User:Axolotl61/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Intersex medical interventions

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I'm personally interested in intersex rights, and I wanted to see how editors reprsented a controversial issue. I think that it's really important for this article to showcase intersex activist's points of view as well, and I wanted to see how it balanced medical information with human rights concerns. My preliminary impression was that the authors did a fairly balanced job of representing the controversy, and utalized a wide variety of sources to reflect the growing awareness that intersex surgery is a human rights abuse.

Evaluate the article
I felt that the lead section was effective in setting the tone for the article. The introductory sentence clearly explained what intersex surgeries are and the medical function of them, as well as instantly getting into the human rights issues. There are ten sources cited in the lead section, but it still manages to be concise. However, the lead does not contain a brief description of the article's major sections, and the only place that's listed is in the table of contents.

The content of this article was effective. There were five main sections, and they covered both the medical facts of intersex surgery as well as the medical debates and human rights issues. The content is extremely relevant to the topic, as it is a big issue with many different angles that need to be explored. I think that giving in depth explanations of the different types of surgical procedures is helpful instead of just being vague about the surgery types. There also is a overview of the multiple perspectives on the negative outcomes of intersex surgery, and those are presented fairly. The content is mostly up to date, but there has been some recent legislation in Germany that I think would be relevant in the human rights section that isn't currently listed there. I think there could also be more content about intersex activism in terms of intersex surgery, as there are almost no mentions of the fact that almost all major intersex organizations have campaigns against intersex surgery. I think that this article does address one of Wikipedia's equity gaps, as there is not a lot of information on LGBTQIA issues on Wikipedia.

I think that the authors did a good job with tone and balance. Intersex surgery is something that is increasingly being seen as a human rights issue, and I was happy to see that the article did not dismiss those concerns as "fringe" viewpoints but rather accurately represented that this is becoming more of the majority viewpoint. I think some people might argue that this article is biased against doctors, but I think the article provides enough sources that the priorization of the anti-surgery viewpoint is not biased, but rather represnetative of changing consensesus. I do not feel like there are any attempts to persuade the reader, as all the facts are just stated as facts and aren't using inflammatory language.

I was impressed by the sources. There were 98 sources for this article, and they showcased a variety of viewpoints and expertise.There were multiple different sources that were joint statements by collection organizations which I felt were particularly reliable. The sources are either current or are historical sources to describe historical viewpoints. The vast majority of sources were peer reviewed medical articles or national statements rather than news websites. All the links I clicked on worked.

The article is well written and uses appropriate language, especially while discussing medical procedures. The organization is clear, with sections about medical interventions and sections about controversy and human rights abuses. In the surgery section, it splits it up to talk about masculinizing and feminizing surgery which helps add clarity. I think the controversies section is also well organized, with headings on specific facets of the controversy. There were no spelling or grammer mistakes that I could see.

There were only two images, and I felt that the first image which was a historical treatment of Androgen Insensitvity Syndrome was not super relevant to the discussion. I think more images would enhance the article, although I do think that there might be difficulty finding images that do not break medical ethics. All the images seem to adhere to copyright, and are well captioned.

The talk page is rather contentious, with people having a lot of strong opinions about the framing of this article. Key issues are debates over the term "abnormal" and the term "intersex genital mutilation." There are a lot of discussions about how to talk about intersex surgery as a human rights issues, and many of the early conversatoins about it 15 years ago were a lot more focused on the medical aspects. There are also some logistical dicussions about whether or not this page should be incorporated with the history of intersex surgery page. It is a C-Class article, and is part of WikiProject Medicine and WikiProject Sexology and Sexuality.

Overall, I thought the article was a solid article. I think there could be more exploration of gender identity and how that intersects with intersex surgery both as an outcome and as justification, but I recognize that may be a more appropriate topic for the article the history of intersex surgery. I think the strengths are that it includes a lot of information to show the growing consensus as a human rights abuse, that the medical information is accurate, and that preferred language is used throughout. I also struggle with the fact that I know a lot of this information in this article is incomplete, because there is so little literature from intersex people talking about our own experiences and those sources aren't accepted by wikipedia. There is a lot of information that I know to be relevant to the discussion that I think should be added, but none of the sources I would want to use would be accepted, which I think is more a problem with Wikipedia in general rather than this article. I think it is a solid article that is complete, although I think more images could be added and I also think there could be some more reference to intersex advocacy organizations.