User:Alexjacullo/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
STEM pipeline

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 as a female STEM student about to enter the workforce full-time as a young professional in STEM, I am very invested in the progress of STEM education initiatives. Also, I think there has been a big push lately to expand the access of STEM educational programs at earlier ages and among communities that may be lacking in STEM representation, such as women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ people. In general, I have considered the STEM pipeline to be an important factor in addressing these inequities; however, very recently I began to see criticisms of the STEM pipeline in this regard.

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 Lead Section is very concise and starts with an adequate introductory sentence that briefly and succinctly describes the topic. The Lead Section does not include any kind of overview of the sections and content of the article.

The overall content of the article is relevant to the topic, but the information is based on sources that are somewhat outdated, though not drastically so. The article addresses a significant equity gap of women and minorities in STEM, which have traditionally been white male-dominated fields. There are definitely areas where content is lacking and could be more fully developed. For example, I would probably adjust the Public reactions section to capture and incorporate more of the tangible criticisms that have begun to take hold in recent years. There is a predominant focus on the STEM pipeline in the secondary education setting, so inclusion of information regarding initiatives targeted toward younger children might be beneficial as well.

There does not appear to be any glaring tone issues associated with the content of the article as it reads rather neutral from my perspective. Similarly, no persuasion or overtly biased statements seem to be present throughout the article and there is information incorporated that encapsulates differing sides of the issue.

Information is consistently cited with sources throughout the article and there appears to be a sampling of sources pulled from and no overt reliance on a single source. Sources are relatively current but there likely could be some beneficial updating. There are some news articles that could probably be replaced by peer-reviewed papers. A lot of the references seem to be in support of one side from the outset, which is something to keep in consideration as potential sources of bias not through tone but rather inherently from the information used to synthesize and develop the original content. There are quite a few reference links that do not work or lead to pages that no longer exist which is an issue.

Overall, the article is pretty well-written and concise with no obvious issues of convention, spelling, punctuation, etc. The organization of the article makes sense but is a bit lacking in my opinion and the sections maybe are not as accurately or effectively labeled as they could be.

There are no images or other forms of media included in the article at this point.

The talk page is not heavily populated but there are a couple of objects touched upon. One of these issues involves a conflict of interest by a user proposing an edit and looking for feedback on the appropriateness of this addition; it was ultimately declined due to the disclosed conflict of interest. Another interaction had to do with a concept that was declined due to its lack of traction and general acceptance. This article is associated with a few different WikiProjects including Education, Science, Engineering, Technology but it does not have a rating from any of these WikiProjects.

After evaluating the different aspects of this article, I would say overall it has a solid start and scope of content but is lacking in some detail and expansion. Additionally, the references and sources are definitely areas that can be improved upon, as well as general updating of information. The article takes a good approach of giving a general overview of the topic and incorporating expansion in certain areas. I would argue that while it is well-developed as a starting basis, it is more generally underdeveloped. Adding to the background/history of the STEM pipeline initiative would be advantageous, plus diversifying the critiques/criticisms section.