User:Cat6095/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Persuasive writing

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article, so that I could learn more about this type of writing, in order to prepare more for my case study and the final presentation. Persuasive writing matters because it allows the person to write, or speak, in a way that's more effective towards their target audience.

My initial impression of this article was that it would be more detailed and have more sources to provide an informative article about what persuasive writing is.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

(My answers to evaluation questions are in bold.)

 Lead Section 


 * "Does the lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?" The beginning sentence describes persuasive writing in a concise manner.
 * "Does the lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?" The lead provides a brief description of the "common techniques" section by listing different types of communicative artifacts that are known for utilizing persuasive writing techniques. However, aside from briefly mentioning 'logical arguments' (the purpose of Logos), the lead does not do anything else to provide a brief description of the "Ethos, Logos, and Pathos" section.
 * "Does the lead include information that is not present in the article?" The lead does not include information that is not present in the article.
 * "Is the lead concise or is it overly detailed?" The lead is concise. However, it is too short and would benefit from more information to effectively define persuasive writing, as well as provide brief descriptions of the article's main sections.

 Content 


 * "Is the article's content relevant to the topic?" Most of the content is relevant to the topic.
 * "Is the content up-to-date?" The content is mostly up-to-date, but still needs a lot of information and more reliable sources to provide a more informative, reliable article on persuasive writing.
 * "Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?" The article is missing a lot of important content, such as the history of persuasive writing and how persuasive writing has been studied by communication scholars. In addition, The first main section ("Common techniques in persuasive writing") does not belong in the article as it is original research, and has no sources or citations to back up what has been written in this section.
 * "Does the article deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps? Does it address topics related to historically underrepresented populations or topics?" The article does not cover any of Wikipedia's equity gaps.

 Tone and Balance 


 * "Is the article neutral?" The article is not neutral. Both of the sources used are not neutral, academic, reliable sources. The "common techniques" section is not neutral either.
 * "Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?" At the end of the "common techniques" section, there are claims about counter-evidence that state that these would have the "greatest influence on the reader" and "be sounder". These claims are biased, as they are attempting to push an agenda, and are not backed up by any credible sources.
 * "Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?" The article is too short to determine which viewpoints are over/under-represented.
 * "Are minority or fringe viewpoints accurately described as such?" Some of them are. The lead section notes that some people "believed that some literature...in a fiction genre could also be intended as persuasive writings."
 * "Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?" Yes. Like I said before, the "common techniques" section uses language that attempts to persuade the reader in favor of a position, instead of remaining neutral and objective.

 Sources and References 


 * "Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?" No. Both of the sources for this article are unreliable. The first source, "What is Persuasive Writing?" by Charlotte Guillain is a children's book, and when I tried to find out more about it, there was not enough information on this book. The second source, "Persuasive Writing: How to harness the power of words" by Peter Frederick is a self-help book. Neither of these sources are academic, neutral, or reliable. In addition, I tried to find information on both authors, but only found information on Guillain. I could not find any information about Peter Frederick.
 * "Are the sources thorough?" Both of the sources cover persuasive writing, but they are not thorough as they are not academic, reliable, or peer-reviewed sources.
 * "Are the sources current?" Both of the sources are fairly recent.
 * "Are the sources written by a diverse spectrum of authors? Do they include historically marginalized individuals where possible?" The sources are not written by a diverse range of authors.
 * "Are there better sources available, such as peer-reviewed articles in place of news coverage or random websites?" There are lots of sources about persuasive writing in Google Scholar. However, most of the sources focus on persuasive writing skills of middle school, high school, and college students, instead of the technique/discipline of persuasive writing itself.
 * "Check a few links. Do they work?" The only link that did not exactly work when I clicked on it was Guillain's book (one of the sources). When I clicked on it, it showed a blank screen with the words "No preview available" instead of the book itself.

 Organization and Writing Quality 


 * "Is the article well-written?" The article is easy to read, but it has a lot of room for improvement.
 * "Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?" Yes. For example, in the lead paragraph, it uses "persuasive writings" as the plural form when it should just be "persuasive writing."
 * "Is the article well-organized?" The article is well-organized. However, the "common techniques" section does not do much to reflect the main topic of the article.

The article does not include any images, so I'm skipping the "Images and Media" section of the evaluation.

 Talk page discussion 


 * "What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?" There is not much activity on the talk page of this article. There is a lot more activity on the history page though, and from the most recent activity, one person (CHADDDDDD) has been blocked for what seems like vandalism. Thankfully, there seem to be a lot of users correcting mistakes and blocking and removing irrelevant contributions from people with malicious intentions.
 * "How is the article rated? Is it part of any WikiProjects?" The article is rated as "Stub-class, Mid-importance." The talk page also says that this article is of interest to the Journalism, Literature, and Writing WikiProjects.
 * "How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?" I remember us talking about Brand, which I think connects to Persuasive Writing. We talked about the cultural, social, and psychological differentiators of brands, and how we tend to prefer familiarity in terms of brands, due to the influence we get from media, upbringing, and society in general. So overall, persuasive writing is used a lot in media to influence people to think and behave a certain way. This article mostly focuses on the more written part of persuasion (which makes sense), with a focus on the three main appeals of persuasive writing: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos.

 Overall impressions 


 * "What is the article's overall status?" I would classify this article as a stub article, since that's what it is rated as. The topic of this article is a unique topic, but the article does not have a lot of information or reliable sources to put it in the same category as a featured article.
 * "What are the article's strengths?" The article does a good job defining Ethos, Logos, and Pathos, which are very important in persuasive writing. The 'See Also' section is also good for people who want to learn more about different, more specific types of persuasive writing.
 * "How can the article be improved?" The two sources so far should be replaced with more reliable, peer-reviewed, academic sources relevant to the main topic. The article needs some more sections to further explain different parts of persuasive writing. The article also needs a little bit of tweaking to fix grammatical errors. And for the 'See Also' section, assertiveness does not need to be there, as the article does not provide much information about assertiveness.
 * "How would you assess the article's completeness?" The article is very under-developed. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done before this article can be marked as developed.