Talk:National Organization for Women
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First (instructor) evaluation comments
Hi James,
Here are some suggestions for further improvements to your encyclopedia entry draft. I'll stick to the sections you've already been developing, but remember that you still need to fill in the others as well as the required subpages.
- Above all, it's important that you present information about NOW in your own words rather than lifting directly (or even paraphrasing closely) from the organization's website. For example, your intro section should not be as close as it currently is to this.
- The "History" section seems to be similarly derived too directly from the NOW website's history page, though by jumping so abruptly into the Civil Rights Act, it doesn't provide readers with enough historical context about feminism in the United States and doesn't seem to discuss how the politics of civil rights actually led to NOW's founding. It would probably be a good idea to scrap what you have there and start over by explaining in your own words how NOW came about and how it's developed since the mid-1960s.
- The first paragraph of the "Current objectives and activities" section should be in paragraph form rather than a list. Once again, your discussion of the organization's work should be in your own words, not in those of NOW's website.
Shamira Gelbman 18:03, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Second (peer) evaluation comments
The encyclopedia entry for National Organization for Women (NOW) is fairly complete. The Intro, History and objective sections have detailed and very informative material. You got into great depth of how the organization started and became as strong and dominant as it is today. Though, you failed to give information on other sections such as Organization Structure, Achievements, and Public Perception and controversies. Achievements is an important part to have because it really shows was the organization has done and what it has been recognized for throughout it’s time. Your Intro section was very well written. You gave just the right information so that readers who have very little knowledge on the organization can fully understand the information given. I did not need to know background or previous information in order to understand what points you were trying to get out. It was very helpful that you added all of the discriminations it was trying to eliminate. Instead of just saying that its main goal was to eliminate those, you listed all very important topics and issues that are occurring.
The History section overall is pretty well done, it could use a little more detail maybe behind the Acts and Titles that you listed. In several instances you listed the names of these titles and act but never if someone were to not have any political or U.S. governmental background, they may not know what you were referring too. The way the EEOC was incorporated was very well done. The EEOC is a very important part of NOW but are there other groups or institutions that played a role in NOW’s formation or arguments? You may want to look into some further background to see if there were other role players. Also, are there are other laws, titles, or chapters that NOW defended or helped to bring to congress? Those are some other questions that I had from reading it. I think you may need to add more to the history since it is such a big and well known organization, there is probably a lot more information that may answer those questions.
In the Current Objectives and Activities section, you give two very big examples of programs or issues that they are advocating but they need some more detail like what are they doing to prove this? Do they hold seminars or events that support activities? These are great programs but going into more detail about how they are actively supporting these and getting the word out there will only add to how important or special these programs are.
Overall, I think your entry is to a good start. There are a few topics that don’t have any information that need to be updated but other than that you have some very good information about NOW. I honestly did not know much about this organization other than obvious issues they support but I am well informed now. I am interested though to see what they are doing to express their ideas of all the issues you stated in the essay. Adding little details will only make it better and going into more depth with make your entry complete.
Public perception and controversies cleanup
As part of my plan to go through all the POL-214 Eduzendium articles, I cleaned this one up today. I rewrote the PP&C section. I rewrote it into hopefully clear prose - although I would like someone familiar with the current status of the David Letterman issue to check it out - I used the magic "allegation" word here, as I'd rather lean on the side of caution. If the Letterman situation warrants a stronger word, I do hope someone will step in and fix that.
That said, 'controversies' would seem to suggest controversies regarding NOW, rather than controversies that they have commented on - that sort of material should really be put in a section regarding their political opinions or activities. A point of comparison might be something like the Church of Scientology where the controversies are the activities, beliefs and opinions of the group or organization (or their underlying ideology) rather than things they have criticised others for. Thank you, Eduzendians for your hard work. –Tom Morris 11:48, 31 December 2009 (UTC)