User:Cbies/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Race and video games

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
The racial landscape of video games is very interesting to me as it relates to the kinds of people who play games, who makes them, and who appears in them. I think there's much more room in this article to discuss the scholarly and cultural conversation that has happened on this subject, especially with the racial reckoning that has happened in all industries over the past few years.

Evaluate the article
Lead section


 * Possible issue: The introductory sentence of the lead may be overly general.
 * Issue: The lead includes only a cursory mention of the idea of representation in the creative process—literally a single word—which receives the first section of the main article.
 * Issue: It specifically references Johan Huizinga's theory of play (confusingly described as "game theory") but does not elaborate on it anywhere in the article.
 * The information that is actually mentioned in the article is summarized well and concisely.

Content


 * The content is generally relevant to the topic.
 * Issue: The article may be slightly out of date: most references are from 2015 and earlier in an industry that changes rapidly.
 * Issue: It contains no information about how the industry reacted to the push for diversity, equity, and inclusion that have taken place in all sectors of the corporate media landscape in the past few years. It also does not address anything about the video game industry's relationship with "nerd culture" and the racial environment thereof.
 * Issue: It offers only a cursory exploration of representation of different races, which can be elaborated. It also has only a single sentence on the "white default" which could be expanded on significantly.
 * Issue: The article is, in fact, about an equity gap and needs improvement to adequately address the situation faced by underrepresented communities in the video game industry.

Tone and Balance


 * The article is generally neutral.
 * I do not find any heavily biased claims.
 * Possible issue: Viewpoints seem to be a bit heavy on scholarly and analytical information from a theoretical standpoint and less on gamers' experiences, but I don't think that's necessarily an issue.
 * The sections that confront differences of opinion do a good job representing the difference between majority and minority viewpoints.
 * The article does a good job of not taking a position on a contentious subject.

Sources and References


 * Issue: There are multiple points in the article already flagged for citation needed.
 * Being new to this topic, I will conduct further investigation to see the fullness of available literature.
 * Possible issue: A large part of the article is historical and citations from when those were current are appreciated; however,
 * Issue: For an article about race and video games, the citations are overwhelmingly written by white scholars. Overcoming the institutional biases of academia will be important to accurately representing this subject.
 * The citations generally are peer-reviewed with only a few exceptions. I will continue looking to upgrade those if possible.
 * Issue: Some of the older citations no longer work.

Organization and writing quality


 * Issue: Much of the writing in the article is disjunct and piecemeal, making it difficult to absorb the information.
 * The article is grammatically accurate and spelled correctly.
 * Issue: The organization of the article is a little all over the place. One suggestion in the talk page that I plan to take is that there should be subsections for representation of different races. There are other sections that could do with a similar type of organization, which will be more appropriate when the article is expanded.

Images and Media


 * Possible issue: The article includes no images or graphics to aid with readability of the article.

Talk page discussion


 * The only discussion on the talk page is the aforementioned suggestion of reorganization for formatting. It also includes a warning, however, that the article is considered part of the "Race and Intelligence" topic area and subject to additional scrutiny. This will be important to keep in mind.
 * The article is rated stub-class. It is part of WikiProjects Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, and Video games. It is considered low-importance in all of them.

Overall impression


 * The article has a somewhat solid foundation but needs significant expansion and revision to be encyclopedic.
 * The biggest strength of the article is its breadth and its attempt to cover the scope of race in the video game industry in creators, players, and the games themselves.
 * The article can be best improved with organizational revision and added content.
 * As it is now, I would consider this article underdeveloped. It is moving in the right direction but needs to be added to and refined to meet Wikipedia's standards.