User:Briannabryant2/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Japanese raccoon dog

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I took a class last year where we watched Pompoko, and I loved learning about the folklore behind the tanuki. I thought it was relevant to this class because Japanese folklore can have a big impact on literature and film. I searched up Japanese folklore, and the tanuki article came up, so my first impression of the article is that it was strange that the article focuses heavily on the biology of tanuki rather than their role in myths.

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.)

First, the lead section is a little strange. There is a paragraph about how the tanuki has a smaller stomach and shorter fur than mainland raccoon dogs, as well as the seemingly irrelevant (and not brought up again) fact that they can also be white. This information does not appear again or go into greater detail later, except in a broader sense about how the tanuki has different DNA than other similar looking animals.

This point leads into my thoughts about the content, which is that the whole Taxonomy section is overly detailed without saying a lot. It was a distracting section that could have been more concise. There also definitely needs to be more secondary sources added to the section about how tanuki show up in pop culture, which is noted in the talk page. Other than that, the information seems to be up to date and there is not even really the opportunity for equity gaps to show up.

In terms of more good things about the article, the tone seems to be neutral. Even when the section goes into too much irrelevant detail about pop culture appearance, there is not any tone of favoritism or anything similar.

As for citations, there could definitely be more. For example, the entire Japanese Etymology section has no citations. However, the citations they did use seemed credible, such as the IUCN, famous myths and stories, and numerous reputable biology journals from different authors.

In the talk page, there is debate about including the pop culture references, and my opinion is that they can stay as long as more secondary sources are added. The article is rated as C-class and of high-importance for the Wikiprojects dealing with dogs and Japanese culture, and low importance for the mythology project. This talk page definitely focuses more on mythology and current culture more than the biology that the article heavily skews towards, which is similar to our class.

As for images, media, and organization, they are all decent. They are not mind-blowing, but relevant and understandable.