User:Ericaw5/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: African independence movements
 * This article was featured on the Wiki Africa Projects page because it has multiple issues. I would like to evaluate it in order to better understand the issues and then perhaps contribute to the article.

Lead
The Lead includes a brief topic sentence, but does not clearly describe the article's topic. The introductory sentence merely explains the title of the article. The Lead includes a list of African independence movements, but does not explain if this is a conclusive list or not. The list of topics is confusing because it organizes the information differently than the rest of the article, which makes it confusing to read. For example, the Lead breaks up the different independence movements by country whereas the article breaks up independence movements by colonial power. The Lead does not necessarily help orient the reader to the article.

Content
The article's content is relevant to the topic, however, it is unclear if the content is up-to-date or factual because there are no sources cited at the end of the article.

Tone and Balance
While the article is neutral, the information purely comes from European accounts of African independence movements. The article could be improved with a more diverse viewpoints.

Sources and References
No, there are no sources linked at the bottom of the article. The article only references other Wikipedia pages.

Organization
The article is broken down into different topics, but it is broken up differently than the Lead sets it up to. There are no obvious grammatical errors in the article.

Images and Media
There are only four images in the article and they are not particularly informative. The images are captioned, but they are not cited. There are large blocks of text with no images and then multiple pictures next to each other. There could be a larger number of more relevant images more skillfully spread out throughout the paper.

Checking the talk page


There is currently an unresolved request to change the title of the article to include a larger number of Independence movements. There are also comments in the talk page which show that one of the images violates the copyright guidelines. This article has been rated as start-class and high-importance. This article is part of the Wiki Africa Project. The article focuses on the European perspective, whereas in class we also studied the internal dynamics of the country to evaluate the independence movements.

Overall impressions
This article could be generally improved with better organization, thorough sourcing, and a diverse number of viewpoints.