User:Bryanoates01/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.


 * Media bias in the United States: Media bias in the United States
 * This article has content that heavily relates to the content and topics being covered and explored in class.

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 includes an introduction sentence and it describes the topic with a lot of detail, including key words and topics that will be talked about later with links to other Wiki articles. It mentions a few, like politics, but not all of the major sections, being that there are quite a few. All of the information present is then later explained within the rest of the article. In addition, It can be seen as overly detailed, being that there is a lot to be read in the lead, however, it is such a broad topic that it makes sense.

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?
 * Does the article deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps? Does it address topics related to historically underrepresented populations or topics?

Content evaluation
The articles content is relevant to Media bias in the United States, with plenty of recent and less recent sources from the country. There are less sources from the current year in comparison to the other sources, however due to the current social climate that makes sense. It is a very thorough article, and contains content from both sides of the topic with many examples and sources. Lastly, it does deal with topics based around equity gaps and confronts the topic of Media bias in the US to the underrepresentation of visual minorities and other ethnic and religious groups.

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 does not seem to contain any bias, with multiple sources showing the opinion from both sides. The only claims that are geared to one position over the other are located within their respective paragraphs/sections, such as the conservative vs. liberal opinion located with the politics section. It seems that most viewpoints are seen and mentioned equally, with the article even showing past and present viewpoints. Finally, the article does not try to persuade the reader to favour one point of view over the other, the article simply gives the information available from both sides and lets the reader associate with either one. It is important to not however that even discussing and validating Media Bias in the US can be seen as a liberal idea rather than a conservative one.

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?
 * Are the sources written by a diverse spectrum of authors? Do they include historically marginalized individuals where possible?
 * Check a few links. Do they work?

Sources and references evaluation
All facts and statistics presented in the article are backed up by one of the 200 plus secondary and reliable sources related to the topic. Some sources however are simply links to other wiki articles, and because of the way wikipedia runs those other articles can be seen as unreliable, but they are mainly used to simply describe a term used. They are thorough and represent multiple forms of information on the topic, with that being from multiple perspectives on the topic. Most of them are current, with them being sources and references from the current decade, however they do use older sources to show history and previous perspectives on Media bias. The actual authors of the sources themselves seem to be quite diverse, with them coming from the two major sides of the conversation typically had on the subject. When it comes to visible minorities and marginalized people their viewpoint is included, but it seems to be that most of it is written by non-marginalized about the struggles of marginalized people, rather than those people speaking for themselves, however, it does need to be unbiased so maybe it helps the article that way. The links are also functional and working.

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?

Organization evaluation
The article is very well-written and easy to understand given the added links to words that may not be common knowledge, however it is very detailed with makes something you have to sit down and read, rather than something that can be simply breezed through. I did not catch and grammatical or spelling mistakes, that being said, some of the sentences were quite long. The article is organized very nicely, with multiple main and sub-points being organized in a way where they flow together and easy to find if the reader was looking for something specific.

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
The only pictures used in the article are of graphs to better depict the statistics used and given in the article. It does help to visualize, however pictures of specific examples used within the article could help to articulate the points and topic even further. They are well-captioned to the point that the reader could just read the caption without knowing the article and they should be able to understand what the graph represents and what it is showing. All of the images follow Wikipedia's copyright regulations, being that they come from copyright free articles and also cite where the images came from. The images are placed right next to the information that they are illustrating with colour and tend to be closer to the beginning, leading them to be visually appealing.

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
Most of the conversations held in the talk tab either refer to whether or not the sources are bias, or if they are relevant/current enough. Since these posts however, those issues seem to have been changed, with most of the concerns being around the politics argument, which makes sense because the topic overall and the act of discussing it can be seen as pretty liberal. It seems as if the moderators of wikipedia have had to remove things in the past, being that this is a controversial topic and there have seemingly been people who are very passionate about the subject. The article is apart of 5 WikiProjects: Media, Journalism, United States, Conservatism, and Politics/American. Wikipedia discusses the topic of Media bias differently from how we've talked about it in class because the goal is to be unbiased, which means not including peoples opinions, however in class we do tend to discuss the opinions and personal examples of topics relating to this topic.

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
All-in-all, the article is very clear and detailed, showing countless different viewpoints and perspectives, as well as a long history on the topic of Media Bias in the United States. Wikipedia editors main issue in the article is to present the information in a non-political biased way, however, it seems like most of the editors agree that it is a controversial subject and therefore some bias is expected to happen unknowingly. It is a well-developed article, however, being that Media Bias in the United States is a topic that is constantly changing and evolving, especially with the current social climate and the new political and human rights movements, it will always be a topic that can be further researched.

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 — ~


 * Link to feedback: