User:Emmazjia/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: Social structure of China
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate.
 * I've always been interested in analyzing social structure of a country and how it changes throughout time, so I believe that doing this will be interesting.

Lead

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?

Lead evaluation
The lead describes the topic of the article quickly and concisely, but does not include a specific descriptions of the topic. The lead may even be seen to be overly concise as it's not attention grabbing or a good indication of the content that's covered throughout the article. The reader is only able to get a good sense of what will be covered when looking at the Contents section.

Content

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * Is the content up-to-date?
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?
 * Does the article deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps? Does it address topics related to historically underrepresented populations or topics?

Content evaluation
Upon reading through the article, it seems that all of the information being presented is relevant to the topic. Additionally, the article also discusses citizens who are in the lower class of society, which includes people like slaves or servants. It talks about the discrimination they went through, presenting people reading the article with a greater understanding of underrepresented and marginalized groups in historical and modern China. Some of the content feels outdated as the last heading for modern China is stated to be 1979 and after. However, many changes have probably occurred since and should be updated accordingly.

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article neutral?
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?

Tone and balance evaluation
Upon reading through the article, it feels that the article remains neutral throughout and also discusses the perspective of people from various societal statuses without focusing too much on one singular perspective. In this sense, the article is very well rounded and doesn't show bias towards any society group. This allows the reader to form their own opinions.

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
 * Are the sources current?
 * Are the sources written by a diverse spectrum of authors? Do they include historically marginalized individuals where possible?
 * Check a few links. Do they work?

Sources and references evaluation
When just taking a look at the article, many of the sentences and paragraphs have in-text citations that are linked to various sources. However, it can easily be seen that many long lines of text have no linked citation. There is no way for the reader to back up many parts of the article. When checking some of the links, many link back to articles that may be unreliable or outdated. There are some sources that look reliable, such as the ones taken from universities or educational books, but overall, sources could be improved upon. Additionally, the article is very long, but only contains 33 sources, some of which are seen as unreliable. For such a long article, more sources should be added to back up the content. There are sources both listed in Chinese as well as in English, implying that sources come from a variety of authors and people of different backgrounds.

Organization

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?

Organization evaluation
The article is organized in a way that makes a lot of sense. Since the article discusses social structure in China and how it has changed throughout history, it makes sense for it to be organized chronologically. The article also does not seem to contain any grammatical or spelling errors. The headings in the article also makes it easy for people to look for specific pieces of information if they're not looking to read the entire article.

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
 * Are images well-captioned?
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way?

Images and media evaluation
The images in the article are spread out and placed in a way that's visually appealing. Each piece of media and the caption attached to the media provides information that helps in the understanding of the topic. However, the majority of the images are concentrated in the first half of the article. Images help engage readers, especially when reading a long article like this one, so images should be added to the latter half of the article too. This not only helps provide the readers with a more in-depth understanding, but also ensures that they're able to stay focused while reading.

In terms of copyright regulations, the majority of the images have been linked back to an original source. However, the last image that appears on this page is an original image uploaded by someone.

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

Talk page evaluation
The talk page of this article states that this article is extremely outdated and the sources are unreliable. Much of this article contains unverified facts and it has been left this way for a long time. However, a couple years ago, people began to remove some of the unverified information, but the article still contains a lot.

Although we've briefly touched on social structure in class, much of what I've read has not been covered. As the story we are currently reading is set in the Qing dynasty, other periods of time have not been touched on yet. Additionally, much of what we've learned is surrounding the upper and lower class, but the working class has not been touched on yet, which is discussed in this article.

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions


 * What is the article's overall status?
 * What are the article's strengths?
 * How can the article be improved?
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?

Overall evaluation
Overall, I feel that the article is underdeveloped. Although it has a lot of information, much of it is unverified and unreliable. The greatest weakness of this article is the lack of citations. Additionally, the most up to date part of this article only discusses up to 1979, whereas much has probably changed by now. This could be expanded upon and talked about more. The article's biggest strength is that it's well organized and allows readers to find information easily,

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

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