User:Joe Gazz84/sandbox/Week 3: Evaluate a Wikipedia Article

Article Analysis
The article on the English Wikipedia entitled “Serena Williams” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serena_Williams) is a very well-written, neutral, and accurate article. The article maintains high standards from its introduction all the way through its end which provides statistics on Ms. Williams’ accomplishments on the tennis courts. To fully analyze and explain the quality of this article would be impossible if considering each component separately, so instead I will explain the quality of the article tying all of the components together. To begin, the article has a clean, well-sourced, unbiased introduction. The introduction includes more than 20 interwiki links and more than 25 external citations. The external citations used in the introduction link to reputable sources including, but not limited to, The Guardian, Sports Illustrated, and The New York Times. The introduction simply presents facts and no opinion. This provides a well-rounded glimpse into the rest of the article while still placing an emphasis on what the majority of the article is about – Serena’s tennis career. Once past the introduction, the content becomes much more detailed and spread out over numerous sections. In these sections, it is important to note that Wikipedia’s Biography of Living Persons policy is heavily enforced. Actually the fact that this policy is heavily enforced is a big reason why this article (and other articles about living people) are so well-written. There is not much information about Serena’s early life, but there is enough for the reader to get an understanding of where she comes from. This section avoids any judgement or bias toward her family’s decisions, such as moving from state to state so Serena and Venus could participate in the best tennis academies. Doing a simple Google search will bring up numerous articles about her early life, some criticizing the family for placing an emphasis on sports and not academics. None of this tone is present in this or any other section of this article – it is incredibly neutral, sticking solely to the facts. The next several sections of the article spend an immense amount of time focusing on Serena’s tennis accomplishments in chronological order. All of these sections are incredibly well-cited (using reputable sources, of course) and some even have additional articles with even more detail should a reader desire to know more. For example, there is not only one section dedicated to Serena’s tennis career in 2004-07 but also four separate articles dedicated to her career during that time (one for each year). All of the sections relating to her tennis career demonstrate a high level of neutrality as well. There is no negative or positive mention of her race as a factor of her success or failure. There is no content that deliberately aims to discredit Ms. Williams on that basis. Any attempt to add that content would be removed by the numerous users who spend time ensuring that Wikipedia’s Biography of Living Persons policy prohibiting libelous or un-sourcable content is strictly enforced. Finally, the article ends with cold, hard facts about Serena’s career in visual form. This visual representation is an easy way for the reader to quickly find information without having to read much text. As is the theme with this article, this information is also well-sourced. Overall, this article can be trusted and is, without a doubt, neutral, accurate, and well-written.