User:CalmPeach/Evaluate an Article
![]() | Evaluate an article
Complete your article evaluation below. Here are the key aspects to consider: Lead sectionA good lead section defines the topic and provides a concise overview. A reader who just wants to identify the topic can read the first sentence. A reader who wants a very brief overview of the most important things about it can read the first paragraph. A reader who wants a quick overview can read the whole lead section.
ContentA good Wikipedia article should cover all the important aspects of a topic, without putting too much weight on one part while neglecting another.
Tone and BalanceWikipedia articles should be written from a neutral point of view; if there are substantial differences of interpretation or controversies among published, reliable sources, those views should be described as fairly as possible.
Sources and ReferencesA Wikipedia article should be based on the best sources available for the topic at hand. When possible, this means academic and peer-reviewed publications or scholarly books.
Organization and writing qualityThe writing should be clear and professional, the content should be organized sensibly into sections.
Images and Media
Talk page discussionThe article's talk page — and any discussions among other Wikipedia editors that have been taking place there — can be a useful window into the state of an article, and might help you focus on important aspects that you didn't think of.
Overall impressions
Examples of good feedbackA good article evaluation can take a number of forms. The most essential things are to clearly identify the biggest shortcomings, and provide specific guidance on how the article can be improved. |
Which article are you evaluating?
Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article to evaluate because I have taken Ecology and Evolution, so I know quite a bit from that class. I also thought it could relate to microbiology because we are learning about microbes and how they work, which we all know that microbes are everywhere and they affect all our lives. I do think that this article can help us all understand how ecology works, and it should be something that we all learn about. Just looking through this article, I can tell that it has a lot of good information, so it will be perfect for an evaluation.
Evaluate the article
Lead Section
The lead section does include an introductory sentence to talk about what Ecology is and how it can pertain to every day life. However, the section doesn't have an area to talk about the sections it has, but it does say what Ecology can be related to. From what I can tell, there isn't any information in the introduction that isn't in the rest of the article, but there is way too much information in the lead. The lead is a little overwhelming with how much information there is since there are too many links that make me lose my focus.
Content
The content is relavent to the topic, and there is a lot of good information for the reader to learn. The first section has the most information and it contains a lot of the basic information needed for learning about this subject. A lot of information in the article is from the 1950s to the early 2000s, so there is a lot of outdated information but there is a lot of relavent information from the last few years. I know that there is a few things that haven't changed from these times, but there is quite a lot of older information. Most of the information in this article I learned in classs, so I feel that most of it is still relvent to stay in the article. I don't think any information is missing, and if I could add anything in this article it would be more on ecological interactions like mutalism. This article doesn't address any underrepresented history.
Tone and Balance
I would say that this article kept a neutral tone throughout the whole article, and I wouldn't change anything with the tone.
Sources and References
All the facts are backed up since most things are cited, the links to the citations work, and they are fairly current besides the articles from the 1950s-1990s.
Organization and Writing Quality
The writing throughout this article is great, but I would fix a few sentences in the introduction due to grammar that doesn't work. I don't like how it's sectioned since the first section has such a wide range that should be broke into smaller sections. There are 14 parts under the first sections, and there are sections that could be broken into their own section like food chains and trophic levels.
Images and Media
There are a good amount of images throughout the article, but there could be more for a couple of different subjects like for human ecology. They are all well-captioned, but they aren't laid out in an appealing way.
Talk Page Discussion
This article is constantly being edited and there is so much work that everyone has put into it considering people are continuously editing sources as well as adding new infomation. This article is rated a GA level, and is a part of several projects such as the ecology, biology, extinction, ecoreigions, enviroment, evolutionary biology, history of science, and vital projects. Wikipedia's conversations aren't very different from the conversations we've had in class since they put this as a project with high priority, however, no one has used the talk page in quite a while.
Overall Impression
Articles overall status is good because it has the strength of the information in the article being very important. I wouldn't add anything in particular that could change this article significantly, but I would edit it to improve what's already there. Since I believe this article is well-developed, I would only change grammer, organization of photos/sections, and fix a few sentences that don't make sense.