User:Dorinapellumbi/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: (link)

Bachelor of Arts: (Bachelor of Arts)


 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate.

I am currently in the Bachelor of Arts program, majoring in English. I was just curious to see what I would be able to read up on the subject. There is a lot of history in this article which makes it really interesting, there was no set reason why I chose it, but I just wanted more knowledge on what the Bachelor of Arts entailed.

Lead
A Bachelor of Arts (BA or AB; from the Latin 'baccalaureus artium' or 'artium baccalaureus') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, sciences, or both. Bachelor of Arts programs generally take three to four years depending on the country, institution, and specific specializations, majors, or minors. The word 'baccalaureus' (from the Latin 'bacca', a berry, and 'laureus', "of the bay laurel") should not be confused with 'baccalaureatus' (translatable as "gold-plated scepter" by using the Latina 'bacum' and 'aureatus'), which refers to the one- to two-year postgraduate Bachelor of Arts with Honors degree ('Baccalaureatus in Artibus Cum Honore') in some countries.

Diplomas generally give the name of the institution, signatures of officials of the institution (generally the president or rector of the university as well as the secretary or dean of the component college), type of degree conferred, conferring authority, and location at which the degree is conferred. Diplomas generally are printed on high-quality paper or parchment; individual institutions set the preferred abbreviation for their degrees.


 * Guiding questions


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?

Lead evaluation
This seems to have a strong lead, it is very factual and includes an introductory sentence that describes the articles topic. The lead doesn't give one too much on what to expect in upcoming paragraphs, the paragraph gives a brief overview on major sections but doesn't give one much to expect in the following. This article stays on topic and makes sure not to include information in the lead paragraph that is not present in the article. This lead is a tad overly detailed but still concise in what the authors want to say about the topic. Instead of keeping the lead short and sweet they added information they felt one needed to know.

Content
Diplomas generally give the name of the institution, signatures of officials of the institution (generally the president or rector of the university as well as the secretary or dean of the component college), type of degree conferred, conferring authority, and location at which the degree is conferred. Diplomas generally are printed on high-quality paper or parchment; individual institutions set the preferred abbreviation for their degrees.


 * The Bachelor of Arts is usually attained in four years in Ghana, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Armenia, Kenya, Brunei, Canada, Greece, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Latvia, Nigeria, Serbia, Spain, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Russia, Ireland, South Korea, Iraq, Kuwait, Turkey, Hong Kong, the United States, and most of the Americas.
 * Degree attainment generally takes three years in nearly all of the European Union and Albania, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, India, Israel, New Zealand, Iceland, Norway, Singapore, the Caribbean, South Africa, Switzerland, and the Canadian province of Quebec. In Pakistan, the Bachelor of Arts can also be attained within two years as an external degree


 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * Is the content up-to-date?
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?

Content evaluation
There is plenty of content that is relevant to the topic and informs one on the different ways each country or place has set up its guidelines to achieve a Bachelor of Arts. The content is somewhat up to date, though most sources fall back to be unreliable, one can assume that things have not changed in how one obtains their degree in said places due to colleges having certain time lines and frames for degrees, most wouldn't go back and change the system. A lot of content here feels as though it is just there to be there, but maybe the author could have done a series on this topic because said author has included way more than actually discussed in the piece in further detail. Just interesting that the author only picked a couple out of the many places mentioned above.

Tone and Balance
In colleges and universities in Australia, New Zealand, Nepal, and South Africa, the BA degree can be taken over three years of full-time study. Students must pursue at least one major area of study, and units from that subject are usually studied in each year, though sometimes students may choose to complete upper-level classes in the same year and as a result, can leave space for elective subjects from a different field. At some universities students may choose to pursue a second major; alternatively, the remainder of the degree is taken up with a minor area of study (in the first two years) and other individual or stream-based subjects make up the degree.

Unlike in other countries, students do not receive an overall grade for their Bachelor of Arts degree with varying levels of honours ("honours" is a distinction but not part of the degree itself). Qualified students may be admitted, after they have achieved their (general) Bachelor's program with a high overall grade point average, to a further one year Bachelor (with) Honours degree program ((with) Honours is part of the degree itself). Thus, to achieve a Bachelor (with) Honours degree (abbr. e.g. BA (Hons.) or BA hons.), an extra "postgraduate" year and a high research honour's thesis must be completed; see Honours Degrees. A student who holds a (with) Honours degree is eligible for direct entry to either a Doctorate (Ph.D.) or a very high research master's degree program.


 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article neutral?
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?

Tone and balance evaluation
The article is neutral and covers multiple different places and the way people can obtain their degree in said places. There are no claims that seem to appear heavily biased toward a particular position. There is a lot of overrepresentation on certain countries and the way they obtain their Bachelor of Art degree, it lacks focus on explaining how degrees are obtained in the other countries mentioned in the piece. If the author wanted to explain how certain countries obtained them, they should not have included every country possible and brought the focus down to a couple main ones and left it at that. The author goes in depth only on certain places and that is fine but the author should have limited to just that. On the other hand, the article is in no way trying to attempt to persuade the reader to favor on position away from the other. This article is purely a definition of what it means to have your Bachelor of Arts and how it is obtained in different places.

Sources and References
"Degree Abbreviations". Harvard University

FAST-US-5 United States Education Reference File".

"Bachelor of Arts degrees". Australian National University. Archived from the original on 2010-04-01.


 * Guiding questions
 * Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
 * Are the sources current?
 * Check a few links. Do they work?

Sources and references evaluation
As I was going through the links of sources, a lot of pages were not found or no longer available. When I was copying and pasting the links into this assignment, a lot of them won't show up as real links, and those are the ones that won't open. So no, I don't believe all facts in the article are backed up by reliable sources. The sources that did open up though, are very thorough and detailed and follow what the article is trying to get at, they reflect the available literature on the topic.

Organization

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?

Organization evaluation
The article is not very well-written, but it is concise, clear and easy to read. There were no grammatical errors nor spelling errors that I took notice in. The only one that came up was the different spelling of "honor," in the article it was spelled "honour" but that is also a way to spell it, it just shows up as a spelling error because in English language we don't spell it with a 'u.' The article is formatted with an introductory, middle, but no conclusion paragraph. The piece doesn't end it just stops when it's done. It is not organized very well and it feels like there is too much information the author wants to cover but they do not get to it all. It is thorough but the author could have kept focus to only a few countries rather than jumbling everything together.

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
 * Are images well-captioned?
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way?

Images and media evaluation
There was no media for this article provided in the piece.

Checking the talk page
Talk:Bachelor of Arts


 * Guiding questions


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?

Talk page evaluation
There was a lot of discussion on the talk page, behind the scenes, most everyone had some sort of complaint with the article bringing in too much information and not elaborating on it. Some were upset that the United States was not mentioned through out the whole article and others had a problem with content and why a lot of it felt misinformed etc. I am not sure where the rating for the article is but I would say poorly just based on the talk page alone. This article is not a part of wiki projects.

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions


 * What is the article's overall status?
 * What are the article's strengths?
 * How can the article be improved?
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?

Overall evaluation
This articles overall status is that in needs work, lots of it. The article distributes some strengths, those being that what the author does cover seems correct. The improvements that need to be made outweigh the strengths. It is kind of disorganized and talks about more than it covers. It is a very undeveloped article that should lean its focus towards what is brought up in the introductory paragraphs, the author shouldn't mention anything he is not going to cover later on because it is just a bunch of not useful information.

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

with four tildes — ~

The question I asked was linked to the sources and why they were not up to date with the information being provided, as well as why links are not found when one attempts to view the references.


 * Link to feedback: Talk:Bachelor of Arts