User:Abbyreads75/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Gothic fiction

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because we are reading several Gothic texts in this class and I am interested in the topic. This article is important for the sake of understanding this genre and its relationship to other genres. My first impression of this article is that it is long and perhaps overly detailed in some places.

Evaluate the article
The topic sentence of the lead, while concise, seems a little vague. The first paragraph likewise doesn't provide enough information on the topic. I think including examples in the first paragraph would be helpful for a quick grasp of the topic, maybe some of the most well-known examples. I do think the lead overall presents a concise, complete introduction to the topics discussed in the article, but maybe the first paragraph could be edited.

The content is relevant and up to date as far as I can tell, and does a good job covering the sub-genres of Gothic fiction. In some ways, it may be too in-depth. As I mentioned before, the article is long, and several of the sections read more like lists than explanations. There is a link to a wikipedia page listing Gothic novels, so this could be improved by using less examples and instead referencing the list.

The tone is fairly neutral, mostly stating facts about the development of the Gothic novel. Some descriptions of the Gothic novel read as interpretation, but usually these are cited as such. The article is not trying to persuade the reader toward an argument, merely relaying information.

Citations seem up to date, links work. A few ISBN numbers were hard to track down.

The talk section brings up some elements that I noticed that have not yet been resolved. Primarily, the structure of certain paragraphs as lists rather than descriptions/explanations of the genre and subsequent sub-genres. Someone brings up that there is nothing discussing horror vs. terror, and while female writers are discussed, this user points out that discussion of queer themes is overlooked. This article is C-class, and part of projects Novels, Literature, and Horror, of Top-importance to horror, though it barely mentions the connection to horror (a couple brief sentences sprinkled throughout the article). I thought the mention of horror vs. terror important, especially since we discussed this in class.