User:Callian/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Striga hermonthica

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
It was one of the ones I was given a choice on and the link worked.

Evaluate the article
Lead- Immediately goes in on the invasive nature of the plant. Helpfully describes the species effected by it. Is kinda wordy with less common terns in the second half, though.

Content- For the most part content is good. Describes the plant's life cycle and effects on the environment. It does feel like it kinda throws you into the middle of it, though, and seems to be heavily focused on the parasite thing. Like, even for an article focused on a parasitic plant.

Tone- The tone struck me as very aggressive. From the get-go I could very much tell that the author of this piece is not a fan of this species and very much wants people who read this to come away from it with a dislike for the plant, so perhaps some toning down of aggressive language is neccessary. It also very much leans into the parasite so one doesn't really get a good picture of the plant outside "it's a parasite and also bad."

Sources- Some of the sources are probably out of date. I noticed that at least two links led to pages that did not exist, so a once-through on sources is probably for the best. Some of the other links also didn't lead to a page about the organism, just to the homepage of a website that hypothetically talks about the organism.

Talk Page- There is no activity on the talk page.

Organization- Pretty well organized. Writing is mostly clear, though there are a couple parts where specialized terms make it unclear, but links are provided to other wikipedia pages with definitions, so that's helpful.

Images & Media- Two images are provided that help establish what the plant looks like with captions denoting the exact nature of the image. No other media is added.

Overall Impressions- Solid article, though it does lean a bit too far away from the wikipedia code of maintaining neutral language and perhaps a better understanding of this species outside of its general invasive/parasitic nature would be helpful. (How does it grow in its natural habitat, for example.)

Callian (talk) 03:06, 22 September 2021 (UTC)