User:EmlyCole/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Natural resource

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
This article has a direct correlation to the ERTH 4303 class content as it outlines many of the general resource aspects to be covered in the class, as well as other aspects that may not be covered. This article is a general overview of what is included in a natural resource and is a good precursor to information to come from future lectures.

Evaluate the article
Starting with the first sentence of this article, it is clear on the topic and gives an exact definition of a natural resource that all the other information in this article will fall under. The lead paragraph of this article describes all following aspects/sections included in the article in a concise way, and contains only relevant information; however, a section in the lead includes an example of a particular location (Fatu-Hiva) that seems out of place when describing the general overview of the article. This location described in the lead is the only place it is mentioned, besides as the caption of a photo, and provides no further information on why the location is overall significant when looking at the general overview of the topic natural resources. This particular sentence on Fatu-Hiva seems like it would be better included on a page for that specific location instead.

The content of this article is an overview of the general key sections included under the topic of natural resources. It is broken down by category of a natural resource, such as the classifications and extractions of these resources, all of which are very relevant to the topic. This content included is up to date and considers many of the developing technologies towards the use of natural resources that are still constantly changing, which helps complete the picture of the topic. Everything included in the content of this article past the lead fits well into the article and there is nothing that seems out of place or irrelevant to the topic.

The articles sections are equally represented, and mostly carries through with an unbiased and neutral tone. Any viewpoint that is presented is backed up by recent and reliable sources. In the “extraction” section of the article, there is a claim that Norway is a role model when it comes to its government management of the extraction industry. This claim could be considered bias as there are many ways in which to handle the governance, and their methods may not be applicable to the countries which have a higher rate of extraction of more natural resources for larger populations. Overall, there are many viewpoints presented, all with sources to back up the information in a neutral way, and as a whole does not persuade the reader in any one way or another.

The sources in this article are all reliable sources of information originating generally from notable organizations and scientific peer-reviewed papers. Other sources are all current as well, with the majority of the articles used published from 2005 onwards, which helps the representation of current information on the topic, and avoids any outdated information. All links that were checked were active and worked.

This article overall as really easy to read due to the organization into sections of subtopics regarding natural resources. This along with the table of contents made navigation in the article very easy and finding the information that is under each topic fast. There were no spelling errors found in the article and the quality of the writing is written in a way that is easy to skim and understand upon the first read over of the article.

The images included in this article are laid out in a manner in which they correspond with the given topic in the article, giving each section they appear in a visual draw. They enhance the information in the sections they occur in with a picture and caption describing the example. Each image is properly cited and does not violate any copyright regulations of Wikipedia, as far as I can tell.

In the talk page discussions, it is evident that this article is part of many WikiProjects including Ecology, economics, environment, geology, geography, international development, law, politics, and water. The only discussions on this talk page are the changing and fixing of links- there is no discussion on the actual article itself.

This article is a very informative starting point if one were to just be starting to explore the topic of natural resources. The breakdown of sections gives a good idea of the many factors involved with the topic, as well as presents the issues and management taken to solve such issues. This is presented as current and factual information and is a good resource for researching the topic. The only improvements to the article would be to continue to update the information as things change in the future, but currently is very well developed and a strong, complete article.