User:CKC29/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Border Cave

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it discusses a heavily discussed archaeological site that has a long spanning occupational sequence. The site's findings are also a source of controversy, leading to some biased viewpoints to be more emphasized over others (which does occur in the article).

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The Border Cave article’s lead section consists of an appropriately detailed first paragraph and overly detailed following paragraph. The lead section’s first sentence opens with a brief description of Border Cave and its location. While the opening statements on the site’s occupation span are well written, the latter paragraphs are too detailed in relation to the site’s excavation history and findings. Some information is present in the lead section that is not present anywhere else in the article (i.e. information about the Lebombo bone). This section follows excavation events in chronological order, but does not outline the rest of the article’s sections in a systematic way. Overall, the lead section has a good start, but needs a revised middle and ending.

Content

The Border Cave article’s content is relevant to the topic. The sections provide overview of the cave’s environmental context and archaeological remains. However, the site’s content is out of date. Although the most recent reference dates to 2022 (which I added), the rest of the articles do not date more recently than 2012. The article’s section titled “San Material Culture” is outdated and does not present arguments from the debates between d’Errico and colleagues (2012) and Pargeter and colleagues (2016).

Tone and Balance

The article mostly presents factual information, but occasionally asserts biased claims (i.e. with phrases such as “These [tools] represent some of the earliest unambiguous evidence for modern human behavior”). The article also almost exclusively discusses how Border Cave’s artifacts represent the evolution of San hunter-gatherers ~40,000 years ago, but does not mention Pargeter and colleagues’ (2016) comments arguing against Border Cave occupants being San. The minority viewpoints themselves are absent within this article. By excluding all the viewpoints, the article may be unintentionally persuading the reader to favor one position over the other.

Sources and References

Although a majority (12) of the sources for this article are peer reviewed journal articles, four of these sources come from websites. These sources reflect part of the literature available on this topic, but neglect some important debates (see Pargeter and colleagues (2016)). As mentioned in the “Content” section of this evaluation, most of these sources are not current. There are also a few broken links, though most of them still work.

Organization and writing quality

The article’s organization and writing quality need work. While there is somewhat of a structure to the sections (and even a chronological structure to the lead section), the writing is not as concise as it could be and contains some minor spelling errors. The article’s sections themselves could use some restructuring, as the site’s archaeological findings are scattered throughout three different sections. Most of the lead section’s chronological overview of the site’s excavation history would also best be worked into a separate new section on excavators and field seasons.

Images and Media

The article’s images (though few) do have appropriate captions that enhance the understanding of the topic. These images do adhere to Wikipedia’s copyright regulations and have an appropriate layout. This article would benefit from more images.

Talk Page Discussion

There are no conversations on the Border Cave Talk page (except mine). The article is rated Start-Class Mid-importance and is part of WikiProject South Africa, Wiki Project Caves, and WikiProject Archaeology. The lack of activity shows that this article needs a significant overhaul.

Overall Impressions

Overall, the Border Cave Wikipedia article is slightly past its beginning stages, and remains under-developed. It needs to be restructured and should incorporate more viewpoints from recent research to balance the viewpoints of the article. The article already has some useful information on the site’s environmental setting and archaeological finds, which simply need to be consolidated into more refined sections and updated with the most recent research.