User:Altosaxma'am77/Choose an Article

Article Selection
Please list articles that you're considering for your Wikipedia assignment below. Begin to critique these articles and find relevant sources.

Option 1

 * Article title Deforestation in Thailand
 * Article Evaluation
 * This article generally has limited problems as written. The content provided is relevant, and while some sources could certainly be updated to more scholarly material for some of the specific details of deforestation, the links all seem to work as intended. I have not checked the books cited, but I could do that if I select this topic. Where this article is weak is in its treatment of upland communities. First, the concept of swidden farming is reduced to "wildfires [...] deliberately set by local farmers". Second, the question of land ownership is specifically reduced to a question about class disparities. While not entirely inaccurate, the complications resulting from the intersection of citizenship, ethnicity, and class create important distinctions that should be discussed in article about this. In fact, I would like to specifically include a section specifically speaking on upland communities' specifically changing relationship with the environment as a result of this deforestation. This article is listed as Start-Class and Mid-Importance, although I would argue that it ought to be higher. The Talk page has not discussed these issues, and it seems to primarily be a place where statistical analysis questions have been asked.

Option 2

 * Article title Environmental Issues in Thailand
 * Article Evaluation
 * This article has similar concerns as the above article, and much of the same issues would be changed. I would argue that a change to the above article would be incomplete without similar changes to the related issues with the "Deforestation" section of this article. Additionally, some sections are oddly devoid of citations. sometimes as low as 1-2 per paragraph of text. Other data probably needs some added context in order to better fit within the broader framework of the article itself. Rather than adding as much distinct sections as in the former article, I would probably go through and add these thematic connections.

Option 3

 * Article title Hydropower in the Mekong River Basin
 * Article Evaluation
 * This article has a shockingly little number of thematic value/connections, theoretical connections, or updated data/links. The environmental impacts section could be expanded considerably, and there are only 5 sources on the entire section. This is an article that could be expanded considerably at almost all levels. I am not sure what I would even start with this, but I'd likely update the data tables, expand the environmental impacts section to include more sources and a greater discussion of short/long term impacts, connections to alternate constructions of the MRB, and/or discussions of specific impacts to local communities.