User:Erikheit/sandbox

Article Evaluations
For this assignment, I chose the following three articles for evaluation: Nitrogen Cycle, Silica cycle, and Calcium Cycle.

Content
Some of the more complicated terms used to describe the first figure on the page are not linked and may be confusing to readers who are not already somewhat knowledgeable on key parts of the Nitrogen cycle. This continues to be a problem throughout the article - with another example being lack of explanation for what anaerobic conditions mean. There was also a broken link to the page on diazatrophs located under one figure.

Some of the claims made in the article, while quite well known, would likely benefit from additional citations - such as the point on animal urine being broken down by nitrifying bacteria.

Some points seemed unnecessary for the discussion on the nitrogen cycle itself: such as the brief discussion of health concerns caused by high nitrate concentration in soils. This information would likely be more fitting in the "Consequence of human modifications of the nitrogen cycle" section of the article.

One sentence in particular within the first paragraph of processes discussing the purpose of transforming nitrogen from one form to another is confusingly worded. This is somewhat a problem throughout the article, where sentences appear to be worded in a somewhat confusing manner - the addition of unnecessary additional words, especially articles, is especially common.

The information in the article does seem to be correct according to current understandings.

Tone
Article does a good job taking on a neutral tone. The article does an especially good job in the section on human influences on the cycle, making sure to discuss steps humans take to attempt to limit their impact as well as simply sources and effects of the impact.

It is notable however, that due to lack of citation for sources discussing the steps humans are taking to limit their impact, the article authors do appear to have some level of disinterest in this topic.

Content
The introduction paragraph is excellent and does a great job of explaining the basics of the silica cycle in a very comprehend-able way while also linking to many important related topics and cites its points very well.

The riverine and aeolian contributions section is well detailed, but could be improved by working to translate some of the more scientific jargon into common language. Some sentences seem overly detailed, and could be shortened to make them more easily comprehended - such as sentences appearing to discuss certain sources in more of a citation fashion rather than through paraphrasing. A link likely should have been provided to the coastal zone wikipedia page to keep the formatting of the sentence in which it appears consistent.

Verification is required on one claim in the article - and this request appears to have a Wikipedia formatting mistake associated with it.

Overall, the article is well written and well sourced.

Tone
The article does an excellent job of maintaining a neutral tone. The article is written with a good degree of detail while remaining readable by the average reader. The only exception to this may be the section on "Riverine and aeoloian contributions" which contains some unnecessarily detail as well as scientific jargon.

The article otherwise maintains a balanced neutral tone with no obvious discrepancies in material focus.

Content
In the first paragraph, calcium silicate should likely have been linked to its Wikipedia page.

There are many areas which could use more sources - particularly the section about calcium and the global climate.

The discussion of human/animal use of calcium seems mostly unnecessary to this page. The section is largely unrelated to the cycling of calcium geochemically and instead goes into a large degree of depth about calcium utilization physiologically. As the section does not really relate this to the calcium cycle, I do not believe it is relevant to the article.

The article appears to have some grammatical errors - a notable example being a sentence fragment in the first paragraph of the Industrial uses section of the article.

Tone
The tone of this article needs some attention.

The article does not always maintain the tone of an encyclopedia article. One such example being in stating that ocean acidity has "already" increased by 25% since the industrial revolution. The word "already" is unnecessary in the sentence and reduces the tone of neutrality.

The article also does not give a very neutral overview of industrial use of calcium or in its "future predictions" section. The article uses somewhat unrelated information to overemphasize the current predicted effects of changes in factors effecting the calcium cycle as one example of this.