User:Fevans9/Choose an Article

Article Selection
Please list articles that you're considering for your Wikipedia assignment below. Begin to critique these articles and find relevant sources.

Option 1
Lead Section: The lead section was well presented, it gave the issue that medium ground finches are experiencing. It gave the problem and what it then leads to. It was mentioned that it is one of the Darwin finches that scientists have observed.
 * Article title: Medium Ground Finches
 * Article Evaluation: Completeness Score:49, Class: S , Views per day: 23

Content: The content is current. The topics range from explaining viruses that finches have to how medium finches have been surviving when competing against large finches.

Tone and Balance: The article tone is neutral. It isn’t told from a biased point of view, but explains the inbreeding depression being faced with medium finches due to their small population.

Sources and References: When going through the sources, they were all relevant to the article. Majority of the cited information had sources to support it, I could tell the article research was done in a timely manner. Where the author was able to get good information from different articles.

Organization and Writing Quality: I do think the article is well written while a lot of topics could be more detailed. The section of habitat and their behavior could get more information added. There was a section that touched on natural selection but not really expanded on and I know that's something if I were to pick this article, expand and try to find urbanization effects also.

Image and Media: The two pictures included were a good touch. It showed how a medium finch looks. If any other media were to be added, a picture of the larger finch or even one of the islands where the population is high with finches could be an option.

Talk Page Discussion: The talk page only has one comment, it spoke about one of the references. This was since 2008, when I checked the article references they were updated so I believe the author fixed the issue.

Overall Impressions: My overall thought of this article is that it is a good topic, it is also well-written. Improvements with media would be good and also the organization. Definitely more information can do well for this article.

Option 2
Lead Section: This section is well developed. I believe the writer did stay on topic and gave a lot of information on the topic of this article. It did make me interested to learn more about pesticides and what it is doing to the environment.
 * Article title: Environmental impact of pesticides
 * Article Evaluation: Completeness Score:70, Class: B , Views per day: 129

Content: The content provided in this article is current. The author took its time to touch on many subjects and the effects of pesticide on each one. Since pesticides have been around for years, the sources ranged to a few years back but they all showed relevance for the topic.

Tone and Balance: I do think this is an unbiased article. It does focus on the effects of pesticides and also shows alternatives for pesticide but neutrally said.

Sources and References: There were alot of good sources included in this article. Some of the sources did have an issue when I tried to find it.

Organization and Writing Quality: I think the article is well organized, it is broken down into several different subheadings. The way this article was written, was to show the effects of pesticides on everything individually. The different subheadings focus on what pesticides do to humans, animals, environments and so on.

Image and Media: This article presents a lot of media, whether it is pictures/graphs. There is a wide variety of media presented and they are all useful to the topic.

Talk Page Discussion: The talk page does have ongoing conversation, all very helpful. There were some people that commented on the “soil” section and asked the wiki author to verify some things said there. Also, someone gave a suggestion to add a new section that covers waste so basically the disposal of pesticides.

Overall Impressions: I think this article is well developed. It has a lot of media which provides a lot of information and insight on the topic. The section of the effects on plants can definitely be expanded. The table provided in the article was also a good touch.

Option 3
Lead Section: The lead section taught me about the different eagles and the population size of these eagles. The total estimation of golden eagles range between 170,000 to 250,000 which is pretty low within this species. It is said that the golden eagle population is declining. I learned this all from the lead section, which motivated me to continue with the article.
 * Article title: Status and conservation of the golden eagle
 * Article Evaluation: Completeness Score: 74, Class: C , Views per day: 9

Content: The content in this article is current. It includes different countries and what is happening to these golden eagles there.

Tone and Balance: The article is neutral.

Sources and References: There was a good amount of references provided. While going through most of them, they all seemed to be working and relevant to the article.

Organization and Writing Quality: Before I read the article, I could see that it included a lot of information but the organization needs improvement. There are multiple heading but it can be broken down into more subheadings and it could improve the article's “look”. The threat area of this article includes that they can be decreasing in population due to urbanization and this would be a good area to help and find more information for this topic.

Image and Media: There were two images provided of the golden eagle, one captive in the UK and one flying free roam. I think a picture of a graph showing the decrease of these golden eagles over the years would be helpful.

Talk Page Discussion: There are no conversations occurring on the talk page, this could be because not a lot of people view this article. This article is apart of WikiProject Birds.

Overall Impressions: I found this article interesting just because they taught the golden eagle and different eagles that I didn’t know existed. Organization is important and this article can use help in that area so more people would actually want to read it.