User:Ganarfelnaf/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: Monsanto Canada Inc v Schmeiser
 * I've heard about Monsanto before when reading an article about pesticides. While I know that is not the only pie they have their thumb in, one thing that I've gathered from Monsanto is that they're the epitome of a corrupt corporation. Using their money and power to silence their opposition all in the name of profits no matter who they may harm in the process.

Lead evaluation
The lead for this article is well done. It is clear and concise, starting with what the article is about and a brief summary of the timeline during which Monsanto v Schmeiser took place. While the lead doesn't necessarily mention all components mentioned in the Contents Box, I believe this is due to the purpose of the the lead being primarily to outline and summarize, not to clog the beginning of the article with small specific details that could be filled in later. All of the information in the lead is present and expanded upon over the length of the article.

Content evaluation
The articles content was all relevant to the topic and up to date. As most of the content was a telling of events that had already occurred, it's unlikely that the information would change. This article does not deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps, nor does it relate to underrepresented populations. After reading, it does not seem there is any information that might be missing from the content as it faithfully recounts the events of the case and even some relevant events that were happening in society that related to the arguments made in court.

Tone and balance evaluation
The article is indeed neutral, with the only inclusion of an opinion being a citation of the opposition to the Court's rulings. No claims were made that seemed outwardly bias, the article includes only facts of the case and objective observations of related groups such as anti-GE groups and their positions on the case. Although I would personally like to hear more from Schmeiser himself, as I have only read about his claims regarding his defense, I realize that any claims directly from Schmeiser are heavily subject to bias. But I believe that his point of view would be important to understanding the case as a whole.

Sources and references evaluation
The majority of the article which outlines the claims made by the defendant and plaintiffs and decisions made by the courts is backed up by reliable primary sources being the court cases and rulings themselves. While I'm sure there are more literature that covers this case due to its popularity when it was occurring, these sources would only repeat opinions and observations made by the sources that were already cited in the article. The sources are concurrent with the case itself, but I do not expect present day sources from 2020 to talk about a case made decades ago unless a new case arises that has many similarities with this one much like the Oxford Rat mentioned in this article.

Organization evaluation
The article is well written and organized. It's clear about the information it wants to convey and is a relatively easy read. Aside from one grammatical redundancy I noticed, no other errors occurred while I was reading the article.

Images and media evaluation
The only image in the article is one of the Supreme Court of Canada, which made some of the latter decisions in the timeline of the case. While the article could do with more images, perhaps of Schmeiser himself, an image representing Monsanto, and perhaps of a canola plant, I would not know where to insert these images so that they'd be "visually appealing".

Talk page evaluation
The conversations in the talk page are mostly editorial, talking about how the article can be better organized. These comments were realized as multiple users worked together to edit the article to what it is today. One of the earlier comment threads suggested merging this article with another, more general article, which was argued against as this article was purely meant to be a factual retelling of the case and the article that was suggested for merging would drown it out with extensive details about the participants of the case and other cases that were similar to it.

The article is part of WikiProject Canada and Law. It was rated a Start-class on WikiProject Canada and C-class on WikiProject Law most likely due to it's short nature caused by the open and closed nature of the rulings made. It was also rated Low-Importance on both WikiProjects most likely due to the cases age and waning relevance.

Overall evaluation
The article does a very good job at stating the facts of the events as they happened, retelling the events from an unbiased point of view. I believe that the article is so short because of it's nature, being specifically about the case, there's not much more to talk about that would be on topic and on par objectivity-wise with the other parts of the article. Besides a bit of grammatical tweaking, I think the article can be developed if it had more visual aid. On the content front, I don't have any ideas on how to improve the article. I would say the article is well-developed because it achieves what it set out to do, detail the case, which makes it harder to add to.