User:AliveDialga/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
House of Habsburg

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose the House of Habsburg because Maximilian I is a Habsburg and it's important to know the historical background of the character I'm playing in the simulation.

Evaluate the article
Lead is fairly concise, though lacks much information about the way that the house rose to prominence; perhaps this isn't necessary for the introduction.

The content seems strong, though there is a section on burials that is empty besides some unexplained links to various pages on burial sites. Besides that, the information looks up to date and details much of the lineage of the house of Habsburg and their significance to European (and Mexican?) history.

The tone seems balanced; there are no clear opinions about one family member or another, nor judgements made about the family.

Sourcing is difficult to describe. Some details, like family trees and maps of lineage, are sourced, but most aren't; it seems that something like this should be able to come from a single detailed work on the Habsburg family. It's not clear why there's not one or two sources supporting the authenticity of the tree, nor why some particular entries do have sources. In addition, some sources (unrelated to lineage) aren't actually citations, they're just explanations about historical context which are themselves unsourced.

The article is reasonably well-written and easy to follow; it is not, however, entirely in chronological order, and is instead divided into sections by topics which are perhaps not the most intuitively ordered. The table of contents is very necessary for one looking for a particular detail.

There are plenty of images; in particular, there are many pictures of individual Habsburgs and Habsburg residences, as well as coats of arms. The only questionable detail is that it's somewhat random which descendants have pictures of coats of arms next to their names and which don't. If anything, there are too many pictures (nearly half the page is taken up by pictures), which is noted at the top of the article.

The talk page is not commonly used, perhaps on average one to two posts per year. The changes discussed are minor and some seem overlapping (for example the discussion of Habsburg vs. Hapsburg). Notably, there were two posts today, the first since October 2020.

Overall, the article is a strong overview of the Habsburg family line and its historical significance, though some additional discussion of is rise to power and the way the family maintained that power (as opposed to simply saying that it did maintain power) could be useful. Additionally, context on the modern-day significance of the house would be appreciated; currently, the head of the house is named, but little is said as to the role of the Habsburgs or the place of nobility in modern Europe.

This article could chiefly benefit from a reduction in pictures, particularly in the section on Habsburg residences, as well as a more fluid organization of sections. It would also be good to generate some consistency with regard to citations, coats of arms next to names, and perhaps a reduction in the overlap of names, as it seems that names are presented in both the form of a list of names and a gallery with pictures.