User:Fauked/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Egyptian Crisis (2011–2014)

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
The Egyptian revolution and its aftermath is a topic that interests me because of its importance and impact on the Arab Spring in general, on the country’s current political situation and the region as a whole. It is well linked to my course topic “Power and Resistance” and it corresponds well with the focus I’ve chosen in studying the contemporary Middle East.

Lead section
- Introductory sentence is too long and only treats the beginning of the revolution in 2011. As this article deals with the Egyptian crisis from 2011-2014, we want to know from the introductory sentence what this crisis is about and not how it started.

- I would recommend to give a short overview of what the Egyptian crisis from 2011-2014 entails in the first paragraph (about politics, democracy, government, related with Arab Spring etc.) with its main consequences and outcomes; then, a second paragraph could elaborate on the order of events and its main actors, responses and impact on the country.

- In general, the lead section contains too lengthy sentences and descriptions and could be written more concisely. The information is written as one block and not divided in separate paragraphs, which would benefit the clarity of the article.

Content
- The different sections are unbalanced in the amount of information they contain: the “Impact” section is less elaborated in comparison to other sections, while the section about the “Relevant history of the Brotherhood” contains a lot of subheadings and takes an important amount of space in the overall article.

- The different sections cover the most important aspects of the topic. However, the “Impact” section misses information and needs expansion. Furthermore, two important sections (“Brotherhood history” and “Egypt post-revolution”) does not cite any sources according to the Wikipedia rules.

- The article could use an update regarding the political stability of the country.

Tone and balance
- In the lead, the statement “the political situation has largely stabilized since he officially took power” doesn’t refer to any source, which makes it a conclusion that can be easily questioned by critical readers.

- Some sentences read like it’s an expression of someone’s own views; e.g. “ The bottom line is that the outcome of the revolution should have benefited the Egyptian people more, had the Islamist groups not intervened.” ; or “On 22 November 2012, after granting himself the powers to "protect" the constitution-writing committee from dissolution by the court” (the addition of quotation marks shows the author’s opinion).

- The background of the Muslim Brotherhood might be overrepresented in this article at the expense of other themes related to the Egyptian crisis.

- Overall, the article has a neutral tone or shows at least a clear attempt to provide different viewpoints; with the lack of citations and sources, however, it is difficult to assess the article on this.

Sources and references
- A lot of citations are mentioned in the text but these are not references according to Wikipedia’s rules (they are cited under “References”, but not sure if these are approved officially), which makes it difficult to check them.

- Apart from some academic citations, which are only used in certain sections, the article builds solely on articles from newswebsites.

- Some sources are not up-to-date or refer to rather irrelevant websites regarding the topic (such as “World Atlas” or an independent investigative news organization in San Francisco, “Mother Jones”). El-Ghobashy’s article could be replaced by her recent book on the Egyptian Revolution, “Bread and Freedom”, published in 2021.

- Important facts such as election results are provided without reference. There is also mentioning of “a poll”, which does contain a reference to a random website, but it should be better to mention the name of this poll, or the organization behind it.

Organization and writing quality
- The writing quality of this article is rather poor: some sentences are incomplete, too long (sometimes one paragraph is one whole sentence), and the sentence structure is not logical.

- Overall, the division in sections and subheadings could be done in a more logical way, which could make the article more clear and gives the reader an overview of the important points when having a quick look at it. Moreover, the title of some headings could be adjusted, such as “Relevant history of the Brotherhood”: who decides if this information is relevant?

Images and media
- The first picture could be used in this article, but isn’t the best one to represent the topic in its whole.

- The use of pictures is unbalanced as they are only provided in the sections about protests. There is a long section about the Muslim Brotherhood which doesn’t contain any picture, while the short section about the post-coup unrest does contain one. An image of the flag or symbols of the Muslim Brotherhood could be used to visually represent this section.

- The two pictures in the “Revolution” section do not contain any specific dates (year).

- Images are well-captioned and adhere to Wikipedia’s copyright regulations.

Talk page discussion
- Most discussions deal with the structure and organization of the article: the timeline, removing or replacing information, taking information from other articles referring to the Egyptian revolution, merging of existing pages,…

- Regarding content, the “Impact” section has been discussed as well as the title of this article. It does relate to discussions in class-context, such as how we should refer to events (Egyptian ‘crisis’ or ‘revolution’) and discussions about when a crisis is officially ending.

- The article is “of interest to multiple WikiProjects”

Overall impressions
- Overall, the article is well-defined in both time-period as in the information it provides. The article’s strength is in its clear overview which provides information about the most important events during 2011-2014 and the key actors playing a role in it. The article would benefit from a clearer writing style, a more logical organization of sections and better and more citations from a diverse range of sources. Some sections could be trimmed, while others could be more developed (especially the “Impact” section could use an update).