User:Coffee2002/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Reform Judaism

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to evaluate this article because I practice Reform Judaism and was curious to see how it would be portrayed from a neutral perspective. Also, I wanted to understand more about the Reform perspective of Israel and Zionism. It is important for any religious denomination to be accurately explained historically and through current events. My first impression of the article was that it was very well researched and detailed in many aspects of the religion in terms of history and practice.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

This provides a very good overview of the upcoming sections of the article in a concise manner. However, the first sentence is not very concise and is including too much information. The rest of the lead section provides an overview of upcoming sections with no irrelevant information.

Content

Overall, the content of this article is strong. However, the "Definitions" section is a little confusing. It is somewhat of a continuation of the lead section due to the lack of citations in the middle and end of the section. In the theology section as well, there are a few places where citations are needed that have been flagged already. This article would benefit from further research to support these ideas. From a historical perspective, this article is strong. One aspect to add is more current data to demographics and practice beyond 2010.

Tone and Balance

The tone is very neutral throughout the article, with information presented from different viewpoints. There is no section that is written in a way to persuade readers towards or against Reform Judaism, rather just information about the religion.

Sources and References

The sources that are cited are all peer-reviewed and reliable sources. Furthermore, all of the links I checked worked. Most sources are coming from Jewish academics, so it would be interesting to see if there are any other perspectives to incorporate. Also, there are some paragraphs throughout that are lacking citations.

Organization and Writing Quality

The article is well written, however it is not the easiest read due to the density of the information. There are a lot of other articles linked throughout, which can be helpful to understand, but there are a lot of terms involved. The organization is broken down well in major sections and subheadings throughout that are well structured.

Images and Media

The images all abide by Wikipedia regulations and are well captioned. Some of them are relevant by providing images of important figures of the Reform movement, however I think the image in the section "The New Reform Judaism" adds nothing and looks like a personal photograph.

Talk Page Discussion

The talk page has a long discussion about the terminology, which explains the definitions section of the article. It is clear that editors do not have one definition of Reform Judaism, and are working to understand how many aspects fit into it.

Overall Impressions

Overall, this is a well written article. One improvement would be to add more information about current demographics and update some paragraphs needing citations. The historical research is very strong.