User:Dramkis/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: (Umayyad Conquest of Hispania)
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate.
 * I chose to evaluate this article because it is the initial interaction of Islam with the Iberian Peninsula in a meaningful and tangible way. The portrayal of this phenomenon, therefore, is critical to understanding the history of Islam within Spain and Europe more broadly. This history is also useful in establishing the physical proximity in which the Dar al-Islam and Christendom interacted and defined themselves.

Lead

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
 * Yes, the first sentence does a surprisingly good job of covering the breadth of representation this topic might receive in historiography. However, I do notice some bias towards Islamic expansion with a few key phrases like "Muslim-ruled" and "Europe" when those monolithic terms for the early expansion period are too broad and anachronistic to be wholly useful.
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
 * It does, but I think the article suffers from a negative bias of Islam's presence in the Iberian Peninsula and its section headings like "Invasion" tacitly accomplish that bias.
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
 * No, the article goes on to expound sufficiently in the areas of fact that it details.
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?
 * It is very detailed oriented and ends rather abruptly, leaving a feeling that maybe not enough or just too little was said on the matter. And it doesn't inspire a true segue into the background section either. Rather, it just kind of reads as background information of a textbook than something that should resemble more of an abstract, in my opinion.

Content

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * Yes, the content is very relevant to the topic in question.
 * Is the content up-to-date?
 * It seems that there is very recent scholarship included, but not the most up-to-date versions possible; however, this topic is very interesting to a lot scholars and received a lot attention in recent years.
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?
 * Yes, source 17 is from a newspaper article, not a scholarly source. I should delete it and replace it with actual references for the numbers this article is using.

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article neutral?
 * I do not believe that the article is of a neutral tone. I believe that it exudes a negative bias of Islam because it portrays the Umayyad conquest of Spain as synonymous with the spread of Islam in the region and consequently, both come across as an invasion by conquering forces. Instead, conversion to Islam could be portrayed as a combined result of acculturation, pragmatism, and sincerity of belief due to the structural changes enacted by the Arab Muslim Umayyad elite. There are tensions and violent conflicts to be portrayed, undoubtedly, but they are not the whole story of Umayyad institutionalism and Islam's subsequent hold and flourishing in the region. For instance, the article leaves out the Arab Green Revolution of the 'high-period' of Umayyad 'glory' in al-Andalus under Abd al-Rahman III.
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * Yes, most of the citations are from one book by Collins, so it represents that view pretty heavily.
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * I think that militaristic conquests are overrepresented which is why I wanted to add sections on agricultural projects or Umayyad gardens and beautification in Spain; all these visual aspects have become part-and-parcel of the Spanish physicality and visuality, but were legacies of Umayyad Syrianization of the landscape.
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?
 * No, I think it does a good job of reproducing the encyclopedic colonialist bias that is inherent in this kind of endeavor. History has, was, and will continue to be subjective as long as we homo sapiens are the ones writing it down. There is no other fated reality than this subjective one.

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
 * Yes, it would seem so, but it is usually the same source. Also, there is one sourced set of numbers that is not from a usable source: a newspaper article.
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
 * They reflect a single scholar's articulation of the topic's relevance.
 * Are the sources current?
 * Decently relevant, as mentioned, but could use with a decade worth of updated material.
 * Check a few links. Do they work?
 * Yes, the links work that I checked.

Organization

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
 * It is definitely concise and full of information. It just has a terse and choppy tone.
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
 * Honestly, not too many flagrant errors that I could notice right off the bat.
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?
 * I think it is well-organized to present Collins argument, but I do not think it reflects a cogent or cohesive understanding of the entire phenomenon which deserves its own textbook.

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
 * Will not really be useful. Only an interactive map would be useful. There could be pictures of towns, but that might make the text harder to read by virtue of distracting and not really adding anything to the content.
 * Are images well-captioned?
 * The ones that are included are well-captioned.
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
 * To the best of my ability, I believe that they are indeed in accordance with regulation.
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way?
 * They are a little small, but I am not visually capable and I appreciate any color scheme that is not red-green, as these images are not, due to my colorblindness.

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * Suffice to say, I am not the only one with strong opinions on the nature of the kind of historiography this article represents. Many have felt the repressed vehemence with which I approach this article's representation of the topic in discussion here. There are people being censored for having engaged in edit wars on this and other pages.
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * It is linked to a C rated article, Islam in Spain, actually in the first line of that article, which is the original article I wanted to evaluate but decided that its scope was just too frustratingly large for my timeframe.
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?
 * There is so much colonialist bias in this article that we would not touch with a hazmat suit on while in class.

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions


 * What is the article's overall status?
 * "Umayyad conquest of Hispania has been listed as a level-5 vital article in History. If you can improve it, please do. This article has been rated as Start-Class."
 * What are the article's strengths?
 * The strengths are in its chronological layout and hyperbolic detail, if nothing else.
 * How can the article be improved?
 * By being rewritten entirely, only keeping the basic structure of chronology, but even changing the headings.
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?
 * It is severely underdeveloped, as Wikipedia has itself noted.

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

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