User:Cadonsam/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Buffalo treehopper

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article to evaluate for my Honors Insect Physiology class. The Buffalo treehopper initially caught my eye because of its unique name, but upon skimming the article for the first time, I found it to be very brief. This article matters because the accuracy of the information is important to keep up to date as the Buffalo treehopper evolves. My first impression of the article was that it was a concise and easy read, but was not as full as other articles I came across. Although the information provided was useful and basic, it could use always use additional information for a more thorough and informative read.

Evaluate the article
Lead: The first thing I noticed about the lead was that it was extremely short. It consisted of only two sentences that described the Buffalo treehopper's classification. Although the first sentence served its purpose in introducing the article's topic, there were no sentences to briefly describe the article's main sections. The lead appears to have insufficient information and can be improved upon by adding a sentence summarizing each section of the article such as the distribution, appearance, life cycle, and feeding. This way, the lead can serve more as a concise summary rather than two introductory sentences.

Content: The content provided in the article is both relevant and up-to-date. There seems to be some missing content, however, as the article as a whole does not appear very full. For example, only one sentence is provided on the Buffalo treehopper's distribution and I was unable to find any content discussing their habitat. Additionally, I could not find any content covering male and female physiological differences. Their conservation status may also be an important fact to include. Overall, more content needs to be added in order for this article to be considered sufficiently informative.

Tone and Balance: The tone is perfectly neutral throughout the entirety of the article. I did not detect any bias towards a particular viewpoint in the authors' writing. The authors did a solid job in maintaining a neutral point of view.

Sources and References: All of the facts stated in the article are backed up by a source. However, not all of the sources appear to be up-to-date. None of the references provided were scientific research articles. Instead, they came from secondary sources, mostly coming from museum websites. One of the references in particular came from a website that had been archived, so this is likely an outdated source that may need to be replaced. All of the links provided in the references work correctly, but one reference did not have a link included at all.

Organization and writing quality: The article had good organizational flow which made it easy to read. What helped the most was the breakdown of the article into subtopics such as feeding, appearance, life cycle, etc. The quality of the writing was good; all of the sentences were concise, understandable, and backed up by sources. No grammatical errors were found while reading the article.

Images and Media: Three images were provided in the article which showed the Buffalo treehopper from different views. The images were briefly captioned and adhered to Wikipedia's copyright regulations. They were laid out in an aesthetically pleasing way so that the images could be easily referenced while reading. However, more images or forms of media could be used to describe particular aspects of the Buffalo treehopper, such as its life cycle.

Talk page discussion: There are very few posts that have been made on the talk page. Most of the discussion was in 2008 concerning how the article should have been titled (either common name or scientific species name). The last post was made in 2019 which reviewed the references' reliability. Currently, the article is rated C-Class on the quality scale and is part of WikiProject Insects.

Overall impressions: Overall, I believe the article has potential and provides a solid foundation to build upon. The backbone is there, and the article offers some great starting points that can be soon filled in with more relevant information. However, many of the references do need to be updated and more content needs to be added. As aforementioned, details about male and female differences in Buffalo treehoppers, their habitats and ideal living conditions, and other related topics could be expanded upon in the article. I would also like to see more forms of media besides images, if there are any videos or audio available to use. For example, the article mentions that males attract females with a unique song, which I would be curious to listen to if made available. While the current article appears brief and insufficient, very basic information is still provided. In the future, I would like to see more detailed content, different forms of media, and updated references in order to make the article as informative as possible.