Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional

The feedback I received definetly helps me strengthen my article. I plan on taking all the suggestions made, such as expanding on the role the group has in present society, making sure the history presented is accurate and citing the information, and reorganizing the section of presidents. My main plans for improving my article was by adding more sources, since the sources presented were not up to Wikipedia standards. I still plan on adding and fixing that as well. By having more suggestions, other than my own, on how I should improve the article, I will begin addressing those suggestions in my first draft.

 

Wikipedia Project Support

Good afternoon!

I’m writing a quick post in response to your requests from this morning’s Wikipedia Workshop.  We’ll talk more after break, but I wanted to make sure you had my feedback in case you’re already working on finding sources and coming up with a strategy to improve your articles.

Questions you raised:

  • Finding sources: this was by far the most common question.  You should take advantage of the rich library resources available to you at the College of Wooster.   The Latin American Studies LibGuide organizes many of these tools.  You can start with online encyclopedia databases like Credo for a broad overview.  For biographies, check out the Biography Reference Bank.  For more detailed research on Latin American topics, Historical Abstracts is my next stop.  Depending on your topic, resources like LGBT life or Chicano Database will be helpful.  Come see me or a librarian for help.  IF YOU USE THESE OFF CAMPUS, you need to connect with the VPN.
  • Writing: We’ll have peer review in class, and you can always get helpful feedback from the Writing Center.  And remember to refer to Wikipedia’s guidelines on tone.
  • Shaping a “Stub” Article: I find it very helpful to look at models from similar articles for ideas about what works and what doesn’t.  For example, when I created the article for Kerolin Nicoli Israel Ferraz, I looked at how other soccer players’ pages were structured, and what kinds of information they included.
  • KH seeing my work: Don’t worry, as long as your are logged in, Wikipedia lets me track all of your contributions to class articles.  I can also see the History pages for each article.
  • Translation: there is a helpful tutorial on translation if this is part of your project.

The next steps in this project:

Before class on Friday, October 18th you will:

  • Complete Wikipedia Peer Review Training.
  • On your article’s talk page, create a new heading to introduce your proposed edits.
  • On the talk page, write a few sentences about what you plan to contribute to the selected article, and why these additions are important. Think back to our discussions of content gaps, Wikipedia’s 5 Pillars, and the American Historical Association article.
  • Compile a list of at least 6-8 relevant, reliable books, journal articles, or other sources. Post that bibliography to the talk page of the article you’ll be working on.

We’ll work on peer review of your improvement plans, as well as any technical or technological questions that may arise in class that Friday.

Celia Sanchez-LA

This topic is closely represented by the Cuban Revolution and Cuba’s government post-revolution. When looking at websites that talk about Celia Sanchez, it seemed to be biased and opinionated since there were many speculations about Celia and Castro being lovers since they were really close friends. But scholarly articles seemed to have a more in-depth explanation of her life before, during and after the revolution, which is helpful in making the article be unbiased. Some of the sources some from one book and a couple of websites but checking out the websites they seemed biased and less factual about her. I might improve the article by using more scholarly articles and emphasizing her contributions to the revolution.

Alpha 66 Blog Post

Alpha 66 is poorly represented. It is sloppy and severely lacking in terms of relevant sources. Even the information presented is more speculation than fact.

Alpha 66 is overwhelmingly seen through the lens of a conspiracy theorist. Recent news articles and outdated documents create the main support for this page’s flawed ideas.

It is not unreasonable to state that any change will improve this page, but I will focus on removing baseless claims whilst simultaneously adding sources and factual details about the group and its history.

Ruth Buendía

This article does a fairly god job of summarizing the most important aspects of Buendía’s work as an indigenous activist and environmentalist. Although it doesn’t seem slanted, the English version stops at 2014 regarding her activity and lacks detail on her childhood (the Spanish version does a much better job of both of these matters, with a whole subheading regarding current problems she is tackling). To improve this, I would definitely rely on sources in Spanish to cite for the English article, because there should be much more information on what Buendía is doing in the current day – maybe even in relation to the recent press on Brazil’s fires.

LGBT history in Honduras

I’m not really sure what to right for this response, mostly because the Wikipedia article is only 3 sentences long.  Basically if I even add one source to the article it would already be a big improvement.  I’m honestly surprised that the article isn’t considered a stub.  But I already have found some articles to use.

Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement

The Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) page is informed largely by sources critical of the movement, and consequently they are cast in an overtly negative light. The article is largely accounts of their criminal and terrorist activity, with very little from the perspective of members and collaborators. The MRTA was of course unambiguously violent and guilty of violating international humanitarian law. To improve the article, I would likely look at sources that discussed the trials related to MRTA members, as well as any manifestos or statements issues by the group on their stated goals. The talk page also has multiple instances of editors drawing doubt on the accuracy of information released by the Peruvian government.

The Cuban Literacy Campaign

In the article, The Cuban Literacy Campaign, the program is represented in a very one dimensional way, it speaks mainly of the successes without contextualization and fails to give enough weight to parts that may have been less than savory, i.e. the fact that all the reading material was revolutionary propaganda. This leads into the biases that are seen throughout the article, as it is written from a largely socialist perspective. The sources used are all quite old, having no citations from documents written past the year 2011, and the article lacks a fresh perspective having been left untouched and labeled as low priority on Wikipedia for a while. Editing the language of the article to be more neutral as well as offering context and discussing certain points further in order to offer more well rounded information would be an excellent start to bringing the article up to Wikipedia’s standards.

Granma (newspaper)

The wikipedia article on the Granma newspaper starts by explaining the historical context of the newspaper, but does not elaborate on its role in the history of Cuba or Latin America as a whole. The article seems fairly unbiased, but this may be because the ideological basis of the newspaper is not discussed in detail. The biggest weakness in the article is probably the sources. The article only cites two, and there are many “citation needed” footnotes in the editions section of the article. The two sources are both academic works, one being a book, and the other being an article. To improve this article, I could research information about the importance of the Granma newspaper to the history of both Cuba and Latin America. I could also research where the newspaper is published, it’s relationship to the Cuban government, and its reception both in Cuba and abroad. My most important change to the article, though, will likely be the addition of sources to support the existing article, as well as my additions to it.

Guerrilla Warfare (book)

This article is about Che Guevara’s book, Guerrilla Warfare. It doesn’t seem to have a bias, and accurately represents that it is a book, written by Che Guevara, about Guerrilla Warfare. It’s really just a summary of the contents of Guerrilla Warfare. The sources are either the book itself or reviews and articles about the book. I might want to improve this article by seeing how these lessons Guevara wrote about were inspired by experiences he had during the Cuban Revolution.