User:Flamenquera/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Interpersonal communication

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it is related to my course. It matters because interpersonal communication is a principal component of everyday life. Learning to understand and navigate it is extremely useful. My preliminary impression of it was that the article includes interpersonal communication's key elements and the theories created related to it.

Evaluate the article
The lead's introductory sentence easily allows the reader to identify the topic. It is a wide view of what can be categorized as interpersonal communication. The lead, however, does not seem to provide a roadmap of what is covered by the article. Therefore, the article is not completely straightforward in that the reader is unaware of the exact titles of the major sections. The information enclosed in the lead is addressed later on in the article. Though the lead provides a general overview of what interpersonal communication is, it is still relatively concise. It doesn't unnecessarily extend on items it doesn't need to.

The article's content is consistent with the topic. While the content seems to be kept up to date, the relevance to mass communication could most likely be added to. This section discusses the ambiguity surrounding social networking platforms. Given this, as a decent amount of time with social media integrated in our society has passed, a more concrete statement pertaining to this could possibly be made. The article could discuss more thoroughly how interpersonal communication looks different among a pair of individuals versus groups. It might also go over any differences across cross-cultural and gender contexts. The article does not deal with an equity gap. It could be interpreted as touching on a topic related to historically underrepresented populations as it mentions culture's influence on communications expressed verbally or nonverbally.

The article is neutral as it doesn't contain persuasive or argumentative language. Claims are not heavily biased towards any particular position. The article is impartial therefore there is not a specific viewpoint receiving more limelight. Theories are described clearly without original research. Minority viewpoints are not identified outrightly as they do not appear to be present within the article. The article does not try to make the reader adopt a position.

The facts in the article reference mostly reputable sources that try to steer away from blogs and media of that nature. The sources reflect literature concerning interpersonal communication and its application in the real world. The sources are likely not as current as would be ideal— most are over ten years old and some are even from the 1900s. Therefore, they could use a refresher. There is a plentitude of references and sources used throughout the article that constitutes diversity among the authors. Better sources could be gathered as there has been a lot of research conducted surrounding interpersonal communication in recent years. Therefore, newer theories have surfaced and claims about past theories have been made. Additionally, much has been written about social media's impact on our interpersonal communication today, especially within the United States. The random links chosen do work.

The article is undoubtedly well-written in a way suitable for an online encyclopedia. If any grammatical or spelling errors are present in the article, they are either not obvious or subjective. For example, commas are used where one might argue there should be an em dash. The article's organization is clear and easy to digest for the reader. The sections are coherent where related information is grouped together under their respective labeled headings.

There are visual representations of the information given by the article through the graphs and images provided. Arguably, however, more could be included to further enhance the understanding of interpersonal communication. All visual representations except for one graph are captioned; though, even those with a caption could be improved— including the labels of such visuals (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.). The images seem to adhere to Wikipedia's copyright rules. On the other hand, they could be laid out un a more appealing way, adjusting how spaced out they are, their sizes, etc.

Regarding this article's Talk Page, there are conversations about the noise factor within interpersonal communication and the argument that it is important to include. There are also external links people consider valuable to be incorporated. There are disagreements on diagrams' presentation of the information at hand. This article has received a C-class rating, and if of interest to Linguistics, Sociology, and Psychology WikiProjects. Wikipedia discusses this topic from a more general and theoretical vantage point, whereas, so far in class we have tried to think about the application and consequences of interpersonal communication in regards to media effects on society.

Overall, the article is still a work in progress but good enough to get a general feel for what interpersonal communication involves. It does a great job at laying out all the different theories constructed about it. I think there is still room to grow in that it needs to discuss and touch on a wider array of topics to accurately portray the scope of interpersonal communication elements and intricacies. Considering this, it could be considered well-developed despite the extra pieces that can be added in.