User:Hclark6/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Encyclopédie

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article because it represents Enlightenment thought, and shows us what things the aristocratic class of the 18th century thought was "important" for others to know. At a glance, it seems to go into a great deal of detail regarding who made the Encyclopedie and why, although I wish it was a bit more specific in what topics the Encyclopedie covered.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Going from the Wikipedia outline, I think this article is fairly okay save for a few sections I find to be distracting and irrelevant to the overall article. The leading paragraphs do not mention some of the content present within the article itself, such as the inclusion of the publication sizes and facsimiles. A lot of distracting quotes are present, including an entire quotation section that effectively clogs the bottom portion of the article (I understand why it was included, but one or two would've sufficed in my opinion). I also wish more images were included, as the leading paragraph mentions engravings within the Encyclopedie.

Overall, it's a well-made article aside for a lot of what feels like filler fluff--it could be paraphrased, I think, but otherwise it is well done.