User:AGR379/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
The article I am evaluating is Shamanism.

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it was in the Anthropology Section of the Academic Disciplines and dealt with traditional medicine, which is related to our course.

Evaluate the article

 * 1) Evaluating Content
 * 2) * Everything in the Article seems relevant to the topic.
 * 3) * There are some old sources, but they are used for the definition and origin of words, which is not a bad use of old sources.
 * 4) * Considering the topic at hand, the Article does a good job of explaining the historical and social context of Shamanism, while also pointing to other articles that go more in depth on specific cultural practices of Shamanism.
 * 5) * The article is extremely busy, so if there was anything to improve it should be the removal of a section. The "Beliefs" section in particular went on for a long time and could have been made its own article instead.
 * 6) Evaluating Tone
 * 7) * For the most part, the article is written in a neutral, academic tone. However, there are a few claims that are offered without proper citation as to who stated them, specifically in the "Criticism of the Term" section.
 * 8) * While the tone is neutral for the most part, as stated previously, there does seem to be a slight bias towards an anti-colonial view of Shamanism.
 * 9) Evaluating Sources
 * 10) * Most of the sources on this article are book sources, which means that there are very few direct links to the content. While the ISB number provided for these books seems correct, it is hard to tell if the sources are actually being represented properly without better access to the source.
 * 11) * Most facts presented come with an academic source that backs them up, and most claims come with an argumentative source and are noted as such. As stated in the previous section, however, there are a few claims that are presented and noted as such, but do not have a source to go with them.
 * 12) * There are over one hundred and fifty citations in this article, and at least eighty of them come from unique sources. The sources are diverse enough.
 * 13) Checking the Talk Page
 * 14) * Behind the scenes on the talk page, there is one part of the article that is being argued about extensively. That is the etymology of the word Shaman. Nobody can seem to agree on how to present the subject or what the truth behind the origin of the word is.
 * 15) * This article is part of numerous Wikipedia projects and its rating ranged from C-class, Low-importance in Spirituality to B-class, Top-importance in Anthropology.