User:ANavalArch/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: Samurai
 * I chose this article because we completed a reading on samurai this past week. The reading gave us an overview of samurai throughout Japan's history. Because we got a broad overview of this particular topic, I believe that the wikipedia article on samurai would fill in the details for me on this subject.

Lead

 * The introductory sentence for the lead paragraph concisely explains the time period the samurai were around, what their position is in Japanese social hierarchy, and what was their purpose was in Japan. There is a lot of generality in these statements, but it also is a single sentence that is being used to describe hundreds of years of history.
 * The lead continues on to do highlighting of some concepts and major events in samurai history, but does not list out everything that the article discusses.
 * All the information in the lead is discussed in the article.
 * The lead is concise, but does not go into enough detail on what is available in the article.

Content

 * Most of the content is relevant to samurai. There seems to be a few things that could be relevant, but aren't well cited (foreign samurai). This seems like it is not as relevant at times, but it is mostly relevant to samurai.
 * The content has not been updated for a few years based on the talk page. But, since this is a historical article there really is not that much modern content to keep up to date.
 * Parts of samurai culture and the early history of samurai does not seem complete in comparison to the later history of the samurai.
 * This article does not deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps.

Tone and Balance

 * From what we discussed in class, this seems to be representing the stereotype of Samurai. There is little to no discussion of the origin of samurai, and it discusses them as if they were always nobility and rich people. So it seems unbalanced.
 * The viewpoint of samurai as nobility is overrepresented. They are always discussed as nobles with no discussion of them as part time mercenaries in their early history.
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?
 * This article does not seem to push one view in front of the other. It tries to present history neutrally, and the positions it pushes seems to be the ones that are academically mainstream.

Sources and References

 * After reviewing most of the sources they are mainly books and academic articles. There are a handful of websites used for sources, but they are few and far between.
 * A lot of the sources come from the latter half of the twentieth century.
 * The sources seem to be really thorough. A lot of them are academic books and articles, and the website usage is limited.
 * The sources are spread widely from the mid twentieth century to a few years old. This article does not seem to have been updated for the past few years, and a lot of the sources seem to be a bit older, and that may be an issue. But, a lot of these sources are high quality.
 * The sources seem to come from academics and people with a fascination with samurai (i.e. the cliche nerd website about samurai). They seem to be mainly academic in nature, so it does not seem to be as inclusive as possible.
 * Most of the links in the sources go to books. This makes it a bit difficult to fact check it, but the books seem to be legitimate books. The few other links I have clicked do go to other wikipedia pages, and websites. There only seemed to be one link that was broken from the ones I clicked on.

Organization

 * The article is well written for the most part. There are a few sections that are a bit choppy with few citations, but they are few and far between. There could be more work done to improve some of these sections, and to improve the earlier history of samurai section.
 * I did not see any grammar or spelling errors.
 * The article is well organized. It is split down into major sections that flow well together. It starts with a historical overview and then turns to specific aspects of the samurai. It breaks down into smaller subsections that make sense in context to the subject area they are in.

Images and Media

 * All the images are on topic and provide visuals to their topic. The images are varied, and only enhance what is being discussed by showing a visual of what is going on.
 * The images describe what they are well with short sentences. There are links as well to pages that deal specifically with what that image shoes (if it is a person, location, etc.).
 * After clicking on most of the images they all have information on where they came from, who owns them, or why they are in the public domain.
 * The images are laid out in a visually appealing way. They vary in the position they are placed, and are always placed in a way that works well with how the text is being laid out.

Checking the talk page

 * This article has very few conversations. It seems there was recent activity to fix some grammar, but there have been a handful of discussions on aspects of the article that seem to be misleading. There is little action on the page to correct these points, and it seems to just be left in this state.
 * This article was part of a wiki education foundation course project (like this one). The article has a rank of C and is listed as a level four vital article for history.
 * The discussion seems to be very stereotypical of samurai. The origins of samurai discussed in this article does not lineup at all with what we discussed in class. The discussion we had about later samurai is more or less in this article, but there is little self awareness on why samurai created their culture. This may be in an attempt to avoid viewpoint bias?

Overall impressions

 * The article is well written and goes into details about many of the aspects of samurai. It discusses aspects of warfare, society, and culture surrounding samurai. There seems to be many sources, and plenty of informative photos, links, and graphics.
 * This article goes into great detail to describe cultural aspects associated with the modern era of the samurai. The discussion on samurai warfare was very fascinating and did not seem like something that would be commonly discussed in other internet articles.
 * The article really only focuses on the latter part of samurai history. There are few details on the origins and early part of samurai history, and from the reading we completed it does not appear to agree with what we read. I would need to do more research to determine if this is true or not, but it does appear to show the origins of samurai in a cliche way of always being nobles. The examples it provides for niche aspects of samurai are also under cited and do not seem to be provided in enough context. The "foreign samurai" section is a good example of this. There is also some discussion over minority aspects of the samurai (wives of samurai, women's status within the samurai) but these sections also need more detail. Additionally, women are mention, and there are attempts to discuss women, but there should probably be more on how women and other classes in Japan interacted and were samurai in some cases.
 * This article seems to be complete. The article tries to cover the entire history of the samurai. It also tries to provide a full picture about all aspects of samurai culture. Even though it has some bias towards the modern side of samurai, it does somewhat try to discuss the older history of the samurai and other aspects most people do not think about when they hear the word "samurai".

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