User:Ianlee11/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
LinkedIn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I was assigned this article to evaluate by my professor in order to practice for the Midterm and Final project.

My preliminary impression of the article is that it lacks a few reliable sources and citations. There are a few portions that are just empty. I also liked that they included a section specifically for controversies and criticisms because it offers a new and different perspective which makes the article a lot more unbiased than it would've been had there not been a section like it.

Evaluate the article
Something that distracted me was the company overview before they explained the history behind LinkedIn. I think it was unnecessary. I also think they should've moved the events that happened in April and June of 2021 to the "Criticisms and Controversies" topic of the article because the information about violations of LinkedIn's ToS and how information was allegedly sold and this would be a huge controversy for LinkedIn. Then they could add more information as to how the public reacted to the potential breach in data and how LinkedIn was impacted by it.

I think it would be better if they added more information about "Memberships" and how LinkedIn impacted the lives of these diverse groups of people using this service. I think it'd be good to include both the positive and negative impacts to ensure a nonbiased viewpoint. This subtopic feels out of place since the information doesn't have any additional, valuable substance to it. It would've been better to add that to the beginning overview at the very beginning and not have its own specific topic for it. I also think that the ongoing lawsuit shouldn't be included because there hasn't been a definitive "end" to it yet. The overall idea that I got from this article was very "pro-LinkedIn" except for the bottom where they discussed the criticisms and controversies of LinkedIn. Other than that, I felt that it was very LinkedIn sided.

As for the citations, a majority of the links that I did click on, worked. There are a few sources that didn't have reliable sources or even a citation from a reliable source. While the sources were up-to-date, some sources are from websites such as CNN, blogs, and similar unreliable sources. A lot of the sources are from the same publisher so that may cause some biased viewpoints.

Overall, the article seems messy with subtopics that doesn't deserve its own specific space and aren't in a logical order. Examples being the "Membership" section, the "Open source contributions" section, the "Science" section, and the "Surveillance and NSA program" section. These were lacking information with extra supporting analyses/evidence so it felt very lackluster and noninformative. A lot of the citations are lacking a substantial analysis done by the editor. It felt like they just added information from a source and didn't really delve deeper into it and is evident throughout the article.