User:Hannahtaanderson/sandbox

Article Review: Athabasca oil sands
The article provides a great deal of information on the Athabasca oil sands, including the history, current extraction processes and statistics, and some of the social/political issues directly related to the topic. The sections in the article are all directly related to the topic and not distracting. The 'tailings ponds' section contains some language that could be interpreted as being biased or from a less reputable source, but upon further investigation, the information is from medical research/reports, which often use this type of language as they cannot draw entirely certain conclusions.

The information is presented in a neutral way for the sections covering history, operations and general information, but in sections that show the oil fields in a negative light, it isn't clear that information from both sides is always presented (this information also may not be available).

The article has many citations (171 to be exact), but not all claims are cited. For example, in the first paragraph of the 'Land' section, there is a claim made about the environmental effects of open pit versus in situ mining which has no citation. Information before and after the claim have sources (reputable sources, Alberta Energy and Alberta Environment), but these sources do not cover the claim. The links used in the sources section work, and lead to reputable sources of information.

The Talk page for the article contains some interesting information on the article. The article is a part of two 'mid importance' WikiProjects- WikiProject Canada/Alberta/Geography and WikiProject Energy. The talk page also includes interesting information about some disputes over information presented on the page, including the claim that the Athabasca oil sands are the largest deposit of bitumen in the world- it is noted that this claim is only true when the Athabasca deposit is added to another deposit directly beneath it. One user points out the the deposits are geologically separate but not geographically separate. Some users dispute the claim that the Athabasca oil sands deposit is the largest in the world, while some support it. The claim that it is the largest in the world remains in the Wikipedia article as of January 31, 2018.

To Do

-Update on current & future oil sands projects as there are new projects, status of some projects has changed

-Update on health & safety incidents, add more info to incidents already there

-Find sources for sections needing citations

-Info for both sides of tailings pond

Peer Review

It is difficult to find information to edit on this subject, since it is unclear how the criticisms of the article are intended to be addressed. For the first paragraph, I agree that all of the information in the article appears to be relevant, and directly related. In the 'tailings ponds' section, you state that the information appears as though it could be biased, however it's from a reliable source. It is possible that the sense of bias is coming from only choosing information that portrays the ponds in a specific way, even if that information is accurate. This is mentioned in a more general sense below. To prevent this I would first try to find information presenting a different perspective if available, and if the bias is clear enough, or presenting opinion as fact, it may warrant removal.

For the missing citations, I would first search for the information presented and try to add a citation yourself if possible. If none can be found, it would be necessary to add a "citation needed" tag to the information. For the citations that do not include the information presented despite being from a legitimate source, they should be removed and a "citation needed" tag should be added there as well.

For information that can potentially be added to the article, the "estimated oil reserves" section is marked as needing an update, and the "1973 oil crisis" as well as the "1979 energy crisis" sections are very short and slightly vague. More detail could potentially be added about their impact on the Athabasca oil sands if that information is available. There aren't very many new additions that can be made however, since the article has so much information already.

Peer Review

Your article review is through but it is hard to tell what you are going to be doing for the final edits. Adding information on the other argument about the oil fields may allow the article to be less bias as you would be giving the reader both sides. Going through the sources for this article is a good idea as it seems there is a lot of mismatch between what has previously been written and what the citations for that information is. Fixing this would benefit the article. Investigating the issues from the talk page and adding them to the article would add good information to the article and expand it.