User:Inayasingh/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Language death

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it pertains to the course- it talks about language death, language extinction, as well as the factors that can lead to language death/extinction. I believe it matters, because it details why language death happens and details the different types/stages of language death, which is very important to understand in order to preserve these languages. My preliminary impression was that it was a detailed, relatively insightful and informative article that would help to enhance my learning of different course topics.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section:


 * Does the lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic? Yes


 * Does the lead include a brief description of the article's major sections? Yes (had a table of contents)
 * Does the lead include information that is not present in the article? (It shouldn't.) No
 * Is the lead concise or is it overly detailed? I thought it was concise and had a nice introduction to the topics, but it wasn't overly detailed

Content

 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic? Yes
 * Is the content up-to-date? Yes
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong? No
 * Does the article deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps? Does it address topics related to historically underrepresented populations or topics? Kind of (in terms of historically underrepresented populations/topics, not equity gaps)- it does detail how language death often occurs because of colonialism and the death of different cultures.

Tone and Balance

 * Is the article from a neutral point of view? Yes
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position? No
 * Are there viewpoints that are over-represented, or underrepresented? No
 * Are minority or fringe viewpoints accurately described as such? Yes
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another? No

Sources and References

 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information? Yes
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic? Yes
 * Are the sources current? Yes
 * Are the sources written by a diverse spectrum of authors? Do they include historically marginalized individuals where possible? I think so
 * Are there better sources available, such as peer-reviewed articles in place of news coverage or random websites? (You may need to do some digging to answer this.) There was an extensive use of academic sources to write this article, nearly 25 sources in fact.
 * Check a few links. Do they work? Yes

Organization and writing quality

 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read? Yes


 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors? Not that I found


 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic? Yes, it followed the contents listed in the lead section and made it very easy to follow. It looked very well-organized to me.

Images and Media

 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic? Yes
 * Are images well-captioned? Yes
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations? Actually, one of the pictures appears to need a citation within the caption it has listed.
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way? Yes

Talk page discussion

 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic? Well, most of the conversations on this particular talk page were more than 5 years ago, mostly complaining about how the information in the article is not up-to-date/relevant/not cited correctly. I'm assuming someone/a group of people took care of these complaints, because it seems a lot better to me now.
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects? It has been rated a level-4 vital article, and is part of the WikiProject Languages.
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class? It's about the same, I guess- just sort of an introductory thing,

Overall impressions

 * What is the article's overall status? I thought it was well-organized and informative, overall.
 * What are the article's strengths? It is well-organized, mostly uses easy-to-understand language and is pretty informative overall.
 * How can the article be improved? Perhaps including more information about specific languages that are dying would benefit the article.
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed? It is well developed, but I think perhaps it could use some more information.