User:Ellie.simon/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Slavery in ancient Greece

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 to evaluate this article because it was a C rated article, meaning it had a reasonable amount of room for improvement. I know that I have an ample amount of sources that I can consult to add citations to this article to enhance its reliability. This article matters because Ancient Greece influences how we view ourselves as a democratic society, as well as provides an ancient form of slavery to compare more modern forms to. My preliminary impression of it, at first glance at least, was that it was well organized and an extensive compiling of research had gone into it, but overall there was a dearth of sources and citations.

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

 * Lead section seemed a bit disjointed.
 * the information was relevant to slavery in ancient greece, but some of it seemed like it was not important enough to be in the lead.
 * the introductory sentence could be improved and more of a broad overview of slavery in ancient greece.
 * the lead does not include a brief description of the article's main sections.
 * the lead contains some info that is not present in the article.
 * the lead could be more concise.

Content

 * Most of the content is relevant to the topic, while some of it seems a bit tangential.
 * The content is up to date.
 * There is some content that the article could do without, however, there are not big chunks of information that need to be deleted.
 * Information on debt bondage, women and children, and social death could be added.
 * The article deals with slaves in ancient greece, which are a historically under/misrepresented group, meaning the article does deal with one of wikipedia's equity gaps.

Tone and Balance

 * The article seems mostly neutral.
 * There are not claims that seem swayed towards one position or another.
 * There could be more information on viewpoints of slavery in different areas of Greece. For example, there are subsections titled "slavery in gortyn", "spartan slaves" and "athenian slaves", so either there needs to be a more general view of all of greece or there needs to be added information for other geographical areas.
 * the minority viewpoint in this case would be that of the slave, and it is described as best as it can be, given how hard it is to study this archaeologically.
 * the article does not seem like its attempting to sway the reader one way or the other.

Organization and writing quality

 * The article is fairly well written. However, it could benefit from a lot more concision and clarity, and it could be more intentional with word choice.
 * I have not detected any grammar or spelling errors.
 * The article's biggest flaw is poor organization and flow. I need to do a lot of work in this department so that the main points of the topic can become clearer to the general audience.

Images and media

 * The article's images are great for the most part, except there is one that does not seem directly relevant.
 * The images are well captioned
 * the images adhere to wikipedia's copyright regulations
 * The images could be laid out better in my opinion. I think they could be organized more effectively: put the directly relevant images in the sections they belong in, if possible.
 * I would probably add more images if possible.

Talk page discussion

 * There is a conversation about the picture of a Black slave in the slave conditions section, one about slaves in Plato's republic, and another about the review of a featured article.
 * the article is rated with a C, and it is part of the following wikiprojects: wikiproject greece, wikiproject classical greece and rome, wikiproject politics, wikiproject sociology, wikiproject discrimination, wikiproject human rights
 * the talk page more focuses on nitpicky things, rather than bigger theoretical things like we discuss in class

Overall impressions

 * Overall status: the article is rated with a C, meaning it's highly important. However, there is a lot of room for improvement
 * Article strengths: overall, I think the article remains neutral and scholarly in tone and diction. I think there is a wealth of information that seems accurate.
 * Article weaknesses: lack of sources and citations, poor organization and flow, lacking in clarity and concision in lots of places.
 * How complete/well-developed is this article: I believe this article is still in its infancy in terms of development. I would like to contribute to the furthering of its development by adding citations, adding content, and reorganizing some things.