User:Cen1917/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
I chose to create an article about Janet Abbate. But I am evaluating this article: Raymond Williams

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 to evaluate Raymond Williams biography article because it is in the same format as the one that I will be creating about Janet Abbate. Raymond Williams is someone whose work we have read for class as well and it is familiar to me. Raymond Williams was very accomplished in his life and this article was very interesting to read. I thought this article was organized very nicely and was very interesting and easy to follow.

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.)

I think this article's lead section could be stronger by giving more of an outline about what is to come later in the article. The lead section is very concise which is good, but I think it is too concise and the whole article would benefit from it being a little bit longer. The content of the article is very strong. It does not focus too much on any given topic and explains the different topics very well. The information is up to date in the article and everything that is mentioned has to do with Raymond Williams and is relevant to his life. This article is very neutral. I do not think there were any cases of bias at any point throughout the article. It did not try to sway anyone in one direction or another and it is strictly factual. The sources and references are lacking a little which makes it seem like the main writers of this article are well versed in knowledge about Raymond William. The organization of the article is very easy to follow and it is clearly laid out for readers. It also does not have much, if any, unnecessary information. While the article does have some images, they are only images of Raymond Williams himself. I think that this article would benefit from including images of some o this works. For example, the journal "Essays in Criticism" which he contributed to the editing for. There are many other works that could be included that could make it much more clear to readers about what he did and it would show them what exactly these things were. The images that a re included are in good places that fit with the flow of the article. The images say that the person who uploaded them is the creator of the image and I believe they are not cited correctly so that is an improvement that should be made. The talk page of this article has some good information in it, for example there is one section that says that Raymond Williams was not a pacifist and it says that the person who said it made useful changes to the article. It is also mentioned that there is a severe lack of citations throughout the article and that it must have been written by people who were originally very familiar with Raymond Williams and his work. The way that they talk in the talk page is just talking about how some of the information my not be fully correct but it seems like they changed it to the correct information. The information that is in the talk page is not really applicable to how we talk about Raymond Williams in class because it is more technical things instead of facts about him and his life. This article is included in the WikkiProjects: Biography, Politics of the United Kingdom, Wales, and Socialism. On Wikipedia's contest assessment scale, It is rated as Start-Class. This article's overall status is Start-class and is listed as a level-5 vital article and it is asked that if you can improve it to do so. The main strength is the way that it is organized. The flow of the article is reader friendly and made me want to keep reading as the information was also interesting. The main improvement is the sources need to be cited better and the information needs to be able to be supported by them. The article is pretty well developed I think it could still use more information and be more in depth.

This article gives me a few ideas to use while I will be creating my own article. I will be using a similar organization strategy that is used in the Raymond Williams article because I found it easy to follow as a reader. I also will cite my sources much more thoroughly than the writers did in the Raymond Williams article. Another thing that I will try to do differently is the use of images and media. I like the way they were shown in this article but I want to include more. The last thing that I found will help me to make my article is the lead section. I plan to include one that helps to outline what is coming later in the article than they did in this article. I think this will help my article organization and make it even better.