User:Ekg34/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Harry Potter

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 to evaluate because when discussing the genre of fantasy children's literature, the Harry Potter series is what first comes to mind as the most popular choice for my generation, meaning an informative Wikipedia article about the series is very important. This article matters because it should be an accurate representation of the series for future generations to understand the series' impact on the 2010s and on the future of not only children's literature, but all literature. My preliminary impression of the article was that it was extremely comprehensive, focusing more on the critique, controversies, and cultural influence over the actual books themselves. It did a good job on focusing on the impacts of the series on literature, along with its adaptations into movies, games, and productions.

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 first sentence is extremely concise, and gets straight to exactly what the topic and lead section is about. The lead successfully goes into brief detail about each of the sections of the article, including an extremely brief summary, introduction into the style and themes, publishing history, and impacts including films and awards. The lead sticks to this order, and does not include information that does not appear later in the article. The lead is very concise and provides the correct amount of information for the reader to know what they are about to read in each of the sections.

The article's content continuously stays relevant to the series, specifically the books, without straying from the topic. The article avoids going into too much detail about the movies, as it is meant to be essentially about the books and their impact instead of focusing too much on the films or Harry Potter franchise. The content is up to date, however it only very briefly mentions the newest Harry Potter book, "The Cursed Child", and only mentions it in the stage production section. This may have been on purpose as this article might be focusing on only the original seven books by JK Rowling, however I think the new book that builds off of this series is worth mentioning. This article does not deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps and does not directly address topics relating to historically underrepresented populations or topics, however there is an aspect in the Controversies section about the house elves being a depiction of race and slavery.

The article maintains a neutral tone throughout. There are no claims that appear to be heavily biased. There are viewpoints of both those for and against Harry Potter presented in an unbiased way. The minority viewpoints are presented in an unbiased way and given proper representation. The article does not attempt to persuade the reader in any direction.

All facts seem to be backed by a reliable secondary source of information and the sources seem thorough and current. The links I checked worked, and as mentioned in the Talk Page, failing links have been and are continuously being checked and removed.

The article is very clear and easy to understand. It notably makes sure to define Harry Potter language as needed so that someone who may have not read the series yet or has forgotten certain words can still get through it without trouble or having to look anything else up. I did not find any grammatical or spelling errors. The article is well-organized, making sure to explain the plot of the books first, then get into information such as themes, controversies, and the author's backstory, and finishing with the cultural impacts, awards, and references.

If there's one thing this article lacks, it's appropriate and relevant images. The images, while present, are mildly abstract to the books themselves, as they do not show the series cover art, only show one image of JK Rowling, and avoid images that are featured within the books themselves. The images are well captioned, but sometimes seem as though they do not fit within the paragraph they are featured in. For example, in the films section, instead of portraying anything from the films themselves, they chose to show a prop with very little relevance to the plot or the books themselves. The images themselves are mildly appealing to the eye, however in my opinion with this topic of fantasy and success the images should be more of a celebration of the series instead of the bland, sometimes colorless pictures that were chosen.

The Talk Page Discussion notably points out that the article is 2,500 words over the 10,000 word recommendation for Wikipedia articles, which they suggest be trimmed away from the plot section. I would agree that there is room to trim there, along with in the controversies section as there is some information that seems less relevant to the books and more about themes of magic and religion outside of the series. The article has been rated a level 4, vital article in the Art category.

The article's strength includes not focusing too much on a single book, and staying unbiased when discussing the series' success and cultural impacts. I think it can be improved through trimming down on certain sections that relate more to controversies, the films, and the awards, as they focus less on the series itself and can be mentioned in a different Wikipedia article that focuses on the movies or JK Rowling. I think this article is very well developed, however a bit too wordy and long for what is recommended.