User:Gsims99/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Cocktail party effect

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I find the cocktail party phenomenon very interesting. I think this article matters because this is a popular phenomenon that humans experience so I think it is important that the article should be well written because a lot of people may come across it. My preliminary impression of this article is that there is a lot of information already there but I think there could be a lot more work put into the article. It seems like most of the information cited in the article does not come from strong sources because some of the sections are so short.

Evaluate the article
 Lead Section 

The introductory sentence is good in terms of giving a summary of what the cocktail party effect is but I feel overall the lead section is lacking. It does not address any of the other sections in the article. The lead section primarily focuses on an overview of what the cocktail party effect is but I feel it should at least address the other sections in the article. The lead section appears to be concise but that may be largely in part due to the fact that the author never addresses the other sections in the article.

Content

The article's content is relevant to the topic. Most of the content in the article relates to the history of the work done on the cocktail party effect as well as the models of attention. These models of attention are relevant because without these models, we would not understand selective attention which is what the cocktail party effect is essentially. As for if the article is up to date, I would say for the most part it is. There are a few references that date back as far as the 1950s and 1960s but most are newer than that and some references are as recent as 2020 and 2021. I would have to do more research into the topic to know if there is any content missing but there does not appear to be any content that does not belong.

 Tone and Balance 

The tone of the article appears to be neutral. It does not appear to be biased in any way and does not seem to try to persuade the reader into believing something that is biased. Everything appears to be represented equally besides the Treisman and Deutsch and Deutsch sections. That may be more so because of the references they used not having enough detail as opposed to a bias in the writing.

 Sources and References 

It appears that every fact in the article is backed by a reliable source. Most of the references appear to be academic journals and the links to these sources appear to work as far as the ones I checked. The articles chosen appear to be good choices. There are journal articles that I think could be a beneficial contribution to this article but I do not think any of the articles already present should be removed as they all seem to contribute to the page in a positive way.

Organization and writing quality

The article is well-written and concise. I do like the way that the author organized the sections as well, especially in regards to the models of attention. I personally did not notice any grammatical or spelling errors while reading.

Images and Media

There is only one image throughout the entire article and it is a generic photo of a cocktail party to drive across the point of why it is called the cocktail party effect. The image appears to adhere to Wikipedia's copyright guidelines. I would say that the image is laid out nicely since it is at the top of the page near where the title of the article is.

 Talk Page Discussion 

The talk page previously has addressed problems in the article such as the use of different spellings of names throughout the article, referring to certain concepts without linking to an article so the reader can get an understanding of what that concept is, etc. The article is rated as C-class and is a part of two Wikiprojects, Wikiproject Psychology and Wikiproject Systems.

 Overall Impressions 

Overall, I feel this article is not too bad but can be improved in a few ways. I mainly feel that the lead section could use a rework as it does not address any of the sections in the paper and rather focuses on describing what the cocktail party phenomenon is. Also, I think some of the models of attention could be further expanded by providing more detail on those topics. I also think more research could be added to the article to give the reader an even better insight into the work that has been done on this topic. Adding more photos to the article may help it look less boring as well. Despite these issues, I feel the article has some strengths as well. I think the article does a good job in explaining the neurological reasoning behind why the cocktail party occurs. I also like how they organized the research done on this topic into earlier work and more recent work, allowing the reader to see the progress that has been made over the years. I think with all of these things taken into account, this article is underdeveloped but is definitely not in a poor state. I feel it is average and has a lot of room for improvement.