User:Booksbodysoul/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: Great books
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate: This article is relevant to my field of study in LIS.

Lead

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?

==== Lead evaluation: '''The lead of this article is concise, but it does not contain a description of the article's major sections. Only the Contents table has an outline of the sections. The lead of this article could be improved by briefly summarizing the content of the article. Currently, the lead provides examples of sets of Great Books and their applications, which does not serve the purpose of the lead as we have been instructed. The lead does begin with an introductory topic sentence which clearly describes the article's topic.'''====

Content

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * Is the content up-to-date?
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?

==== Content evaluation: The content of the article is relevant to the topic, insofar that it all pertains to the conceptualization and evaluation of Great Books as bodies and collections of literature. I question the inclusion of the Great Books Program in this article's content. I think that the Great Books Program could better be represented independently in a unique Wiki article on its own, as it seems external (albeit inherently connected to) the topic of Great Books. ====

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article neutral?
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?

==== Tone and balance evaluation: The article centers thinkers and ideas which shaped the origins of the evaluation of Great Books in the Origins section of the article. The article contains a very small section on the controversy of Great Books, which is perhaps under-represented in the overall composition of the article. The Series section of the article includes a block-quote justification from the founder of Great Books of the Western World, Mortimer J. Adler, in which he defends his reasoning for not including more diverse literature and authors into the Great Books canon. His justification is based on the standard of books' relevance to the 102 great ideas, and the great ideas themselves are unexamined and undefined within the article. While the article does not, in tone or syntax, attempt to persuade the reader I find that the article under-represents the controversy of Great Books. By deferring to the defense of Adler, and by not providing a link or explanation of what constitutes Great Ideas, the article does not provide enough information of what underlies dominant distinction of Great Books. As Great Ideas are supposedly the determining basis of what constitutes Great Books, I think defining Great Ideas is important for the context of this article. The absence of this information is a weakness of the article, overall. ====

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
 * Are the sources current?
 * Check a few links. Do they work?

Organization

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
 * Are images well-captioned?
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way?

==== Images and media evaluation: There are no images or media in the article itself. The only image appearing on the page is in the right side-bar column linking the article to a series on Reading. The image is captioned as "a person reading a book" which is appropriate given the series. I do not know how to tell if the image adheres to Wikipedia's copyright regulations. ====

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

==== Talk page evaluation: The article is part of WikiProject Books, WikiProject Libraries and WikiProject Education, rated Star-Class, Star-Class Low-Importance and Star-Class Mid-Importance respectively. The Talk page is organized into Content areas itself, which I found surprising as it is highly organized to mirror the structure of a Wiki article. There are many critiques behind the scenes, ranging from analysis of authors included in the Great Books canon to comments comparing the Great Books program to similar initiatives in the Eastern World. Some comments on the Talk page are indicative of Wiki editors proposing or explaining changes to the article, and other comments are simply critiquing the article in the current form and not proposing or making any edits, explicitly. The majority of the comments on the Talk page are several years old. The most recent comment on the Talk page was left by a student editor in Fall 2019, in which they offer their overall evaluation of the article and Talk page. ====

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions


 * What is the article's overall status?
 * What are the article's strengths?
 * How can the article be improved?
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?

==== Overall evaluation: The article is high-status, overall, from what I have observed. Given the analysis on the article's Talk page, I believe the article is overall a credible source of information. A strength of this article is that it is part of a high quality WikiProject, and has considerable in-depth analysis on the Talk page. I think this article could be improved by expounding on what the Great Ideas are, or providing a citation to a definition of the Great Ideas. I think this is important as the Great Ideas criteria underpins the distinction of Great Books. By not interrogating the basis of Great Ideas, this article is potentially perpetuating a biased understanding by not offering substance for readers to critique the evaluation of Great Books. ====

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

with four tildes — ~ (completed)


 * Link to feedback: Talk:Great books