User:Goobglorp/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Planktivore

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I found it to be very short for its subject matter. I am also researching freshwater mussels (which are planktivores) and felt that I could provide some more information on planktivory from the research articles I have found already.

Evaluate the article
The lead of the article is simply one sentence, defining the term "planktivore". There is no overview or further information on the subject.

The article is also relatively short, but all of its content is relative to the topic. I believe there could be more to discuss, such as the different forms of planktivory and the animals that perform them. There could also be more content on the effects of planktivory on ecosystems as well, although they do have one mentioning of the gizzard shad.

There is a neutral tone, but the gizzard shad appears to be a subject that is overrepresented. No persuasion of viewpoints are present.

All of the sources include relatively recent peer-reviewed articles from several different journals, however there are only 8 sources total. There are also some issues with the citations: for "1", the link works but not for the PDF file and "2" requires further access which does not allow the general viewer to see more than just the abstract. Further, there appears to be a citation missing for the last statement in Forms of Plankton for, "Some taxa are planktonic for only part of their life cycle".

The article appears to be written well and flows fine. It just appears to be truncated.

Images in the article aren't problematic, but their captions could benefit by having additional information included rather than a simple title. More images could be added and laid out in a visually more appealing manner rather than in a straight vertical line.

No conversations have occurred on the articles Talk page. The article is a part of two WikiProjects: it is a stub-class on the quality scale for WikiProject Ecology and WikiProject Limnology and Oceanography. It is also of mid-importance on the importance scale for WikiProject Limnology and Oceanography.

The article could benefit from having more information on the topic of planktivory specifically, however it does have a very good base with interesting additional information (the gizzard shad and the prehistoric shark). Due to its under-development, more data on planktivores overall should be included for better structure of the article.