User:Evkmpn/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Prehistory of Australia

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to evaluate this article because it generally pertains to the content that we have been learning in class for the past few weeks. I wanted to see whether there was just as much information currently within this article as there seems to be during our class discussions. I had a fairly positive preliminary impression of this article, as it seems to have a substantial amount of references with lots of reliable information that I recognize.

Lead Section
I would say that the introductory sentence concisely defines the topic of the article, the rest of the lead section but doesn't seem to briefly address the article's major sections. The second paragraph describing the land management practices prior to initial human settlement seems out of place to me, and could be replaced by a description of the article's sections instead. The lead section properly contains information that's found in the article itself, with the first paragraph being nicely concise.

Content
Generally speaking, the content of this article is relevant to the topic at hand. This is reminiscent of the information that we have discussed in class surrounding this topic. The content appears up to date and cites the recent research breakthroughs in this topic that have occurred over the last five years. Given that this article explores the prehistory of Australia, I would expect extensive information on the Aboriginal people, which I can say there appears to be. I currently cannot think of any content that appears to be entirely missing, but I think that there should more sources utilizes in the "Possible link to east Africa" subsection to ensure that this information is notable.

Tone and Balance
To me, the tone appears neutral, with no biased language or sway in the information. There has been considerable debate surrounding the dates associated with this topic, and I feel that while each viewpoint is briefly mentioned, it may be beneficial to go into more detail about minority perspectives.

Sources and References
Most facts appear to be backed by a reference footnote, but I feel that there should be more in order to strengthen the individual paragraphs of this article. There are many references, but the majority of the them stem from news websites that are meant to be written by qualified writers. I don't see too many scientific journals among the list of references but there should be more. If news articles have a reference list, then we should backtrack and go straight to the more reliable sources, like peer-reviewed articles, instead.

Organization and Writing Quality
I don't see any spelling or grammar errors, which is a good start. The article is indeed broken down into sections, but some are rather lengthy and comprise of two topics. Such sections could be split once more in half. Overall, I am able to follow along with the article and see that it is easy to read.

Images and Media
The images provided in this article are well captioned and generally encompass the main sections. I would also make sure that every other sub-section or so, has a relevant image that encompasses the key points, especially if there is scientific data involved.

Talk Page Discussion
This article is rated at a level 5 on the vitality scale and C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale, which doesn't seem ideal. For C-level articles, organization and piecing together the sections/information is recommended first. This article is apart of a few large WikiProjects, including that of archaeology, history, anthropology, and Australia. The Talk page primarily contains debates on the phrasing of information to emphasize neutrality and non-biased language, which is something we are typically on the same page on during our class discussions.

Overall Impression
Upon further examination of this article, I have realized that there is indeed some more that can be done in terms of the organization of this article. This article does a good job of being neutral and full of evidence, but I believe that stronger references should be used and the information should be separated into further categories with more supporting images. I think this article is well-developed, but needs some organizing.