User:Fudgevillain/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Karl Marx)

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose to evaluate the Wikipedia page about Karl Marx for this assignment because he is the first thing to pop into my mind whenever I think about the subject matter of this course (Global History of Communism). Marx matters because he is the "father of communism", so to speak; his works have been read on a massive scale, and he has influenced a countless amount of people with his ideas on social science. My preliminary impression of the page was that it was long, well-written, and easily understandable.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

The lead section of this article was concise and covered the major events in Marx's life, which was good to take in right off the bat. The lead section also included a brief explanation of Marx's theory of socialism and the issues surrounding capitalism, which was to-the-point and easy to understand.

The content of the article is substantial and up-to-date. That being said, Karl Marx is long dead and him, as well as his theories on social science, are not generally unknown or underrepresented. The article included a section on his legacy, which I find important because it allows the reader to see what a profound effect Marx's ideas have left on society as a whole. In my eyes, no valuable piece of content was left out of the article and I found nothing out of place.

The tone and balance of the article was very neutral and came across as unbiased and knowledgeable. The article simply goes into detail about Marx's life and his ideas; the author mentions more than once that Marxism has been both "lauded and criticized", which I find important to highlight. Marx's endeavors are categorized by the article as being "radical left", which I find accurate, as his ideals are not generally held by moderates. The author does not attempt to sway the reader in any particular direction.

The sources and references in the article seem to be thorough and trustworthy; the author has backed up every claim with a source. After reading through the bibliography, the sources given do seem to reflect the available literature on the topic and are thorough. The sources are written by a diverse set of authors; after randomly clicking on five names, one was a woman, one was a Brazilian man, one was German, one British, and one Israeli. The grand majority of sources in the bibliography appeared to be peer-reviewed books and articles-- there were no news coverage or random websites on the list that I caught. The links that I clicked on from the reference list did work and were up-to-date.

The organization of this article is exceptional. It was well-written and concise, with no grammatical/spelling errors that I could catch. The article was well-organized and all of the major events of Karl Marx's life were laid out in a way that was simple to follow and easy to find.

The article includes a multitude of images that enhance the understanding of Marixsm and provide the reader with interesting visuals about Marx's life and ideals, as well as the legacy he left behind. The images are well-captioned, appealing to the eye, and do follow Wikipedia's copyright rules.

After exploring the Karl Marx talk page, it seems that users are debating whether or not to add Marx to the Wikipedia list of "Jewish Atheists", providing links and information on Marx's childhood home in Trier, Germany, and pointing out that an editor has attempted to make the false claim that Marx's "real name" was Moses Mordecai Levi whilst urging users to stick to hard facts when writing or editing articles. I found this talk page interesting as it brought up subjects pertaining to Marx that I was not aware of beforehand.

Overall, the article definitely expanded my knowledge on the life and ideas of Karl Marx. It was a very interesting read, and very well-written/ unbiased, which I find imperative when researching information. In fact, I would say the biggest strength of this article is its neutrality. Some other highlights include the amount of factual content on the page itself and the strength of the sources in the bibliography and reference list. The article could be improved by perhaps going more into depth about his family life; I always personally find it interesting to read about the inner workings of the lives of famous historical individuals. The article was complete and well-developed.