User:Bjoneshollis1023/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

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 specific article because it is about the work of a Black woman who deeply influenced pop culture, and in class, we often analyze how Black women were recognized in the past in order to understand how that impacts their depictions in the present. The same way analyzing Serena Williams and how her being a Black woman affects the way her work as an incredible tennis player is perceived. I thought it would be fun to analyze the way the work of one of my favorite artists has been perceived since its creation. This is important to understand because it allows us to analyze perceptions and therefore be equipped to dismantle harmful depictions of Black women in the future, allowing their work and stories to be respected. Lauryn Hill also visits many controversial topics throughout The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and I was curious to get a summary of how most people reacted to it.

My first impression of the article was that it was dense and well-constructed, easy to understand, and extremely thorough. I can tell many contributors banded around it, understandable considering its popularity. However, the article's bibliography only lists five sources, which I wasn't expecting, and for a second I thought the article only had five sources in total. Then I realized it has over 200 footnotes that act as sources, another great sign of an in-depth, rich, substantial article. I'm not sure if this is because not many people have written extended analyses of the album, if all the papers wrote on the album already covered all there is to really know, or if it's because the Wikipedia contributors themselves haven't found all there is to cover. Based on the density and the inclusion of pictures, however, I can't imagine the article would be missing anything.

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.)

The article contains a very strong lead; the first sentence is a direct definition of what The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is, using the album's title as the first word. Readers know from the first five sentences the major themes discussed on the album, its publication company and date, genre, and the inspiration behind the Lauryn's naming of the album. This makes the paragraph a concise but extremely informational lead that sets a firm foundation for the content that follows.

The biggest issue with the article's content is lack of consistency regarding section length. Some sections, like the lead, range from four to five paragraphs of various lengths, while others are one or moderate paragraph(s). Other than that, the article appears to be up to date. There is information from 2021 and 2022 within it, so information is being continuously added as the album receives new recognition. The content that is there is relevant to the album's origins, history, creative inspiration, and influence. There doesn't appear to be must content missing. The article is also centered on the work of a person who experiences intersectionality as a Black woman, and therefore educates on some of the experiences of marginalized communities.

The article maintains a consistent neutrality throughout, presenting summarized information in concise ways without drawing any conclusions about it. The section that discusses the album's reception, I would argue, perhaps could use more information regarding the opposing views of Lauryn's work. It leans more toward it's wide reception, which is great, but I would like to know more about how the themes presented could have been it was considered threatening, unless that hasn't been written. I'd imagine there were other examples of opposition that could have been included to make that section potentially richer, but I wouldn't necessarily say the opposition was underrepresented since the album was widely received. I know that Lauryn's album was definitely well received, especially among the Black community, so the minority and fringe perspectives are accurately depicted in my opinion. All information is simply presented to the reader for them to gain information and make their own conclusions about that info.

One of the only small flaws I saw in this article was that it needed more clear sources. It makes a few statements about the album, primarily in the opening section, that link to other explanatory Wikipedia without making it clear if this is summarized from research or information from original research, as articles can't use other Wikipedia articles as sources. However, the extensive footnotes bring readers to a wide range of secondary sources they can use to factcheck the article. Given the large number of footnotes, I would argue it reflects the current available resources surrounding the album. The source dates range from the 1990s to this year. A lot of the sources that I browsed are from white authors but I believe this to be a sign of a simply white dominated media and entertainment industry; most major record labels, publishing companies, etc. were white owned, especially throughout the 90s and early 2000s. It therefore must have been difficult to find sources by many people of color. However, there are many female authors I found. The article doesn't really need better sources, as the footnotes are so expansive that refer to everything from peer-reviewed articles to press materials to books. Additionally, every link I clicked on while sifting through some of the sources worked.

The writing is clear and eloquent, making it extremely easy to follow. The sections are ordered in a way that feels sequential; it begins discussing the background information and the making of the album, then grapples with its reception when it was put out into the world, including tables and graphics to depict other pieces of essential quantitative data as well. I didn't run into any grammatical errors, but I may have missed something. It looked great to me. Each section logically leads into the next, with graphics and images used to break it up in between. The headings and subheadings also work to easily categorize the text and make it more navigable.

Each picture is used to enhance the content on the page. Photos include things like the album cover, the first location of Hill's short tour, and a photo of Julian Marley, whose romantic relationship with Hill was a major creative influence on the album. Other forms of media, like audio snippets from the album's popular songs also help the reader delve further into the album if they haven't heard what the text is referring to. Each image is well captioned and placed in context to the information is it near, and every piece of media is positioned so that it aesthetically compliments the text. All of the images are under free use or they are submitted and credited by the sources themselves.

The talk page discusses things like what is relevant enough to include, how to classify the songs into genres, and the accuracy of the information that has already been included. A few examples I saw were of people debating whether bonus tracks like "Tell Him" or "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" should be added to the track, if record sales were up to date given that the album is still being bought, and if the biblical influence in tracks like "To Zion," or "Forgive Them Father" should permit the statement of Gospel as a sonic influence. Multiple WikiProjects claim the article as of interest, and it has been classified as a level 5, good article, meaning it is very developed and complete. The biggest thing it can work on is a better clarification of sources in the lead, and perhaps more representation of opposing viewpoints to the album to balance out the many sections tackling the generally positive perception.