User:Abel.jack03/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Rapala (Rapala)

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I like to fish, and was interested to learn more about the history of one of the biggest fishing lure manufacturers in the world. From a first glance, it looks like a pretty standard wikipedia page, with a brief overview of the company and its relevance in the fishing lure industry and beyond.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section - The first part of the leading section is good, were there is a brief history of how where the company was created, how the first fishing lure was designed, and their prominence in the world today. However, there are a few grammatical errors or words that should be switched around, and the last two paragraphs don't really flow that well. Instead of including the last sentence in the second to last paragraph, more space should be dedicated to what 13 Fishing and the Okuma fishing brand are (mentioned in the first sentence of the same paragraph). Either way, both paragraphs reference very recent achievements by the company, which is okay, but it also include a summary of the company's success as a whole. Overall, it includes some details that probably could've been left out.

Content - The content is well organized, and the section "Company history" gives a very good, chronological list of events pertaining to the company's growth. The only downside is there are statements made in the lead section that aren't brought up again, such as the American subsidiary of Rapala based in Minnesota. The "Popular lures" section is written rather informally, and I think there could have been more space dedicated to talking about the functionality of the lures themselves. There are pretty sufficient citations throughout, and the "Acquisitions" section in particular is well cited. Overall, lot of the content is dedicated towards Rapala as a business, and I think more time could have been spent talking about the lures themselves, since in many ways they started a trend for how lure manufacturers design their baits to this day.

Tone and Balance - Overall the writers did a good job of keeping the tone neutral, as it's very easy to sound like an advertisement when talking about companies current progress. For example, this sentence in the lead section: "Rapala's lures are considered some of the world's leading baits and sold in 140 countries [ref] with Field & Stream ranking Rapala's Original Floating Minnow the third of the "best topwater lures ever created" in 2019" is a good way to sum up Rapala's prominence in the fishing lure industry. The "Company history" section does a good job keeping a good balance of the company's history, spending time mentioning its business acquisitions and expansions, while also mentioning events leading up to its success. The popular lures section is also presented in a clear way that borders on an advertisement, but doesn't make any biased claims. However, including a section here to talk about Rapala's most successful lures based on numbers purchased would help back-up this neutral viewpoint.

Sources and References - It's tough to find scholarly, peer-reviewed articles about the history of an 88-year old business. Most references are from newspapers or magazines, with few from the Rapala website itself. While these aren't the most reliable sources, the secondary sources they use are from a variety of different newspapers and media outlets between North America and Europe, so the content isn't based on biased information. The oldest source used is from 2000, with many of the other sources being from the late 2010's or 2020's.

Organization and Writing Quality - The writing quality of the leading section and "Company history" are organized very well, but do have some grammatical errors. Overall there are a handful of grammatical errors throughout the article. It's broken down well, with the major topics being covered such as the company's history and relevance among fishing lure manufacturers today, but little to no time was spent talking about the lures themselves and what makes them significant. There could be a section added talking about this.

Images and Media - The article only uses two images (aside from the company logo in the panel in the lead section). The first one is appropriately placed in the "Popular lures" section, showing the diversity of the different lures manufactured by Rapala. However, the second image is all the way at the very bottom past the references, and could definitely be moved higher to exemplify what Rapala lures look like. All images have a caption and are correctly cited as own works.

Talk page discussion - In the "Talk" section, there are discussions regarding the relevance of certain sentences, the formatting of the bullet points in the "Popular lures" section, and adding more sources to increase the size of the article. It sounds like a lot of information was initially taken out and a few years ago this article was pretty thin, until more work was added mostly coming from newspaper and magazine articles. These "Talk" pages look super helpful for authors to bounce ideas off of each other and make suggestions without engaging in editing wars.

Overall Impressions - Overall, I'd rate this article a 6.5/10. It has solid background and organization in most of the article, but there are some sections where there is either irrelevant information or not enough information about a certain aspect of the topic. There are a few grammatical errors and the placement of some of the photos is questionable, but ultimately the reader can get a decent understanding of Rapala as a company and what they produce.