User:Casually Anonymous/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Purr

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
Cats have played a large part in my life growing up. My family has had a couple domesticated house cats as well as many wild ones that would visit daily. Each cat would vary in the amount of times it purred. Typically, they were given similar treatments of affection and care, however, they would differ in ways of purring. Some cats would rarely purr towards any sign of affection and care, yet they would still show a kind, vulnerability, that, in my personal opinion, seemed to mean they were comfortable and content. Whilst other cats would immediately, and for long durations, start purring once making any sort of contact, whether physical or just laying near a person. This led me to wonder whether the act of purring varied between each individual cat, or if it was a response towards varying factors. When looking at this article, my preliminary impression was that it seemed to be very informative on the topic.

Evaluate the article
The content of this article provides a relevance towards the topic of purring throughout its entirety. There are some fairly up-to-date references used in this article. Although there are a couple that seem very outdated, such as the ones that are from 1834, 1916, and 1936. I did find similar topics discussed in articles that are more recent, thus providing information that is better updated and reliable. I do believe that more information in some parts of the article would be beneficial. Within the 'Frequency, amplitude, and respiratory variation' section, It would be great to know why a cheetah, which is considerably larger than a domesticated cat, has a lower frequency. Could this be due to the difference in size? I also wondered whether a purr held different frequencies for different meanings (i.e., towards a kittens mother vs. a human companion, happiness, food, etc.). Also, in the second paragraph, numerous other animals besides cats were listed to have the ability to purr, however, there were no mention towards them after that paragraph. Even though the article is on purring, it focuses almost entirely on cats. More information like how they purr, frequencies, more specified reasons as to why they purr, should be provided for other species that are able to purr. Some reasons behind why Cats purr were listed, but some were not explained as to why. An example would be fear/defense mechanism. How does the act of purring aid this species in defense against other species? Overall, more specific information is necessary to better understand this topic.

The tone of this article holds a neutral point of view, and is not heavily biased towards any specific position on the topic. Instead of just explaining one theory as to how cats purr, multiple theories were presented, preventing any potential persuasion from occurring. Although there are no imbalances in the article, it does need more information provided to have a better understanding of purring.

The sources backing up this article come from a diverse array of authors and publications, however, some sources are not taken from a reliable secondary source of information. One specific source comes from the company Purina, although, not exactly a terrible source, it is not undoubtedly reliable. There appears to be no biases with any sources on the articles topic which furthers the reliability of the information provided. A couple sources are outdated and should be updated with more recent works. All of the source links are working, letting readers of this article dig deeper into the topic. Lastly, I noticed a lack of citations within the article, especially in the beginning. Proper use of citations are needed to provide the article with reliable information.

Regarding the talk page, there is little to no useful information given to further this article and its information. There is one helpful input providing links to other articles of similar topics that could be used as references to further the information in this article. There are no ratings for the article, and it is not presently a part of any WikiProjects. Compared to class discussions on animal behavior topics, the talk page of this article has almost no informative assistance to increase the quality of the article. Casually Anonymous (talk) 14:26, 14 September 2021 (UTC)