User:Cdortma/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Battle of Bouvines

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this battle as it is very important to understanding the life and accomplishments of King Philip II of France, a historical figure I find incredibly fascinating. This battle and the consequent negotiations allowed Philip to expel a large amount of Plantagenet influence from France and further strengthen his own hold and influence over France.

Evaluate the article
The article starts strong with a concise lead that details the essential and most important aspects of the battle without coming on too strong with too much information. The lead section effectively highlights the content in the rest of the article and only contains relevant information. The content of the article is certainly relevant to the Battle of Bouvines, but there does seem to be an abundance of information for the French side and a lack of information for the coalition of allied lords they fought (this could be explained by a losing side not wanting to detail exactly how bad they lost, however). The content is largely up-to-date, with some modern information regarding celebrations of the victory at Bouvines included in the article. The article certainly takes a neutral tone, as seen in the "praise" of strategies employed by both sides, but as I mentioned earlier, there is an imbalance of information for the allied side. Overall, bias is practically non-existent. As for the sources, all of the links that I tested worked, and most of them seem to be current and reliable sources, aside from two exceptionally old sources. I honestly do not believe that I could find better sources, aside from a few extra sources detailing the allied forces against the French. The article is well-organized and written in a way (a good division of sections) that lends itself excellently to conveying the events of the Battle of Bouvines. The images add welcome flavor and interest to the article and obey copyright regulations. However, their formatting is a little awkward at points, such as when two images are close to each other in the article and condense the text to a width of two words per line. The talk page holds criticisms of the article that have all seemingly been resolved and amended, showing monitoring and updating of the article to put it in top form. We have not quite discussed this precise topic in class, but there is are examples of forward-looking history in the correlation and causation of certain events (not to say that they are completely unfounded, for example, the ramifications of the battle for John Lackland certainly were a factor in the enforcement of the Magna Carta upon him, despite his lack of presence at the battle). Overall, I would say this is a very well-done article, and most of the criticisms I make are either things that are likely unable to even be addressed or amended, or just nitpicking.