User:AlexKurtt/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Agar plate)

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article because it pertains to the culturing of microbes which is done fairly common, especially in microbial ecology. It matters because it is such a widely used medium but background information on it is not typically available; it is so commonly used, researchers typically don't need to describe it. The article was able to touch on the many different types and uses of agar plates which was helpful to learn about the many applications.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

The article had a nonbiased outlook on the uses and purposes of agar plates. It drew from mainly credible sources but one outlier was a blog post style page describing the uses of blood agar. While this provided useful information, there is little proof of the source credibility.

The general layout of the article was well put together but it's clear that multiple authors have made revisions as it is slightly jarring to read. In many cases it felt as though new information was tacked on rather than having one coherent section and an entire revision of clean up would be beneficial for certain sections such as the opening general information.

The included images were very applicable and helped with visualization of different aspects such as the streaking method. Additionally the captions for each picture made it clear what the reader is looking at. One final critique is that the history section is a bit lacking but this could be a result of a lack of information available to make edits or a simple background in general.

As a whole this article is more beneficial to learning about the many types of agar and mediums used rather than the development of the method.