User:ChrispinPerez/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Yosemite National Park

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
This article was chosen to be evaluated because of its historical significance to indigenous environemntal justice. The Ahwahnechee tribe's ancestral homelands exists within Yosemite National Park, one of the most visited and well known national parks in the U.S. and the world. This article mentions the initial history of the Ahwahnechee peoples history in the park but does not explore beyond the end of the Mariposa War which is the main historical event that evicted these indigenous people from their lands. The article is well organized and covers a variety of topics related to the parks history, resources, diversity, and present status but lacks newer and/or present knowledge regarding the Ahwahnechee tribe, its descendents, and their significance to Yosemite National Park today.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section: The lead section does a satisfactory job of discussing what Yosemite National Park is and includes in regards to its physical natural environment, mentioning some diversity in plant diversity, geological formation, and historical natural events. It could be argued that it is overly detailed in this regard, some of the information could be included under other sections like geography, geology, or ecology, all of which however do have much more information including an expansion of what is mentioned in the lead section. The lead sentence states the name of the park and its geographic location, so the topic at hand is easily identifiable. The lead paragraph does not give a good overview of the most important topics however, only more general information regarding its location and most notable scenic components. The entire section only discusses the geology, geography, and a small amount of history of the park without mentioning significant historical events like the mariposa war, the presence of indigenous peoples, the conservation efforts to preserve the park today, and any controversy in general. Overall, the lead is concise and does offer most information that is needed to understand the articles information, but needs to be refined and added upon.

Content: Every section and subsection of this article is relatively well balanced in terms of quantity but not necessarily quality. There are some sections that lack updated information and science, for example, the increased protection efforts ends with the return of Yosemite to the federal government in 1906 after being under state control for some time. Although federal protection and regulation is the safest bet for national parks, that does not mean there has not been any dangers or threats to its protection in the last century. The threats to Yosemite National Park from the last 117 years and today could be explored in this section, or another new section called conservation timeline or unresolved/continuous issues. There is another subsection later on in the article that talks about management issues but this only discusses species management, specifically of the black bear and a few plant species. There are over 40 species that are endangered or specially protected somehow in Yosemite National Park (NPS 2017) and multiple have gone extinct. This deserves more attention in the article, either by expansion of the management issues subsection or by adding a new subsection entitled species conservation. I am thinking that an entire section titled conservation should be created with multiple subsections under it like land conservation, species conservation, and environmental legislation to fully explore the environmental threats that the park has faced and what has been done to mitigate them. It would be easier to have a section for all conservation and preservation issues instead of reading about some information spread throughout the entire article. The article discusses some climate change effects, or human caused impacts, like the increase in ozone pollution but fails to address other environmental issues and potential externalities in the park like increased human traffic, other types of pollution, logging, etc. Important factors that have shaped the social, environmental, physical, and legislative character of the park should be emphasized or added upon like the use and impacts of fires under the wildfire section which is very short. The recreational information can also be expanded upon especially the hiking subsection which is what the majority of visitors partake in. Lastly and most notably, this article fails to properly address the significance of the Ahwahneechee miwork indigenous population. It mentions their historical presence in the history section and how they were driven from the lands and “possibly annihilated” but does not include other sensitive but important information regarding the true history of the park’s history. Mostly this subsection of ‘Ahwahneechee and the Mariposa War’ needs to be expanded, edited, further cited, and have a deeper level of understanding to the ‘darker’ history of the park’s formation and historical colonial, racist motives.

Sources and references: Most claims and facts are referenced throughout the article but there is still a significant amount of sentences that lack citations or have possible unreliable sources. This is indicated by the sentences ending with a note above stating the status of the source if there is a concern. Most of the sources that are missing or of concern are regarding more controversial information, especially about the Ahwahneechee people and conservation efforts. There is only one source that is used to directly discuss the Ahwahneechee indigenous population, the rest of the sources used in that subsection are for general historical or geographical facts about the Mariposa War and ‘Indians’. The academic sources used in this section are a little outdated, from 2002 or earlier so it could be possible to find new articles and books. Other sources used are more up to date like websites and government databases. To my knowledge and a brief search of some of the authors of sources used to discuss the Ahwahneechee and Mariposa War, none of them are authored by the Ahwahneechee or any marginalized indigenous population besides the website of the Ahwahneechee tribe. There is not a diverse spectrum of authors used to cite this historical information and the history of the park in general, most are white males. After some brief searches too, many authors are not well accredited or recognized in their fields, with little to no professional participation, one of the authors was a ‘freelance editor’. The use of more peer reviewed articles and books from more accomplished authors or scholars would be beneficial to this article. All of the links that I tested did work, including the in text citations and citation/reference list.

Organization and writing quality: To my knowledge and evaluation, the article is well written with no grammatical or spelling errors. When mentioning Indigneous Peoples, or either word to refer to the Ahwahneechee or Native Americans, they both should be capitalized out of respect to them. ‘Native Americans’ is capitalized in the article and so should Indigneous be. The sections run smoothly and follow a decent flow making it easy to read. Despite being separated into sections and subsections, some of them can have better introductory or concluding sentences to better the flow. The division of topics into sections and subsections is appropriate and quite well done to reflect the major topics of Yosemite National Park. There are some sections that are potentially missing or could be expanded to discuss more important topics further like the Ahwahneechee history and their significance and the general conservation history and efforts to make reading and learning of it easier.

Images and media: The article does include many appealing photos and most enhance the learning and reading experience but more can be added, while some can be replaced or removed. There are no photos of the Ahwahneechee people/tribe, only one of a Paiute ceremony, so one needs to be added. The Mariposa Battalion, although being responsible for a terrible action in the near genocide of the Ahwahneechee, should be photographed as well, being a signficant character in the park’s history. More or better photos of the natural environment and recreation activities could be included to make the article more appealing and informative overall. Most picture captions are satisfactory, a simple sentence is used to name the subject in the photo and sometimes its location, could use further connection to the text. The images themselves are evenly spaced and do not disrupt the articles arrangement, but after more evaluation they can possibly be arranged or edited to be better fitting. All of the images are properly used and adhere to Wikipedia’s copyright regulations, most have more leniency in their use and adaptation.

This article is a former featured article from 2007 and is currently listed as a level-4 vital article and has been rated as B class. The level-4 indicates the quality of the article, so this is quite high in quality, the highest level being 5. The B class rating means that the article is mostly complete and still requires some further work to reach ‘good article standards’. This speaks to the smaller missing components of the article, even if they may be significant in the opinion of some groups like the Ahwahneechee. Most of the information is present with no inaccuracies but more detail, facts, and sources can be included. Knowing it was a featured article at one point and a higher rating means that it has had some editing that lessened the quality of the article somehow. This article is part of several WikiProjects like American history, the Old West, and Climbing. The last discussion in the Talk page is from September 2021, and there are 12 main topics that have been discussed. This article is discussed objectively but from a more traditional perspective of informative history, as opposed to how we discussed it in class when talking about the Ahwahneechee population and their presence in Yosemite National Park. We spoke of them with higher emphasis and respect, including smaller and more controversial ideas and details. Of course some of that discussion cannot be used in the article because it may be biased or emotionally charged, but the facts presented by the book chapter we read can be utilized.

Overall impressions: The status of the article in regards to Wikipedia’s evaluation is mentioned above, in my opinion, the ranking and rating is well suited, the Yosemite National Park article is mostly complete and almost if not entirely accurate. The strengths of the article are the organization of its ideas, the inclusion of every notable topic, and the historical context applied to every section. This article can be improved by the addition of credible sources and expansion of certain subsections and possible creation of an entirely new section about conservation, as discussed previously. The use of and lack of certain photos can be reevaluated. I would say the article is well developed but missing some smaller, yet important details and facts, especially about the Ahwahneechee significance and conservation efforts/impacts of past and present.