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Hi! My name is Moet Matsuoka. I am from Tokyo, and I enjoy being a student at Georgetown so far!

Welcome![edit]

Hello, Moet-matsu, 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) 15:56, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Notes on the book censorship article[edit]

Hi! I wanted to expand on the email:

From what I can see, the other editor looks to have been going through and doing some cleaning to make the content better fit Wikipedia's guidelines. Something I noticed and I'll go into more detail about later, is that you have a lot of content that could be seen as an opinion and/or lack the coverage needed to back up the information. I especially want to emphasize the need for reliable sources, as we can't take anything for granted on Wikipedia as a fact - everything needs to be verifiable.

Some of the content that you've added needs to be better sourced to back up the claims in the article. For example, in one part of the article you claim that Huckleberry Finn was the first book to be banned in the United States and backed it up with this source. The issue here is that the source does not say this - when it uses the word "first" it is used to refer to the first time that this specific book was banned, not to signify that it was the first book that was banned. This claim also contradicts something that was written later in the article, specifically that a book by Walt Whitman as banned in the 1850s soon after it was published. (For what it's worth, I believe that the first book to be banned was Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan, which was published in 1631, but I can't find a good reliable source to really verify this.

Other content that you have needs to be both re-written and properly sourced to show that it's not a personal opinion. For example, the following section could be re-written:

Public schools and libraries in the US have been limiting the children’s choice to read books. More and more books are banned every year and limiting the freedom to read. This problem “highlights the tension between parental authority and society, but it is ultimately about defining American Value.”[1] As there are Parental Guidance to movies, there are also some books that young adults are not ready to read, books that are for adults. However, some of the banned books are helping the children to identify themselves or educate themselves. For example, The Harry Potter series or Drama.
Critics have stated that banning books in public schools and libraries limits the freedom and ability for young readers to pick out their own books, which could help educate the readers and help with their self-identification.[citation needed] On the topic, (name of person making the statement) believes that this “highlights the tension between parental authority and society, but it is ultimately about defining American Value.”[2]

With the above portion you would need to source the first sentence to show where you drew the information from, if it is not sourced by the Credo reference. The second sentence needs to have the name of the person who made the comment. It would also help to expand this a little to show what they meant by this defining American Value - this is a little confusing.

There was another portion that I was going to highlight, but my main concern with this at this point is that I would like for you to find a citation for the claim "It has been suggested that as there are parental guidance to movies, there is a need for something similar for books. "

As far as the editor goes, I think that they mean well here and that they look to be trying to work with you rather than against you per se - but I also think that it would be a good idea to reach out to them and politely ask questions about why they made the changes. I think that they were right to challenge some of the material, such as the passage I highlighted above, but this would be a valuable opportunity to learn from another editor on Wikipedia. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:11, 8 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  1. ^ "Book Banning | Culture Wars in America: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices - Credo Reference". search.credoreference.com. Retrieved 2017-12-05.
  2. ^ "Book Banning | Culture Wars in America: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices - Credo Reference". search.credoreference.com. Retrieved 2017-12-05.