User:BeckMarin/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Work–family balance in the United States

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 choose this article because my PE works to help caregivers get access to childcare. The uptick is a need to childcare comes from the increase of parents wokring, this increase not only means more people need to find childcare, but it can make childcare harder for people to find or afford now that they market has a higher demand. Looking at this balance will help me evaluate the need for childcare and the pitfalls of childcare in the US. My prelimary impression was that it is a good article because it had no warning labels, was a good length (there are sections but it is not increadibly long), and tackles politics, some history, and possibly some sociology (effects on families).

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.)

Evaluating content


 * 1) Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
 * 2) No, the article was very linear. It discussed key legislation, its effects on families, and then solutions for the negative effects.
 * 3) Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?
 * 4) Yes, the newest information is from 2011, so there can definetly be infomation added that is newer and more relavent. For example, gay marriage was legalized in 2015, which potentially created work-family imbalances for more people. Also, with COVID-19, work and family have become one, so it would be interested to see how this article can expand on that.
 * 5) Can you identify any notable equity gaps? Does the article underrepresent or misrepresent historically marginalized populations?
 * 6) This article does not mention race (the words Black, Asian, and Latino are not even in the article), so that is definetly a place where the article can imporve.
 * 7) What else could be improved?
 * 8) I think more information about childcare and its types could be useful for this article because not all work scheudles are the same, so not all work-family balances are the same.

Evaluating tone


 * 1) Is the article neutral? Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * 2) There were some odd wording, like "our society" and "our country" that I think should change, the article reads like someone from the US wrote it. It also does seem like they favor government support over the other solutions presented.
 * 3) Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * 4) There were no mentions of informal care, intersectional identities, and there was an odd sentence "Middle-class family issues center on dual-earner spouses and parents while lower class issues center on problems that arise due to single parenting." This was uncited and presents a view that all families in the lower class are one-partner households and vice versa.

Evaluating sources


 * 1) Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?
 * 2) Most of the links do not work. They mostly go back to the same Wikipedia page.
 * 3) Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted.
 * 4) There are points that are not cited and are biased. For sources that linked to an acutal source, they were government papers (it was for the legistlation part).
 * 5) Do the sources come from a diverse array of authors and publications?
 * 6) There are 62 different sources and there does seem to be a good range, but they don't link to anything and some of the links say [dead link].

Checking the talk page: Now take a look at how others are talking about this article on the talk page.


 * 1) What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * 2) This is only one conversation going on right now, which addresses the inadequecy of the article and how it focuses on on legistration really and does not give concrete details abuot conflicts and issues that arise.
 * 3) How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * 4) It is part of three WikiProjects.
 * 5) WikiProject Sociology	(Rated B-class, Mid-importance)
 * 6) WikiProject United States
 * 7) WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health	(Rated B-class, Mid-importance)
 * 8) How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?
 * 9) They also talk a lot of citing, but they are mostly concerned with fleshing the article out rather than showing details like we are doing in our Kat Memo and Needs Talk History.I think because the article does need so much improvement that they are just trying to explain what the article will look like rather than getting into the nitty-gritty like we try to in class.