User:AnnaRO2021/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Post-democracy

Choice of article
I have chosen the Wikipedia page about the concept Post-democracy used by the political scientist Colin Crouch since our course is concerned with what democracy is in the 21st century, including exploring how we can rethink democracy. Crouch is not included in the readings of the course so thereby reading this Wikipedia article I can explore further and broaden my understanding of what research has been done in the topic of modern democracy in the field of political science.

Preliminary impression
My preliminary impression of the article is that is contains many of the elements the Wikipedia training involves - e.g., links, bold font, citation and also text pieces where citations is needed. Also, the article includes a picture of Colin Crouch, it has a clear structure and a good use of headings as well as a reference system, links to further reading as well as links to related Wikipedia articles.

With regard to the topic of the Wikipedia article, I have previously conducted research about the Danish power elite and therefore I find democratic challenges related to power elites especially interesting to investigate further. The Post-democracy article deal with how Colin Crouch see this tension between small elites and democratic institutions.

Lead section
The very first sentence does introduce the term post-democracy. However, you need to read a bit further to understand what exactly is understood by post-democracy which is a concept used by Colin Crouch. Is this way, the very first sentence could be more concise and to the point. The lead section itself is neither too short or too long which is good.

In the lead section there seems to be some value statements - e.g., when it is stated that the term post-democracy is polemical. This paragraphs also does not have citations - which I think relates to the fact that the paragraph is not neutral to some degree.

Content
The content of the article is organized in a good way since it includes headings and bullet lists with key points related to the different subtopics in each section. However, I do miss more elaborated paragraphs in each subsection that briefly explain how this is related to the post-democracy. The article is a bit short so I think one could elaborate much further on this topic. The article does not address topics related to historically underrepresented populations or topics.

Tone, Balance, Sources and References
Overall the tone of the article is neutral and well balanced. It does not seem to wanting to persuade the reader in any way e.g., by overrepresenting or underrepresenting certain viewpoints. Also, the articles does have citations and links to other relevant and related Wikipedia articles. The links do work - both the links to internal Wikipedia articles and the external links. However, I find that in some of the sections - e.g., Causes and Consequences - the text does need more citation in order to heighten the reliability.

However, as mentioned above, in the lead section there is a paragraph that lack citation and is also somewhat normative. I do not think that the value statements should be included - or they should at least be rephrased after having found reliable sources to build upon.

Images and Media
In the article one image of Colin Crouch is included and it has a brief caption. Maybe one could have included an image of the book(s) in which Crouch have used his concept since it is not a biographical article but an article about a theoretical concept. The image is layout in a appealing way. Also, the image have a citation page where you can find information about the photographer, including a remark about it being his own work. This seems to be OK in relation to the copy right politics of Wikipedia.

Talk page discussion
Even though the Talk page of the article is not that long it still contains some dialogue. The Talk page also shows that the article has been rated 'Start' and 'Mid'. Thus, the article is a great example of something my future Wikipedia article could be similar to. Finally, the Talk page shows that the article has been included in the WikiProject Politics.

Overall impressions
The article is a great 'Start' article since it has a clear structure and good elements such as paragraphs, headings, clear definitions, mostly neutral writing, citations, references, links to other Wikipedia articles, links to further reading, and external links.

Nevertheless, the article should be revised by other Wikipedians in order to make sure that is it neutral in the paragraphs that is missing citations and contains value sentences. Also, it would benefit from having more Wikipedians to contribute to this page, including having more activity on the Talk page.