User:Gosuperdonnie/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: Sexuality and Disability
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate: I am a MPH student and my research focuses on the sexual health of disabled adults

NB: I realize Wikipedia style apparently tends towards person-first (e.g., person with a disability) language. I, personally, do not. For the purposes of non-public facing exercises and other materials that don't have to adhere strictly to Wikipedia style, I am going to use identity-first (e.g., disabled person) language.

Lead

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic? Sort of. There is an introductory sentence but it a) doesn't seem grammatically complete and b) merely states that the article is about "the sexual behavior and practices of individuals with disabilities" without explaining what either of those components are.
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections? No. Several sections, including "self-image," "LGBT," "resources," and "organizations" are not summarized within the lead.
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article? No.
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed? Concise.

Content

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic? Yes. The vast majority of the content concerns "the sexual behavior and practices of individuals with disabilities."
 * Is the content up-to-date? Yes, as much as it can be while still relying primarily on secondary sources. (There are not that many secondary sources, particularly scholarly sources, available on this topic and those that are tend to be older.)
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong? I'm not sure if this is a case of "content that doesn't belong" or "article needs to be reorganized," but the section on "Fetishes and BDSM" contains a significant chunk of material about fetishes involving attraction to disability/disabled people, rather than fetishistic or BDSM practices by/involving disabled people. Because the article is supposed to be about "the sexual behavior and practices of individuals with disabilities," I think that this chunk either needs to be its own article or be moved to a different section specifically labelled as "attraction to disability" or some such. (This material also takes up the bulk of the "Fetishes and BDSM" section – I think that there can be more material specifically about disabled people's practices in this area.

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article neutral? I find this hard to give a yes/no answer to. I don't think it's overtly biased because I could probably find, with time, a Wikipedia-worthy source for each of its claims. The issue is that these sources aren't cited. For example, the lead includes a passage: "Commonly, people with disabilities lack comprehensive sex education that would assist in their sexual lives. This roots from the idea that people with disabilities are asexual in nature and are not sexually active. Although some people with disabilities are asexual, it is a misconception to label all as such." I've read multiple Wikipedia-worthy sources that speak to this that I am going to cite as part of cleaning up this article but the article, as it stands, doesn't cite them.
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position? This article tends very heavily towards a social-model of disability position.
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented? Not a whole lot of medical/health care views of the topic.
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another? The whole article seems to be written as a pushback to what I'm assuming the writer felt was an over-reliance on the medical model of disability and the over-medicalization of sexuality, especially among disabled people. That's not a bad view to hold (and it's one I agree with) but it doesn't belong on Wikipedia.

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information? No. There are a whole lot of unsourced statements – statements that, again, I could fairly easily find citations for but that for now don't have any sources.
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic? Yes and no. There are certainly more authors the article could be citing (Alison Kafer and Laura Hershey come to mind) and the sources are older (although that's not that big a problem for most of the sections)
 * Are the sources current? Somewhat, see above.
 * Check a few links. Do they work? Checked three links; two worked. (The other one needs to be updated since the content it refers to is still extant but I'm not quite sure how to do that yet.)

Organization

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read? It's kind of all over the place. The content is there and most of it can stay with significant revisions for style/citations but it's very obvious whoever wrote this didn't understand Wikipedia's style or formatting.
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors? Well, there's one in the first sentence.
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic? There are sections that mostly make sense, but it's kind of a crapshoot whether the material in each section matches the section header.

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic? Yes. One image of two people with Down Syndrome "caressing." I would like there to be more images but I'm not sure what of. (Some of the sex toys/accessibility devices mentioned in the article, maybe? Other images of disabled people in relationships?)
 * Are images well-captioned? Yes. (I can't speak to whether they contain alt text/image descriptions; I don't know how to check for alt text on Wikipedia and I don't have a screen reader enabled.)
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations? I think. The image page itself is largely in German with a link to a CC license based in German laws. I don't speak German well enough to know what it's saying and I have no familiarity with German laws, so I can't tell. At the very least, the image seems to be okay to use under a strict copyright sense; whether or not the people in it gave permission to have their photographs used on Wikipedia is another matter.
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way? Well, there's only one image but it's at the top of the article and doesn't obscure or hinder the text so ... yes?

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic? A lot of discussion about how this article needs to be cleaned up/rewritten. The consensus seems to be that the information in it is largely good but the style/citations need a lot of improvement.
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects? Start-class, part of WikiProjects on Disability and Sexuality and sexology.
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class? The talk page, as far as I can tell, is generally WikiProject Disability contributors (and other people largely interested in disability/disability studies), so it's not that different from how we've been discussing disability in class.

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions


 * What is the article's overall status? Start-class article; lots of information but needs citations and style edits.
 * What are the article's strengths? The information is there and the article already cites a number of good sources (e.g., McRuer, who's one of the foremost people in the field).
 * How can the article be improved? This entire article needs to be re-written and re-organized. It's as if someone got out all the ingredients to make a cake and then left them on the counter. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done.
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed? Underdeveloped; it's a good start and definitely promising but needs a lot more work.

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

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