User:CardinalSims/Evaluate an Article

This is Jacqueline's evaluation of an article.

Which article are you evaluating?
I will be evaluating Wikipedia's article on Bertran de Born.

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I have chosen to evaluate this article because the image of de Born walking around with severed head in Canto XXVIII was extremely grotesque and "eye-catching" to me. He is an especially significant "character" within Inferno because in the Italian version of the text, he explicitly names the concept of contrapasso that Dante applies throughout the novel. It is important for de Born to have a functioning Wikipedia article because he was not only a real person (unlike Alichino the demon, for example), but also somebody who has remained significant beyond his death within the realm of literature. Unfortunately, my preliminary impression of his article was underwhelming. Its references are lacking, the grammar isn't the best, and I don't feel as though I have a complete picture of his life.

Evaluate the article
I began by evaluating the Lead Section. While the first sentence accomplishes its purpose, it is the only sentence in the section. There is no description of the article's major sections, nor does it have any information about de Born's career, despite the fact that "Career" is the longest section of the article. Overall, this section was concise, but unfortunately incomplete.

The content of this article is disappointing in multiple ways. There are a few sentences in it that aren't relevant to de Born (such as the penultimate sentence of "Early Life"), and while the "View History" indicates that it was updated recently, it seems to be evaluated by Wikipedians only a couple of times a year. The content is up-to-date in the sense that de Born's life has been completed, and it is hard to tell if any information is missing due to the article's minimal use of references.

Because this article describes a deceased person in a biographical manner, it has no issues with its tone or balance! It provides a neutral view on his life and does not make use of biased language to describe his appearance in Inferno or his struggles with his brother (though the tensions between them are hardly described beyond their existence).

The Sources and References of this article are its least impressive aspects. While every link to another Wikipedia article works, the link to "Works, translated by James H. Donalson" does not. The article's most recent source, cited in Note 2, was published in 2005. The penultimate bullet of "References" states that the article cites a French dictionary, but doesn't state which edition of that dictionary it is citing (while I can't read French, there seems to be at least 34). There are certainly more sources that could be cited in this article, especially on his role in Inferno: he is referenced 17 times in the Dante Encyclopedia, mentioned in a note in the Hollander edition of Inferno (the note on lines 130-138), and has a short article in the Enciclopedia Dantesca, which primarily describes his life and career. Unfortunately, it is hard to tell if the facts in the article are supported by sources, as only two sentences in the entire article are followed by citations (Wiki Education suggests that every paragraph should have at least one citation, a far cry from what is present in this article). Because of the lack of references in this article, its credibility is severely diminished, as noted by a template message left on the top of its page in March 2018.

While the article is well organized, it is not particularly well-written; the sentences are a bit clunky and the grammar could be improved. This perhaps should be taken with a grain of salt, as I'm an English major, but I believe that some of its errors are quite noticeable. For example the "Known for" part of the info-box isn't grammatically coherent, the first sentence in "Early life" is missing a comma, and prepositions in the "Later literary image" section are misused.

The images are relevant to the article, although the first one has a caption that does not make sense. They are visually appealing and adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations.

The talk page is relatively empty. There are only two comments on it-- one from 2010 and one from 2018, which aren't responding to one another. The first discusses questions surrounding what de Born's nationality should be stated as, and the second is asking why de Born was (wrongly, and likely due to his depiction in Inferno) placed in the "Cephalophore" category on Wikipedia. The article is part of four WikiProjects (France, Military history, Biography / Military, and Middle Ages / Crusades), but is designated as "Start-Class" for each Wikiproject. Overall, there is little action on this page, and few conversations happening.

Overall, I feel that this article is mediocre. While it is not completely empty and provides some useful information to the reader, it is underdeveloped and needs numerous improvements to its structure, its grammar, and most importantly, its references and citations. With these improvements, I think that this article would be a valuable source for anybody looking for basic information on Bertran de Born.