Talk:Public criminology

Untitled

This page was created through the joint efforts of Eastern Michigan University's CRM447W: Senior Seminar in Criminology class during the Fall 2018 semester with continued work during the Winter 2019 semester. DoctorKarpiak (talk)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 January 2019 and 26 April 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): McGreal Duffy, Asutton7, Hcutler, MVetter15, Jlyons15, Cfowler8, EMUramirez, RosolinoM23, Jazlynn1, Alexandria Paliszewski, Troyal15, Jbrichan, Abochar, Diasav, GdusaEMU, Amanda akles, Kgreen50, Davon0828, Kstein4, Tbyrd10, Cmallory9, Beauemu23, Lmullins19, Kaylak23, Aarnold15.

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 May 2019 and 21 June 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Dfett1, Shuelke, Smithpf, CGamache, TaylorMarcusStudent, Koshea2, Tstevens211, BreezyLBM, Ayabarr23, AWGraham14, NavinN95, Lkovach5, Lwilliams3emu. Peer reviewers: Dfett1, Shuelke, Smithpf, CGamache, TaylorMarcusStudent, Koshea2, Tstevens211, BreezyLBM, Ayabarr23, AWGraham14, NavinN95, Lkovach5, Lwilliams3emu.

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2019 and 11 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Graceward601, Katie Kirkpatrick. Peer reviewers: Steffensarah22, Corynneemmerson, ToruOyama1.

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Essay

Pinging @Shalor (Wiki Ed):, hope it's okay to bring you here but this has become a massive essay with a ton of WP:OR. I'm not sure how to even go about helping the students clean it up but can you please help? Even the lead is what I'd expect to find in an essay, not an encyclopedia. Praxidicae (talk) 15:42, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Not to mention, I've now been reverted three times for removing inappropriate links, such as this which appears to be a Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the same university (and department) which this class assignment is for. Almost the entire article is based on his research and it's a massive conflict of interest. Can someone with WikiEd please get involved and discuss this? Praxidicae (talk) 15:50, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

I think this is useful conversation to have, but as the professor supervising this project I have to voice my dissent with this reading. First, this entry was vetted thoroughly last semester by a number of individuals and projects and none of this was voiced. The most recent changes from this semester have in fact been geared toward addressing some of the reviewer concerns. While I am not 100% committed to inclusion of the link to Gregg Barak's website, I take special issue with the interpretation that this entry is "almost entirely based on his research". He is mentioned because his work on "newsmaking criminology" is both one of the inspirations and sources of contrast for "public criminology". This fact is duly cited with multiple peer-reviewed articles. I also take issue with the argument that this entry reads like original research and not like an encyclopedia. There is no original research offered here, rather it consists of summaries of the relevant peer-reviewed academic literature and debates. It was my understanding that the core purpose of the Wiki Ed project was to assure that what counts as "knowledge" on Wikipedia be more strongly rooted in this. DoctorKarpiak (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:39, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

What is acceptable for a paper submitted in school is not the same thing that is acceptable in an encyclopedic article, as is the case here. It is rife with original research and if I didn't know this was a class assignment, I'd suspect a case of someone with a conflict of interest attempting to insert references to promote one individuals research.Praxidicae (talk) 16:22, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

• DoctorKarpiak, Praxidicae, I'll take a look through this and give some thorough feedback. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:08, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
• Sorry that it's taken me a while to get back to this - I ended up getting fairly sick over the weekend and wasn't able to get back to this since I had so much of a backlog of work to get back to. I'll try to get to this today or tomorrow! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:40, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

I agree that this article reads like Original Research (which is forbidden on Wikipedia), and that it seems to be institutional self-promotion. I am familiar with Barak's work, but I don't think someone from Barak's university should be promoting it so forcefully on WP. Also, the lead is far too long and doesn't succinctly communicate the most important things a lead should communicate. I understand that some students who are unfamiliar with Wikipedia have created this, but I think their edits should be in a sandbox because it isn't ready to go live. It reads too much like a school assignment with biased original research (even if that was not your intent). Aroundthewayboy (talk) 21:37, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Notes

I'm going to go section by section:

Lead

This needs to start off with more of what public criminology is, as opposed to what it argues. For example, is it a method of criminology? A theory or concept? A movement? Basically, we need to establish the basis of what it is before going into what it argues. Taking the Oxford Bibliography as the standard, here's a potential lead sentence:

Public criminology is defined by Oxford Bibliographies as a way to potentially address gaps that exist between criminologists and the general populace.

Keep in mind that the lead should be a general summary of the article as a whole. If you name someone in the lead, they should also be mentioned in the body of the article. If you quote a work, this should typically be expanded on in the main article. One of the biggest things I noticed was that the lead sentence says that this is tied to public sociology, however this isn't further elaborated on in the body of the article.

To be honest, I would work on the body of the article first and then return to re-write the lead. This page is the big entry on how to write leads, however this boils down some of the essentials into something that is quicker and easier to read.

The Need for Public Criminology

This needs to be retitled since it comes across as Wikipedia petitioning the reader to see that there's a need for public criminology. Things like this shouldn't be written in "Wikipedia's voice" as the site isn't meant to make a case for or against anything- it should summarize the content without making an argument either way, leaving it up to the reader to decide.

With this in mind, the question here is what purpose this section is meant to serve since it cannot be used to make a persuasive argument. There is information about what it is supposed to do, what it hopes to do, as well as some information about its history. This needs to be streamlined into a section that expands on the lead's definition of what the term means. This is why it's very important to clearly define what it is, as the type of definition changes how we will describe something in subtle ways. For example, we would describe a movement differently than we would a method in subtle ways. This section would also lay out the fundamental core aspects of what public criminology is meant to help with and address - so in other words, you can include the goals and intentions here. The catch is that you shouldn't be writing about them in a way that would argue that there's a definite need for this, even if it seems like it's obvious that it's needed.

Anything that is history oriented should go in the history section for now, unless it's vital to the description(s) of the term.

Historical Precedents

When it comes to anything on Wikipedia, especially history, we can only summarize what has been explicitly stated about the topic. For example, this section starts by saying that public criminology had its start with ideas and work from Cesare Beccaria. The issue here is that the source that was used was one by Beccaria himself. We can't say that his work laid the groundwork unless we have a source that explicitly states this outright and using Beccaria's work as a source doesn't work on Wikipedia since the term's earliest use was traced to 2000. So in other words, someone from the 1700s isn't going to be able to say that his work is responsible for laying the groundwork for something that came later. The same can be said for anything else that predates the first use of the term. The bottom line here is that the only things that should be listed in the history section are claims that are written in sourcing that was published after the term came into use, specifically uses the term 'public criminology', and also explicitly states what is written in the article. Even if it is a commonly held opinion or mentioned in class, we need it to be recorded in a published source. It doesn't mean that the claims are wrong, just that we are extremely limited in what we can put in the article. To be honest, this is why many history sections tend to be on the smaller side with articles, since things of this nature aren't always recorded, as it's assumed that people would know this.

Criticism

Avoid terms like despite, as this comes across as us petitioning the reader to see things in a specific light. This section should begin with simply "many criminologists have voiced concerns regarding the challenges facing the emerging discipline". I'll make this change with the article. You also want to avoid posing questions to the reader, as this can be seen as us making a persuasive argument.

As with the history section, we should only include arguments that are specifically made about public criminology in this section.

Contemporary examples

Do not include judgement calls in the article such as saying that something is valuable. We can say that a specific person or group sees something as valuable if we have a source that states this, but Wikipedia itself should not be making judgement calls on things.

Avoid terms like 'dedicated', as this is something that is seen as a promotional term on Wikipedia because it comes with various associations. For example, the word dedication brings up positive connotations and as such, we will view dedicated people or organizations more favorably, either consciously or subconsciously. It also doesn't help that in the past Wikipedia has had many PR companies come on and use terms like this in an attempt to promote various people or topics.

Examples sections are typically not included on Wikipedia because there are not always enough or any sources that list examples with an explanation as to why they're listing them for a given topic. You should not create your own examples, as this is something that is subjective and also original research. Essentially, someone could argue that something else serves as a better example or that the listed example doesn't actually serve as an example of public criminology. To be honest, in most cases any potential examples listed in the source material are woven into the body of the Wikipedia article as a way to exemplify or clarify a given point or claim.

Do not use hotlinks within the body of the article. Terms should link to articles that define the word or they should be left alone. External links should really only be present in the external links section and even then, they should be kept to a minimum and be something that is obvious to the reader. For example, we would link to an official website for a company in a company article. An example of what should not be linked in the external links section would be say, linking to a poetry center on the poetry page. The reason for this is that any one specific poetry center is unlikely to be the "go to" place for all people who are interested in or write poetry. In this end, I don't know that I would really include any of the links currently in the external links section. There's more about this at the page for the Wikipedia page for external links policies, if you're interested - I will warn you that this is a slog to go through, though.

What I would suggest here is refocusing this section to have it specifically focus on public criminology organizations, with sourcing that specifically labels them as such.

General notes

• As far as general notes go, I saw that there were some people who were mentioned for the first time using only their last names. Avoid doing this when you mention someone for the first time, as we can't assume that the reader will know to whom it's referring. Remember - the average article will be read by not only people familiar with the topic but also those who are not and as such, won't automatically associate anything with the names.

• Be careful of grammar, spelling, and typos. Try to avoid ending with a preposition. I'm bad about doing that myself, so just make sure to do a good grammar check before publishing the work live.

• I've sated it earlier, but I want to emphasize that we should only be using sourcing that specifically discusses public criminology and that we can only summarize what has been explicitly stated. Even if it looks like something is implied, we cannot assume this on the writer's behalf.

I hope that this all helps! Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:41, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Shalor (Wiki Ed) Thanks for your thoughtful analysis, Shalor. Do you have any opposition to removing the excessive external links? Praxidicae (talk) 21:36, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

• I personally don't, although it would be good to get the other's input on this. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 02:07, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you both @Shalor (Wiki Ed): @Praxidicae: for the input here. We'll be running this version of the course one last time starting next week, and we'll use these comments as a guide to move forward with DoctorKarpiak (talk)

Excellent feedback, Shalor! I would just add that this has been an issue for many months now, with few improvements, so I think the time is right to aggressively shorten/remove content from this article and put it in a sandbox where the students in this class could experiment with edits and perfect a great article, before making their edits go live on WP. Wikipedia has norms and goals that this class has not quite been able to adhere to. Sorry, because I do believe that you are editing with good intentions! It just takes a while to get a hang of how we can craft good, encyclopedic articles on Wikipedia. Aroundthewayboy (talk) 21:42, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

I just slightly edited the lede to remove some biased language. Upon reflection, I realized that a lot of the problems with the article were from the lede being too long and biased. With a more encyclopedic lead, the rest of the article is pretty informative. Hopefully others agree with my edits! Aroundthewayboy (talk) 22:12, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

• What my group wants to change is adding pictures to the wiki page of public criminology to give more of a visual representation of what public criminology looks like. Examples could be having scholars faces that were talked about to show what they look like, etc. We also will look at grammatical errors in each section and fix them. Not only that, but we added a better template of criminology and added to it to fit more of the need for the page. TaylorMarcusStudent (talk) 23:41, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Chris Uggen Teaching.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:54, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Historical antecdents and "find inspiration"

Uggen and Inderbitzin find similar inspiration in the work of Elliott Currie,^{[citation needed]} a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California at Irvine who works on policy and specializes in cases of violent crime, the social context of delinquency, etiology of drug abuse and the assessment of drug policy, race and criminal justice, and George Kirkham, a police officer-turned-criminologist who wrote a book entitled "Signal Zero."

I started to add a citation for the language around Currie based on the Public Criminologies paper cited here, but I noticed that the same sentence is saying Uggen and Inderbitzen "find inspiration" in the work of two people in this sentence. I don’t see where the authors used language like this, though they do say this on p. 744:

If public criminology is to become a public good, then it can build on the rich legacy of engaged scholarship begun by scholars such as Shaw and contemporary criminologists such as John Braithwaite (2005) and Elliott Currie.

I found no reference to Kirkham, and have no idea where to find it, but I want to note that the reference for Kirkham is simply regarding his being the author of a book called Signal Zero, rather than the claim that Uggen and Inderbitzin find inspiration in his work.

Basically: This sentence is 69 words, much of which is biographical information about the subjects in whose work Uggen and Inderbitzin are claimed to find inspiration. I think it’d make sense at least to:

• break these into separate sentences
• limit the biographical information
• modify the language to more closely reflect what’s literally said in the paper

More radically, I propose removing this sentence altogether and perhaps replacing it with information that accounts for how the works Currie and Kirkham specifically serve as historical antecedents. Spida-tarbell (talk) 02:29, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Community Economic and Social Development II

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 January 2024 and 12 April 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sangeen001 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Ansmehta, Timmzie.

— Assignment last updated by Michelle312 (talk) 02:30, 4 April 2024 (UTC)