User:Cole Rhoades/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Yucatan squirrel

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I'm evaluating the squirrel article because I like squirrels and I also noticed egregious examples of plagiarism and close paraphrasing.

Evaluate the article
Lead: Concise lead, consistent with the formatting of leads for other mammalia species.

Content: Seems somewhat up-to-date at a cursory glance, though I am not a squirrel expert so I can't be completely sure. It doesn't mention the possible future fragmentation of the environment for Yucatan squirrels.

Tone and Balance: Mostly neutral tone. The "Interactions with Humans" section significantly overstates the impact of humans on the Yucatan squirrel.

Sources and References: The taxonomical classifications are up-to-date, but sources about the biology and appearances of the squirrels are generally somewhat out-dated, most of them being at least 10 years old, several being from the early 1900s. VERY IMPORTANT : Information from sources is not properly cited. While sources are included and footnotes are used, the paraphrasing is inadequate and some sentences are practically lifted out of the source and dropped into the page unchanged.

Organization and Writing Quality: Clunky and hard to read at parts. The page is made worse by the close paraphrasing. "Their food consists of soft fruit, nuts and seeds, whilst Reid in 2009 concluded that their main diet consists of flowers, buds, and shoots." (Yucatan Squirrel, Biology) The phrasing here makes the sentence hard to read. According to the sources used, it would be more accurate to say "The diet of the Yucatan typically consists of soft fruits, nuts, and seeds. They are also known to consume flowers, buds, and shoots when those foods are absent."

Images and Media: Media is sourced correctly, but the captions are somewhat lackluster and the map of squirrel distribution is somewhat difficult to view due to the low contrast.

Talk Page Discussion: There are no discussions on the talk page. Disappointing.

Overall Impressions: On a first glance, the page looks fine, but it suffers from close paraphrasing, plagiarism, and clunky writing. The sources could use a dusting-off and could stand to benefit from more recent papers about Yucatan squirrels. On the bright side, the information presented on the page is generally accurate. The article is underdeveloped and needs a rewrite to fix its plagiarism issues and clunky writing.