User:Curranan/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Gestapo

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I have chosen to evaluate the Wikipedia article on the Gestapo because it is relevant to our discussions of the Gestapo in class.

Content
The content of the article is relevant and does not go off on personal tangents. The article used the work of Robert Gellately very heavily which, by today's standards, is somewhat out of date. Perhaps leaning more on Eric Johnson, a writer who shares a lot of opinions with Gellately, would be more apt, as his work is newer. Notably, for this class, the work of Claire Hall is missing, possibly because her arguments do not align with this article. This article does deal with Wikipedia's equity gaps as it directly addresses a topic related to an underrepresented group (the Jewish people.)

Tone and Balance
This article is not neutral it leans heavily on the consent side of the argument in the coercion vs consent debate. In the first sentence of the section, the author cites a quote about how little impact the Gestapo actually had, ignoring the several authors that argue differently. Minority viewpoints are not really mentioned at all, the work of Vandana Joshi is notably missing. This article definitely tries to sway the reader towards the consent side of the coercion vs consent argument.

Sources and References
The sources used in the article are accurate and reliable if quite biased. The article would benefit from having more sources as 12 of the 26 total footnotes are consumed by Robert Gellately alone. Some of the sources are recent enough but the overreliance on a 30-year-old paper by Robert Gellately is concerning. The article is missing work from women and people of color, most of the authors cited are elderly white men. Some of the sources are peer-reviewed, but several are not, which hurts the overall credibility of the article. Several of the links are nonfunctional, which hurts this article as these links are supposed to lead to authors that prove that the Gestapo was not an all-seeing organization.

Organization and Writing Quality
Writing is a notable high-point for this article. The article is fairly concise and free of spelling or grammatical errors. However, the paragraphs within are not labeled, making it difficult to find a specific piece of information.

Overall Impressions
Overall, I would give this article a C+. The article uses some peer-reviewed sources. The article could be vastly improved with the addition of several more authors of varying backgrounds, ages, ethnic groups, genders, etc. The article is underdeveloped, addressing only half of the argument on coercion vs consent.

Reflection
This training taught me why Wikipedia articles are not as trustworthy as they seem to be. Many arguments I have had with people have ended with a simple Wikipedia search and now I am second-guessing whether that was the right way to end it. I learned to really pay attention to the footnotes, and how much the author might be leaning on one particular source. This assignment has made me wary of trusting Wikipedia for scholarly uses, for simple things like arguments with friends and family it's likely still alright. Before this training, I would have taken this article at face value and just assumed that because there were footnotes that it was correct.