Wikipedia talk:Wiki Ed/University of Texas at San Antonio/Black Lives Matter - Critical Perspectives (Spring 2017)

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Hi everyone! It looks like the following pages were nominated for deletion:

Unapologetically Black (Black Lives Matter Guiding Principle), Queer Affirming (Black Lives Matter Guiding Principle), Intergenerational (Black Lives Matter Guiding Principal), Diversity (Black Lives Matter Guiding Principle), Loving Engagement (Black Lives Matter Guiding Principle), Transgender Affirming (Black Lives Matter Guiding Principle)

The reasons given were that the pages seemed a little too promotional, they didn't have the sourcing to justify individual articles on Wikipedia, and they also read a little too much like a reflection paper. Offhand I do have to agree with this, as it's pretty rare that an organization's guiding principles will have the coverage necessary to justify inclusion for an overall page or for individual ones.

When sourcing articles you must find sourcing that covers the topic (in this case the BLM guiding principles) in depth and is independent of the topic itself. In this situation the BLM's pages would be seen as WP:PRIMARY sources and would not be able to show notability. They could be used to back up basic points, but they wouldn't be able to show notability. You also need to be cautious about WP:TRIVIAL mentions, which are cases where the guiding principles would only be briefly mentioned in passing, most likely in relation to the movement itself. Most of the time the guiding principles of an organization or movement will be only briefly mentioned in passing, usually when quoted or explained by someone involved.

Now when it comes to writing content, you need to make sure that the content remains neutral. This can actually be pretty difficult to do, especially if you are used to academic or personal writing. (I know that when I started out, I had a really hard time with this!) If I could sum it up in one sentence, the gist of neutral writing is that a reader should be unable to tell that you stand a specific way on the topic at hand. In many cases this means that an article topic will be summarized in a fairly brief manner, with a minimum of quotes. The reason for a minimum of quotes is that sometimes the quotes can be very passionate and moving, which in turn can make something seem like it's pro-topic.

What I suggest is that you work on incorporating these guiding principles into the main article for Black Lives Matter, as there's a section in there about these principles. You could give each principle a 1-2 sentence summary of what this principle entails. For example, for Transgender Affirming you could write something like this:

This guiding principle requires members to show respect for transgender persons, support those persons' ability to participate and lead in the movement, and to help eliminate cis-gender privilege. This principle pays particular attention to black trans women, who the movement believes "continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence."(source)

This gets the general gist of the principle while also summarizing it in a brief manner. (You can totally use this example, if you wish, or rephrase it as you like.) It does contain some of the language used in the principle language, however it specifies that this is a belief held by the movement. This might seem nit picky, but little language tweaks like that can help distance Wikipedia from the topic and make things seem more neutral. The only catch is to make sure that you don't paraphrase too closely while summarizing the principles.

If anyone has any questions, please feel free to tag me in this conversation by writing {{u|Shalor (Wiki Ed)}}, as that will send me an alert. I will also be monitoring the board, but this can be helpful in general if you want to post a question on your talk page or on an article's talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:32, 24 April 2017 (UTC)