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User talk:JoelyB

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Welcome!

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Hello, JoelyB, 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) 17:42, 16 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]


Response

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Hi! I wanted to reply on your talk page. As far as paywalled sourcing goes, you can use it but use extreme caution with it. The main thing is to make sure that we avoid using it to back up claims that aren't explicitly stated or to use it to cite very broad, generalizing statements.

On a side note with your draft, be careful to avoid point of view statements/wording, as well as vague statements. For example, the following statement is vague because it doesn't say who is making this claim and because someone could argue that this isn't the case - it's important to attribute claims of this nature.

Television comedy can be seen as a way to bring audiences to a collective sense in viewing and enjoying commonly-watched programs across societies

This following sentence is also somewhat problematic as well:

The award-winning show is famous for mocking political events and candidates, and bringing in "correspondents" to report further on these events and people.[

The issue here is that the term 'famous' can be seen as a weasel word that implies a certain viewpoint or emotion, plus it can be subjective to the reader - some may agree that it's what makes them famous, others may say that it's something else. It's best to say that they're known, as this is more neutral and more precise. Putting correspondents in quotation marks can also be kind of problematic since it can be seen as scare quotes and may be vague or confusing to people unfamiliar with the topic. To be honest, some of this may take a while to get used to since much of what I've pointed out is wording that wouldn't be a problem elsewhere but is seen as non-neutral or too casual on Wikipedia. It certainly did for me!

You also want to make sure that you're careful to keep a global perspective with this and not focus too heavily on one area over another, unless the article is of course focusing on a given area. This can be easier said than done and I do see where you're trying to avoid this, but it's always good to keep this in mind.

I hope this all helps! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:30, 24 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]