User:JSCC3412/Mauritania–Senegal Border War/WadeBucket Peer Review

General info

Wade Buchheit (WadeBucket) reviewing Jeff Sousa (JSCC3412).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JSCC3412/Mauritania%E2%80%93Senegal_Border_War?veaction=edit&preload=Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org_draft_template

Mauritania–Senegal Border War

Evaluate the drafted changes

Lead Section:

Great! Simple, easy to read, gets the purpose and need for the article across. Neutral, efficient, contains the most important information. I don't have any changes to recommend.

Structure:

I like what you have right now; the original article certainly has plenty of problems but is nicely organized so you could potentially draw from that. I guess just thinking about where you place the "editing existing text" subsections and making sure it doesn't feel like they've been injected later than the rest of the article. For example, will "desertification" go in the "Background" section or will it get it's own section before "Border Violence"?

Topic Coverage:

I would say the length of your sections is proportional and every section is necessary. Definitely flush out the original article's refugee repatriation section; that seems like a really important part of the aftermath and felt a little half-assed. I'm obviously not an expert on the topic but there didn't seem to be any perspectives missing. You could perhaps discuss the role of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie a little more than the original article does, but again not entirely clear on how important it actually is - probably a judgement call for you. I also think the "Border Violence" section is written a little redundant and the sentence that starts with "As a result..." is a tad confusing because of the interjection before it, so maybe some things to keep in mind.

Neutrality:

I have no idea if you have a perspective or particular opinion, so... success! In all seriousness, I didn't pick up on any language or signifiers of bias, but definitely look to Sabrina for a second opinion. I think the evaluation guide's advice to look at the balance of positive and negative information is kind of ridiculous because this is a war, but suffice to say you're not overly critical of anything or anyone.

Sourcing:

Sources look great! If possible, you could draw from them more during the body of the article, though I understand the instinct to avoid relying on them overmuch. I think the Wiki guide thing suggested one citation per 2-3 sentences as a rule of thumb. That might be overkill, but I assume it's to avoid any accusations of plagiarism. The beginning of "Border Violence" in particular could have citations more often, which you might be able to draw straight from the original article.

Overall:

I think you do an excellent job writing out some of the weaknesses from the original article, both some of the straight up mistakes and marking and improving some coverage issues. Your structure also looks excellent, and you have a clear plan of how to proceed (excited to read the new background section).

I think the single most important thing to change would probably be just more citations, incorporating the sources from the original article where possible.

Looks good Jeff!

Peer Review Response

Thanks for all your comments! I took your advice on finding more citations and I spent the weekend finding new (better) sources and refining the information I had gotten from my existing sources. I feel like this was something I neglected to do earlier in the project, so it's good that I spent some time doing so. It's obviously far more beneficial when you have a greater number of decent sources.

I also took your advice about structure and put more thought into the current structure and about how I can improve the structure that I currently have in my sandbox. I made some adjustments and decided to have separate sub-sections within "Background". For example, "desertification" now has its own paragraph within Background. I appreciate your thoughts on this, as I hadn't previously put much thought into it myself.

The refugee repatriation section is definitely the next major part I'll be working on, so thank you for that suggestion. It was really lacking in the original article and I have struggled to find decent sources that cover this topic in depth, but I think I found a couple this weekend that will be useful.

As for the Border Violence paragraph, you're correct about the confusing sentence structure and lack of citations. This paragraph is mainly original text from the article, and I have only made minor edits on it so far. The grammar and sentence structure will be much better once I'm finished editing.

I'll keep your comments about neutrality in mind. I agree that it's difficult to use the guidelines when you're discussing a war. Thank you for all of your comments though! I will continue to refer back as I continue to add information and make edits.