User:Emilygeorge06/Evaluate an Article

Article Evaluation - Animal Suicide

 * Name of article: Animal suicide
 * I chose to evaluate this article because suicide is a behaviour that I did not realize was expressed in animals and I would like to learn more about the context behind the situations that could lead an animal to engage in suicidal behaviour. I am also interested to know how this behaviour would impact the other animals around them.

Lead
The introductory sentence of the lead provides a succinct description of the topic discussed in the article. The lead also touches briefly on the main sections of the article itself - suicidal behaviour, self-destruction and parasitism - while also providing a few examples. However, there is one section towards the end of the article that is not included in the introductory lead: the section titled Misconceptions. Though this section is somewhat about suicide, very briefly stating that a lemming will commit mass suicide during reproduction, it mainly references the popularization of this misconception in the media throughout history and is not included in the article's lead. Overall, the lead itself is quite concise - consisting of only 6 lines in total - and provides a general summary of the topics discussed in the article without going into too much detail.

Content
After reading through the article, most of the information presented is relevant to the topic of suicide. The sources given are, for the most part, relatively recent within the last ten to twenty years, however, there are some sources cited that are a bit dated - ranging from 1971 to 1987 - with one source dating so far back as 1897. Perhaps it would be beneficial for these sources to be reviewed to ensure that the information being presented is as relevant and up-to-date as possible. With regards to the article including information that does not belong, I would have to argue that the section titled Misconceptions towards the end of the article should be considered for removal. I mentioned briefly above in my evaluation on the lead that this section does not really discuss the topic of suicide, but rather mentions how this misconception of suicide in lemmings was popularized in the media throughout the years. This short section does not include a lot of information that strengthens the content of the article, and it also does not explain or go into detail of what they mean by mass suicide or how and why it would happen. While reading the article, the section titled Misconceptions was one of the only areas that really stood out and distracted me. Overall, most of the content included in the article is relevant to the topic of animal suicide and there are some strong examples to support that. The only other improvement that could be applied to this article apart from revising outdated sources and removing irrelevant information would be to simply include more research - most of the sections are short, so I think the more information that can be included on the topic the stronger the article will be.

Tone and Balance
In general, the tone of the article is seemingly neutral, however, there are some instances where the concept of animal suicide is called into question. In the opening section titled Suicidal Behaviour, it is mentioned that some dogs and ducks had "allegedly" drowned themselves, but there was no information provided to support those cases. Throughout the section it is repeatedly stated that some behaviours may not be considered suicide and that the accuracy of actual suicide in animals is hard to distinguish - these claims had confused me, as I was supposedly reading an article on suicide in animals, but was often left questioning the act of animal suicide itself.

Sources and References
For most of the article, there are reliable and scholarly sources referenced to support the presented information. The only issue that I had noted in terms of cited sources was that there were at least five sources that were included from general websites and magazine articles. These sources were from sites such as Discovery News, Slate , Daily Mail and Snopes. In addition to those articles, there was a source cited as well from a magazine titled New Scientist, however, when I clicked on the link in the reference list to bring up the information, I was informed that the page was no longer active. As mentioned above in my content evaluation, most of the referenced sources in the article are fairly current (published within the last ten to twenty years) but there were some that were slightly outdated - ranging from the year 1971 to 1987. I will again emphasize the importance of having these dated and unreliable articles reviewed so that the information of the article can be strengthened and improved upon.

Organization
Overall, I think the article is fairly well-written. It is divided into three main sections - suicidal behaviour, self-destruction and parasitism - which makes it easy for the reader to understand and find what they are looking for. Despite some of the sections being somewhat short in terms of content, they still provide a general amount of information so that the main concept of the article is understood. I appreciate as well how some of the concepts and animals mentioned are linked to a definition that further describes them (for example the term autothysis and the insect known as a pea aphid) - this really helped me to understand and picture what was being discussed in that section. In terms of grammatical and spelling errors, I only noticed one minor issue: in the third paragraph of the section on Suicidal Behaviour, the second sentence starts off saying "In one of the alleged case" when instead in should say "In one of the alleged cases" - changing the last word to its plural form. Apart from that, it was relatively well done.

Images and Media
One of the main issues that I had with this article was that it did not include any images at all. I am not necessarily stating that there should be photographs included of animals exhibiting suicidal behaviour, but I think that the article could be improved upon if there were even some images included in the section on parasitism. I feel that it would be beneficial to readers if they could at least see the various types of parasites that were being discussed in the article. Even in the section on self-destruction, an image of the secreted substance in termites during the process of autothysis would be beneficial to readers so that they could actually see what that process looks like.

Checking the talk page
The talk page of the article mainly focused on the concerns some editors were having with the content of the article. One of the first conversations mentioned how there were numerous mistakes in terms of grammar and language use, however those issues seem to have been resolved. Another issue that was brought up in the talk page was similar to what I had mentioned with regards to the tone and balance of the article. A few of the users had felt that the references to animal suicide being unreliable and not necessarily plausible were problematic with regards to the topic of the article. One user even gave the example that was mentioned of a deer jumping from a cliff to avoid being attacked - the article states it as an example of suicide, however that view was debated in the talk page as simply being an attempt at survival and escape. The article is categorized as a C-class article of mid to high importance, and is featured in the WikiProjects for Animals, Biology , Death and Suicide.

Overall impressions
Overall, I think this article provides a good starting point on the general concept of suicide in animals. It is relatively well-written, clear and organized in its descriptions, which makes it easy to follow along and understand as a reader. As mentioned above, some of the main improvements that should be considered in order to strengthen the article would be to include more research into each section, update and review the older and unreliable sources and to include some images on the parasites or other animals / processes in question. To conclude, I do not think this article is poorly developed, however, there is still some work that can be done to improve its content.