User:Bokchoychoy/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Spoon sweets

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose the article on spoon sweets simply because my grandmother talking about the food culture of her diasporic Greek friends sounded interesting and I wished to learn more. This article reveals some important ideas about food culture and hospitality in the greater Balkan region. I had initially thought this to be a very good article, but upon further scrutiny it has more problems than I had thought.

Evaluate the article
This article is very well-written with a neutral voice and text that flows well with no inappropriate emphasis on one part of the topic. There are no obvious errors in its construction or content and describes the idea and reasoning behind the making and serving of spoon sweets well as far as I can see as someone who has no previous exposure to such a thing.

However, it only has two sources to speak of, one being a reference to a book on Middle Eastern food that obviously cannot be linked. The other source is a link to a website about mastic and its use, but this domain is now unused. The information therein is likely being provided by mostly Greek diaspora, given that there is extremely scant information on spoon sweets outside of Greece despite it being common in the greater Balkans as well as parts of Russia and the Middle East.

The talk page does not address these issues specifically; the majority of the talk page is dedicated to translation of the Greek word for spoon sweets as well as the types of spoon sweet that contain mastic and vanillin and whether or not they are of separate varieties.

The pictures and video provided are very helpful in visualizing a few types of spoon sweet, though the quality of a few are not wonderful. I suspect that pictures of certain types of spoon sweet (such as the vanilla submarine) are, however, difficult to procure in an English-speaking sphere so this is not terribly surprising.

Overall, this article is constructed well and seems to be informative but lacks authoritative sources. It focuses disproportionately on Greece, despite mentioning that spoon sweets are common elsewhere. Both information discussing spoon sweets in other locales and sources to back this and other claims up would massively improve the article. Images provided could potentially be improved but this is, again, a matter of access.