User:Backbrush/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: (link) Ecocriticism
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate.
 * I chose the article to evaluate because I am currently taking an ecology-related class and have never heard of this term before.

Lead

 * Guiding question:


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
 * Yes, I was able to learn the general gist of the article's topic through this lead.
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
 * Yes, though there aren't many major sections to truly look for. The "contents" section was quite clean compared to others I have seen, which makes me think more about if there could be more information to be added in for the future: Contents
 * 1Definition
 * 2In literary studies
 * 3See also
 * 4References
 * 5Sources
 * 6External links


 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
 * No, everything else is covered in the article. Though, the mention about the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) may have been unnecessary, unless Americans really do get confused with the two terms very often.
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?
 * The lead is concise, again with the exception of a possible unnecessary mention ( Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE). However, otherwise it gets straight to the point and I was able to learn what ecocriticism is, which is why I went for it.

Lead evaluation
The lead seems pretty solid, save the mention of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) as I mentioned above. The lead was informative and told me exactly what Ecocriticism is on a surface-level basis. However, the lead also did not have many citations (it only had two total for three paragraphs)

Content

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * Yes, however much of the content is a very long "sources" section. Because Ecocriticism has to do a lot with literature, there is a lot of additional information in "Literary Studies", which could be seen as a bit unnecessary because ecocriticism is a very broad subject, as mentioned in the lead, so naming and listing literature that talks about ecocriticism is only very loosely relevant, and could just be an attempt to fill the article, since there are a lot of authors who like to put in their two cents about the environment in their books.
 * Is the content up-to-date?
 * It appears so, after clicking through a few of the citations and seeing how the dates of the soruces tend to be in the late 20th/early 21st century. There could be more late 2010 articles, but this topic is also not very touched upon as it appears to be a more recent and low-priority term.
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?
 * No, though again there is the question of how relevant listing specific books such as The Country and the City. I have more qualms about this mention versus others such as Silent Spring and Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition because apparently the two latter books have a greater impact on the actual movement, while the former seemed to just be thrown on.
 * There definitely are a lot of quotes, and I'm not completely sure if all are necessary. For instance, in the "Definition" section, there are well over five direct quotes and many are concentrated in the mid paragraphs. They would likely only be relevant if these people had contributed significantly to ecocriticism.

Content evaluation
The content is thorough and informational, however there are a few mentions of other books that may be advertisement or unnecessary. Additionally, there could be more content, though I don't know much about the topic itself so I can't say what, but it would be nice to see more of the impact of ecocriticism.

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article neutral?
 * Yes, the article is neutral: there aren't many strong adjectives that show bias towards any side. Most if not all quotes are directly quoted from people, and it seems like the context of the quotes are provided accurately (so no leaving out certain information to serve a specific side).
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * No, the most bias that is shown is really the book-name dropping that comes up, which could show more of a certain author's perspective, but it could also be necessary because I believe some of the authors mentioned (Rachel Carson for sure) really did begin the ecocriticism movement and/or had a very high impact on it.
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * No, though again there may be people who are on the opposite spectrum of ecocriticism than Carson and/or give other perspectives in favor of the environment. It would be nice to see if there were any major players against the environmental movement and if they published anything for ecocriticism to see how both sides play out.
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?
 * No, the article isn't persuasive and mostly informative. The main fault with the article is that it doesn't have that much information to start out with. There are also a few "extreme" adjectives that could be more neutral with a few changes:
 * Such anthropocentrism is identified in the [tragic] (Instead just use "concept") conception of a hero whose moral struggles are more important than mere (mere could be omitted here) biological survival, whereas the science of animal ethology, (from here it is quoted).

Tone and balance evaluation
The tone and balance seem to be completely neutral and only there to inform the reader. There are a few slip ups as noted above, but otherwise the article really has most of its faults in the amount of content it provides.

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
 * Yes, though the lead was definitely lacking many sources (it only had one in the first paragraph, one in the second, and none in the last). There could definitely be more in-text citations, as from a quick scroll through there is only about one citation per paragraph (some do have up to three, but they seem to set off those which have none, such as the first paragraph under definition. Some parts are marked with citation needed: "evertheless, ecocriticism—unlike feminist and Marxist criticisms—failed to crystallize into a coherent movement in the late 1970s, and indeed only did so in the US in the 1990s.[citation needed]"
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
 * Yes, they are thorough. There are certainly many sources that haven't been cited, so it brings up the question of whether there is a lot more info that could possibly be added onto the article, though it isn't very clear what could be added as the definition of the subject is quite new and not well-studied.
 * Are the sources current?
 * Yes, though some are also from the 1900s. This would make sense though, because the a lot of the rise of environmental thought and pressure did begin in the 1900s. There are also a fair amount, about half of the listed sources, of more recent articles (2000s).
 * Check a few links. Do they work?
 * Yes, though some resources in "external links" have to be paid for or only show an abstract and/or are partially locked, others are in different languages: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/isle https://sites.google.com/site/groupgieco/

Sources and references evaluation
The sources and references that I have looked through and checked are working and reliable in that there are many different types of sources and the information in the article appear a good compilation of such sources rather than leaning heavily on a specific source.

Organization

 * Guiding question:


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
 * Yes, the article is well-written, as I was easily able to figure out the general concept of ecocriticism and see how it is quite a under-researched concept that definitely could use more insight.
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
 * No, though it could be made less winding (so connected to the above question--it could be more concise:
 * Ecocriticism is the study of literature and the environment from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. [It takes an interdisciplinary point of view by analysing the works of authors, researchers and poets in the context of environmental issues and nature.]
 * this second part repeats how ecocriticism looks at literature and nature--this could be combined
 * additionally, it's often spelled "analyzing"
 * there are many cases of s instead of z:
 * . In part this entails a shared sense of the ways in which 'nature' has been used to legitimise gender,
 * For now, I have changed the spelling to a more often used one.
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?
 * Yes, though that is partially because there isn't much information in the first place so it's not very hard to organize what's there at the moment.

Organization evaluation
The article appears to be well organized and easy to navigate, though the sources take up a very large part of the article despite not really being fully represented in the article itself. There also again isn't much to sort out in the organization section of this article as there isn't as much content. If anything, the definition section could be considered very long at four paragraphs going into different educators' perspectives on what ecocriticism is.

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
 * No, the article does not include images at all.
 * Are images well-captioned?
 * n/a
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
 * n/a
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way?
 * n/a

Images and media evaluation
Cannot provide evaluation as there are no pictures or media. The pictures that could have been added to the work are perhaps titles of important books/literature to ecocriticism, or perhaps a nice graphic that shows the interdisciplinary nature of ecocriticism and how it connects literature with a pure science such as environmental sciences. It would be useful in connecting our knowledge and understanding of the environment to literature itself, especially as books such as Silent Spring and The Jungle are very well known and already have a schema for many in environmental sciences (so it would help us make that connect immediately upon seeing the picture vs having to come across the titles and realizing that those are good examples).

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * In the talk page, it is mostly about self-promotion of their own books and removing such information from the page. Personally, I believe it has been removed because there aren't many examples about new/current books vs. books that I've heard of as "classics" that really brought about the environmental movement in the 20th century (such as the much-noted silent spring).
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * it is part of the the Wikiproject literature, which makes sense because it is about the environment and how literature connects to it.
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?
 * We haven't talked about this topic in class.

Talk page evaluation
The talk page appears to be useful for the article of course, because in this case it really kept track of the neutrality of the subject, and keeping out any self-promotion. Additionally, the talk page was very civil and passed around what we would call "good vibes" by supporting the writers but also noting bits of criticism and ways to improve (again with taking out the self-promo).

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions


 * What is the article's overall status?
 * it is rated as C-class.
 * What are the article's strengths?
 * It was informational to me and I learned the meaning of the article's subject. It definitely has a very formidable sources page, which could be a weakness, but it helps me if I want to look into it in my own time and go through the effort of reading into it.
 * How can the article be improved?
 * It could include more media and neutrality appeared to be a problem according to the talk page. The sources could be filtered through and the really important information put onto the article rather than being slapped onto a list. Additionally, the article could use more citations throughout and could have more information in general, because it definitely felt short.
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?
 * it is developed just enough so it isn't underdeveloped, which is why it is rated C-class. I definitely think there could be a lot more added onto it and look forward to seeing it explored more in-depth as the movement increases.

Optional activity

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