User:Adschwister/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Bird vocalization

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I was personally interested in what all goes into the sounds my pet cockatiel makes every day and figured this article would be cool.

Evaluate the article
The lead includes a detailed definition of bird vocalizations, with distinctions emphasized between birds' songs and their calls. The lead is not very descriptive of what exactly is covered in the article, however, only really offering a definition of the subject which seems a bit redundant considering the first section is about defining bird vocalizations.

The article itself is very detailed and covers a wide variety of relevant content. Most sections are adequate in length except for the one set aside for describing anatomical and physiological mechanisms of bird vocalization, which is unfortunately one of the sections I was most interested in reading about. However, the author did very thoroughly cover the cognitive side to bird vocalizations.

Overall the article remains fairly neutral and the author refrains from drawing their own conclusions separate from their sources and outside research.

As for the currency of the article and its sources, the article itself was last edited four days ago, and its sources' origins range from the late 1800's to the year 2019. The sources listed are also very thorough and cover a broad spectrum of relevant studies.

The organization is solid, and the writing is followable and simple enough for the average reader to digest without needing further knowledge of the subject. There are external links placed in nearly every sentence, which might not objectively be a positive, but I enjoyed having the option to hover over a particular term and have a brief explanation, link to an external source, or an image. The author's use of audio samples is not entirely needed I suppose but it fleshes the article out nicely by including so many sensory aids.

This article is part of the project, " WikiProject Birds ", as mentioned in its talk page.It is rated as B-Class quality, and as Top-importance relative to the aforementioned WikiProject. Most discussions in the talk page are regarding the format of the article, with some users adding complaints about the use of subheadings and others discussing the amount of audio files needed. One interesting find was a well-hidden vandalism in the form of adding an external link to the word "music" that led curious clickers to a video of Avril Lavigne.

Overall it is a relatively well-developed article, although I do agree that the subheadings in the section for cognitive context behind vocalizations are a little bit overwhelming. Maybe the next edit could be making that whole section into two or three.