I promised Crowsnest I would try to find him a writing rubric from an actual writing class to evaluate (and evolve) his writing.
In my experience, organization counts for about 80% of the grade, and the other 20% is for the topic sentence, or identifying the main idea. Another 2 or 3 percent is carved out somewhere for grammar, structure (which is really “organization”), and focus (which is really the “topic sentence” again).
If you don’t know what a rubric is, this is a fairly decent explanation:
“9 Elements of a Writing Rubric: How to Score Well on Your Paper“
2 Thesis statement
A thesis statement is a declarative sentence that tells the reader the argument being made or the main point of the paper.
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- Is your thesis statement strong, clear, and insightful?
- Is your thesis statement relevant to the assignment?
3 Support and development
The support and development section in a writing rubric assesses how well you support your thesis with research.
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- How in-depth is the analysis?
- Is it relevant?
- Do you make a strong case for your thesis using a wide range of evidence from credible primary and secondary sources?
There are a whole bunch more similar things, but this is already at least 90% of your grade, so for now, let’s just concentrate on those.
Now here are some sample rubrics. If that isn’t enough there is a whole list here: High School Writing Grading Rubric.
Here are two I have chosen as being representative, one for middle school (grades 6,7,8) and one for high school (grades 9-12).
Now let’s pull up Crow’s last post. Compare it to one of the rubrics, whichever one you like, just on “topic” and “organization”.
Now a blog comment is not necessarily an essay, although it can be, and the word count for this one was arbitrary, so it might not have been as developed as it could have been with a higher word count, but already you can see a few things taking shape.
The topic, or theme is usually easy to pick out because it is the topic sentence, and the topic sentence is usually the first sentence in the paragraph. It can be in other places, but that is where it usually is. I don’t always write that way myself, and a lot of times I will go back the next day and delete everything that is in front of the topic sentence, when I realize the writing needs to be more clear. I always find a lot of typos the next day too. You can do that sort of thing with a blog, because you control the edit process. But if you are writing a comment on someone else’s blog, or on a forum, you basically get one chance, although of course I have fixed typos for other people when they ask.
But what is the topic in Crow’s above post? The “last laugh” (in the first sentence)? I interpreted that as a bridge between the original post and his own comment. The “Marek Kukula scandal” (second sentence) ? Whatever on earth is that? It is mentioned once, without explanation, or even a link, and the topic is never revisited. What about the next sentence, “Giraffe, Hemi-dude and Vigilant are icky” ? Well, Zoloft is mentioned a few more sentences in, so maybe it’s “Some Wikipediocracy dudes are icky”, but then Alison is in there somewhere further on, and AFAIK is not anything to do with Wikipediocracy, but much earlier, maybe from the days of Wikipedia Review. I have to admit the last bit about Crow as Mephistopheles, emerging from Hades, is a funny touch. I can almost smell the sulfur.
Now if Crow does not actually have anything to say, but just wants to muddy the waters, the above might work. But it’s not the kind of analysis that is going to make him a big hit on all those other platforms, which I might remind you are all mad at him right now, after having let him sneak back multiple times. So my point with the rubric is to provide a tool to improve his writing, and make it more clear, and maybe even something people want to read.
But, but but, ….I can hear him sputter, doesn’t that take all the heart out of it, all the fire? Well, fair enough, it might, at least in the short term. But once you learn the mechanics, you can go back later and your impassioned writing will be that much more effective for having mastered the basics.
So how to fix Crow’s above post? I have already posted the link (from Perdue Online Writing Lab — OWL) but I will post it again. “Why and How to Create a Useful Outline”
How do I create an outline?
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- Determine the purpose of your paper.
- Determine the audience you are writing for.
- Develop the thesis of your paper.
Then:
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- Brainstorm: List all the ideas that you want to include in your paper.
- Organize: Group related ideas together.
- Order: Arrange material in subsections from general to specific or from abstract to concrete.
- Label: Create main and sub headings.
Go for it. Or start over with a new topic.
Gender Desk 
Kukula is a convicted sex offender and former science educator. The only newspaper to cover his criminal case was the Daily Mail, so the Wikipedia article on him doesn’t mention it. Crow believes that the Kukula case demonstrates the harm of Wikipedia’s blanket ban on the Daily Mail.
Very succinct.
His article does not mention this at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek_Kukula
Here are the articles:
28 Jul 2018 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6887460/dr-marek-kukula-astronomer-doctor-who-book-child-abuse-images/ “Kukula was sentenced to twenty-one weeks imprisonment, suspended for twelve months, must complete a sixty-day rehabilitation activity requirement and pay £535 costs. He must obey a seven-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order, which limits his internet use and sign the sex offenders register for the same period.”
28 July 2018 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6002381/Greenwich-Observatorys-Public-Astronomer-downloaded-407-child-porn-images.html Same article, word for word.
Neither the DM or the Sun gives any links.
Reliable sources noticeboard https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_343&oldid=1142577946#Very_serious_crime,_but_only_deprecated_sources
The only problem with this is that the Daily Mail has been caught repeatedly making things up, and this has been documented extensively. So how do we know they didn’t just make this one up. So you have to corroborate it with another source. And there isn’t one. You would think there would be at least a court report, or the sex offenders register, but nothing. Those would be probably be considered to be primary sources, but still it would show something about whether this information was factual or not.
“You would think”. No, you would not. UK <> US
Ok, I see. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_and_Sex_Offender_Register
“…jailed for more than 12 months for violent offences…” Not him. Unless he pled to a lesser charge in exchange for a guilty plea. And it looks like they don’t do that in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain#England_and_Wales So according to the story he looked at some stuff on the internet and somehow it ended up on his computer so he deleted it. No physical contact. And something like 8 years later his place was searched because somehow they already knew he had it. Which means some kind of sting operation or honeypot. Which means if he does it again, they will know.
IMHO anyone who uses the information will leave themselves open to a defamation lawsuit. Now the Daily Mail may have deep pockets, and it does have a reputation for being litigious, but I don’t think Wikipedia is in that same boat. Without better sourcing, Wikipedia is not going to touch that with a ten-foot pole.
If I google him, the Sun article comes up on the first page of a google search, so there’s that. If someone is doing due diligence, they should come across it. Might make an interesting question at a job interview. Or not. Depending on the proclivities of whoever hires him next.
I don’t know how it works on the US, but over here, what he did was intentionally (admitted in court) view child abuse images. The law treats that as “production” because it requires creating a local copy. That is to convey the seriousness of the offence. First step, looking. Second step, touching. And he had access to kids as a trusted member of a trusted institution where his role specifically saw him interact with kids. How long it took (or even how) the police came to discover these images does not matter in the eyes of the law. He plead guilty because he did it. Justice was served. Kids were protected.
There frankly isn’t a snowball’s chance this is a false or even mistaken story. Not a chance. It says everything you need to know about the evil that is Wikipedia, that their preferred solution to the Marek Kukula paradox, is to on the one hand claim the Mail habitually prints lies, while on the other pretending that parents who Google his name and find that story, are in a position to protect their kids.
But there is of course a flaw to that, which a top level critic would already be aware of. Not satisfied with merely declaring the Mail was unreliable, the Wikipedians wanted companies like Microsoft to act on this judgment by giving them a negative rating in their browser plug ins. The next logical step is to omit them from search results entirely.
Marek Kukula is quite rightly never going to pass a job interview for a similar role again. Primarily because we have government tools that would flag him up as a risk to children.
[redacted to 300 words -GD]
How do you know?
Prove it.
You can’t, because the DM is proven liars.
They will do anything for click bait.
And no one can stop them, because they have buckets of money.
Whatever. Your redaction conveniently leaves out the part where it can be shown the actions of Wikipedia editors have put children in danger, and the only way we can be sure they aren’t, is if the man himself has indeed seen the error of his ways. Hence why you’re trying to argue he isn’t a paedophile and the Mail have lied.
I don’t need to prove it is true. You need to prove it could be a lie, by making an argument a little more convincing than they have lied before. Which would apply to every newspaper ever printed, obviously. I only need to point how absurd it is that you think there is any chance it is a fabrication, in this specific context. What is being reported, where it sits in the Mail’s vast output, what the consequences would be, and how people can respond, up to and including no win no fee legal action.
Sadly, that takes more than 300 words.
This story is also true because there’s is not a single shred of proof it is not. No objection, correction or retraction. We have robust voluntary press regulation. We take this stuff seriously. Freedom with accountability. The Mail is in IPSO. We know when stories are corrected and fines are issued. It is where the Wikipedia editors get most of their “proof” the Mail “lies”, while conveniently ignoring how the Mail compares to other papers. Context matters. Type, frequency, nature, impact, it all matters. Not to Wikipedia.
You didn’t read the outline instructions, did you.
I can see I am going to have to do a tutorial.
And no, the DM does not print retractions and/or have editorial oversight, otherwise the RS noticeboard would have found it long ago. There are plenty of people who would like to use it as a source, if only there was a way to discover which stories were true and which ones were fabricated. “Because I say so” just doesn’t cut it.
You should also google “proving a negative”.
The word count was chosen partly because of what I have time for as opposed to Brandolini’s law, and also because I noted that your best posts were about that length. Any longer and you start posting meaningless boilerplate and creepy litanies about various Wikipediocracy members. Speculating on someone’s death is not something that is going to be posted here, and the idea of paying a visit to someone’s family in the U.S. is more than a little stalkerish.