User:Gs4446/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Extreme ironing

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
This article caught my eye when looking through the list of C-Class wikipedia articles because I had never heard of the subject matter. I wondered if "extreme ironing" truly referred to ironing clothes, and thought that it must be a term for another sport. It turns out that it does refer to ironing clothes. This gets to the heart of why the subject and page matters; it's something that is surprising to people. They are likely to look it up and may come across the article. I also chose this article because it has a robust Talk page and looked like a good example for a practice evaluation.

Evaluate the article
The article begins with a clear and concise introductory statement that explains extreme ironing. The introduction does not summarize the main sections of the article, but since it is a relatively short article, this type of summary does not seem necessary and would detract from the article content. However, the introduction contains information that is not contained in the body of the article regarding media perception of extreme ironing and a debate between whether it is or is not a sport. This information could potentially be moved to its own section in the body of the article and needs additional sources. There is one link to a newspaper article about extreme ironing, but the assertion about the debate borders on editorializing without the inclusion of additional sources. The lead is concise and does not contain other extraneous information.

The article seems to be up to date. Although most of the information listed is from the early 2000s through the early 2010s, this seems to coincide with the popularity of extreme ironing. There is one inclusion of an event from 2018. There is not any extraneous information. This article does not deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps.

Aside from the article's claim about the debate surrounding extreme ironing's status as a sport, the article has a neutral tone and appears to be objective. However, many of the sources are not current and are from the same types of sources or regarding the same event. The sources do not come from a diverse spectrum of authors. I was surprised to see that many of the sources were from the creator of extreme ironing, which differed from the discussion in the trainings about not using press releases and self-authorized information. At least one of the sources (footnote 7) directed the reader to a domain that is no longer current.

One of the most interesting things about this article is the talk page. There is confusion about whether extreme ironing is a joke or a "true" sport. There is also significant discussion about the lack of quality sources. At one point, the article was nominated for deletion from Wikipedia. Although it was kept, there is discussion on the talk page about whether extreme ironing (and the page by extension) are products of a self-promoting publicity stunt by the creator of extreme ironing. The creator himself has also chimed in to the discussion and contributed significant content to the article.

The article is relatively well-written and is grammatically correct. The inclusion of extreme ironing events could possibly be better displayed using a different format to make the list easier to read. The most significant changes that could improve the article are to find a wider array of sources and avoid sources from publicity organizations and from the creator of extreme ironing. The article in its current format seems untrustworthy at its worst and poorly sourced at best.