User:JThomasAnthropologist/Evaluate an Article

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

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.)

My interest in the topic of Shell Shock stems from my interest in World War I as a whole, the psychological effects of battlefield conditions and trauma on those who were fighting, as well as popular attitudes towards mental health at the time of the conflict. This is an important topic because the First World War was unprecedented in it's scale, and those who fought in the conflict were effected in ways that mental health professionals were just beginning to try and understand. It was also difficult for non-combatants and civilians to grasp the gravity of what soldiers had experienced on the front lines, and as a result of this dissonance, many veterans found it difficult to find acceptance among their peers once they returned to their lives as civilians.

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 lead section of this article did an excellent job of giving a concise overview of the topic, containing enough information within the first line to allow the reader to understand the subject without being excessively detailed. Personally I believe that the second line could benefit from some changes to the grammar and vocabulary used in it. No mention is made of how to manage the condition within the lead section despite management being the focus of a major section in the main body of the article, which is another issue that can be resolved to the benefit of the article as a whole. All of the information in the lead section is mentioned again at some point later on in the article, so at least the content is consistent with the lead.

Content: The content of the article itself is relevant and up to date, however it could do with some better organization. In particular, I feel as though there is significant overlap between several of the major sections--enough that merging them or transferring information from one article to another could help to streamline the flow of the information somewhat.

Tone and Balance: The tone and balance of the article is effectively neutral, however it could benefit from the creation of a separate section dealing with the social context that effected the way mental illness was interpreted at the time, in order to distinguish it from modern views on traumatic psychology. Other than that, I can't really find anything out of place with it in terms of tone. It isn't persuading me to take any kind of specific stance on the subject, it is simply presenting me with the information in the most neutral way possible so that I can form my own opinions on the subject.

Sources and References: The sources and references used for this article vary from peer reviewed research papers, to scientific journal articles and official records on the history of the British Psychological Society. There are no primary sources that are not supported by a secondary source, all of the facts mentioned in the article correlate with their source material, and the content of the article draws on all of the sources quite nicely in terms of the amount of content from each reference that is included. I do feel as though it could be expanded on, however.

Organization and writing quality: As stated before, I feel as though certain changes to the organizational structure of the article could stand to benefit the flow of the information, and that the second line of the lead section could do with some grammatical revision, but other than that this article is decently written.

Images and Media: The article contains only one image at the beginning, next to the lead section, however it does an excellent job of capturing the subject of the article, and the image is captioned in a way that accurately describes what is being depicted in the photograph.

Talk Page Discussions: Most of the discussion surrounding the article's contents have to do with the Anglo-centric view of the condition, while the issues of how the French and Germans dealt with Shell Shock is pretty much completely absent. Apparently this is such a significant issue that the users Dosboy12, Laboutier, and Fritz1776 suggested that the article should be re-titled "British Reaction to Shell Shock". There was also an impressive degree of correspondence between users Paulturtle and The Land on the subject of whether shell shock was considered admissible in defense or not. The article is in Wikiproject Psychology, Wikiproject Psychiatry, which is a subset of Wikiproject Medicine, and it is also a part of Wikiproject Military history. All of these projects rate this article as "start class", but assign it differing levels of importance, with Wikiproject Psychology classifying it as mid-importance while Wikiproject Psychiatry classifies it as low importance. Wikiproject Military history hasn't assigned a level of importance to this article.

Overall Impressions: I believe that this article has a strong and invested group of editors that work well with one another, and while it may be in need of further development and organization, as it is now, it provides a solid base to work off of. I would love to become part of the team that is editing this article some day.