User:Eren7013/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Homelessness in the United States

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article to evaluate because it offers a comprehensive review of the history, different types of homelessness (including women and families) as well as the effects and efforts to prevent homelessness in the United States. The article helps me understand more about the issue of homelessness and how it arose in the US, which is really relevant for my practice experience. Upon first glance, I was pleasantly surprised to see how comprehensive the article is in its approach with discussing homelessness. Furthermore, the talk section of the article appears to hold many constructive discussions.

Evaluate the article
The Lead Section

Beginning with the lead section, the introductory sentence provides the main topic of the article - homelessness in the united states - and describes what homelessness is defined as in the United States. The lead section continues on to give many statistics concerning homelessness, why it is relevant to discuss it, as well as a bit of the history surrounding it. Though those are components of the article, it does not discuss the other aspects of the article - being various categories of homelessness, efforts being taken to assist homelessness, effects of homelessness, and public attitudes. In my opinion, the lead section is overly detailed and gives too many statistics for the beginning of the article.

Content

I think the article gives a very comprehensive review of important topics related to homelessness. Each section of the article is thoroughly detailed and comprehensive in the information it provides - except for one section "Public Attitudes" which is much shorter and has sources no earlier than 2007. Though the article discusses homelessness, a condition which marginalized communities are more at risk for, it does not give much information (ie how/why they are at higher risk for homelessness) about them besides some statistics.

Tone and Balance

Upon opening the article, wikipedia warns the reader that the article has many issues such as its neutrality being disputed and that some of its listed sources may not be reliable. Looking at the talk page discussion, some wiki users believe that the lead section is not neutral and is actually making homelessness to be worse than it is. Looking back on the lead section, I do think that it overwhelms the reader with statistics (as I mentioned before). Furthermore, I can observe the editor's opinions trickling through throughout the article (for example under "The McKinney- Veto Homeless Assistance Act" section where the editor describes something as "worrisome").

Sources and References

As mentioned beforehand, wikipedia warns the reader that some listed sources may not be reliable. Furthermore, scattered throughout the article there are places where citations are needed. Clicking on some links takes me to pages that do not exist or mention that nothing was found. Though there are a few niche articles and other non-scholarly sources, there are a fair amount of scholarly sources throughout the article. According to the talk page, there are also a few blacklisted links found in the article.

Organization and Writing Quality

I believe that the article is rather easy to read - though the lead section is a bit difficult to decipher with all of the statistics - and it does not appear to have many grammatical errors. I also do like the flow of the article and the content it goes over.

Images and Media

Media are throughout the article and go portray visuals relevant to specific sections (ie in the historical sections there are many historical images). In addition to images, there are many different graphics providing a visual for relevant statistics throughout the article. However, there are a few pictures and graphs without citations. Furthermore, in the "Efforts to assist homeless people section", "Effects of homelessness", and "Public attitudes" sections, there are very few images or graphics and I think there should be more to provide a visual for the reader.

Talk Page Discussion

The talk page discussion and debates are thorough and constructive. There are users wondering if they should write new sections and other users giving input on that. The article is rated as B-class or C-class and of low-importance, mid-importance, or high-importance. The article is of interest to the sociology project, united states/government project, home living, psychology, and urban studies and planning. The discussions in the talk page go over the issues with citations, neutrality, and reliability of the author is disputed.

Overall impressions

Personally, I believe the article provides a rather comprehensive review of homelessness in the United States. However, I believe it can improve in its tone and reliability. Furthermore, there are quite a few areas where pictures and citations are needed (author making unfounded claims). All in all, I thought it was a great article which gave me a better understanding of homelessness in the United States.