User:Anniewelch/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Pocosin

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 this is the wetland type I created for the wetland types google slideshow, and I was interested to see how the Wikipedia page differed from the textbook we are using in class. At first glance, the article seems to do a good job of describing pocosins.

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.)

Lead Section

The lead section of the article is somewhat short, consisting of two small paragraphs. It provides a brief definition of pocosins, with some details and contextual information about where pocosins can be found within North America. The lead section is adequately concise, however it does include some information that the article does not mention again. It mentions that the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina was created in order to serve as a protected area for pocosins, and this is not elaborated on anywhere else in the article.

Content

The content included all seems to be relevant to the topic at hand: pocosins. The article is broken up into two sections, "Characteristics" and "Etymology" and the etymology section is just two sentences explaining where the word pocosin comes from. I feel as if this information may not have been needed, or could have been included elsewhere in the article; it seems unnecessary to have a whole section for just two sentences of information.

Tone and Balance

The tone of the article is professional and unbiased. With this kind of topic, it would be most likely that an author could become biased when discussing the level of protection placed around wetlands, however the author does not fall into this trap. They do mention that pocosins can house endangered plant species and are important habitats for many bird species, however they do not include any additional comments that could be perceived as biased.

Sources and References

Not all of the sources have links, which makes it difficult to assess their validity. One of the sources that does have a link is from a scientific journal in 1983, and the other is from the U.S. Forest Service in 1993, however this link is broken. I think that the references section could use some improvements due to the lack of information on the sources, and because some of them are slightly outdated. I also think that reference information is missing for some of the article's content, however it is hard to judge this when the links are absent or broken.

Organization and Writing Quality

The article contains two major headings within the body. As previously mentioned, the second section is very small and could potentially be placed somewhere else. The main section, "Characteristics," could potentially be split into smaller sections, i.e. "Hydrology," "Soils," "Plant Life," "Fire Presence." The section contains all of this information, but there are no headings to distinguish it.

Images and Media

There are two pictures that have descriptive captions and include source information when you click on them. In my opinion, there were opportunities to include more media, but the existing images are adequate.

Talk Page Discussions

There are two entries in the talk page, one from 2008 and one from 2011. Both entries mention that there is some sourcing information missing and suggest breaking the article down into more sections. The article is part of three WikiProjects: WikiProject Ecology, WikiProject Virginia, and WikiProject United States/North Carolina, and rated as the following, respectively: Start-class, Low-importance, Start-class, Mid-importance, and Stub-class, Low-importance.

Overall Impressions

The article needs to include additional citations and update the existing citations. Some organization within the body of the article could increase the reader's understanding of the topic. The article does a good job of describing pocosins by discussing their hydrology, soils, and plant life, as well as the importance of wildfires to their ecosystems.