User talk:Collinross20

Welcome!

Hello, Collinross20, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Ian and I work with Wiki Education; 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
Editing Wikipedia, a guide for student editors Choosing an article to edit Add images to articles Citing sources on Wikipedia
Additional Resources
You can find answers to many student questions in our FAQ.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:33, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Your draft

Hi Collinross20 and Jgplantz. I returned your draft to your sandbox because it isn't ready for mainspace yet.

The first issue is the lack of inline sources. This makes it difficult for readers to verify factual statements in your article. Every statement should be followed by a supporting citation; if a group of sentences are all supported by the same source, you can place a single reference after all of them, but you need to have at least one reference per paragraph, and you shouldn't have any statements after the final reference in a paragraph.

The one inline reference you do have, Solomons, Selina. "How We Won the Vote in California." is incomplete - it's just the name of a work, with no information about what kind of work it is, publication date, or anything else. You also have a lot of primary sources listed in your bibliography, like the US census. These aren't considered reliable sources because it takes expertise to interpret them (make sure that the person listed is actually the right person by that name). It's better to rely on secondary sources, so readers know who did the work. (As Wikipedians, we are anonymous to readers.)

The second issue is the layout of the article. Wikipedia articles begin with a lead section, which summarises all the major points of the article. Have a look at page 7-9 of the linked Editing Wikipedia brochure for more help with layout. I also linked to the Biographies handout, which will give you a sense of some of the usual sections that you find in a biography.

Finally, I recommend that you skip the timeline, you don't list children and grandchildren by name and lifespan, and that you avoid euphemisms like "passed away", because they can be challenging for some readers, especially those who are used to a variety of English that uses different idioms and expressions, or who aren't especially fluent in English. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:06, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Collinross20. Please don't move the draft back to mainspace without addressing these concerns. I assure you it's not ready for mainspace. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:19, 7 December 2022 (UTC)