User:Bio-m77/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Evolution

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 have chosen to evaluate this article because it was one of the few topics that I have knowledge of that I think I can critique for this assignment. I think this topic matters because it provides an understanding in how and why people change over time. My preliminary impression was that this article was very good. It has been edited many times by a variety of users and the article references many scientific resources

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.)

I found this article to be very informative and well researched. The lead sentence of this article not only discussed what the article was about but also defined evolution in a concise and clear manner. The lead provided a detailed outline of what the article was going to discuss, including the history of evolution, how evolution arises, and the applications of evolution in relation to medical care and agriculture. Additionally this article did not provide too much information, so the lead did not feel overwhelming to read and only information pertaining to the article was present in the lead. I found the lead to provide a concise and clear outline for the rest of the article.

This article on evolution provides detailed information on the history of evolution but it also provides information on more current findings with the last update occurring on Jan.13, 2021. This article contains information that is relevant to evolution and does not overwhelm the reader with unnecessary information that is not pertinent to the topic. Well I don't possess a wide range of knowledge in evolution, I believe that all the important information is present in this article and given that this article has been edited and updated many times, I think others would also agree.

Since this a science based article, this article takes a scientific and neutral tone. All of the information contained in this article has been researched and documented. Additionally, many references were used in the creation of this article so I don't believe that this article has influenced or persuaded the viewpoints of people. This article simply states facts that have been well documented.

This article on evolution is well researched and every fact has been referenced to a valid scientific resource (book, journal, etc.). This article has also be created using over 300 resources and has been reviewed many times. When I tested 5 links, all of the links directed to the source where the information was retrieved from. Additionally, all of the resources I checked were peer reviewed and written by people in various disciplines of science. Based on this information, I think that this article is a valid source.

This article on evolution is neat and well organized. I read through the article multiple times and could not find any grammatical errors. I also like that this article is divided into section based on different topics (History, variations, outcomes etc.) and that these topics were then further divided into subtopics. It made the information I was looking for easy to find. It is clearly written and I had no trouble finding what I was looking for.

The images in the article help engage the reader and provide them with more than just a name or structure. The images that were selected are well labelled, referenced, and aided in a deeper level of understanding. I liked that the pictures were off to the side so that they did not impacted making reading area. There was one picture of a graph in this article that I felt required further explanation. It was comparing generation time to allele frequency, while I understood the information, I feel like a more detailed explanation would be beneficial.The pictures were large enough to see but they did not overtake the page. Overall the pictures and visuals benefited the article.

In the talks pages of the article, a few people questioned whether the definition used for evolution was appropriate and whether the controversies surrounding evolution should be discussed. Since evolution has been scientifically proven, it was determined that there was no need to mention the controversies in the article. This article does not appear to be part of wiki projects. I found this article to be very similar to the way that evolution is taught in class. The concepts were discussed in a very similar way. This article discusses the historical aspects in great detail which is not covered in class, however I think that this article would be a useful resource for learning outside of the classroom.

Overall, I thought this article was very good. This article was well researched and cited. I think the strengths of this article were the layout, the vast number of resources used, and the amount of edits that have been made to improve this article. The one thing that I feel would benefit the article is a deeper explanation of the graph image (allele frequency and generation). This article is well-developed and I would use it as a resource for academic purposes.