User:Chcam1/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Positive psychology

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I choose to evaluate this article as Positive Psychology is a growing topic within the scope of Psychology that should be considered greatly in today's world. I viewed this article as intensive, and believe that this article could have been better refined. Although published on Wikipedia, this article is currently in an excellent state. This article has a possibility to be rated higher than C-class after minor improvements of stylistic editing to keep a concise and impartial explanation of the scope of Positive Psychology.

Evaluate the article
The lead section of this comprehensive article included a lengthy description of how the formal empirical study of positive psychology was organized and refined since its inception. The first paragraph of this lead section effectively describes the key components of Positive Psychology as a scope within psychology. The lead section of this article is not overly detailed with the major sections and does not stray from information not present in the article. The article goes a step further by including theories that are connected to positive psychology.

This Wikipedia topic includes sections and various subsections related to Positive Psychology; however, some sections could have been omitted and might have led to a higher class rating. For example, within the Criticism section, the Methodological and philosophical criticism subsection has been flagged as needing additional citations for verification. This section was derived from a published academic journal article by UCA professor Richard Lazarus. This section includes one citation from Lazarus' article explaining his stance on a relatively new topic that relies on seemingly fluid factors of emotion. This one citation is from a reputable archive of JSTOR and the peer-reviewed and editorial-screened journal Psychological Inquiry. This singular reference citation is lost in a sea of 140 citations. To help this section become verified, I recommend looking at recent findings about the methodology of positive psychology, as this singular citation is from 2003. Overall the citations throughout this Wiki are relevant to positive psychology since this topic is evolving.

This lengthy article currently includes three pictures. With these few photos, this Wiki could either benefit from removing these few photos or adding more to make it visually appealing. The images included are described well, and I consider them high quality given the limitations of copyright. The article's strength and following weakness lie within its expansiveness on the scope of Positive Psychology, from academia to popular culture. This article mentions how this formal study within the branch of Psychology was officially recognized within the past few decades in 2000. This article also explains the founding of positive psychology from ancient times and the following gained developments in this branch of psychology. This Wikipedia is insightful. However, this article could be culled, removing the information under superfluous sections of popular culture. The subsection of this section contains superfluous information is Books. This included books that seem to be popular self-help books. I understand why this section was created, but it detracts from being a genuinely academic page. This section caters to social influences within an academic topic that could have been removed or at least include pictures of the popular culture topics mentioned.

Overall, this article is an insightful resource that could benefit an introduction/ conclusion section of a paper connected to a complete experiment involving positive psychology. The article's strength lies within its length, touching across social and cultural influences that help connect humans across the world about the topic of positive psychology.