User:Blazed Spade/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Pacific lamprey

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article, frankly because the species interests me. When I saw this fish for the first time, it made me go, woah, that is terrifying, and I love it! I wanted to know more about it because it's a type of fish I had never seen before. I thought it was an eel at first but it isn't. Then I looked at the article and I wasn't exactly disappointed, but it was also clear to me that this animal wasn't very well documented.

Evaluate the article
Basing myself on the questions that have been provided, here are my evaluations for each category.

Lead Section: While it does provide us with good information, enough to where a person would look at anybody who has say 30 seconds to get information on the article such as the species latin name, where it lives, etc, it has information that never comes up again. It mentions that the Lamprey can also be found in Asia, however this is never mentioned again in the article. There is also no mention of what the article will be talking about, only the name of the species and some nicknames that it goes by are provided. I do however believe that is somewhat concise however, as it never felt too wordy, however I will say that the information given is kinda the bare minimum and besides the actual habitat given, there's nothing super helpful about this lead section. If I had to give it a grade, it's only going to get a C. It's fine, but there is much more that can be added here.

Content: Overall I would say that the content is doing good. It's up-to-date in a lot of aspects, including recent sightings that date back to 2022. The only thing that I would say is missing is again related to the mention of Asia being listed as a habitat. It does also bring up underrepresented groups as it talks about how the Indigenous People of California had used it in the past for ceremonies, I would say that's a huge plus in it's favor. Giving it a grade, I say it earns itself a B+, closer to an A- as there are some things that can be elaborated on or new things added to it.

Tone and Balance: It gets a solid A+ for this one, I detected no biases, it remained neutral when presenting the information. It did not try to convince anybody to think a certain way, it gave the information it has so far on the Pacific Lamprey.

Sources and References: I would say that the sources provided are again, very good, I would even say that they are great sources. After looking into the authors, they were all credible people, usually doctors who specialized with Aquatic life, and we even had the input of some of the Native American Tribes and their efforts to repopulate the Pacific Lamprey. The sources are also pretty recent, though one does date back to 2002 so one could make the argument that 20 years is too old. Not all the links work however, the last source claiming that there have been recent sightings returns a 404 error code. Every other source however does appear to be in working order. I do believe that there are better and more easily accessible sources however, as some of the sources are books and not readily available as say a website is. I was also able to find some scholarly articles about the Lamprey and its habitat so yes, I would say that there are better articles out there. Score wise, I'm going to give it a B.

Organization and Writing Quality: It is done very well, there are no egregious errors that stand out, it is easy to read and the topics are all broken down very well. No complaints here, a solid A.

Images and Media: Eh, it's bad, there are images that help us understand it, but nothing that enhances our understanding of it. Earlier it mentioned that depending on the water, it could change the color of the Lamprey, but there are no images that show us the differences. I have yet to see any images that show us the lamprey latching itself on to its prey so that was a bummer. It mentions its use in food but again, they don't show us that which I think is a huge missed opportunity. It was cool that they provided a video of a lamprey digging its nest, which it mentioned in the article which is a huge step in the right direction. Descriptions are basic, mostly just explaining where the photo was taken, that's fine, I don't really know what else they could've done, other than choosing more interesting things about the Lamprey, assuming such photos or videos exist. They do comply with copyright but as for the layout, it's pretty bad. The video of the nest is down where it talks about how they're used for food and the ecological issues? WHY? Overall I'm going to give it a D-, they could've done so much more, at the very least have taken the time to make it look good but they didn't.

Talk Page: There are no conversations that have been sparked about the Pacific Lamprey so far. The article has been rated so far as Start-Class, and of low priority in both WikiProject Food and Drink, and WikiProject Fishes. Comparing to how things are done in class vs wikipedia, it's day and night. In class we go a lot more in-depth while on Wikipedia, we're a little more restricted on what to share as most people only want the more basic facts.

Overall Thoughts: This article has a good foundation to work with so far, its clear that the people who worked on this article knew what they were doing when it came to knowledge about it. However it is also apparent that there needs to be work done to fix this article, such as either elaborating on points that they said they would touch on but never do, or reworking the images so that they are better and can help us understand how the fish operates. I wouldn't say its well-developed yet, it is however getting close to that level as there are things that can be added here and there to better help us understand the fish. While it does provide a lot of the bigger information that one would want to know which is a big plus, the fact that it brings up points and never elaborates on them again is a problem. Overall, I would give this article a C+ to a B. It's a good article that needs to work out some big kinks.