User talk:Ljlight
Welcome![edit]
Hello, Ljlight, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Ian and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.
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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:32, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Medicine Man Peer Review- Emma Heiden[edit]
Overall, the group did a great job of enriching the introduction with a clarification on the role of medicine men/women in terms of both health and spiritual issues. Adding a completely new focus on herbal remedies, featuring a relatively detailed, easy-to-read chart on the various tribal uses of Echinacea, especially reinforced the fact that these nontraditional remedies are more common than a reader might think. With the potential addition of more charts for Sage, Witch Hazel, and/or Willow, as well as eliminating some of the subjective/biased content from the original page titled “Medicine Man,” this article would be even stronger. While the introductory section is very accessible for non-experts, it might be even better to expand on why understanding the role of a medicine man is important to those even who are not in a Native American tribe. The given list of healing practices is great, but could be improved with brief explanations on how some of these practices work. I found that the contents of each section justify their length, and as an amateur on the topic, I felt it was helpful that the hyperlinks on important terms like tribes, drugs, and chemical compounds were linked to additional Wikipedia pages. In terms of the highlighted examples, I particularly liked the example of the Menominee tribe using Witch Hazel for sore legs of tribesmen who participate in sporting games. Perhaps the editors could also include a more specific case of documented, proven improvement for a member of a tribe? The content is not duplicative of any other content already on Wikipedia that I have been able to find. I really liked the table on Echinacea and its uses within various tribes. The table definitely seems like original work, given the formatting that Wikipedia provides. The table was simple, easy to read, and highlighted the ubiquitous yet subjective nature of a medicine man’s ability to use one plant in so many different ways. I might just add some hyperlinks within the “uses” column, so that the reader could potentially research other ways to heal similar symptoms besides Echinacea. From the brief additional research I have completed, the table on Echinacea seems to be accurate. Overall, the references are complete, and all appear reliable, relatively recent, and objective. The edits are relevant to the article that is being edited, and especially relevant to the mission of the class. In terms of potential for drug development, these edits touched on an important alternative to traditional biomedicine, which pertains to the class nicely. I think adding a section on Effectiveness was truly necessary to improve the original article. I think the editors did a great job of maintaining an objective view in the “Effectiveness” section by only proposing views that are cited with primary evidence. The changes/additions to the introduction were also justified, especially in that they clarified what terms some other cultures use for medicine men/women, which would help international readers. For the most part, the article corresponds to the Wiki standards in terms of language, content, bias and sources. However, I would delete the following section from the original page and find a way to make it less subjective: “The 1954 version of Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language reflects the poorly grounded perceptions of the people whose use of the term effectively defined it for the people of that time: ‘a man supposed to have supernatural powers of curing disease and controlling spirits.’”
If more time was available, to make the entry more interesting to the reader, I would also suggest adding pictures of some of the herbal remedies or medicine men in action, and/or adding columns similar to the one presented for Echinacea, as this was a great way to quickly synthesize and skim information. To be more gender-inclusive, I am also wondering if the title of the page could be changed to “Medicine Man/Woman” instead of just “Medicine Man.” — Preceding unsigned comment added by EmmaHeiden (talk • contribs) 02:37, 24 March 2016 (UTC)