User:Caitlyn.Barry/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.


 * Name of article: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate. I chose this article as it relates to the field of microbiology more specifically bacteriology. The topic of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been a field that we talk about in veterinary school a fair amount so I would be interested with the Wikipedia community reports on this matter.

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 introductory sentence clearly describes the topic. The rest of the lead gives content to why MRSA important and describing some terminology that may be needed to understand the remainder of the article. The lead is concise and offers a table of contents to display the sections that are currently important for this topic.


 * 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?

Content evaluation
Overall the article is broken down into appropriate sections that make the material more manageable. The content within these headings is up to date to the best of my knowledge and based on the reference which has the year the research was conducted or collected. But as this become more of a problem in the medical field there will be more research into the different hosts affected, the outcome of the infection and the treatment or therapies that prove beneficial or curative. Over all as more developments become available it is hard to maintain the most current status, but currently the Wikipedia page for MRSA is good. There are a errors I found when reading the article in animals subsection there is a MRSA ST 398, referring to a strain in red and it links to a page that tells you the article does not exist.

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
Overall the article had a neural tone, the information is presented in a objective rather than subjective manner. There seems to be a good balance of positions and recommendations in relation to prevention which could be an area where biases may appear.

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?
 * Check a few links. Do they work?

Sources and references evaluation
Of the reference listed (139) I looked at a few to randomly. Of those articles I looked at the links worked for most of them. Reference 138 is linked but result in error 404 page not found. Also some of the references provided are for MRSA in the media which is hard to evaluate in terms of reliability since it is media and certain aspects could have bias.

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 concise and clear. I think it is arrange into logical headings then subheadings to make it even easier for the read to break the material into small more comprehensible chunks of material. From my reading I did not note any glaringly obvious grammatical or spelling errors but there is a large amount of text so it is possible that I missed something.

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 article does include images that are well captured and serve a purpose for further illustrating a point. All the images appear to be references appropriately. There is a scanning electron micrograph to help describe the shape of MRSA and some agar plates that help describe the diagnosis process. The two other images are used to show that start of a human infection with MRSA and then a diagram showing antibiotic resistance modelling.

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
The article is in the WikiProject Microbiology and is rated as a C-class with high importance. The rest of the talk page has suggestions on how to improve or new information that has come forth more recently and where it should be added. It also highlights some civil discussions about treatment options and the references that have been provided not meeting the approved sources guidelines. It also shows how some individuals have differing opinions on material that might be controversial (phage therapy) and whether or not it meets the article policies of verifiability.

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
Overall the article is a strong, well-developed article. The topics are clear and arranged in a format that makes it easy to follow. The content is vast, touching on a lot of areas that are implicated in MRSA as well as background information. I think this article is complete but as mentioned before as new articles and research become available some section will need editing as this will never be an article that does not grow with scientific advancements.

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: