Document Development Exposition: White Paper

Explain in detail your document’s development from planning to finish, describing your
challenges, how you overcame them, and what you learned.

Planning
When planning for this paper, I struggled to find a company/organization to represent. It took me a
good amount of research until I settled of CSIRO which met all my requirements for this paper. In
determining my audiences, I had to do research on the governmental departments that regulated
the environment and any gold mining related agencies. In planning the areas my white paper will
include, I focused on identifying the problem, presenting the solution, and using plain language.

First Draft (for peer editing)

I focused on finding primary research papers that correlate with my topic. I found three primary
sources that were suitable and began reading through them, retaining the information and
knowledge to paraphrase and incorporate into my white paper. I was able to describe the process of
cyanidation in detail with plain language in mind throughout writing the paper. Further in the paper,
I described the effects cyanide use has on the environment as well as the health risks for humans and
wildlife. I also found it important to provide an example of a cyanide spill and how it affects the
surrounding environment. I chose the cyanide spill in the remance mine because it was one of the
biggest spills in history. I explored the research done on the tailings surrounding the remance mine
that was done in one of my papers. Lastly, I discussed CSIRO which I had originally mislabeled as
clean mining, that confused me a little. I discussed the alternatives to cyanide and what we know so
far.

Second Draft (for your packet)

For my second draft, I made a couple notable changes. I added citations for the images on my cover
page, added more relevant figures to my paper, fixed the location of the figure titles, and fixed the
company name to CSIRO. I referenced external websites for more information regarding cyanide use
in gold mining and incorporated the information into my paper. I took into account my peer
reviewer’s comments and made changes accordingly like making the font size of the body uniform
and some format adjustments.

Final Draft (for your portfolio)

For my final draft, I analyzed professor Sindelar’s revision notes and applied them to my paper. I
avoided floating images on my cover page by extending the images to the edges of the paper rather
than have them in the middle. I added another relevant picture to my cover page. I did not change
most of the body of the paper because it was not necessary. I switched figure 1 to a more relevant
picture than I can incorporate into my paper, which I did by referencing it as an example of a cyanide
spill. I fixed the format of the figure title as per professor Sindelar’s suggestion, by adding citations. I
also incorporated figure 2 in my paper by referencing it in the text below it as shown in the tracked
 Document Development Exposition: White Paper

changes.The biggest change I made was adding a subsection named “action plan” as per professor
Sindelar’s suggestion of stating some short term solutions and how to act them out.