Talk:WriteAPrisoner.com
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it. | |
| ??? | This article has not yet received a quality rating on the assessment scale. | |
| ??? | This article has not yet received an importance assessment on the assessment scale. | |
Contents |
[edit] FREE Service?
My son is in Prison in Ohio. He has requested that I find a Pen Pal format for letters to himself and his fellow inmates. Does anyone know of a FREE service? I'm starting to get really tapped out on money - the collect calls are really getting to me! So, if anyone knows of a truly FREE service, I'd greatly appreciate hearing back. K. Bickerton dkbicfla@Bellsouth.net 72.144.132.232 01:14, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Concerns with article (why I reverted)
I have several concerns with the article as it currently is written. First, there are a lot of claims that are made without any supporting from reliable sources. Examples would be the claim about the number of prisoners who are included annually, the site's status as the fastest growing and largest site of its type, the site's first amendment work, and so on. It's not so much that I doubt the claims, but that they need to be sourced independently.
Second, the tone of the article sounds way too much like an ad for the site. The people at Writeaprisoner may be doing great work, but the article should just neutrally report facts, and let the reader judge. I'm particularly concerned that little mention is made of the specific criticism that the site has received.
Third, the article is very choppy. Some of the material seems to be out of place - for example, a very favorable quote from Oprah Winfrey is in the middle of the controversy section, when there is no controversy about that (at least none revealed in the article) at all. It needs some formatting and reorganization.
I attempted to rewrite the article to address some of these concerns, but this change was reverted to an earlier version with all the above problems. I have restored the version I wrote, and I ask that if a future editor wishes to revert, please discuss these concerns, and any that you have with my version, here. That way we can try to come up with a version of the article that is acceptable to all. I'm leaving this same message on talk page of the reverting editor, but since it was an anonymous IP address, the editor may not see it. Xymmax (talk) 15:17, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] I don't understand your edit
I'm all for a balanced article, and I feel that I contributed balanced content. You wiped out half the article and only added negative comments about the site. The old article contains good and bad. It seems that you just focus on the content from the negative articles. Other than eliminating almost half the reference links, all I see that you did was add a lot of "fact" links and then quote everything negative which you can find. If we're trying to be neutral, why the emphasis on the bad? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.189.30.55 (talk) 13:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
- First, thanks for discussing things over here. I also want to be fair. I dont think for a minute that my edits should be the last word, so I'm happy see changes. I added the fact tags everywhere in an attempt to help. Under Wikipedia's policies, the information in the article should ideally come from sources outside the subject. One option when you have information that is unsourced is to delete it. I didn't want to do that, because it seems clear to me that the information is accurate, it just needed a cite. So, I added the fact tag. My plan is actually to come back and look for reliable sources that contain the information, and remove the tag.
- Most of the other information I took out, I removed because either: 1) it wasn't clear to me what the purpose of the information was or 2) It seemed too promotional in tone. For example, I removed a couple references to specific prisoners who use WriteAPrisoner.com. To me, that had the feel of a celebrity testimonial, so I removed it.
- As for being too negative, I'm trying to be neutral. I took the negative quote right out of a reference that all ready was in the article. That article was about half positive and half negative, and I was trying to get closer to that balance. There were other negative quotes that I did not use, but this one seemed to be representative. I will say that I realize that right now the only quotation is a negative one, and it would be best to get positive quote in the article too. My thought is to find a newspaper quote from the president of Writeaprisoner.com (instead of one from the website) and but it in for balance. I also can see adding back in some of the other services offered by the website if they can be sourced a bit. Ok, that's enough for starters. What do you think? Xymmax (talk) 14:39, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] edits and reversions today
What exactly is wrong with the "live" version? It's pretty darn neutral. Lawrence § t/e 21:04, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
