User:HeyItsFrance/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Pater familias

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I choose this article because it was a subject that I was confident in my knowledge of based on the past reading, and I felt I would conduct a more accurate analysis on this rather than trying to evaluate an article about Roman women in general. The powers of the pater familias give insight as to how women were perceived in Ancient Rome.

Evaluate the article
Lead section: The introduction provides a comprehensive yet generally concise overview of the article. In my opinion, the description of the latin in the first paragraph (while important for the understanding of the topic), does however make it less concise. There may be a way to put it in a different section that goes more in depth, rather than putting that much detail in the first paragraph.

Content: The article content is relevant and (to my knowledge) up to date. While the article does cover topics that are still being researched, there is enough evidence to support the descriptions of the legal terminology and ramifications presented in it (such as the Twelve Tables and the works of various Roman senators).

Tone and Balance: Overall, the article is fairly neutral, however in the section talking about the pater familias right to life and death over their family, the words "in theory" give a slight air of bias to the description. Additionally, bias also seems to be present in the description of Augustus and the falling birth rate in Rome, as to my knowledge it is still unclear as to how his legislation actually affected census data. Otherwise, it seems that the article doesn't seem to persuade the reader to take a certain viewpoint.

Since sui iuris wives are brought up but only briefly touched upon, I think the article should go further in depth with how women could become sui iuris as different legislation was enacted (such as Augustus' ruling regarding women having children). I think also touching on how pater familias could be a grandfather of the husband rather than the husband himself would also be important.

Sources and References: The sources presented are reliable, varied, have diverse authors, and are current, with dates ranging from the 1800s to the early 2020s. The links work, and given that this is a topic without as much coverage as more mainstream historical subjects, there don't seem to be better sources available.

Organization and Writing: The article is well-written and organized, with sections have clear, important themes. My only suggestion would be possibly adding a section that goes more in depth with Latin definitions to make certain sections that contain this information more concise, however I have never seen a Wikipedia article do this so it might not be the correct answer to this problem.

Images and Media: There is only one image in the article, and it does adhere to Wikipedia guidelines and is relevant. Being as there is only one image however, there are probably other forms of media that could be added to help a reader understand the topic.

Talk Page Discussion: The conversations surrounding this article on the talk page generally relate to the origin/definition of Latin terms, sources, and accuracy of information - all topics that you would expect of an article about an ancient history topic that has relatively few surviving documents to use as evidence. The article is a part of two WikiProjects, those being Classical Greece and Rome (C-class, Mid-importance) and Latin (C-class, Low-importance). Wikipedia discusses this topic in a way that is much more devoted to "accuracy." In class, we are able to make inferences based on what certain evidence may point toward, but Wikipedia articles can't infer, and must describe what is factually accurate based on evidence.

Overall Impressions: Overall, the article is accurate and fairly concise, with it only being slightly biased in minute areas comparatively to the whole article. I think the article has abundant coverage on the legal definitions of each relative Latin term, as well as what their consequences were to families, but I believe that expounding on areas relating to how women and children were affected by the pater familias would be helpful for complete comprehension. The article is well-developed.