Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 3/NPOV opening exercise

As an opening exercise, I would like you to help me identify the source of these two texts. I'm going to read them to you: There are two texts here, both of them about the same person, Tiwa Savage from Nigeria. The left text, text number one reads:.

"Tiwa Savage is a global singer, performer, dancer and composer par excellence who can't stop blessing her teeming fans with her outstanding elegance, charisma and alluring presence on and off stage. Angelic songstress and influential entertainer Tiwa Savage is indeed an icon that never stops."

That's text number one. Text number two:.

"Tiwa Savage is a Nigerian singer, songwriter and actress who has been called the Queen of Afrobeats. Savage sings in English and Yoruba. Her music is a blend of Afrobeats, R&B, Afropop, pop and hip hop. Savage's contributions to the Nigerian music industry have earned her several achievements."

Which of these two texts is coming from Wikipedia? Let's see a quick show of opinion here. We see a lot of votes for number two. Yeah. Excellent. Yes, you're absolutely correct. All of you who expressed an opinion selected number two, the text on the right, as the text coming from Wikipedia. And I want to ask you, what makes you so sure that's the one from Wikipedia? I didn't give you any hint. I didn't prepare you for this text. Why are you so certain it is this text on the right that is from Wikipedia? How can you tell? So we have some answers here in the chat:

"Less adjectives." "It is neutral." "Written from a neutral point of view." "Just stating facts", "without means of advertising", "more concise facts", "written without decorations", "text number one has too many subjective tones". Absolutely. That's right. And what I wanted to demonstrate to you here is that you *already know* what neutral point of view sounds like. You know it when you see it. You know it when you hear it.

What kind of source is the other one? This text on the left. I mean, you probably don't know *exactly* where it's from, but what *kind* of source would it be? Do you have some opinions? In the chat: "blog", "advertising", "personal blog", "promoting", "personal promotions". That's right. It's very, very clearly promotional. This text is promotional. The *tone* of the text is promotional. And we hear it, we see it, we notice it.

So in fact, this first text is from a press release that was posted in the Premium Times of Nigeria. The Premium Times of Nigeria, as far as I know, is a serious newspaper, a reliable source for *news*. But it also has paid ads, paid promotions, and this text is from a paid promotion inside the Premium Times of Nigeria. So I hope this convinced you that you know neutral point of view when you see it.

The point today is to learn how we can achieve it when we come to write content, to expand or improve an article on Wikipedia; how can we ensure that we create sentences like the ones on the right, and not like the ones on the left?