Jonescha2020

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Hello, Jonescha2020, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.

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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:19, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Notes

Hi, I have notes for your draft, as your instructor stated that you want to move this live:

• Avoid addressing the reader and using the words "we" and "you", as Wikipedia is meant to be written in third person. This type of wording also presumes something of the reader (more on this here) and can also make the writing seem too casual or like it's a reflection or original research on the topic.

• There are a lot of unsourced claims in the draft, which pose an issue of original research, especially as it looks like it's written as a response to the topic. Keep in mind that we can only summarize what has been explicitly stated about the topic in reliable sources. Anything that does come across as an opinion or a subjective statement will need to be clearly attributed, as subjectivity means that while the statement could be true for one person it may not be for the next one to read the article. Someone could argue that "X doesn't mean Y" when it's written as such and even point out sourcing that states the opposite of the claim, but they couldn't argue that "John Smith stated that X doesn't mean Y" because there's documentation that he made this statement and this is his belief.

• On this note, avoid any sort of "if... then..." or "furthermore..." type of writing.

• You use studies as sourcing - Studies should generally be avoided unless they're accompanied with a secondary source that reviews the study or comments upon the specific claim that is being stated. The reason for this is that studies are primary sources for any of the claims and research conducted by their authors. The publishers don't provide any commentary or in-depth verification, as they only check to ensure that the study doesn't have any glaring errors that would invalidate it immediately. Study findings also tend to be only true for the specific people or subjects that were studied. For example, a person in one area may respond differently than one in an area located on the other side of the country. Socioeconomic factors (be they for the person or a family member) also play a large role, among other things that can impact a response. As such, it's definitely important to find a secondary source, as they can provide this context, verification, and commentary. Aside from that, there's also the issue of why a specific study should be highlighted over another. For example, someone could ask why one study was chosen as opposed to something that studied a similar topic or had different results.

This is especially important when it comes to discussing this topic when it starts broaching into physical and mental health type avenues, as the sourcing must meet the guidelines for medicine and psychology related reliable sources. I would like you to review this training module on this.

• Two of the sources you used are Master's theses. Be extremely careful about these as Master's theses don't undergo the same level of rigorous oversight that a doctoral thesis would. In most cases a Master's thesis would likely not be seen as reliable, to be honest, particularly when it comes to a topic that is as frequently controversial as virginity.

• Additionally with sourcing, be cautious when it comes to the scope. This article addresses virginity on a global scale, so you want to make sure that we're not citing content with something that is making a claim based on a single country, state, or small area - or in the case of studies, a small slice of a population within a relatively small area. What is true for one area may not be for another.

I hope that this helps! Also, I saw that you posted to the talk page for virginity and Deacon Vorbis responded there. They were brief, but I believe that they had the same concerns that I do. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:56, 9 December 2019 (UTC)