User:Cayleyp399/Choose an Article

Article Selection
Please list articles that you're considering for your Wikipedia assignment below. Begin to critique these articles and find relevant sources.

Option 1

 * Article title
 * History of Herbalism

The introductory sentence gives an overview of roughly where in history herbalism began and ended. The lead includes a basic overview of the history of herbalism and its relation to other developments in human civilization. It does not include information not present in the article and is sufficiently concise. The article appears to be up-to-date and the content is relevant and is broken up into sections that make sense. There does not appear to be content that is missing or does not belong, except for the section on Mesopotamia which is very sparse and could use more information. The article appears to be biased against herbalist treatments, although subtly. It appears to be in favor of western medicine, because it includes information that is not necessary to the history of herbalism such as the fact that herbalists are generally not licensed. However, it does not include any opinions in this section so it is still professional. The paragraphs are filled with sources and it appears that every fact is backed up by a source. Many of the sources are older, but this makes sense because it is a history article. The links that were checked led to valid websites. The headings are generally based on country which makes the article easy to read. However, some headings are based on the time period which makes the article a little confusing because it does not read in chronological order. There are no grammatical or spelling errors and it is fairly clear. The images are interesting, well-captioned, and add to the topic. They are visually-appealing, but the article would be more interesting with a couple more pictures because there are only two. It could include more photos of the plants and herbs it describes so the reader knows what some of the more obscure ones look like. The images adhere to copyright regulations. The article is involved with several WikiProjects including Plants, Alternative Medicine, Medicine, and History of Science, with all of whom it is rated C class. There is a cyberbot on the talk page that adds information but asks users to delete bad information and add a specific link afterward to prevent the bot from modifying it again. Another bot modified external links and wanted to let the users know. The article is C-class, meaning it is missing some important information and may contain content that does not add substantially to the topic of the article. It is rated mid-importance, meaning it is important to its own category but is not especially notable. The article is fairly thorough but could use elaboration in the Mesopotamia, China, and India sections. It is very-well referenced and provides interesting sources. It is good, but a bit underdeveloped.
 * Article Evaluation


 * Sources
 * http://read.pudn.com/downloads150/ebook/649372/Groundbreaking_Scientific_Experiments.pdf
 * History of herbalism
 * http://exhibits.hsl.virginia.edu/herbs/brief-history/

Option 2

 * Article title
 * List of Plants Used in Herbalism


 * Article Evaluation
 * The article is useful because it gives an overview of the main plants used in herbalism and their traditional uses. It will allow for more research on the specific plants used in both traditional and alternative medicine. There is a warning at the top of the article that says it needs more medical references and that it is fairly one-sided. Therefore, while this article may be good for some basic information, it should be taken with a grain of salt. Fortunately, every plant is cited so those can be used to learn more information about them.


 * Sources
 * List of plants used in herbalism

Option 3

 * Article title
 * Herbal Medicine


 * Article Evaluation
 * This article seems to give an unbiased account of herbalism. It explains the usefulness of plants in traditional medicine while admitting that the practice generally lacks clinical trials and FDA standards. It has sufficient references for each fact, which will be useful when doing further research. The talk page explains that phytotherapy and phytomedicine no longer have their own pages and have been instead combined with this page.


 * Sources
 * https://books.google.com/books?id=_hkSTiEsKvkC
 * Herbal medicine

Option 4

 * Article title
 * Article Evaluation
 * Sources
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Option 5

 * Article title
 * Article Evaluation
 * Sources
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