User:Hmc442/Evaluate an Article

Article Evaluation

 * Name of article: Pecking order.
 * I chose this article to evaluate because it is an interesting animal behaviour article that is lacking some important sources.

Lead evaluation
The Lead provides a concise definition of pecking order and who first described the behaviour. The Lead also provides a summary of the main sections of the article, giving a description of the function and mechanisms of the pecking order in chickens and how this concept can apply to other species. The information in the talk page has some questioning the article authors definition of pecking order.

Content evaluation
The content is thorough in describing how the hierarchy works and why it is in place.

Tone and balance evaluation
The article seems to be slightly biased towards the reasoning for chickens to behave in this way. They make claims about how the animals choose to react to others of their flock based on regarding their size and acknowledging the larger as dominant. They do not suggest any other reasons for this behaviour even though their claims are not backed up by reliable sources, or any sources at all at times.

Sources and references evaluation
The sources on this article are almost entirely from 1955 to 1988 with one other source from 2010. Both of the links provided are broken. The author could have been more thorough with providing sources, especially for their bold claims about the reasoning for the behaviour of the chickens.

Organization evaluation
The article is organized, clear, and easy to read. Any words or concepts that might be difficult to understand are linked to a description explaining what it is. The article does have two sections for the major topics. There did not seem to be any grammatical mistakes.

Images and media evaluation
The only image provided was of a chicken at the bottom of the hierarchy who has damaged feathers due to pecking from the other chickens (descriptive title).

Talk page evaluation
Another wikipedia member stated, in the talk page, that the reasoning for the pecking order stated by the author is wrong and claims that it is due to one chicken being ill or the weakest, causing the other flock members to peck it and "bully" it. Another user states the author was in fact correct and it is about social hierarchy and not illness.

The article is apart of WikiProject Birds and was rated as "start-class" and "low-importance."

Overall evaluation
The article is quite underdeveloped due to the lacking of reliable and up to date sources. More research would have to be done to improve the article and cite the claims made by the author so that they will be reliable. One strength is that the author seems to have experience with chickens and so they have first-hand insight on their behaviour but describing the behaviour is not enough to make the article reliable. It must be backed up by scientific evidence and controlled experimentation.

The addition of more pictures of chickens displaying the behaviour would be an interesting addition.