User:BrettKuzmicz/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Orogenic gold deposit

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it is related to the field of work I am involved with in geology, and it is related to my thesis. This topic matters because gold is a valuable resource, and providing scientific information to those who are interested in it could be useful to help contribute to new scientific findings. My preliminary impression of the article is that it does a good job of briefly touching on the topics of information to do with orogenic gold, but could use some elaboration, some figures, cessation of bias, and improved citations.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section:

The lead has a concise and clear introductory sentence which describes the articles topic. The major sections are not introduced in the lead. The lead includes information that is not present in the article, which it shouldn't. The lead has spelling errors (focussing), and suggests that gold mineralization involves deposition, which is a term applied to sedimentary rocks. Gold in orogenic deposits is emplaced, not deposited. The lead is very concise.

Content:

All of the content of the article is relevant to the topic, but is not up to date, and contains many errors or gaps in knowledge. Specifically, in the temporal pattern subtopic, it suggests that orogenic gold is absent 1.80-0.75Ga. which is out of date information from a 2001 source. There is orogenic gold proven to have been emplaced in Siberia up to 803 +/-6 Ma. This is suggested in page 222 of the Geology of the World’s Major Gold Deposits and Provinces publication by Sillitoe et al., 2020, linked here: https://doi.org/10.5382/sp.23.

The subsection of this article called Historical term does not accomplish its goal in this article as it mentions a very outdated 1993 non-cited definition. If the writer feels the need to include an entire subsection for the historical term, a more elaborate history must be included. Otherwise, this subsection should be deleted. Also, this article lacks any information about the locations of orogenic gold deposits in the world, and their grades. The knowledge of this article falls short of its potential without a real world application of the scientific facts introduced.

Another error is the composition of the veins in which the gold is emplaced. The article says "Obviously, quartz is the dominant mineral in the veins.", which is not the case. Veins in orogenic gold deposits can also be dominated by carbonate. It would be more accurate to refer to them as quartz-carbonate veins in the rest of the article as seen in scientific articles which cover the topic such as the article Greenstone-Hosted Quartz-Carbonate Vein Deposits by Dubé and Gosselin from 2007.

The section tectonics and gold formation suggests that there is no specific deformation structure associated with the formation of orogenic gold deposits, which isn't true. Shear zones and normal faults are associated with orogenic gold deposits.

The content is not related to Wikipedia's equity gaps or historically underrepresented populations or topics.

Tone and Balance:

This article is neutral and scientific in some sections, but is not in others. There appears to be some bias toward a particular position in the genetic model section. There are viewpoints which are overrepresented or underrepresented. There are multiple viewpoints on the source of the hydrothermal fluids involved in orogenic gold deposits. The article does a good job at providing information for each one, but it does attempt to persuade the reader to favour one viewpoint in particular. This bias lacks citations.

Sources and References:

Most of the facts provided by this article are based on the best sources available. The Historical term subsection lacks a citation for the 1993 definition of orogenic gold. As mentioned earlier about the temporal distribution of gold, this information is outdated and should be updated. Also, as mentioned earlier the Mineralogy & Geochemistry section contains errors and could be updated with more scientifically accepted terminology. The genetic models section is heavily lacking in citations. The Examples section contains only three of eleven sources.

Organization and writing quality:

The article not adequately written. It is too concise in some sections such as the lead, and very elaborate in other sections such as the genetic models. The article contains many spelling errors. The lead uses the word "focussing", which is spelled incorrectly. The Historical Term section contains the word "therm" rather than "term". The Mineralogy and Geochemistry section contains the term "hostrocks" which should be "host rocks". The subsection Sub-crustal fluid source contains the term "neutralstress" which should be "neutral stress". The term "age dating" is used in the Fluid Source section, which is a grammatical error as it should instead be called "aging" or "dating", and not both.

The article is well-organized and broken down into sections which reflect the major points of the topic. It could however include more real world examples, and an improved Historical term subsection.

Images and Media:

This article contains no images or media. I suggest a graph displaying the temporal pattern of orogenic gold deposits found in an article about Secular Variation in Economic Geology by Goldfarb et al., 2010, linked here: https://doi.org/10.2113/gsecongeo.105.3.459. Also, some images of gold bearing quartz/carbonate veins, cross sections of typical orogenic gold deposits, and maps and examples of the tectonic processes involved in orogeny would clear up the topic for the reader. Geology is a topic in which visual representations of the writing of the topic is a great aid for the reader, and this article completely misses an opportunity to do this.

Talk Page Discussion:

This article does not have a talk page discussion, but I am willing to begin the conversation of improving the article. This article is rated C-Class on the project's quality scale, and Low-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is part of WikiProject Geology.

Overall Impression:

Overall, this article contains good information about the topic with citations from reputable authors such as Richard Goldfarb. Some of the citations in this article are outdated, and some facts require citations. The lead could introduce the topics of the article better, the overview contains out of date information and a disorganized definition of orogenic gold, the mineralogy and geochemistry section requires some clearing up, the genetic models section lacks citations and contains bias, and the tectonics and gold formation section lacks useful information in its lead, but contains a very good Geodynamic setting and architecture subsection. The examples section could be re-written as a Orogenic gold deposits of the world section with elaboration of their locations including a map.

This article has a adequate degree of clarity of the information which it is attempting to provide, and contains very good structure do to so. The coverage of the article is not balanced. For example, there are three major paragraphs about the genetic models of orogenic gold, but there is almost no information about real world examples. Also, the genetic models section contains bias. The talk page could use some activity to help refine the article.