User:Joeyslinger1/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Gardening

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to evaluate the Gardening article for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, it is a C-class level-4 vital article, indicating that it is not currently written at a sufficient standard compared to its importance to Wikipedia. Secondly, gardening provides a basic necessity for human survival and its significance to human past, present, and future should be well accounted for in Wikipedia's knowledge base. Thirdly, I believe this article was written primarily from a western point of view rather than having more even coverage.

When I first read this article, I was surprised at the lack of information this page displays in comparison to other articles on obscure topics such as Xinhua News Agency. It also lacked many pictures relevant to the information present within the article. Despite these criticisms it provides a reasonable starting point and has links to many other related and well written Wikipedia articles.

Evaluate the article
The Gardening article has many flaws. One of these flaws is that the article is not written with a high level of clarity. The article wrote in more detail about things such as cottage gardens while refraining from discussing the basics of forest gardening, which is the origin of gardening, or subsistence vegetable production which has been the main form gardening has taken throughout the history of mankind. This article feels like a collage of someone’s interests in gardening rather than an encyclopedic entry. The images which were chosen to be displayed on this article also lacked clarity of purpose. I was questioning the message intended by the first picture, how does artistic hedge maintenance display the basics of gardening? I suggest replacing some of the photos with gardening pictures such as pictographs and cave painting or sites of nut shell deposits which depicts the oldest evidence for forest gardening. Despite these pitfalls I believe the article was written well in terms of its ability to plainly communicate ideas and research in an accessible manner for people of all ages and education levels.

As mentioned above the lack in coverage creates a vague view of gardening. For example, adding a section on the history and current gardening practices of marginalized and Indigenous communities throughout the world would improve coverage dramatically. Having a section on snake shot (a obscure pest management system) and not a section on Incan or Australian Aboriginal horticultural practices shows the lack in equity of information coverage that Wikipedia aims to provide.

Given this absence of crucial information I suggest a re-structuring of the article when additional sections and information are added. I believe the structuring could be more streamlined. For example, a lead section followed by a background prehistory/history section which would then be followed by a current practices section and the other sections on types of gardens, social aspects, benefits, etc. The addition of a final “looking towards the future” section would be excellent. The current sentence and paragraph structure in this article is sufficient aside from the occasional mistake such as the first paragraph under the Social Aspects category.

One of the strengths of this article is that it is written in a neutral tone. I did not find any statements that attempted to sway the readers opinions. This seems to be because of good communication on the talk page. The Wikipedia user Piet removed sections with improper entries written in the first person. This leads us into the next strong point for this article, the talk page. All talk page users seem to be working well together, resolving any issues that had arisen. The main downside to the talk page is its inactivity and lack of discussions on balanced coverage. The inactivity of Wikipedia users on this article is even more surprising given its status as a recently featured Wiki project of the month. One Wiki user mentioned the lack of good references which is my next topic of conversation.

Most of the reference links do work which is a good start however it quickly goes down hill with many of the cited sources not belonging to reputable scientific articles, books, museums, etc. A significant issue is people are referencing websites and blogs. These are often opinion pieces or statements with no significant backing. In addition, there are not many references overall, numbering only a total of 43 references. There are also many sentences and even paragraphs lacking citations thus readers cannot know whether the information being stated is valid. There is also a need for improvement in the variation of disciplines for the authors of the studies being referenced. I believe they could improve this section by finding more articles to reference such as this anthropological articles on the origins of plant cultivation (Piperno, 2011). The article does however have many links to other relevant Wikipedia articles and the references and citations are in correct format.

Overall this article reflects its C-class status and could use a lot of editing.