Tlajas

Welcome!

Hello, Tlajas, 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.

Handouts
Choosing an article to edit Editing an article • Add images to articles Citing sources on Wikipedia
Additional Resources
You can find answers to many student questions on our Q&A site, ask.wikiedu.org

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:38, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Ken Yager

Hi! I think that you could do a mixture of both. I'd start off by finding as many sources for Yager as you can, then going over the article and seeing if you have any sources in the article that could back up claims in the article. You can then use the existing article as a base to work from. Offhand I do see that the article has some issues with tone, as it looks like it was perhaps edited by a marketing or PR person given the use of his first name and some of the marketing speak in the page. If, while you're working, you feel that you need to completely start from scratch then that's fine as well.

I do have some notes for the article/draft (since you've copied the article to your draftspace).

• Make sure that you refer to Yager by his last name rather than just his first, as otherwise this will make the article too casual. I've edited the draft to fix this.

• When it comes to awards I'd limit this to just the most notable awards. It's generally kind of assumed that a politician will receive awards for their work, so what I'd focus on would be the most major ones, the ones that received coverage in sourcing that's independent of the award granting institution, the recipient's website(s), or anyone affiliated with either. Part of the reasons for this other than it being something that's pretty much par for the course with politicians is that adding all of the awards can make the article seem fairly promotional, even if this is unintentional.

• The same thing goes to a certain degree for the committees. I'd limit this to those you can find sourcing in general for.

• I would combine the personal life and education sections into a single section entitled "Personal life and education". This kind of streamlines everything without it needing to have as many different sections, which makes it easier to read as a whole. The political history and early work section can be combined into a career section that's separated by subheaders. I've done this to the draft to give you an example of what this could look like. Definitely feel free to edit this if you don't like it.

I've added some of the material from the article that wasn't there, just so that you can get a better idea of what the article will look like when it's ready while you're working. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:10, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

• Also, here is a brochure on editing biographies that could be helpful. Definitely let me know if you have any questions or concerns, or need any other help! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:11, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Response

Hi! I wanted to give you another response. Ultimately when it comes to others reviewing your draft, it's up to them to find a classmate to peer review. You could ask your instructor about this, but this is more something that they need to do to be honest. If someone selects your article they should check your sandbox but if they don't, you can let them know that the work is in your sandbox. It shouldn't count against you if you don't get a peer review. Now that said, I'm definitely more than happy to re-review your draft and give you a review in the interim! I'll re-review your draft and post back in a bit. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:38, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Here's the informal review:

• The article is generally neutral, but had some prose that could be tweaked to be more formal. This was carried over from the live article, so it's not something that the student did. I've cleaned this up for the student since a lot of these are words and phrases that are fairly innocuous sounding. (To be honest, it's something that I really only became aware of after years of being on Wikipedia.) The tone is no longer an issue.
• The sourcing is good, but there could be more sourcing, especially more coverage in newspapers and books. The only issue with the sourcing is that one of the links goes to the basic Vote Smart website instead of a page on the site that's specifically about Yager. This has since been fixed. Everything is sourced, which is one of the more important parts.
• This gives a good general overview of Yager's career and life. It could be expanded more, but what's here gives readers a good overview of the topic. Adding more would be reliant on finding more coverage, to be honest, which isn't always there for some politicans.

Overall I think you've done a good job here. I've fixed some of the more nitpicky things that people may bring up. None of those were really things you did, since they were already in the existing article. I think that you're ready to move your work over whenever you want. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:15, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Response

Do you mean like help moving your work live or do you just want to rename your sandbox? I can help you do either, if you like. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:54, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

• I've moved it to User:Tlajas/Ken Yager, but let me know if you want me to move your work live for you. I can do that in a way that would keep your edit history intact. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:55, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
• I've moved it live! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:28, 10 July 2019 (UTC)