User:Aasaro4970/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
The article that I had chose was the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
The reason why I had chosen the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was that this act was one of the three acts that I had chosen for my Friday Journal. I wanted to evaluate this one because it was the smallest of the three acts and I personally do not know if I should pick a smaller length Wikipedia article to work for my semester project compared to one of the other acts that have a larger Wikipedia page.

Evaluate the article
Firstly, when looking at the lead sections, I saw that it was somewhat good, but it needs work. The lead sections should have a good and clear first introduction sentence; for this act, it seems that it was somewhat clear. It states when the act was signed into law, what president had signed it into law, and what Congress it was under. However, the sentence does not explain anything about what the act was about or what it did. The next paragraph in the lead sections explained what the act had done. The lead section is only made up of only two paragraphs, and they are very short with very little information. Because of that, the lead section does not go over the article’s major sections. When looking through the content of the article, it seems at first it has very little information since it is a smaller Wikipedia page. The content of the article seems like it was related well to the act itself. However, for example, there is one section called “on crime” where it seems that they used studies to understand how the act affects crime levels, and it is somewhat confusing because they both contradict the section. It is good to have two sides, but there should be more filler sentences to make the readers understand the content better. I believe the content is better with the Legislative background and descriptions. I think this Wikipedia page was written in a neutral tone, but some of it has a more conservative point of view. This can be first seen by the use of the offensive word “illegal immigrants,” typically many scholars and the American population use a less offensive word of “undocumented immigrants.” While looking at the talk page, it is very one-minded, however, most of the actual Wikipedia page is moderate in view (except for the wording of undocumented immigrants). When looking at the sourcing, it could be somewhat updated. For example, when looking at the “on crime” section, they had incorrectly explained what study went to what journal. But when looking at the sources itself it seems up to date, most are from the 2010s - 2020s. Also, most of them are peer-reviewed articles, or some were published in respectable journals. I think they should add more articles explaining how this act affected the marginalized community which the act had focused on, undocumented immigrants. I think organization and writing are extremely bad. I have noticed that a lot of the time there are no connecting sentences between the facts, which can highly confuse readers. Also, I think some subsections can be turned into their own main sections for the page to flow better. For example, the provisions are a subsection of the Legislative background and description; it would flow better if provisions would get their own section since the legislative background is pretty long. Unfortunately, there was only one image on this Wikipedia page, which was cited properly. When looking at the Talk page discussion, it was somewhat shocking how inappropriate some people are but many reviewers usually disapprove of these types of people. This Wikipedia page is being used by the WikiProject United States and WikiProject Law. This page is classified as a start level. Overall, the article needs a lot of improvement but more in the content area of it. This Wikipedia page does not have a lot of information because of that it is an underdeveloped article. I believe its' strengths are the use of good sources. If I do not decide on this act’s Wikipedia page I do hope someone else does because it deserves more information to be added to the page.