User:Gclarke2103/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Politics of Madagascar

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
The article begins the timeline of Madagascar politics in 1960, when they gained independence. Some contributors, including myself, believe it is important to include information on the local political dynamics which pre-dated independence. This article is also listed as being a high-importance article in two projects (WikiProject Africa, and WikiProject Politics), which further motivated me to want to improve the article.

Evaluate the article
The article lacks some length overall, and has big sections which should be broken up into smaller, clearer categories (such as 'political history'). The lead section is very short and could be fleshed out with an additional sentence or two. The article also focuses too heavily on history and not enough on current political dynamics. Although the country's flag is included at the top of the page, there are no supporting images. Adding more images and figures could improve the article's readability. The article does have two data tables which provide the article with an empirical edge, and help the reader visualize the information more clearly.

As far as I can tell the bulk of the article was written in 2006-2009, but there have been a few updates to include information from the last decade, such as a cited BBC news headline from December 2021. Almost all the citations are from newspapers or online media sources, and there are only 8 total references listed in the article. The article could benefit from some more rigorous academic and peer-reviewed sources to back up the information presented.

Although it lacks some content and depth, it is written fairly objectively and with a neutral tone. There are some sections which seem to have been started but not finished, or that simply link to other wikipedia articles rather than re-stating the information. The readability of the article could be improved by splitting up the large section on political history, and by adding sub-headers to existing sections.

In the Talk page, there is some debate around when the politics of Madagascar begins (1960 or earlier), as well as questions about the accuracy of the information presented in the article. Additionally, it seems as though place-holder data was inputted into the data table at some point, and since there is no reply to this comment it is unclear whether the correct data has replaced it in the meantime.

Overall, this article deserves its C-class rating. It has the foundation to be a very good article but needs some updated source info and inclusion of current-events. This article would also benefit from an organizational make-over to make it more professional, as well as some additional information about Madagascar's governmental structure (branches of government, international relations, etc).