User:Ccustodi/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Grignard reaction

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I decided to choose this article on the Grignard reaction because I am very interested in organic chemistry and I like the Grignard reaction. Articles like this one matter because they help students like myself learn more about a topic of their interest or clarify a tricky concept from class. My preliminary impression of the article was that it was a concise and effective summary of the Grignard reaction which would provide someone new to this topic a good overview.

Evaluate the article
This article's lead does provide a reasonable and concise summary of the reaction in the first sentence while also briefly summarizing the article's contents. The lead section also does not include any information which is not discussed later on in the article; however, there is a section later on in the article about other types of reactions involving Grignard reagents, which is not discussed in the article lead.

This article's content is up to date and all content presented in the article is relevant to the topic: the article provides a good overview of the history, mechanism, and uses for the Grignard reaction. It is, however, missing a discussion about uses of Grignard reagents with other reagents such as CeCl2, which impact the chemoselectivity of the reagent. Finally, this article does not cover equity gaps nor any topics related to historically underrepresented groups and therefore, does not include a discussion about these topics with respect to the Grignard reaction.

Since this article's sole objective is to provide an in depth summary of the Grignard reaction, all of its claims were neutral, although it did highlight some disagreement about what it considered to fall under the categorization of the Grignard reaction in academia. When the article discussed the difference in opinion, it did provide all perspectives with equal weight and was successful at presenting the key facts for all sides while maintaining a neutral position. Therefore, this article was successful at remaining free of bias as all view points were presented equally. Additionally, the article included the source of each opinion presented, which allowed the reader to form their own opinions about what they believe to be a more reliable source. This allowed the article to remain free of persuasion as it only presented the facts.

While all of the facts within the article are backed up with secondary sources, all of the sources seem outdated. Even though this is not a newly discovered reaction, it may be beneficial for the article to include a section of uses for this reaction in modern chemistry, since many of the cited sources seemed very outdated. Additionally, one of the links (citation #2) did not work, as instead of taking me to the proper page, it brought me to a frequently asked questions page with no information about the Grignard reaction. While the sources are from a diverse spectrum authors, it seemed like the article did not have enough citations. Adding more citations may allow for the inclusion of work done by a more diverse group of authors, which would likely include more historically marginalized authors too. As previously mentioned, this article could include a section which discusses how the Grignard reaction has been used in modern chemistry, which would allow for the inclusion of more recent work and peer reviewed articles from well known and reputable journals.

Overall, this article is well written as it is concise, grammatically correct, and provides a reasonably good quality overview of the Grignard reaction, in both classical and more modern contexts. The article is also fairly easy to read as it follows a good logical flow of ideas and is effectively broken down into subtopics, which help the reader understand the topic better.

The article also makes effective use of visual media as the reaction schemes, mechanisms, and starburst diagram really help the reader visualize how the reaction occurs, and the uses for the reaction. All of the visual media except for the first reaction scheme and the last starburst diagram are well captioned and laid out in a visually appealing way. The first reaction scheme is missing a descriptive caption of what is occurring to help the reader get a better understanding of the reaction. The last starburst diagram in the article is also missing a caption. While this figure is very self explanatory to someone in the field of chemistry, this would not be clear to someone who did not understand what all of the included reagents do. Therefore, a descriptive title would be helpful to the reader for the last figure in the article. Finally, all of the visual media in the article is not in violation of Wikipedia's copyright regulations, as all of the media included was created by past editors of the page.

The talk page for this article appears to have been quite active earlier this year in April. There were discussions about what is considered a Grignard reaction as well as evidence of collaboration to better the accuracy and visual media of the article. This article is currently rated as a B class article, and is a part of WikiProject Chemistry. Additionally, this article has been rated as High-importance within the project.

Grignard reactions have been discussed in class as a reaction in which a MgX (X=Cl, Br, I) is added to any electrophile. The classic definition of the reaction had never been discussed in class: a Grignard reaction typically occurs between MgX and a ketone or aldehyde. Instead, we just learned that it will attack any carbon nucleophile or act as a powerful base in the presence of an acidic proton.

Overall, this article is underdeveloped but well written and structured, and contains good and helpful figures. While this article is in reasonable condition, it is in need of more citations, more current information, and a section on modern uses of Grignard reagents, as well as a section on other reagents like CeCl2, which improve the chemoselectivity of a Grignard reagent.