User:DVSnell/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)

Takizawa Bakin

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

It was the only option for 17th century Japanese Novelists. It is very short, but seems to be a good starting point for something bigger.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Lead Section:

On good notes, the lead is concise and clearly describes the article. Unfortunately, it contains information that isn't touched on the article. It mentions his extensive works, but no bibliography is listed. It also contains subjective opinions about said works. Lastly...

Content:

... the content focuses on the author's life, but none of his personal history is mentioned in the Lead Section. The minutiae here is a bit distracting. Why do we care about the haiku he wrote when he left his position? We see his brothers are listed as being "pivotal" to his life, but we barely touch on how one brother was important and completely omit the other. Ideally the sole section "Life" should be split into his personal life and his works.

Tone and Balance:

Overall, the balance is fine, but lacking in actual content. It needs to be meatier.

Sources and References:

The references are varied, but they're from archived newspapers and a museum about Bakin's artistic collaborator. You'd think a person responsible for so many "masterpieces" would have more current scholarship around them. The fact the majority of sources are in Japanese also implies that the language barrier isn't an excuse for the lack better references.

Organization and Writing Quality:

I think the organization is mostly fine, apart from my comments in the content section. Giving him a single infobox with consolidated information would help clear out some of the noise in the content. The writing quality is a bit mixed. A minority of sentences don't make sense and reek of Google Translate Copy Paste.

Images and Media:

Images are "Ok" but some artistic pages from his works might make more sense than a shot of his well.

Talk Page Discussion:

No activity since 2012 and it was a question no one answered. Not a good sign. There didn't seem to be any conflicts, though. It is listed in the Japan Wikiproject but at Start and very low priority and a stub.

Overall Impressions:As stub implies, it's a good starting point, but it lacks focus and applicable content. It can use a lot of fleshing out.