User:Annawood2/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Oceanic crust

Oceanic Crust

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to look at oceanic crust as this article is listed as C-Class and has been rated as high importance. Oceanic crust is a key building block into understanding the structure of the Earth, how plate tectonics work (i.e. the movement of plates) without the knowledge of oceanic and continental crust we wouldn't be able to understand the Earth's history and evolution.

Initially, I felt that the article was decent. It describes what it is, it talks about the life cycle, the composition and layering of the crust, all of which are key concepts.

Evaluate the article
Lead: Has an introductory sentence that clearly describes the articles topic. It does include a brief overview of what is found in this article, just not as clear as it could be. I feel that the lead is slightly over detailed, upper and lower crust information especially "...pillow basalts and a dike complex....troctolite, gabbro and ultramafic cumulates..." could've been introduced in the composition section of the article in much greater detail.

Content: All information is related to the topic and is relatively up to date.

Tone & Balance: Overall a neutral tone, nothing is biased.

Sources & Resources: There are only 2 references listed. Link works for one, the other is a book and all the information is correct. They are a little out dated being 2005 and 2009. I found this article that discusses oceanic crust thickness and a new reference model for oceanic crust structure. This article was published in 2018 so is much newer and has potential new information to add to strengthen this wiki page.

The citation is : Grevemeyer, I., Ranero, C., & Ivandic, M. (2018, April 01). Structure of oceanic crust and serpentinization at subduction trenches. Retrieved January 27, 2021, from https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geosphere/article/14/2/395/525936/Structure-of-oceanic-crust-and-serpentinization-at

Organization & Writing Quality: Would've preferred that the section of the crust's life cycle goes before geochemistry so that we have a better understanding of the processes that occur for new crust formation before identifying the chemistry. Overall writing quality is strong, no grammar or spelling mistakes that jump out at me.

Images & Media: Only two images shown, the captions are good and easy to understand, however could've been worded better although visually works well in the article. I think having an image related to magnetic anomalies to show what the pattern looks like parallel to the ridges would've been beneficial. Another image that I feel would've been useful, is one illustrating convergent boundaries as they mention it in the life cycle section.

Talk Page Discussion: In the talk page, users are discussing topics and inaccuracies in the edits. Lots to debrief and consider, all have valid suggestions and contributions to the article. However, no one is discussing if they should add new ideas and information to the article, which I think could help improve this piece. Many users are just fixing and opposing ideas.

Overall Impression: Overall this piece does a decent job of explaining oceanic crust, has a good structure and layout. More sections with thorough details would make this article much stronger. Could discuss the importance oceanic plates may have on natural disasters (i.e. earthquakes, underwater volcanoes). Another suggestion to strengthen this piece would be more pictures and diagrams to help aid in the understanding of major topics.