User:Fuchs190/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Rhizosphere

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
"Rhizosphere" caught my attention because I have heard the term before, but don't quite know what it means. I am pretty sure this topic has something to do with effect that the roots of plants have on the surrounding soil, which would make it relevant to biogeochemistry.

Evaluate the article
While the first sentence is sufficient (it concisely and clearly describes the article's topic), the remainder of the lead section seems unfocused. For example, it does not necessarily include a brief description of the article's major sections and appears to describe material that is not described in the article. I do not consider this lead section concise, cohesive, or focused.

The background section feels a bit out of place. It is perhaps too short to be useful, and therefore, should be removed, in my opinion. The "Chemical interactions" section seems to include some information that is relevant to the topic, but feels disorganized. The meat of the article, the "Ecology of the rhizosphere" section, contains content that seems relevant to the topic, although as is a common theme in this article, feel disorganized. I think the "methods" section could be removed, as the bullet pointed methods often lack an in-depth explanation and are not specific to the rhizosphere, making them irrelevant. The article does not deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps, although I am not sure how this would look in the context of this topic.

The article is neutral and does not seem to be attempting to persuade to reader in any way. Claims don't seem to be biased, as much of them focus on relatively objective definitions. The "Ecology of the rhizosphere" section seems overrepresented, while the "Chemical interactions" section seems underrepresented, despite being equally important in my opinion. If there are minority or fringe viewpoints in this article, they are not represented as such, which represents a potential oversight.

Most content is backed up by sources, which work when you click on them. Additionally, these sources are from a diverse group of authors, meaning that they probably reflect the available literature on the topic. However, sources from the past approximately five years seem to be lacking, which represents a potential problem. Most of the sources seem to be peer-reviewed articles or textbooks, so they are likely reliable.

While the article is well-written in the sense that it has no grammatical or spelling errors, it doesn't seem very concise, which prevents it from being completely clear. For example, the organization doesn't make much sense to me and the headings don't always seem to represent what is discussed.

The article includes lots of images, which I like. However, many of them are perhaps overly complicated with lots of text (in the image). That being said, I don't think they necessarily enhance the reader's understanding of the topic at hand. In fact, they require a good deal of thought to understand and describe things that could probably be adequately explained in text. They seem to be more of a review of the material rather than a supplement to it. The images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright policy and are captioned. The images are not always laid out in an appealing way, as they seem bunched near the end of the article.

The article's talk page features a discussion on the lead section, corresponding with a large rewrite. I personally liked the original version of the lead section, as I thought it provided a much better situation of the topic in the context of ecology (or related topics, such as biogeochemistry). The article is rated as C-class, although is part of a course assignment with student editors and reviewers.

In general, I think the article contains lots of good information, but needs to be reorganized in a way that makes more sense. Additionally, the "Chemical interactions" section needs to be expanded, as I think this is an important part of the topic. Further, the "Methods" section could be removed, as it feels a bit clunky and unnecessary. All in all, I think the article is underdeveloped, but a good start.