User:Beachwaves/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Marine ecosystem

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 I am fascinated by marine ecosystems and I know quite a bit about how they work. This article matters because it is very important for people to know how marine ecosystems work because the ocean covers about 70% of the Earth's surface. My preliminary impression of this Marine Ecosystem article was that it is well structured with headings and subheadings as well as links to other articles that relate so the reader can dive deeper into whichever subtopic that they are interested in.

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.)

Overall, the Wiki article Marine Ecosystems conveys information regarding some of the different types of marine ecosystems in a clear, concise manner. In addition, it does quickly mention some threats to the ocean at the bottom but this topic was not covered as thoroughly. Firstly, the lead section does a good job of providing the reader a brief overview of the article. Towards the end of the lead paragraph, it lists the various zones which are each discussed deeper later in the article. Though the lead paragraph was concise, it provided the right amount of information that the reader needs to figure out if this article is useful or interesting to them. On the other hand, for the content section I think the article had more of a focus on near-shore/coastal ecosystems than any other section. Each section for the coastal ecosystems was well-developed, but it seemed to neglect the deep sea and sea floor section as well as the section on climate change which had little information comparatively. Therefore, I wouldn't say that there is content missing but there is minimal content in some sections that could benefit from additions. However, in general, the content seems pretty up to date as it includes references that were published very recently and it does not seem biased. The writing is very objective, providing facts with little opinion surrounding them except an underlying tone that people are not doing enough to protect our waters. As mentioned earlier, the sources are current and there are over 50 of them spanning a wide range of authors, topics, and backgrounds. Furthermore, the article was well-organized and the writing quality was fair but the flow of the article could improve. At points, the sentences seem choppy instead of flowing from one idea to the next. Overall, I think this article is good and very helpful for anyone wanting to learn more about different marine ecosystems. However, I think this article could be more developed for the last few sections, especially the section on threats. It provided a lot of great information, but it would feel more finished if it didn't seem like the subsections on invasive species and climate change were just thrown in at the last minute. However, this could be due to the sheer number of people contributing to the piece. In addition, there is little disagreement and not many suggestions to improve the article discussed in the talk tab.