User:JHer359/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)

Multicellular organism

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I have an interest in the rise of multicellularity, specifically in bacterial and archaeal multicellular structures, so an exploration of multicellular organisms and their connection to the world of "prokaryotes" was a topic that came promptly to mind. Multicellularity is a topic with wide importance in fields related to evolutionary biology, biotechnology, and medicine, and microbial ecology can give insight into the foundations of multicellularity by highlighting the cooperative and self-organizing networks (both structural and metabolic) within prokaryotic multicellular colonies and biofilms. As such, this article matters insofar as it may guide initial perspectives on this topic, especially for those new to these fields and looking for future directions of study therein.

My preliminary impression of the article was positive on the whole, as it appeared well-researched and did not focus on a single theory. The article seemed focused, and the lead section was concise.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Lead Section: The opening sentence is concise, though rather narrow in scope (the minimal definition excludes non-eukaryotic and transient multicellularity, though some justification for this is given later in the lead section). While concise, the lead section more broadly does not provide an overview of the main sections and contents of the article below, but focuses on delineating different modes of multicellularity and its analogues (e.g., colonial, pluricellular, and multinuclear unicellular organisms). There is no summary of key topics or points within the article, and much of the discussion of different modes of multicellularity is not present elsewhere in the article outside the lead section.

Content: The content of the article is reasonably up-to-date (though little content from after 2020 appears to be referenced), and the topics discussed are relevant (specifically, the origin, evolutionary history, experimental evolution of multicellularity, and advantages of multicellularity). However, little attention is given to the types of multicellularity, its associated processes, and to background discussion, and the discussion of experimental evolution seems to be given an importance unwarranted by its two citations (perhaps it would be better suited as a subsection at the end of the Origins section). The Advantages section could be better discussed in a background section providing more discussion of the nature of multicellularity and its different types and processes. The article does not deal with an equity gap.

Tone and Balance: The overall tone is balanced and neutral and does not seem to attempt persuasion of the reader to a particular vantage point. Some viewpoints receive relatively little attention or passing reference, with most attention devoted to counterclaims, implying a possible lack of balance within some other sections (e.g., origins of multicellularity). Though fringe viewpoints are not identified as such, the balance overall remains fairly solid, with most sections combining evidence with counter-evidence (e.g., in the Advantages section at the end).

Sources and References: The references are all from reasonably reliable secondary sources, and seem to represent a broad spectrum selected from existing technical literature and web articles on topics related to the origin and evolution of multicellularity primarily, as well as other related topics. The weaknesses in coverage discussed above may apply to the reference selection, however. There are many "citation needed" tags, and many other concrete facts or statements that are not cited clearly if at all, and some of the sources (like the New York Times) could likely be replaced by original research papers inspiring the news article in question. All tested links in the references section worked well. The diversity of authors is of uncertain applicability here, as the article is highly technical.

Organization and Writing Quality: The article is generally well-written and professional in tone, even with varying perspectives. Dubious grammatical construction and typographical error do appear occasionally, but not pervasively. Organization of the sections and topics, as mentioned above, is often problematic, with some rather obscure topics (like experimental evolution and advantages) given their own (very short) section, while background information is largely absent outside the lead section.

Images and Media: Some images and a video are present, and they are visually pleasant and concisely captioned. All images or videos are Creative Commons and are open for use without copyright infringement.

Talk Page Discussion: The talk page appears to be empty (the option to create a talk page for this article was offered), and the revisions page records a long history of back-and-forth revisions. The article is classified as "of interest" to eight WikiProjects: Molecular Biology, Tree of Life, Plants, Animals, Fungi, Marine Life, Algae, and Palaeontology, but always at low importance (or C-class). This page does not seem to be high-priority project.

Overall Impressions and Final Evaluation: My final impression of the article is that it is moderately complete with some fairly substantial gaps that need to be addressed to fully develop its content. The article has a fairly strong (if rather concise) discussion of the origin and evolution of multicellularity, which is its chief point of interest. However, it needs considerable reorganization, with addition of a background section which ties the lead section to the rest of the content (at present, they seem rather disconnected and not explicitly relevant to each other). The stubby Advantages and Experimental Evolution sections could be incorporated into other more prominent sections (Background and Evolution, respectively), and discussion of the biotechnological and astrobiological relevance of multicellularity, currently lacking, could be added to an Implications section at the end of the article. More references would be added to supplement the current selection, and more thorough citation of facts and assertions in the text (along with copyediting) would be beneficial. Expansion of the lead section to include an overview and summary of the article's contents would round out the major reorganization of this article.