User talk:Isamouse79
| This user is a student editor in George_Washington_University/UW1020_M82_(Spring) . |
Welcome!
[edit]Hello, Isamouse79, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; 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. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:45, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
Response
[edit]Hi! I have some notes for you:
- Avoid using sites like Genealogy.com as sources. The reason for this is that the content there is almost entirely user submitted and as such, runs the risk of being deliberately or accidentally incorrect but represented as true. This is especially possible with human error when it comes to older records. It's entirely possible that they could find a record of someone with the same name as a family member (but is not related in any way) but is assumed to be the same person or related.
- You should also be cautious of any website that doesn't have its editorial or verification process posted, especially if the website doesn't tell you who is writing the information. A website that looks good could actually end up being written by someone who isn't an authority on the topic and uses sloppy research methods. With cases like these, it's a good idea to see if the sites are typically seen as reliable by other reliable sources such as academic and scholarly sources. To that end, I'm unsure about the reliability of Instgreatwar or Maltaramc.
- The good news, however, is that you can use some primary sources depending on how you use them. For example, you can back up basic details but you can't make any major, controversial claims with them. I don't see where there that should be a major concern, but I do have to caution you about that. I found some general sourcing for you here: [1], [2] (this came up but I'm not sure how useful it'll be), [3]
- The writing looks good, so no worries on that front!
So far the only thing to work on will be the sourcing, which is going to be kind of difficult due to the time period, unfortunately. Again, you can use primary sources for this - just make sure that it's for the right person. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:13, 5 April 2019 (UTC)