Kthakrar9

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Welcome!

Hello, Kthakrar9, 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.

I hope you enjoy editing here. If you haven't already done so, please check out the student training library, which introduces you to editing and Wikipedia's core principles. You may also want to check out the Teahouse, a community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to helping new users. Below are some resources to help you get started editing.

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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:07, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Sexism in video gaming

Hi! I received a notification about your edits to Sexism in video gaming. I'm also going to ping your professor, Jmoorman9, so they're aware.

You recently made this edit, with the edit summary "A number of data and statistics... adding information as well as as linking it back to the overall topics". They were reverted by Koncorde, with the edit summary "the changes made are somewhat sweeping in contrast to the edit summary. While I can see some elements are good contributions, other parts are very POV or otherwise written in an unencyclopedic tone and as more of a personal essay from a particular stance. I would suggest where you are adding additional citations add these in unique edits. Removing content should always be quantified".

The concerns here are these:

• When you made the edit, you removed a lot of content that was already in the article without explaining why it was removed. Some of the content that was removed included sourcing.
• The content had issues with tone, as it was written from a specific viewpoint/opinion on the topic area.
• There were issues with original research - claims, conclusions, and such that you came up with on your own.

When making changes, make sure that you aren't removing content without good reason. If making large changes like this, especially in a controversial topic area, it's a good idea to post to the talk page and give a general head's up about what you plan on doing and why. It's not absolutely required, but it's heavily recommended because it gives people a chance to discuss the edits and if there are issues, they can point them out more easily there. You also need to make sure that when you edit, that the material is as neutral as possible and doesn't come across as arguing a specific vantage point. Avoid using opinion statements or using scare quotes, as these are inherently non-neutral. Any controversial or major claims or opinions should be attributed to the person(s) making them, along the lines of "According to..." and so on.

Original research should be avoided, as we can only summarize what has already been explicitly stated in the source material. Attribution is also very important here as well, as this can sometimes help show that the claim is not your own, but something that an authority on the topic created. Avoid writing broad, sweeping generalizations without attribution. Not only do these generalizations run the risk of being inaccurate, but they can also be offensive. For example, this sentence from your addition could be seen as a sweeping generalization.

Women are known to be more nurturing which is why video games are stereotypically never known to be something women have been interest in.

This opens quite a few issues. The first is who knows this - it says that it's known, but exactly who knows this is too vague. The second is that this could potentially be viewed as offensive, as women are often stereotyped as nurturers and men as non-nurturers. The preceding sentence also stereotypes video games as violent and destructive and men as naturally rough and tough, which poses the same issues of generalizations and stereotypes. I get the impression that this is a summary of the source material, so it needs to be phrased very, very carefully and very clearly attributed to the person who originally stated this.

Switching between writing styles (persuasive or argumentative essays as opposed to encyclopedia writing) is definitely something that can be tough to get used to, a way to get around this is to mimic the writing styles in existing articles, especially ones that have been deemed Good or Featured Articles. Ones that could be helpful are the articles on Lara Croft and ESRB re-rating of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. As far as feminism in general goes, you can look at the articles on Cutting the Mustard or Women in Classical Athens. The article on Sexism is only C class, but can also be a good article to review as far as writing styles go. With reviewing for writing styles, it isn't really the topic as much as the way the article is written and handles various major claims.

I hope this helps! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:54, 28 November 2018 (UTC)