User talk:Macybartlett

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Hello, Macybartlett, 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.

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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:26, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Prison education

Hi Macy. I note you've been assigned the article Prison education as part of a supported University assignment. I'm the main contributor to this article; it's a topic I'm particularly interested in, and Wikipedia's coverage of the issue used to be quite poor. Here is what the article looked like before I started working on it: [1]. Of course, nobody owns any Wikipedia article, so I look forward to your contributions.

I do consider myself a subject-matter expert though, so if you'd like any feedback on proposals for working on the article, please let me know. It's completely up to you, though my feedback may save your time. For example, an ongoing problem I have at the article is people repeatedly adding inappropriate content to the 'North American' section. Here is the latest one which was only added a couple of weeks ago, and subsequently removed by myself: [2].

So there's nothing wrong with this information per se, the issue is is that the section is supposed to summarise the history of the entire continent as succinctly as possible, so writing an entire paragraph about the establishment of one seminary that did not change prison education on a national level or do something that had never been done before is a violation of WP:UNDUE. This paragraph may have been very appropriate in a more narrow article, for example, an article just on the history of prison education in Louisiana, or perhaps even just the US, but it wasn't appropriate on an article about the subject from a worldwide perspective.

Prison education is a featured article, meaning it has been peer-reviewed to the highest standards. It may be useful for you to read both the initial unsuccessful Featured Article review (FAR), and the later successful FAR, regarding what was necessary to have the article promoted in the first place. For example, you may see an idea for expanding the article, or see that an idea has already been rejected by consensus and it unlikely to be accepted. I feel like the article is very comprehensive at the moment, though some older statistics could very much benefit from being updated (assuming newer statistics exists of course, trust me, it's a difficult subject to find information on sometimes). It was also noted at the first FAR that the article doesn't have a section on education in military prisons. While there was no consensus on whether it should, and I'm not personally convinced it is necessary (or that enough sources exist to create one), that's at least a topic that hasn't been researched before, and could be of benefit. Anyway, good luck and let me know if you have any questions. Damien Linnane (talk) 02:39, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi Damien! Thank you for reaching out. I am just now starting to draft my contributions and once I am closer to finalizing them, I would love to send it your way before I publish. I want to ensure you that I will do my best to uphold the integrity of this article and I would greatly appreciate your feedback. Macybartlett (talk) 22:07, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi Damien! I would love if you could take a look at some of my additions. You can find them in my sandbox: User:Macybartlett/Prison education. Let me know what you think! Macybartlett (talk) 21:55, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi Macybartlett. Thanks for getting in touch. The changes look good to me. I only see two minor issues. The first is with the word "currently". Have a read of WP:REALTIME, which is one of Wikipedia's many, many guidelines (there's stacks out there and i still find new ones even after editing for many years). Anyway, 'Currently' is a word you should not use on Wikipedia. Instead, use the actual year the source refers to, even if it is the current year.

Secondly, your final added sentence on the prison University Project looks like it would be better placed in the 'History and results' section of 'Reductions in recidivism', rather than in the 'Rates' section. The 'Rates section is just for raw rates, not impacted by educational programs. Let me know if you have any questions. Damien Linnane (talk) 07:11, 21 May 2023 (UTC)