User:He3525/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Digital Curation Centre

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I selected this article for evaluation due to its pertinence to digital curation and preservation, the content of the course for which this article evaluation was assigned. The Digital Curation Centre matters because they have played a major role in the fields digital curation and preservation and have created tools and provided research that has helped develop practices for dealing with data and preserving it through its digital lifecycle. My preliminary impression of the article is that it provides a good, brief overview of the topic though it is lacking in some much needed content. Essentially, it is a good start, but needs a lot of work to be a fully-fledged, well-formed wikipedia article.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The lead section for this article is incredibly concise, it consists of only one sentence. For this reason, it is a good lead for establishing a brief overview of the topic of the article, as this singular sentence explains the purpose of the Digital Curation Centre. However, due to its concise nature, this lead does not do a good job of establishing an outline of the rest of the article. The rest of the article includes sections on the purpose, activities, and history of the organization, which are not mentioned in the lead. I do not think this means that the lead section is bad, but rather it proves another critique of the article overall--it is lacking in content. More information could be added to the lead section to make it more comprehensive, but the only way that would be possible is if more information is added to article, considering one does not want to add information to the lead that is not touched on in the rest of the article. Therefore, this is a good lead section for the length of this short article and covers what a good lead should in that it provides a brief overview of the rest of the article.

Content

The content of this article is relevant to the topic as the article discusses the purpose, activities, and history of the Digital Curation Centre and these are all relevant things to discuss in a wikipedia article covering an organization. The content, however, probably could use updating as the history section of the article does not cover anything past the date of 2013. It is probably pertinent to cover some of the goings-on of the organization from the last 10 years as it is unlikely that absolutely nothing of note has been happening with them. It is also my opinion that certain important information is missing from this article, particularly information regarding which sort of tools and methods have been developed by the DCC for use in digital curation and preservation, most notably the DCC Curation Lifecycle Model, which is not even referenced in this article at all and, as far as I can tell, does not have its own page on wikipedia either. I believe this would be important information to be added to this article as it is recognized and well-established tool of the DCC's. Perhaps this could be done by adding a subsection under activities for the different tools, services, and research of note that are provided by the DCC.

Tone and Balance

I believe the tone of this article to be neutral and the content balanced, largely because this article simply discusses the organization and what it does. There is not much to get in the way of simply telling the reader what the organization does, or hopes to do, and therefore not much that comes across as persuasive. However, because this article is so concise, and lacking in content and sources, it can sometimes read as if coming directly from the institution itself. This may not always be a good thing as it could come across as optimistic in terms of what they were established to achieve versus what they have actually achieved, but looking into that would require more research and the addition of content that is more up to date to let readers know more about what the organization has and hasn't accomplished in recent years. Overall, the tone seems neutral enough, as the article is largely just discussing the purpose of the organization and how it came to be.

Sources and References

The sources and references are the portion of this article that I find to be most lacking. The majority of the content in the purpose and activities sections of the article is not cited. Therefore, we cannot know for certain where the content comes from and, thus, if it is accurate. This is the main problem that needs to be remedied when looking at the sources and references for this article. I believe, that it is most likely an easily remedied problem, as I believe most of the information from these sections likely comes from the first reference in the reference list, which is an academic symposium paper explaining the DCC's aims and goals. Utilizing this source, along with other academic sources on the DCC and their work, is vital to the improvement of this article in order to properly cite the material that is written.

The majority of the other references utilized for the creation of this article are no longer available except via the wayback machine (and are just news updates from the old JISC website), which does not sit well with me either. I think it is probably pertinent to update all the sources to information that is more readily available or perhaps one could simply get rid of some of the information in the article that these sources are utilized for. Most of these sources are utilized to establish the timeline in the history section of the article and provide, maybe, even more specific of a timeline of the creation of the organization than is necessary, which has lead to the history section of the article being a little long in comparison to the other sections for no apparent reason.

Finally, one of the sources in the reference list is actually a link to another wikipedia article, which is not acceptable. One would need to find out which of the sources in that wikipedia article is used for the content that is being cited in the DCC article and utilize the source that was utilized in the other article (this is the wiki article being referenced in the DCC article: Digital repository audit method based on risk assessment) as the source in the DCC article. This should be easy enough and possible as all the sources utilized in the DRAMBORA article are good, academic sources that the DCC article would benefit greatly from if they were added.

Organization and writing quality

The article is well written, concise, and easy to follow. It is broken up into organized sections (purpose, activities, history) that help the reader to understand the organization as a whole and thus the topic of the article. I see no major issues with either organization or writing quality in regard to this article, though any article can always benefit from a quick read through for copyedits and clean up. This article will also, obviously, benefit from more content being added which would affect both the organization and writing quality. As long as one maintains appropriate section breaks and the style that is currently here then any additions should also be good in terms of organization and writing quality.

Images and Media

The article includes only one image--that of the current director of the DCC. Therefore, this does enhance one's understanding of the topic though one's understanding also wouldn't be hindered were it not there. It is well captioned as it simply states it is a photograph of Kevin Ashley who is the current director of the DCC. It would be nice if the article included a logo image for the organization at the top of the article in the box with the other basic information about the Digital Curation Centre. It is also not clear that this image of Kevin Ashley adheres to Wikipedia's copyright regulations because there is a notice on the image that states "Although this work is freely licensed or in the public domain, the person(s) shown may have rights that legally restrict certain re-uses unless those depicted consent to such uses. In these cases, a model release or other evidence of consent could protect you from infringement claims. Though not obliged to do so, the uploader may be able to help you to obtain such evidence. See our general disclaimer for more information." This statement, along with the fact that the file has yet to be reviewed by an administrator or reviewer to confirm that the CC license is valid makes me think it may be better to remove the image.

Talk page discussion

There are absolutely no discussions currently being had on the talk page for the Digital Curation Centre article.This article is rated as Start-Class, indicating that there is a lot of work that needs to go into this article still in regard to both content and the number of quality sources. This article is unfinished at best, and it doesn't always cite any or reliable sources, both of which I have mentioned in previous sections as needing to be remedied. The best way to improve this article is to simply add more content and be sure to cite sources in the areas where they are missing, most likely with the symposium paper that is already cited. This article is part of the Libraries WikiProject and has been marked as low-importance for the project, which points to why it is still so unfinished. There are probably more pertinent articles that have taken the attention of the users that focus on the Libraries WikiProject.

Overall impressions

Overall, this article is very clearly just a good start. What we have here currently is well written, concise, and organized, but it is lacking in pertinent and up to date content as well as reliable sources and citations for the already written material. Therefore, the article's strengths obviously lie in its structure and style and its weakness lie simply in its lack of content. The article is underdeveloped and would benefit from the addition of material from the last ten years in the history section and from specific mentions of the different tools, services, and research of note that are provided by the DCC in the activities section. With these additions more sources will be added and cited, further advancing the quality of the article.''' '''