User:IngmarV/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Israel on Simple Wikipedia

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I have chosen to evaluate the Simple Wikipedia because it directly relates to my chosen article of Zionism. Israel is a major independent country, and so it is of course an important article to have on Wikipedia. My first impression was that it was less thorough than I am used to from the normal English Wikipedia, but that seems fair for a simple English article.

Lead Section
The lead section contains everything that it should in my eyes, though it mentions Israel's status as the only democracy in the Middle East, which isn't mentioned anywhere else in the article. It also mentions the Jewish Autonomous Oblast here and not in any other place in the article. Cutting these two sentences would make the Lead Section a bit more concise, and will make it match the rest of the contents of the article.

Content, Tone and Balance
The content that is there is all relevant as far as I can tell. The sections on the economy and geography are fairly complete when compared to the rest of the article, and contain no glaring omissions to my knowledge. The section on the history focuses disproportionately on the premodern/biblical history and says much less about the subsequent periods, the formation of the State of Israel itself and the history after the formation. The section on politics government and local politics is good, but it contains no information on Israel's foreign politics or anything about the occupied territories. When compared to the normal English Wikipedia article, which has thorough sections on the occupations and wars with Palestine and other countries in the region, these omissions seem strange. It gives the article an unbalanced feel. I do not know if the rules for the Simple English Wikipedia differ in this regard when compared to the main page, but the lack of attention paid to this controversial topic gives the Simple English version a more pro-Israeli character. The focus on premodern history and mentioning its status as the only democracy in the region in the Lead Section add to this balance problem in my opinion.

Sources and Resources
The sources used are mostly news articles, with a lack of print resources. Some of the print resources that do appear seem biased, such as "Live by the Sword: Israel's Struggle for Existence in the Holy Land" by James Rothrock. This could be fine, if there were other sources as well, but the article does not contain sources from Palestinian authors or more pro-Palestinian sources to give a more diverse spectrum of thought. The sources used for the economic or geographic aspects do seem relevant and neutral. All the links seem to work.

Organization and Writing Quality
The article is well organized and written without any spelling or gramatical errors. The only think that might warrant another look is the Economy section, where there are there are a lot of sub-headings with only one or two sentences, though it might be difficult to combine them into larger sections.

Images and Media
Some of the images in the article are repetitive, such as the three different maps of Israel used that seem to have little additional value compared to one another. There are also images such as the two "views from mount X" which seem to have little relation to the text next to it. In my opinion, there are too many images, and cutting a few would make the article more visually appealing.

Talk Page Discussion
The discussions on the talk page relate mostly to the bias one way or the other of the different sections relating to Israel and Palestine. It acknowledges the article as a controversial topic, so that is to be expected.

Overall Impressions
Overall I think the article is adequate, but it can benefit from expansion. It is an article that has gotten enough attention by the standards of Simple Wikipedia, so it is well-structured and written clearly, but I find the omission of certain historical aspects and the lack of diverse sources to be a problem. Adding more of the history of the actual state of Israel, instead of its biblical history, can only serve to strengthen this article.