User talk:SarahOll/sandbox

Homework
Sources

Mmom, Prince. "Challenges and Prospect of Environmental Remediation/Restoration in Niger Delta of Nigeria: The Case of Ogoniland". citeseerx.ist.psu.edu. Retrieved 2019-03-17.

scientific paper devoted to researching the extent of the oil spill in the Ejama Ebubu oil spill. also lays out the challenges for future environmental remediation.

Article Evaluation -- Politics of the Republic of China

Is everything in the article relevant? Is there anything that distracted you? I think everything in the article is relevant; however, there was a lengthy discussion of the history of Taiwanese politics and the layout of institutions and current debates/leaders are not mentioned until towards the bottom of the article and only very briefly. I think it would be useful to bulk up information regarding the current political situation of Taiwan. Is any information out of date? On the page, Wikipedia has noted that the "Republic of China on Taiwan since 1949" section needs to be updated to reflect recent events. Additionally, I believe the polling data could be updated if more data has been collected as the current data being displayed is from 2008-2010. Also, the "Political Conditions" section only extends to events before 2005, so it might be useful to add more information and elaborate on that section. What else could be improved? I think a big flaw of the page is that when a political party is referenced, some of them do not have any linked pages and thus the reader may not know what the political party stands for, which can be very important and relevant for discussions of politics. So, either adding new pages for those political parties, or adding in information about these political parties would help the reader gain a more robust understanding of current political motivations. Additionally, the institutions which comprise the Taiwanese government are only briefly explained, and I think it would be useful for a reader if those sections which lengthened. Adding in strengths and weaknesses may be useful (although, that could also potentially be biased and subjective). Is the article neutral? Any seemingly biased claims? I think it is really easy for writers to express some opinion when writing about politics, but I actually think this page is fairly neutral sounding. I think by using statistics, quotes, and academic article these Wikipedians did a good job maintaining a mostly neutral tone. Are viewpoints over or under-represented? I think an important aspect of the politics of Taiwan are its foreign relations with the US, and the greater international community; however, viewpoints and comments by these players are only mentioned here and there. Instead, as these are important actors with regard to Taiwanese politics, it could be useful to add in another section specifically dedicated to the US position, US-Taiwanese relations, or Taiwan in the international community in order to make sure these voices are also represented. Do links work? Does the source support the claims? Most of the links worked, only one that I clicked on returned a "Page could not be found" tagline, and yes, it appears that the sources support the claims made in the Wikipedia page Is each fact referenced with an reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? This article has a notice at the top that the article "possibly contains original research" and that the article "needs additional citations." So, no, each fact is not referenced well or reliably. However. many of the sources which are listed do seem to be credible academic papers published in notable journals. A couple sources are from newspapers which have the potential to be biased as sometimes countries (like China) restrict what the media can say and publish, thereby eliminating full credibility. What kind of conversations? A big point of discussion on the talk page is how the page should be labelled and named due to the controversy surrounding Taiwan's political status. The debate includes some who want the page to be renamed with "Taiwan", others who prefer "Republic of China" and some have suggested moving the page or splitting the page into two. Article rating? The article was nominated as a "Good article" but did not meet the criteria. Differences to Discussion in Class? In class we briefly talked about how sources are very important when writing a wikipedia page, but the talk page here seems more preoccupied with how to display information rather than the information itself.

Isabelle's Peer Review
I think your article so far is well done. The content appear neutral and is well-structured. For example, the explanation of the prevalence of oil spills and the ways they can occur is very clear and concise. One area that could be expanded if you can find more information is the Ejama Ebubu section. Specifically, you could add more about the court case and how the community was able to file the lawsuit and succeed against such a large and powerful company. (ie. Did they have help from non-profits or legal experts?) I also think that your idea of adding a separate section about gas flaring is a really good idea. As we have learned it has become a large part of the way oil is handled in Nigeria and has significantly affected the environment and the surrounding communities. Overall, your article looks like its on the right track and I would mainly suggest on expanding some of the pertinent details of the Ejama Ebubu section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Isabellekd (talk • contribs) 17:49, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Nicola's Peer Edit
The most impressive part of this entry was the equal coverage of oil spill responsibility. Because it seems to be a contested issue of what exactly is the primary cause of spills, instead of taking a side, the author both covered Shell's account and the local account.

For the Ejama Ebubu section, would it be possible in the first sentence to be more specific about what civil war, or if there is already a wikipedia page for it, could it be hyperlinked? Because you said it took some time before the spill to actually be detected, is it possible to include a year or more specifics on the lawsuit, such as what court was it in? The language of "retaliated" is maybe not the most objective--perhaps use "responded." To follow the information format that was in the oil spills section, it might be helpful to find press releases of Shell regarding the spill to bolster the impartiality of the article. For the rest of the Ejama Ebubu section, maybe you could discuss what has been done with the awards within the community. Finally, I recommend that this section be a subsection of of the overall oil spills part, because it is a specific oil spill.

Things to be Added

Along with maybe adding more Shell related sources for Ejama Ebubu, you mention that satellite imaging was used to determine the magnitude of a spill. Would it be possible to find a copy of that. Overall, more images might be helpful to understand what oil spills look like in Nigeria. I am suggesting this based off of the Vice documentary-- often times we see oil spills images from deepwater wells, but I believe there is a different imagery associated with the Nigerian spills.

Sources

For citation 3, I clicked on the link but it redirected me to a invalid DOI number page. Other than that, the amount and quality of sources are great.

Miscellaneous Ideas to Ponder

Are there more examples of oil spills besides Ejama Ebubu that Shell has paid out awards on?

Maybe you could create a subsection of legal proceedings taken against Shell Nigeria in order to better organize the article. Looking at the current page I see that you are just adding to current sections, but I do think that making a section on the legal proceedings against the company would help a future reader and overall help promote more accountability for the company, in an objective way. This wold not necessarily require more research from you, but just putting the last few sentences in your first section into the new section. I do think that gas flaring would be interesting to add! Important would be photos to this because it is hard to understand their impact without visuals I think.

Lampthecat (talk) 00:21, 7 April 2019 (UTC)