User:Batuolana/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomonic_dynasty

Why have you chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it talked of the history of the country that I'm from. I felt it was significant because it is a side of history that is heavily argued about in Ethiopia. My preliminary impression of the article was that is spoke of the history as if the legends were facts.

Evaluate the article
This article written about the Solomonic Dynasty of Ethiopia (or Abysinnia) was informative enough to tell the political and royal history of Ethiopia. However, there are biases, misleading information and pass of legend as facts within this article. This is because the history written in this article had lack of reliable sources for evidence and the major evidence on which the article told the history from was a biased document called Kibre Megest, which was used by the royal families themselves.

The lead section of this article was written is a good manner where it had a precise introductory sentence and briefly tells what the Solomonic Dynasty is about. It states, when and how it was formed, the key rulers and how long it lasted, all of which give the fundamental information of the article and tell the reader what the whole article will be about.

The content of the article is moderately good where it tells the story of the country about how the rulers came to power and fought one another. However, there is an equity gap where everyone significant in this history wasn't told as much about as everyone else. The content is also not very up to date because it is not a current issue that is still affecting the country. It is also not up to date with more historical evidence that were potentially found after this article concluded its history of 1974.

This article had a lot of lack in tone and balance. Although it described the events that occurred in more recent years comparatively have more consensus, the story that influenced those events and the ahistory that is said to have started it all is not stated from a neutral point of view in the article. The article still uses the term 'claim' to show how the royalty claimed legitimacy however doesn't give the theme of the history being a legend throughout. Rather, it tells the story like a fact and uses Kibrea Megest(a biased source) to as evidence. This article has great potential in persuading the reader to get a wrong or just part of the whole history.

For a history that spans centuries, or millennia if the legends are true, this article has major lack of recourses. There are only 7 sources sighted and one is used more than one time. This link to that source leads to one single paragraph that is through as enough to be evidence for some of the major plots of the history. Additionally, there was a source that, when reached to the site, was not freely accessible to view. This doesn't live up to the 'public domain' notion of Wikipedia.

The article was fairly organized when seen from a chronological point of view. However, it was all written under one category of 'History' and 'Coat of Arms'. These two categories are not quantitatively enough for the history of the Solomonic Dynasty. A better version of this article might include adding more subsections and chronologically dividing the reigns of different rulers.

There were a few relevant images in this article that supported the history. However, there could be more imaged to source out for and use to tell this vast history. Finally, the talk page discussion was a place that strongly called out the biases of this article. Apart from being aggressive in the way the article was described, the talk page was able to give the misinformation of the history. Overall, this article was interesting to tell the history of Ethiopia and the legends that were believed in history. With some corrections in the information and the removal of biases, it can be an article that is very informative of a significant portion of Ethiopian history.