User:EKH1998/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Elizabeth David

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.)

The reason that I choose it is because this biography is on someone who was deeply influential to food writing in the mid-twentieth century. The person who I am going to try and write a biography in Wikipedia on is also someone who worked within the public sphere to spread her knowledge of food in the mid-twentieth century. She was even born in the same year as my potential subject. Therefore, I am using this article as inspiration, an example, and to gain some more knowledge on the subject.

The reason why this article matters is, as the Wikipedia article makes clear, Elizabeth David was incredibly prominent and influential in her field and even helped spread knowledge of Italian methods of cooking to the British population.

My preliminary impression of the article was that it was far longer a biography than I would be able to write on Margaret Carr due to less historians and other academics writing on Canadian food history, and those who were notable in that field, than British food history. My other first impressions was that the article was very thorough and had a vast bibliography.

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:

The first sentence is one that very concisely and clearly introduces the subject, why she is notable, and gives a brief, yet informative, insight into the rest of the article. While not overtly obvious, the lead section also gives an overview as to how the article will flow with its major sections. The lead section also does not include any information that is not present within the article itself. However, the lead section has moments where it could be more brief or provide more of a general overview, rather than finite details.

Content:

The article's content is incredibly relevant to the task of an overviewing biography of Elizabeth David. While looking at the bibliography and the date of her death, it also appears that the article is up-to-date. From the base research that I have done into Elizabeth David, it appears as though no major information is missing from the article and it does not look like there is any glaring components that are out of place. This article is focused on a woman. Therefore, this article does address one of Wikipedia's equity gaps. It also deals with food history, a topic of history that has had been historically underrepresented in the historiography.

Tone and Balance:

This bibliography does not appear to take any stance or have any claims that look like it is taking a strong stance on any particular position. To my knowledge, there does not appear to be any viewpoints that are overrepresented or underrepresented.

Sources and References:

From what I can tell, all of the facts in this article are backed up by a reliable source of information. They also seem very thorough, as they cover a wide variety of source types and, based on my quick research, provide a pretty good snapshot into the sources that Wikipedia would accept on this person. The sources are also written by a variety of people, including some women and people of color. From what I could tell, the sources used appear to be the best available. I also checked some of the links, and all of the ones that I tried were operational.

Organization and Writing Quality:

The writing is clear, concise, professional, and well organized with appropriate subsections and diction. It is also easy to read and does not have any grammar errors that I caught.

Images and Media:The article does include images, they do enhance the understanding of the topic, and concisely well-captioned, are laid out in an appealing way, and do not to my eyes egregiously violate any copyright violations.

Talk page discussion:Behind the scenes, people are tumultuously discussing word and phrase choice, notes on sources used, and having a general discussion on what could improve the page. The article is rated very highly as "one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community" and is part of the projects of biography, food and drink, women's history, and women writers. The 'talk page' is very informal and a bit rowdy in comparison to how I would conduct myself in class.

Overall Impressions:

The status of this article is quite high and has been identified by Wikipedia as such. Some of the strengths include the length, the variety of sources, and just how many people appear to have worked on this. I would say that this article is quite complete and well-developed.