User:Djeetend/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Sunflower sea star - Wikipedia

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
chose this article because it was interesting to learn that sea-stars could grow that big and the fact that climate change and disease is causing these species to face extinction as their populations are declining at fast rates.

Evaluate the article
Lead section - the lead section looks like it has adequate information on sunflower sea stars, draws upon some information from the following sections without going in to too much detail.

Content - All the information and headings are related to the topic, while also being up to date - some information coming from as recent as 2021, while the content covering all the information on sunflower sea stars, their habitats, why they are endangered and also ways to prevent them from going extinct.

Tone and Balance - the article is from a neutral point - as the authors/editors look at different reasons to why the sunflower sea stars populations are declining. but seeing climate change as the main the reason for the decline could be a little biased. although some points about the increase in population in sea urchins are underrepresented - as the increase in those species have larger effects on the ecosystem as a whole and i think more could be elaborated on that.

Sources and references - the facts look like they are backed up by relevant sources, the sources also are connected to all the writing in the article. the sources seem to be from 2013-2022 so they are current. There are also plenty of different sources with different authors so not just a few of the same ones. there should be better sources compared to some of the ones provided as there is one that is a news article (3), some links do not work like (4,20) and also 13 being one with no full citation or link to the source.

organization and writing - the article is well written without any grammatical and spelling errors and contains a good structure with subheadings to all the important information.

images and media - i think more diverse images could be put into the article there are currently 3 of the sunflower sea star, 2 of the top side of it and one of under side of the sea star. Maybe some of the habitat where they live that includes what the feed on, where they live, and maybe even what wasting sea star disease looks like. 2 out of the 3 images are well captioned and one doesn't include a caption. But the images do adhere to Wikipedia copyright as they are linked properly.

talk page discussion - there was an interesting conversation in the talk page on whether sea star and star fish were the same thing and how sea stars didnt represent fish, hence the name of sea star vs the name star fish. The article is a level 5 vital article and is a part of wiki project vital articles and has been given a rating of C. I think it is similar to what we discussed in class, due to the nature of it being endangered and why it is endangered.

overall impressions - the overall status was marked as low importance, the article's strengths are that it lays out the sunflower sea star as an endangered species, the article gives relevant information on the topic, the articles is also well organized with all the information needed in each section. The article can be improved by trying to find out what other factors other than climate change add to the declining population of these sunflower sea stars, and ways in which this can potentially be prevented in its natural habitats. other than that and some errors in the sources the article is well developed with all the important information.