User:Candid Capybara/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Birds of New Zealand - Wikipedia

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
This article involves a topic that I focused on in my own time while in New Zealand. There is a lot that goes into evaluating the endemic and colonized bird species of the country, and how their biodiversity is constantly threatened ever since Europeans colonized the nation. With all of the locations we travelled to, I was able to visualize how various birds adapted to the numerous biomes available on the island. My initial impression of the article was that it had the basic information of the most notable endemic species and conservation efforts, but it does not include the country's 2050 goal of being predator free, which has been driven by declining bird biodiversity. Going along with that, many other bird species are missing from the rest of the website. It would be a good idea to include future articles about the other bird species, where information can be derived from Cornell University's database. I hope to add to this existing article to allow future pathways for New Zealand's 2050 goal and enhance other pages examining the country's biodiversity.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section: The topic sentence does give a basic overview of the article. It does highlight that there are many endemic species not available in other countries, but it does not include that they are constantly threatened until the third paragraph of the leading section. The leading section does not give a description of the other sections available, however the topics are slightly highlighted. There is information from within the section that talks about very little change happening to endemic species, which is incorrect. I would say that the lead is overly concise. I think that it would benefit from highlighting more on colonization of Europeans and their species, the introduction of the nation's 2050 goal, recent extinctions, and more.

Content: The content of the article is relevant to the topic, but there are parts of the information available that is missing. As spoken about the lead, there is information that has not been updated. The information from the citations comes from 2015 and earlier, and the 2050 goal of New Zealand being predator-free is more recent than that. Going along that same point, I hope to add to the history portion of the content with the perspective of the Maori people. When visiting museums within the country, there was a difference in perspective between the colonizers and Maori people. It would be interesting to explore this perspective in a historical sense and gain an understanding of the decline in bird diversity due to the fact that the Maori people are fairly underrepresented. With that, they have been recently fighting for their representation in the political world, which may shift conservation efforts in the country. There are birds missing from the extinction list, which should also be added to the page. There could also be information added to the global comparison and conservation sections.

Tone & Balance: The content and tone of the article is neutral. The only piece of the article that may be leading is within the "Conservation" section of the article, where the writer comments on the original reasons for bird extinction included the Maori using them as a food source. The colonization of Europeans and the species that came with them is included, but without the "European colonizer" piece. I do think that there is not enough of a viewpoint to even say that there is an under- or overrepresentation of one or the other. It is clear though that Maori perspective on biodiversity conservation is missing.

Sources & References: A majority of the information contained within the article is backed by a secondary source. The sources do not get the full picture on the declining bird biodiversity and minority perspectives (i.e., indigenous peoples) are missing. There is also only seven citations and three external links available for more information. I believe there are better sources that can be used, including the following below this paragraph. The external links tested on the article, for the links that I checked, all work.

Conserving New Zealand’s native fauna: a review of tools being developed for the Predator Free 2050 programme | Journal of Ornithology (springer.com)

[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/emr.12230 How do we restore New Zealand's biological heritage by 2050? - Norton - 2016 - Ecological Management & Restoration - Wiley Online Library]

nztcs36entire.pdf (doc.govt.nz)

Conservation-translocations-of-New-Zealand-birds-1863-2012.pdf (researchgate.net)

Conservation Issues in New Zealand | Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics (annualreviews.org)

An Alternative Reality: Māori Spiritual Guardianship of New Zealand's (taylorfrancis.com)

‘Preservation’ and ‘Protection’: Environmental Writing and Representations of Māori in Forest and Bird, 1955-1974 (auckland.ac.nz)

Drivers and trends in the extinction risk of New Zealand's endemic birds - ScienceDirect

Full article: Observations of chick feeding rates and parental defensive responses to disturbance at nests in the critically endangered New Zealand fairy tern/tara iti (Sternula nereis davisae) (tandfonline.com)

Land of the birds that walk (cell.com)

Palaeoecological and historical observations of an endemic New Zealand bird (Strigops habroptila, kākāpō) reveal shifting drivers of decline during 800 years of human settlement - ScienceDirect

[https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2001.1918 Prehistoric bird extinctions and human hunting | Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences (royalsocietypublishing.org)]

Organization & Writing Quality: Although there is more information needed for the article, I do think that the article is easy to read. I do think that there is more information that would allow the article to be on a professional level. There are also sections available for the information available, though there is only one to two paragraphs available per section. After putting the article into Grammarly, there were quite a few grammatical errors and minimal spelling errors. The overall score the application gave the article was a 61, after fixing the errors that were able to be altered with the free version of Grammarly, that score shifted to an 85. To say the least, there is a little bit left to be desired for the "well-written" side of the article, but I overall thought the article was not bad.

Images & Media: All of the images included within the article are related to the topic. The images themselves are all birds, only one set of the images is not recent (historical drawings of prehistoric birds). All of the images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulation and the images are all visually appealing. The captions of the images can be improved, both in bulk material and grammatical consistency.

Talk Page Discussion: There are not many conversations going on behind the scenes of this article. The only "conversation" is in a form of one assessment comment. The comment mentioned that there was a "high level" focus on conservation and that the rest of the article is lacking due to the previous editor's expertise. The to-do lists the previous editor suggested includes more information on the evolutionary history and describing its unique characteristics. The article is of interest of three different WikiProjects, which are all start-class and have labelled the article as low- or mid-importance. I am unable to speak of the differences between the article and what has been discussed within class.

Overall Impressions: The article's status is not bad in my opinion, especially with its contents being low on the importance list for WikiProjects working on it. The fact that the article was updated within 2023 and the references are all of primary or secondary sources, means that the information available on Wikipedia is legitimate and accurate. The photos available on the article are relevant and the sections available on the article make sense. That said, there can be some adjustment to the article in relation to the amount of information pertaining to the history of bird biodiversity in New Zealand pre- and post-colonization, alongside updated progress within the country and potential case studies conducted by researchers. Once there is more information implemented, there will be a need for subheadings and references to back the newfound information. I think the article, as is, is developed, but not is definitely not complete. With the biodiversity crisis being a crucial issue in archipelago nations like New Zealand, past and present information should be available to the public. By adding more recent information and information that is typically blocked from the public, normal people searching the web can utilize the information and learn more about the bird biodiversity crisis within New Zealand and potentially benefit the effort. Overall rating: 6/10 — ~