User talk:Rippedjeans6/sandbox

Arrest and Trial: - mention James Potter's full name again, in case people didn't read the early life & family section carefully enough

Return to Slavery Section: Overall, the content of this section is fairly good as it is informative and sticks to the subject. One problem I noticed is that the section does not really stand on its own. I had to read the beginning parts in order to understand what was going on in this section, which is not what people should have to do for an encyclopedia article. I think this could be improved if there was a bit more context to what is happening at the beginning of the section. Additionally, some of the adjectives that are used are not very neutral, such as "the dramatic court trial" and "strong protests." One last improvement is that this section might benefit from being split up into two paragraphs, especially if you go back to add in more information.

Later Years Section: I realize that you guys did not write this section, but I still think it should be improved. The sentence "In 1877, Devens was appointed U.S. Attorney General by President Rutherford B. Hayes." probably shouldn't be included because this article is about Thomas Sims, not Charles Devens. It would be better to just say that Devens appointed Sims to be a Union general while Devens was U.S. Attorney General, not specifically saying when and how Devens was appointed. Also, the word "returns" in the first sentence isn't very clear about what Devens was supposed to do, so you might consider changing the wording. For neutrality, the only problem is the second sentence about Devens having "qualms about the assignment," all the other sentences in this section are pretty neutral. Additionally, this section doesn't really have much other information about Sims' later years, so you might want to either gather more information for this section or change the section name to something else.

Reactions Section: I think this section needs more details and context. Some sentences have almost no context, such as "African Americans had raised $1,300 to pay for Burns's freedom." There is no details to what is going on in this sentence, which is confusing to the reader. In the first sentence, is using cause célèbre necessary? Also, there is no need to have "(see for instance, the references in Henry David Thoreau’s Slavery in Massachusetts)," you can just cite the source. I also think there should be two paragraphs, with the first having the first sentence (hopefully with more detail) and the second having the rest of the section. I think this section just needs a lot more information in general.

Ecdinh1 (talk) 13:44, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

General comments
Early Life and Family: I think this section is pretty solid, especially considering the fact that there probably isn't that much information about his early life out there. I would just clarify when Sims worked as a bricklayer because from the rest of the article, it seems as if he worked on the same plantation his parents were enslaved (Potter's plantation) and then once he escaped, he worked as a bricklayer in Boston. Otherwise, this section is good.

Escape from Slavery Another good section. If you can, try to find some more details about Sims' escape.

Arrest and Trial This section seems very dense, and though you guys did split up the paragraphs, I think that there still is some more room for you to add some more breaks to make the section a little more readable. If you can, add in where Sims was sent to in the South. Was he sent back to the plantation his parents were enslaved? Or somewhere else. This might seem like a trivial thing, but if someone who had no idea what the Fugitive Slave Act was were to read this article, they may be confused. This also kind of goes back to what I said about the Early Life and Family section...

Gld04 (talk) 15:46, 2 November 2018 (UTC)