User:Michael O'Conner 2019

Hello,

I am a student in Steven Arntson's English 101 class. I am 31 years old and I am returning to college after a 10 year "break". I love TV shows especially the Fantasy and Action genres. I am also very active in my church and their young adults Bible study on Monday evenings.

I frequently use Wikipedia but I have never contributed to the site itself. I am really looking forward to helping out specifically in the areas of mental health and pharmacology. These have been two areas in which I have been personally impacted by and have often received a better understanding of these topics by researching Wikipedia pages about these topics.

Article Review

I visited the Proxy Marriage page on Wikipedia, and found three aspects of it worth commenting on: Absentee marriage application in Washington state, Legality of proxy marriages performed in other states, and the references section.

The first aspect that I found worth commenting on are absentee marriage applications. Even though proxy marriages in Washington state are not allowed Washington state does allow for absentee marriage applications. In many states if a couple wants to get married both people in the relationship must apply in person for a marriage license but several counties in Washington state allow for an absentee marriage application. The can be accomplished either via mail or the internet. Once it has been received it must be filled out and notarized and mailed back additionally the waiting period increases from 3 days to 1 month. Finally, if it does get approved it can not be mailed back it must be picked up in person.

The second aspect that I found worth commenting on have to do with the legality of proxy marriages and if they are recognized in other states that do not allow proxy marriages. Proxy marriages performed in a state that legally allows it are usually recognized to some degree in the rest of the United States. Some will fully recognize them and others will only recognize them partially, usually in the form of a common law marriage. However, the exception to this is the state of Iowa, where proxy marriages even if they have been performed legally in a state that allows it, which rejects it completely. Washington could be considered to be another state that rejects proxy marriages in their entirety because Washington views proxy marriages the same as it would a common law marriage which in the state of Washington is another form of marriage that is not recognized. I also included this information when I edited the article and it can be found in the final two sentences of the United States section.

The third and final aspect that I found worth commenting on is the references section of the page. There were only 11 references for the entirety of the article, however, I added another reference which brought the total to 12 references for the article. Nearly all of the references that I checked had at least one issue. The third reference listed does not exist anymore so I marked it as a dead link. There were a handful of references that were five to 10 years out of date. Lastly some of the references that I checked I either could not find the author of the reference or the references looked suspicious due to an excess of advertisements. Finally it looked like one of the references had been "Cherry Picked" due to a lack of information the total length of that reference could not have been more than a few paragraphs.

In summation, this article needs a lot of time put into it before it could be considered a reliable source of information or be used as a reference by anyone who is writing or speaking on the topic of proxy marriages.