User talk:Premsay/sandbox

Premsay, as per your request on my talk page, I'm reviewing your draft of this article. Please feel free to remove them when we're done, so you can use it for other purposes. Or if you like, we can move it over to your talk page. I'll ask your forgiveness in advance for what may seem to be harsh and picky comments, but please understand that it's being done with the best of intentions, in the interest of creating the best bio for Dr. Parrish-Harra as possible.

Overall impressions:
 * I think the biggest thing you need to work on are sources. All of your sources but two are for her bibliography and are from WorldCat. They aren't adequate because WorldCat isn't a secondary source; see Verifiability, which I suggest you get to know well because reliable sources are the hallmark of WP. (There's another way to handle a Bibliography section, which I'll get to later.)
 * Tone: I suggest that you read this: WP:NPOV, specifically the section WP:TONE. As this draft currently reads, it sounds more like a promotional document than an encyclopedic article. Basing the bio on sources will probably resolve this issue.
 * Article development: I suspect that in the drafting of this article, you skipped a very important step: article development. I'll share with you my process: 1) I do a google search, google book search, and a google scholar search. (If you have access to a university library, you might want to go there, too.) 2) Gather all the sources I can find and then summarize them. 3) At that point, write the article, putting nothing in it I can't support with a source. I DO NOT write the article and then go hunt for the sources, because it's very possible they don't exist.

I did a cursory google search, and found two reliable sources I think might pass: an interview (scroll all the way to the bottom) and a 2017 press release, which I notice you already use. This could be problematic because I suspect most of the information you include in the draft aren't in these sources. Plus, neither of them are the most reliable sources because the first one is self-published, from an organization Dr. Parrish-Harra supports, and the second is a PR, which isn't the best source because it's, well, promotional. You might be able to "get away" with using them due to its nature and because I suspect this will be a short article. There are other options for sources, though. I suspect that more is written about Dr. Parrish-Harra in New Age publications that won't necessarily show up in a google search. They wouldn't be the best sources because they may be questionable sources; see WP:QS. Also, did she write a memoir? Or maybe she wrote about her near-death experience in one her books? Memoirs aren't the best source because they're technically self-published, but if they're published by reputable publishing houses, they may pass mustard.

Books section

As per WP:WORKS, this kind of section should be entitled "Works". Please remove the word Dr. from your first sentence, as per MOS:HON. I went ahead and made the change, as well as how I think you should cite it because for me, it's easier to show it than tell you what to do. You'll notice that I removed all the individual refs to the individual WorldCat pages, and put Dr. Parrish-Harra's result page. That's something I would do because it centralizes it all under one site and makes things less cluttered. I also added Dr. Parrish-Harra's list on her webpage because the WorldCat page doesn't list all her works. I suggest going through the list and making sure they appear on either source; if not, you should find a source that supports that she wrote it. My addition of the these two sources may seem to contradict what I said above about WorldCat being unreliable, but I included it, anyway, because it (and the webpage list) is probably best we have. You may need to support their inclusion if you choose to follow my sugggestion.

I was going to go through the rest of the article and evaluate the prose, but I don't think I will for now because everything else is currently unsourced. Remember this, from WP:V: "Material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source." That means that everything not cited can potentially be removed by any editor, and really it should because it violates a core principle of WP. In other words, you need to rewrite most of this article to support your assertions. My concern is that you may not find enough reliable sources to warrant an article, which would be unfortunate. Dr. Parrish-Harra may not be notable, which would also be unfortunate. This is why, as you know, the 1000 Women in Religion wikiproject is also trying to increase sources outside of WP, so that someone like her can be notable enough to warrant a WP article.

Hope this is helpful. Please let me know how else I can assist. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 04:08, 19 December 2020 (UTC)