User:Eml5597/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
I will be evaluating the article on the Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, linked below:

Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I picked this article because it ties directly into both the article I intend to help edit, on The Young Ottoman movement, and because it was a precipitating event for the Armenian Genocide, which I intend to focus on for my final paper. The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire was a major shift politically in the Turkish world, as well as the larger Arabic world. It also dramatically shifted the face of global politics - the Ottoman Empire, which had remained a large and relatively stable (at least in appearances, if not in actuality) monarchy, shifted dramatically and violently into something resembling a multi-party democracy. These conflicts did not end with the ousting of the Sultan, but impacted political movements and groups within the Empire through the First World War.

My first impression of the article is that it's relatively well written, but has some structural issues and, as noted by the header, shows some bias towards Turkish nationalism. Thus, it seems like a good candidate to assess with both strengths and weaknesses to discuss.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The opening sentence is a little bit long and confusing, and could likely be split into two sentences. There is a clean bias towards the revolution, with a strong claim that the revolution was mostly supported by the people - I'd want to check the citation to see if that's an accurate interpretation of the cited work. The lead references the genocides conducted during this period, and links to the appropriate page, but the rest of the article does little to touch on it, despite having a section for it. The lead does not, however, provide a summary of the article's sections, instead providing a brief summary of the Dissolution in general. The last sentence is confusingly worded and could be clarified substantially.

Content

While the content of this article is detailed, the article itself may be too complicated, and might benefit from being divided into different sections. That said, I don't know what those sections would be, or if the article as a whole should be merged into others. Two sections of the article don't cite any sources, which isn't good, and another needs additional citations for accuracy. As mentioned above, while there is a section for the genocides that occurred during this period, the section is entirely empty. In general, this article is fairly well written, and does reference other, better-cited, articles on Wikipedia, but it does not do enough on its own to cite its sources.

Tone and Balance

The tone of this article, as mentioned above, is heavily slanted towards Turkish nationalism and the Young Turks movement as a whole. It does not generally critique the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and instead claims that it was almost universally accepted. There are no sections of the article devoted to the non-mainstream viewpoint, and rarely are they mentioned within the article as a whole. Both the tone and balance of this article need substantial work.

Sources and References

The references and sources are somewhat lacking. Where they are present they're very good, but they are absent from several sections which weakens the article as a whole.

Organization and Writing Quality

The writing is generally good, and the article is organized well, following a relatively clear sequence of time. It might make more sense to structure the article around the rulers who were active at the time, as is done with the final section on Mehmed VI.

Images of Media

There are a multitude of different images included, most of which are well utilized and captioned. In general the illustrations fit well, and make a lot of sense to include.