User:Cassiusdog22/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Footprint, Talk:Footprint

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
Just looking through all of the C-Class articles about archeology and this ones stood out to me because of how vague its title was. I thought that something like this that includes several major historical findings about ancient people as well as other meanings of the word "footprint" like carbon footprint and digital footprint could both be discussed in this as well. It is just a small article that I think could have some work done on it.

Evaluate the article
The introduction does define a footprint, but does not clearly indicate what is talked about in the rest of the article, the introduction merely states a description of a physical footprint, but doesn't dive into the uses of it archeologically, its use in detective work, or mythological significances.

The content of the article definitely lacks in other appliances and cultural topics relating to footprints, and the mythological section does not go into any depth about some of the significances of footprints, just sends us to other articles. Also the introductions to these sections are super minimal, only a sentence or two long and cold definitely be bulked up with a bit more detail and streamlined information. Similarly, as stated before there are other subjects related to footprints and paw prints that could be brought in or expanded, this article just lacks in volume and detail.

Honestly there isn't much room on this article to be biased or opinionated. I think there could be more focus on the scientific and historical importance and usage of footprints, and for the mythological section, other cultures could be represented or expanded on rather than just linked to. Overall this article has no bias though, and does remain strictly informational.

The images are pretty solid, honestly not much to say on that section. All of the images appropriately depict what is being discussed in the section they're attached to. Similarly, there is no really "out of date" information, some of the studies are a bit older, but still well researched and mostly historical studies that haven't been re-created. Likewise, many of the studies are also much newer, released within the last 4 years.

Luckily as well, the citation list is thorough and the topics talked about all have an appropriate about of citation and reference. The sources cited all seem to be well researched and credible. The main things lacking from this article are not references, citations or misinformation, but instead a lack of content and a lack of variety of topics relating to the main topic of footprints.

On the "talk" section of the footprint article, it seems they are discussing adding in a section about Roman Votive tablets and the history and tradition of those, as well as going more into the detective section of the article as well. They bring up "why we would use footprints as evidence" and consider beefing up the actual applicable uses of footprint detection and research.

This article is rated c-class and of low-importance, in all fields relating to it. But the fields of archeology and criminal studies seem to be growing and the other editors seem to also believe this should be the route this article should head for improvement. The strengths of this article is the formatting, media, proper links, and extensive credibility and citations. This article has a great baseline for improvement, and i think with just a bit more research and writing work through sources already citied, this article can really be improved.

This article has a strong backbone, it was properly built up, and with just following the lines of research already delved on before, could easily be shaped into a higher tier article, and could very likely contribute more to the criminal studies and archeology fields of wikipedia.