User:Juliannaplace/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: History of science
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate.                                                                                                                                                                           I chose this article because I think it's important to have an understanding of how a field of scientific study was created.  I believe this knowledge provides people with a greater sense of appreciation for how science has evolved and how society/culture have impacted scientific development.  Also I seem to be terrible at finding articles that specifically relate to plant physiology.

Lead

 * Guiding questions

The Lead provides a a through description about what the history of science is defined as and what fields it covers. It doesn't give a great description of the article's major sections but it also does not present information that is not further addressed in the article. The Lead talks about the time frame in which the history of science evolved from the late antiquity period to the 20th century which I believe is done as a way of including different regions of the world without stating what each region is; for example China, Europe etc. It could have more concise given that the information included is also included in other parts of the article so by simple stating what the history of science is, what fields it include, that fact that different regions of the would defined it differently / impacted its development and then maybe ending with how todays' society impacts it would suffice.


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?

Content

 * Guiding questions

The content in the article is relevant to the topic; it all has to do with how ancient societies viewed scientific fields of study, how scientific fields developed as time went on, how different fields of science developed and how science is applied in academics. There does not appear to be much information about how the 21st century is impacting different fields of scientific study or if knew fields have been developed which is important to add. Some parts of the article aren't as developed as others, for example the paragraph about the formation of social sciences is not very informative (it's only two sentences). There is also a section about scientific inventors titled "The Plight of Many Scientific Inventors" that probably could have been broadened to encompass more than four inventors and it probably would have been a good idea to include if this "plight" was the same for all inventors. The problem with this article is that the author took information from other articles and just copy and pasted the information and the pictures that went with it.


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * Is the content up-to-date?
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions

The article is neutral, there doesn't appear to be and biased claims in an attempt to persuade the reader and I think the author did a good job representing diverse viewpoints on the topic without over-representing or under-representing one as opposed to another.


 * Is the article neutral?
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions

The author has a diverse amount of sources including newspapers, books, academic journals, websites etc. all of which have varying dates with the earliest being 2019. At the facts with citations in the article are backed up by a reliable secondary source of information. However, there are a couple of instances where information in the article isn't cited like for the paragraph about "geology" there are no citations. The links I clicked on did work for the sources used.


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
 * Are the sources current?
 * Check a few links. Do they work?

Organization

 * Guiding questions

There are a couple of choppy transitions between sentences and paragraphs but in general the article is well-written, well-organized and pretty easy to read. I'm not the best at catching grammatical errors so I didn't see any and I also didn't see any spelling errors.


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions

The article includes pictures to represent things like different cultures or different scientists who made impacts in science which is nice but I don't know if they enhance the understanding on the topic; they're just nice to look at because they go next to the topic that's written. The images used have a brief description of what's being shown but they don't include links to where the author got them from which needs to be included.


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
 * Are images well-captioned?
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way?

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions

Conversations in the talk are in general focused around that fact that the author includes a lot of information lacking facts that prove the information is correct (which I can agree with). There is also a conversation stating that the author has forgotten to include American pre-colombian peoples. The article is rated C-Class and is part of four WikiProjects. We talked a little bit about the core concepts in plant physiology but this article gives a broad background on those concepts.


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions

Overall this article needs help, the information from other articles in this article are copy and pasted which is definitely plagiarism. The article is very well-organized and pretty well written but for it to improve the author needs to put citations next to information they include and provide more facts. In general the article is pretty well-developed.


 * What is the article's overall status?
 * What are the article's strengths?
 * How can the article be improved?
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

with four tildes — ~


 * Link to feedback: