User:EmWriter20/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Olifant (instrument)

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
My partner and I are working on this article for the long term project in out Art History class.

Evaluate the article
Firstly, the lead section of this article is not very informative nor an overview. Yes, the first sentence does very clearly provide a description of what the olifant is, but after that it goes into talking about the most famous olifant. This could be useful information to include in a separate section of the article, but because there is no section, it should not go in the lead. It might be worthwhile, for one, to edit this article by creating a seperate section to discuss some of the most famous olifants instead of including that in the lead section. Adding onto that, the lead has no brief description/introduction of the sections on where the olifant is present in fiction or on Salernitan olifants.

The content is relevant to the topic, but seems very very scattered. There is little to no mention of how the olifant was created, the carving process, or the history of it, especially as it relates to Africa. The article is largely focused on a few specific famous olifants instead of just the instrument and its history itself. Adding onto that, the "depictions in fiction" section is interesting, but seems kind of thrown in without actual context for the history of the object itself. A small thing, but there is also no mention that olifant is equal to oliphant (I've even seen olivant). That seems important to include given that it could confuse someone who is searching for further information. However, there do not seem to be many biased viewpoints in the article, which is a positive of it.

Like I said previously, the writing does seem a bit scattered and all over the place. There is little significance given to the object's history - I find myself wondering many things while reading. How many olifants still exist? What is the significance of the carving? Where were they produced? Who used them? It does not feel like an encyclopedia article and instead rather feels like a random series of notes.

The sources for this article are not very good and are often missing when they should be present. For instance, the article tells us that one of the most famous olifants belonged to the legendary Frankish Knight Roland. But where is the source for this? Any research seems sparse and to be focusing on what the writer wants to talk about instead of what they should be talking about. In addition, the representations in fiction section has no sources. Who says the Horn of Gondor was based on an olifant? What is the significance of that? It seems largely unresearched.

The images are good, but could definitely be better. It would be interesting to have a description of what the carvings more often were instead of the images of Roland at the very top. There should definitely be more images of the olifant itself as that is the main focus of the page.

The article is currently unrated and the talk page is nonexistent. I think that's definitely something that could contribute to the lingering quality of the article, as its very easy even upon a single read to see the issues that are present with it. We have not discussed this topic yet in class but I think that even a simple discussion in a class would yield more relevant information than this article.

I think that the article's strengths are the first couple of sentences and the fact that there is great room for improvement. There are endless things that could be improved on in this article - from the sources, the structure, the pictures, the content. It would definitely be improved by adding sourcing as well as more sections about the object in general and its history, instead of simply a discussion about the olifant in general. I would say that in general, this article is not only underdeveloped, but poorly developed as well.