User:ECM0815/Evaluate an Article

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I'm a creative writing major who's always been fascinated with anti-censorship efforts, and with book bans substantially increasing across the US in the past few years, it felt like an even more relevant issue than it was when I first realized I wanted to be an author. I've seen the Orange Public Library celebrate Banned Books week every year since I've gone to Chapman (the last full week of September), but I didn't know anything about the origins of it.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The lead section has a very concise introduction sentence and details what is to be discussed in the article in a shortened, accessible way. It contains information relevant to each section and no excessive detail, but there is one thing mentioned that isn't mentioned again in the article (the First Amendment Film Festival) and it would probably be beneficial to provide more information on that instead of leaving it as an unelaborated example.

Content

Information provided in the article is as recent as 2022, so it doesn't feel entirely outdated. Nothing feels completely irrelevant and I wouldn't say anything is missing, but the sections for Banned Books Week's history, US events, and international events are all significantly shorter than the section for reception and criticism, which does contain excessive quotations (including two instances of block quotes).

Tone and Balance

The article does appear to be neutral, as multiple viewpoints are presented without heavily leaning into any of them. However, like the "talk page discussion" section says, some readers have expressed concern over how much attention is given to the opinion of Focus on the Family. FOTF isn't noted as minority or fringe, either, when it could have been.

Sources and References

The article includes 41 sources, so it's safe to say they didn't rely entirely on one or only a few pieces. They range from American Library Association publications to opinion pieces from conservative extremist group Focus on the Family, so there's certainly a wide spectrum of viewpoints. Sources that fall into "random website" territory are usually opinions that can be useful for the article to show how Banned Books Week is percieved. While some older sources are only linked through WayBackMachine, all the links appear to work. There are only a few sources from the past few years, however, but the article didn't feel outdated.

Organization and Writing Quality

I didn't notice any grammar or spelling errors, so the article has clearly been proofread. It's organized into sections, and it's concise for the most part (the "reception and criticism" section is much longer than the others).

Images and Media

Only two images are included in the article-- one the official Banned Books Week logo in the introduction and one an image of a Banned Books Week "read out", or an open-mic style event where parts of banned/challenged books are read aloud, in the "United States event" section. The logo, which is owned by the American Library Association, qualifies as "non-free media" by Wikipedia's standards and has been determined as "fair use" because it's the only correct logo that could represent the organization. The image of the read-out is the original work of the user who uploaded it, and Wikipedia provides a disclaimer about how this user has rights to it. Both images do enhance the topic and are visually appealing, but only the read-out image is captioned, and a slightly longer explanation (detailing the book being read) is only available in the media-viewer window. A caption on the logo explaining that it's the official ALA logo could be helpful.

Talk page discussion

The first topic brought up on the talk page is a concern over how too much attention is given to certain fringe groups' backlash against Banned Book Week and the ALA. Several users claim dedicating an entire paragraph to a "manufactured controversy" is unnecessary and that the passage can easily be shortened. They also point out that the source used for this section is a Fox News article, which aren't exactly known for being reliable. This topic was posted in 2010, and in 2022, another user posted a message about how they tagged the article for excessive quotations and lack of paraphrasing.

Overall impressions

The article is well-written for the most part, but it could be improved by making the "reception and criticism" section more concise (fewer quotes and similar length to the other sections). It could also provide more sources from the past year or past few years-- a few were included and the article didn't feel out of date, but it could be at risk of being out-of-date just a few years from now.