User:Ed.osterberger/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Intercultural communication - Wikipedia

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.)

I chose this article because my journal group for class is the Journal of International & Intercultural Communication. Using this article for evaluation should me attain important background information before exploring my specific journal. Intercultural communication is important because understanding how different cultures communicate will help people learn about the culture and communicate with the culture more effectively. This is becoming more important as the pathways between foreign cultures and ones own are narrowing with technological advancements. My preliminary impression of the article is that it needs some work. Usually when looking at a Wikipedia article the text can be very overwhelming but in this case the article left me wondering what exactly they were trying to define intercultural communication as.

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.)

The lead section is very concise and does an okay job representing the subject. It gives a definition that is pretty self explanatory but one that will provide a one sentence reader with an accurate definition of the subject. The next two sentences of the lead give a much too brief summary of the articles major sections. The lead section acts as a 3 sentence definition rather than a quick overview of the entire article. Its not until the description that we get a more in-depth overview of the material that will be covered. If we were to combine the description section with the definition section I believe we would have a much better lead section. By combining the sections we may have a slightly overdetailed lead that could use some revising. Besides these formatting issues I believe that the information is accurate and would only benefit from revision.

The content of the article is applicable for the most part. Intercultural communication is a fairly new idea that has a very broad definition. This means it is very difficult to determine exactly what points are more important than others. In terms of this article, it does a good job laying the foundation and explaining particular theories that coincide with intercultural communication. After these beginning sections the rest of the article contains information that is semi-related to the subject. Idea such as the history of assimilation and differentiating between verbal and nonverbal communication do not necessarily belong within this article as the focus should be directly on intercultural communication and those ideas directly impacting it. With a fairly new idea of intercultural communication as the subject, the article seems to be out dated. As our world becomes more and more connected through technology, ideas surrounding this subject are going to arise and so will the need to have a more modernized explanation of it. When dealing with a subject that has to include multiple cultures the article does a good job of representing people from all types of perspective. Although the articles content is applicable for the most part it could benefit from revisions as well as a modern approach that includes new ideas.

The tone throughout the article remains consistently neutral and does a good job staying unbiased while presenting claims on the topic. When dealing with a topic such as intercultural communication the word intercultural helps in representing all types of people and viewpoints. With this being said, rather than trying to stay neutral throughout a specific topic, this article must try to represent an idea that encompasses all types of cultures and people. With this lack of argumentative subjects, the article could try to make a better point of including all cultures but for the most part its self explanatory.

The citations in this article are very worrisome. From seeing an alert bar requesting additional citations at the top of the article to seeing lengthy paragraphs without any citations, the need for better citing is apparent. When sources are provided they are from scholarly publications such as SAGE and OCLC. These are both very reliable secondary sources of information and this is consistent throughout their sources. The problems start arising when we talk about thoroughness. The number of sources cited are way to scarce to represent these topics in detail. The quality of the sources is not in question as they do come from current, diverse, authors and publications. For this articles sake there is a need for more scholarly sources to confirm the already sufficient sources within the article. The sources are functioning and applicable but far too sparse to support the amount of information presented in this article.

Organization and writing quality could also use some work. The writing is free of grammatical errors but can get lengthy and hard to follow at times. For someone trying to learn about this topic a more concise writing style could benefit them. In general, the writing quality is sufficient for this article but could improve from a couple sentence restructurings. The organization of the main points in this article flow cohesively together but its within the main subjects where we see issues. Most of the ideas are portrayed through a bullet point organization that isn't as easily read as prose. To improve these we would need to accurately cite and provide commentary rather than listing important ideas in bullet point form.

Images and media are nonexistent in this article. The article would benefit from the addition of physical representations of the ideas we are being told about.

The talk page discussions largely reciprocate my own findings. Multiple people conclude that the information is accurate but the page itself is still in the works. The article is rated as C-class and involved in 3 Wikiprojects (culture, sociology, and translation studies). The article is also involved in 5 different Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignments.

Overall the article is still in the working stage. Its on the right track to be a well developed article but isn't quite there yet. The main strength of the article is the information that is actually written in prose. The article starts to fall off when we get into the depths of the site, we start to uncover some poorly developed sections. Ultimately, the article is nowhere near complete but does have a solid foundation to be built upon.