User:GiannaParisi/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: William Stokoe
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate: I chose this article because William Stokoe is a big name in the history of ASL and the establishment of it as a language. Given this, however, there does not seem to be a lot of information about him in this Wikipedia article, so I thought it would be interesting to evaluate it to see what is done well and what is done poorly, as well as what should be added.

Lead

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?

Lead evaluation
The Lead section of this article includes an introductory sentence. The introductory sentence clearly defines the articles topic (with it being about William Stokoe, an American Linguist), while also including his name, profession, and dates of birth and death. The sentence is also short and concise, and is a nice introduction to who he is if someone decided to click on this article and just read the first sentence. Besides the introductory sentence, the Lead seems more like a description of his legacy than a summary of who he is and his research. It mentioned some of the article's major sections, but overall spoke about them in a way that emphasized the impact of his work. While the Lead seemed to overly touch upon Stokoe's legacy in the profession of ASL research, the "Impact" section of the article is very short -- in this sense, the Lead includes information that is not present in the article. Also, the Lead is not properly cited, so it reads more like a biased account of his legacy. For the reasons above, the Lead is concise in its introductory sentence, but overly detailed and descriptive in the rest of the parts, as it fails to just summarize the article's major sections.

Content

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * Is the content up-to-date?
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?

Content evaluation
When looking at the content of this article, the content is all relevant to the topic. Everything written describes William Stokoe, his life, education, career, research, and impact. However, it is very base-level information, that only skims the surface of his research. Considering this, it seems like there needs to be more information in each section. There should definitely be more information about his early life, since all that is listed is his birthdate and birthplace. Additionally, there should be a lot more information about his career, and his time working at Gallaudet, as his time there formed the basis for all of his research. Lastly, there should be a lot more information about his research in the field of American Sign Language, with an in-depth dive into his findings and the implications for ASL as a language and the Deaf community. The content is not up to date in that his "impact" section does not delve into the impacts through to modern day, as the work he helped do changed public perception on ASL and heavily impacted the Deaf community for years to come.

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article neutral?
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?

Tone and balance evaluation
Besides the slight bias (with no citing) in the introduction, the article appears heavily neutral in every other spot. There are other no claims that seem heavily biased towards a particular position. The article does not attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another. However, this may be because there is not a lot of information within the content of this article that could bend a reader any which way. I do think there are some viewpoints that are underrepresented. William Stokoe's work was seen as very polarizing in both the hearing and Deaf communities, and it would be very valuable to include those viewpoints in this article.

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
 * Are the sources current?
 * Check a few links. Do they work?

Sources and references evaluation
Out of the 8 links in the reference section, only three of them worked. This definitely reflects that the sources are not current or that they were not properly cited and linked. Additionally, there are shockingly little sources listed in this section, which shows that all the literature on this topic is not properly reflected. Lastly, the actual quality of the sources is not very high. A lot of the references were taken from articles like the New York Times, Washington Post, etc., and there are no peer-reviewed sources that I can see within this section. Therefore, this topic needs to be fleshed out more accurately and in a lot more detail so that the references section can grow and become more of a reflection on William Stokoe, his career, and his research.

Organization

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?

Organization evaluation
The article is clear and easy to read, but it would be too far to say that it is well written. While there are no grammatical or spelling errors that I can see, the writing is very simple and could be improved upon with further editing. The wording of some sentences are not ideal, such as the sentence "Through the publication of his work, he was instrumental in changing the perception of ASL from that of a broken or simplified version of English to that of a complex and thriving natural language in its own right with an independent syntax and grammar as functional and powerful as any found in the oral languages of the world." This is a rather long sentence, and can be changed to "Through his work, Stokoe was instrumental in changing people's perceptions of American Sign Language. He was able to change the public's perception of ASL from one that saw it as a broken or simplified version of English to to one that validated it as being a complex and thriving natural language." Overall, the article is relatively well organized, but there needs to be a "Death" section of the article to act as a conclusion (as all information on Stokoe's death is laid out in the "Early Life" section of the article, which is inaccurate).

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
 * Are images well-captioned?
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way?

Images and media evaluation
There are two images present in this article. One is of William Stokoe, and one is of a passage of Goldilocks written with Stokoe Notation. The images are well-captioned, and adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations due to them being of public domain. They are laid out plain and simply, but the second image is not pleasing to the eye, and I'm not sure if I would include that image myself.

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

Talk page evaluation
When checking the Talk page of this article, I noticed that the most recent update of this article was in 2014. From the handful of conversations present on this Talk page, only one caught my eye as having made meaningful edits to the page. The rest of the conversations just talked about wanting to remove links or pictures, or just arguing over the pronunciation of his name. This article is rated as "Start Class", which means it is still developing but is overall incomplete. It is part of the WikiProject Biography and the WikiProject Deaf, and is rated as "Start Class" on both WikiProjects. Overall, a lot of the conversations are polite and only make suggestions, but only one really talks in detail about any edits they made to the article, which is different than how I expected it to be based on my impressions reading about Talk Pages in Wiki Tutorials. It is actually a lot less formal, and a lot less change to the article is discussed in this Talk page than I would have previously thought there would be.

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions


 * What is the article's overall status?
 * What are the article's strengths?
 * How can the article be improved?
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?

Overall evaluation
Overall, I agree that the article is in development, but is in need of a LOT of work. It is very incomplete in this sense, and it can definitely be improved through further research and expansion on William Stokoe, and his and his colleagues' research. Besides this, I applaud the article for being very neutral and matter-of-fact in the contents it does possess. The article has good bones, and as long as further edits are made which keep the same tone and abide by similar rules in terms of respecting copyright issues, etc., then I believe this article could really grow in a positive way with time.

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

with four tildes — ~


 * Link to feedback: