User talk:Dvpolicy11/Sandbox

Suggestions, etc.

Sorry I didn't have time to give you a thorough breakdown of the improvements that need to be made. This article is not ready for the mainspace yet, but I will help you when the time comes to move it. The reference section will work fine in the mainspace -- that doesn't need to change. Some changes that I would suggest:

There are still far too many quotes. I believe I linked you to the recommended use of quotations section of WP:QUOTE. Looking through your article, not a single piece of information you've added needs to be a quote. Instead, you should paraphrase the quotes (to avoid plagiarism, of course) and leave the citation. Think of it as if you're writing a research paper. When you write a research paper, you compile information from different sources and paraphrase it into a paper. You don't submit a paper that is a compilation of direct quotes from different sources.
The references look quite good! Good job with those.
The section headings aren't bad, but could use a few changes. For starters, just a formatting note: "Laws/Policies" should be "Laws and policies", caps only on the first word. "HealthCare Intervention" could probably be simply "Intervention".
I'd suggest transforming the first section into a lead. You need a lead section in the article, and that type of overview information will be valuable. You should read about leads at WP:LEAD. If you have any questions about them after reading that, feel free to drop me a note.

Anyway, I hope this helps. I've posted it on this talk page and not your user talk page because I want it to be visible to others who may also be working with you on this article. If you respond here, you will get a quicker response by posting a whisperback template on my userpage. To do so, you can just add {{whisperback|User talk:Dvpolicy11/Sandbox}} to my talk page. Alternatively, feel free to respond/ask questions there directly. – GorillaWarfare ^{talk • contribs} 22:22, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Re: your message

The section headings look good! "Domestic Violence Nexus" should be "Domestic violence nexus" (only the first word should be capitalized), but other than that, they look very nice. I'll try to take a look soon after you finish rework to give additional feedback. Good luck! Keep in mind that if you need anyone while you're editing and I'm not around, #wikipedia-en-classroom is a good place to go for help. – GorillaWarfare ^{talk • contribs} 19:19, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Critique for new edits

The content is definitely improving. I think this article can be moved by Thursday, with a few changes:

Y The article is still missing a lead section. i would suggest eliminating the first header altogether, because I think the first section would make a viable lead.
Y The article needs to begin with the name of the article in bold. It will be formatted sort of like:

Murder of pregnant women is a type of homicide often resulting from domestic abuse.

Obviously the wording can be different, but the bolded part should be the same as the title of the page.

YYou should work to make sure the article focused on the murder of pregnant women. It's pretty good right now, but, for example, "Domestic violence, or intimate partner violence (IPV), is a threat and fear for women all across the United States" is something that should not be placed at the beginning of the page. It may confuse people as to the subject of the article.
There are still too many quotes. The following quotes should be paraphrased:

Recent attention has begun to focus on pregnancy-associated deaths (i.e., deaths that occur during pregnancy or postpartum, sometimes referred to as maternal deaths) caused by violence.
YAmong women experiencing IPV, abuse during pregnancy has been identified as a specific risk factor for lethal violence.
High profile homicide cases helped to spur the 2004 passage of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (Public Law 108-212); this U.S. law defines a fetus as a 'child in uterus' and a legal crime victim if a fetal injury or death occurs during the commission of a federal violent crime. -- With this quote, you could leave the direct definitions (i.e., "child in uterus" and "if a fetal injury or death occurs during the commission of a federal violent crime".) as quotes.
At least 36 U.S. states have implemented state laws that increase the criminal penalty for homicides in which the vicitm was pregnant, with some of these laws defining the fetus as a person for the purpose of criminal prosecution of the offender (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2008). -- With this quote, however, you could possibly leave "a person for the purpose of criminal prosecution of the offender" as a direct quote.
YSystematic training for heath care providers, including psychiatry, on assessment for IPV, safety planning, and intervention skills is needed.
Because many women who experienced pregnancy-associated intimate partner femicide or suicide made health care visits soon before their deaths, but their health care providers were not aware of the violence in their lives, we encourage health care providers to screen women for IPV and to be well prepared to refer women to needed services.

Y I see that many of the sentences are missing periods at the ends. Please don't forget to add those. In the case where a sentence ends with a footnote, the period comes right before the footnote with no space in between the period and the footnote.
Y You should work on the tone of the article a bit, as well. It's not bad as is, but some sentences like "Too often this fear becomes reality." err on the side of dramatic. Keep in mind the article should be written more like an encyclopedia article and less like a magazine article.
You start with the sentence: "Domestic violence, or intimate partner violence (IPV), is a threat and fear for women all across the United States." Why just the United States? Keep in mind that this article will be read by people across the world, and that care should be taken to globalize articles as much as possible. However, because your "Laws and policies" section only covers the U.S., you might consider changing the article title to "Murder of pregnant women in the United States". Let me know which you would prefer.
Y The article currently contains no wikilinks. Wikilinks are the hyperlinks that link from one Wikipedia article to another. The formatting is quite simple. If I wanted to produce: The current president of the United States is Barack Obama, I would format it: The current president of the United States is [[Barack Obama]]. If I want to create a link that shows different text than the name of the article, for example: The current president of the United States is 49 years old. (note that "current president of the United States" actually sends you to the Barack Obama article), I would type: The [[Barack Obama|current president of the United States]] is 49 years old. Note that the line separating "Obama" and "current" is not an uppercase I, but a pipe character (|). Not every word needs to be wikilinked, but if a word would be better explained by linking to another Wikipedia article, I would suggest doing so. Only the first appearance of the word is wikilinked -- you do not need to wikilink every instance of the word. I would suggest wikilinking domestic violence, pregnancy-associated death, postpartum, Unborn Victims of Violence Act, fetus, North Carolina House, National Network to End Domestic Violence, safety planning, intervention, and femicide, as well as any other words you think might be useful.
In the second section, "High profile homicide cases" are mentioned. Do you happen to know which cases these are? If so, mentioning them and wikilinking to any Wikipedia articles on them could be a valuable addition.
Y Please remove "More information on these states can be found at National Conference of State Legislatures; under the Issues and Research tab search for Fetal Homicide State Laws." This should not be included in the article text. Do, however, consider adding the link to that website under an "External links" section.
Y The external link to the North Carolina General Assembly should be removed.
There are two free-floating external links in the text (after "The North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence does not support this law for numerous reasons including failure to see violence against the mother as the cause of the fetal death" and "The Coalition does however support the position of the National Network to End Domestic Violence regarding the Unborn Victims of Violence Act"). I assume you are using these as references. Please format the references as footnotes.
Y Please do not use the word "we" in an article, as you have in the sentence "While it is almost impossible to determine an exact intervention point to prevent pregnancy-associated homicides we can pinpoint some possible opportunities."

I apologize for the massive amount of text here, but really there are not terribly many changes that need to be made. I will check in tomorrow, and maybe then we can move the page to the articlespace. How does your professor feel about edits by other people to the articles? If worst comes to worst, I can do some final cleanup before the article is moved to the articlespace. I apologize for seeming hesitant to move the page, but I'm simply trying to avoid having the page deleted once it is moved. I think the page is in pretty good shape now, though, and with the above changes, you should be set to move it. – GorillaWarfare ^{talk • contribs} 04:02, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've placed tick marks next to the things you have completed. The ones that are not ticked off should be fixed at some point. You need to make sure you don't lose any of the information on the current Murder of pregnant women article when the two are merged. This can either be accomplished by leaving some of the existing article in place when they're merged (essentially inserting your sections between the existing ones) or by working the information into this sandbox article and then replacing all of the content. As soon as this is done, I think the article is ready to be merged. Let me know which you choose, and we can go forward with that. – GorillaWarfare ^{talk • contribs} 04:17, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]