A goat for you! edit

File:File-Boer Goat (8742860752).jpg

You deserve a goat for your beautiful sandbox page!

Itherina (talk) 01:43, 20 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

A barnstar for you! edit

  The Original Barnstar
Good job on the masculinity article! Your additions are very valuable. AnaSoc (talk) 22:50, 13 March 2018 (UTC)Reply

WP:Synthesis and WP:Tone edit

Michaelramirez, content added to articles should be about those topics. If sources are about something other than the topic and that material is added to the article, and especially if added to the article and worded as though the sources are about that topic, this equates to WP:Synthesis. There are also WP:Tone issues with your students' edits. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:38, 17 December 2019 (UTC)Reply

Hookup culture edit

Hi! Ryan (Wiki Ed) alerted me to this. I took a look and here are some things that I noted that are likely part of the reason why the edits were reverted by Flyer22 Reborn:

It looks like the student used this study as a source, as well as several others like this, this and this. (Not sure if this is a study, but it looks like it probably is.) Studies are discouraged as sources for several reasons, one of which is that they are primary sources for the claims and research conducted by the author(s). Other reasons include context (since studies are limited in who they can survey and/or scope, so may not be representative of a wider group), commentary (provided by others on the study and its findings), and verification, as the publisher of the study doesn't actually provide these per se - they do check for any major errors or things that could invalidate the study immediately, but they don't really validate or provide commentary or context, so it's still possible for a publisher to put out a faulty study. There are also issues with original research that pop up, as someone could question why one study is chosen over another.

(More including this for any incoming students, as I figure you are already aware of this. :) )

I think that the more major issue, however, is that it wasn't really clear how sexual economics and the sexual marketplace plays into hookup culture. The section looked to cover the sexual marketplace in more of a general sense, rather than how it applied to hookup culture in specific. The two topics do relate to one another since in order to have a hookup culture there needs to be a sexual marketplace, but the two aren't necessarily the same thing since the sexual marketplace would also presumably house the dating scene where people pursue more serious relationships. (In other words, the hookup culture is a type of tree in the large forest that is the sexual marketplace.) I think that this is a case of having a very general topic in a very specific one and to be honest, I think it would be worth pursuing this for its own article (on the sexual marketplace). It would definitely need non-primary sourcing and it would also need to be edited for style, as the writing included "we" type phrasing that doesn't fit Wikipedia's third person writing style. (There's information on why Wikipedia uses this here.) It could also use some attribution, as there are some things that could be seen as the student connecting two topics via "if... then..." type of sentences. An example of one would be this sentence:

Sex is seen as a female resource and since sex with women is seen as a commodity, it makes it more valuable and allows women to restrict the sexual supply
It's the "since" that makes this more of an "if... then..." statement, as it looks like it's building an argument to persuade the reader to see things in a given light. To be honest, the persuasive writing style is one of the hardest things to try to avoid on Wikipedia since it's so incredibly pervasive and innocuous in everyday life. It's certainly something I still struggle with at times, even after many years of editing, so I try to remain as vigilant as possible when I write. A good way to help resolve things like this, however, is to attribute it to the person(s) making the claim. (However I would be remiss if I didn't mention that if it's not a widely held viewpoint then there is a question of whether or not it should be in the article.) The statement could be attributed as such:
Scholars such as John Smith and Jane Smith have argued that as sex is seen as a female resource and since sex with women is seen as a commodity, sex is made more valuable and women are allowed to restrict the sexual supply.
The prior statement could be contested, as someone could argue against any part of the claim in one fashion or another but they won't be able to argue that this is a viewpoint held by specific people, as this would be in the given cited source.

I hope that this helps explain what is going on! For the meantime I think it would be best to hold off on re-adding anything until any concerns have been met and again, I think it would actually be a better idea to look into creating an article on the sexual marketplace - there certainly seems to be enough coverage out there to justify this having an article. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:34, 17 December 2019 (UTC)Reply

Yes, Shalor (Wiki Ed). The following part is especially why I reverted: "[I]it wasn't really clear how sexual economics and the sexual marketplace plays into hookup culture. The section looked to cover the sexual marketplace in more of a general sense, rather than how it applied to hookup culture in specific." As always, thanks for taking the time to explain. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:39, 17 December 2019 (UTC)Reply