User:Elaineamery/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)

Male prostitution

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 it seemed like a very interesting topic. As a much of this class explores, male prostitution has typically been a taboo topic that I feel is thrown into pop-culture as a gag or plot development but isn't a concept that is really explored especially academically. I was also interested in this article because there are many strong points and sections throughout the article, but I did find some errors in my evaluation.

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 does give a brief, but not too overly detailed, description of the topic. However, it does bring up information and topics not yet covered in the article. The lead section brings up monkeypox and Covid's impact on the practice but does not address either of them anywhere else on the page. The information presented is relevant to the topic and up to date for the most part. There are some content gaps though, one in particular was under "Sex Tourism" which had no new information, just a link to the Sex Tourism page. It does comply with Wikipedia's equity gap in presenting information from a historically underrepresented group. The page stays mostly neutral throughout, there are a few points throughout the article though that don't use as professional or academic language. An area I noticed this in was the second paragraph under Introduction to Prostitution, I can tell that the paragraph is summarizing the findings from a study but it seems almost like an opinion is being stated instead of research findings. There are sources throughout the article as well as links to other existing Wikipedia articles. There are more current sources, but some outdated ones as well. There are some older sources that serve to show certain concepts have been around, but other sources are plainly outdated. There is information being pulled and used in the article from a source published in 1993, almost three decades ago without more current sources to second this information or back it up. Across the board from newer and older sources though, the links I checked seem to be working. The information is fairly well written and organized. I did spot a few grammar errors throughout, I even found some in the lead section. The images selected help enhance the understanding of the topic, and are very well captioned. I think the very first one is very visually appealing and since it can be seen from the lead section, I think it lures the reader to continue learning about the topic. Overall, I think the article is fairly well developed. There are some outdated sources, grammar issues, and ill presented study findings that should be remedied. But overall the article has good subsections and many strong points.