User:Emilylavia/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Foundling Hospital, Dublin

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it discusses a specific hospital in the 18th century which is in line with our class's time frame. It briefly discusses the presence of Christian nurses in the hospital, which pertains to our focus on women in the historic medical field (assuming nurses were women at this point in time).

Lead Section
The lead includes a very short introductory sentence that states what exactly the Foundling Hospital of Dublin was. It does not have any brief descriptions pertaining to what the article is about or what the major topics will be. However, it does not include information that is not presented in the article, or in other words, add any additional information that should not be in this section. The lead is very concise and not detailed at all, and could probably use another sentence describing the main points of the article.

Content
The content of the article is relevant to the topic of discussion and does not stray away from the main idea. Since the hospital was closed in 1835, I believe the article is up to date as there is no new information to present. I believe there should be more content describing the personnel of the house - was there only one set of parents for the abandoned children? How many nurses were normally there to help out? How many children were there on average? What did they do to stay occupied? Based on the fact that my article talks about abandoned children, the equity gap discussion is shifted more towards the younger population.

Tone and Balance
The article is written from a neutral point of view, as it is simply stating facts about the Foundling Hospital of Dublin. I do not sense any biased content. With this being said, I do not think there is any overrepresentation or underrepresentation of any viewpoint, just a lack of content. Additionally, I do not sense any persuasion, for this article is strictly informational.

Sources and References
After examining the sources provided, it is clear that they are accurate and peer reviewed. The sources come from a wide variety of primary or secondary books and online resources. The sources are very thorough, in my opinion, and provide good background for the concepts discussed. They also appear to be current and provide a diverse range of authors. There do appear to be additional, credible articles in academic databases, as well as scholarly sources that could contribute to the discussion as a whole. The links provided do work, as I was able to access each one.

Organization and Writing Quality
The content is very concise, clear, and easy to read. It is very straightforward and does not leave room for uncertainty. There are no grammatical or spelling errors present in the article. The article is very short, and I feel as if it could be expanded and broken up into different sections rather than just a "history" section, even though the Foundling Hospital of Dublin is no longer open.

Images and Media
The article provides a few images that allow for a better idea of where the hospital was exactly and what it looked like. They provide a sketch of the hospital, which shows that it is very old and there are no real photographs of it. The image captions are very short and sweet. The images do indeed adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations, providing sources and captions for them. The images are laid out in a visually appealing and organized structure and are very easy to access.

Talk Page Discussion
There is a conversation discussing an unclear reference to a source of funding for the hospital. However, that source of funding has been removed from the article due to unclear explanation. It has been rated as "start-class" and "low importance." It is apart of a couple WikiProjects - one regarding Ireland and one regarding medicine. Although this topic has not been specifically discussed in class (yet, at least), I believe our class would talk about the role of the nurses in the hospital and how the women working at the hospital played important roles in its short success.

Overall Impressions
The article's overall status is rather professional and strictly informational. In other words, it provides basic information regarding the Foundling Hospital of Dublin and gives a basic understanding of its purpose. The article's strengths include that it is not biased or persuasive at all and does a great job of staying on topic. However, the article could be improved by expanding on different aspects of the hospital, rather than just stating when it opened and how it closed with brief statements in between. Therefore, I believe the article is underdeveloped and has some room to expand. There are many routes it could go, especially in regards to the Christian nurses that worked there - did they actually serve as nurses or more as teachers? etc.