User:JunoBear/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Environmental impacts of fur farming.

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it relates to my larger area of focus of environmentalism and sustainability while further pursuing issues regarding animal rights, a topic that is important to me personally. This article matters because it's an ongoing and pertinent issue for both animals and the environment that we as people can actively alleviate. My preliminary impression of the article was that it's a bit short but has a great foundation.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The introductory sentence to this article does not do a good job at setting the scene for what the rest of the article is about. Instead, it just jumps right into fur farming without easing into the topic or providing a more general overview. It touches on the general points of the article in its first couple of paragraphs without too much detail. It doesn't introduce any topics that aren't mentioned later in the article. The lead is generally concise but could be written better.

Content

The article's content is generally relevant to the topic. It briefly dips into discussions of animal cruelty before diving back into the environmental impacts of fur farming. This may be seen as irrelevant or distracting to some given the central theme of environmentalism, but I think it's nice to mention in passing. It's also strange that the article discusses manure even though the article is concerned more with fur farming. The content is up to date with relevant and timely sources. I think that the section about future solutions can be elaborated on or split into smaller sections. It might be useful to add more information about the process of fur farming for more detail.

Tone and Balance

The article is neutral and discusses the facts with clear language. It even mentions that synthetic fur coats aren't generally as warm as fur coats for an unbiased perspective. The article doesn't overrepresent one opinion or try to get the reader to think one way or the other. Instead, it plainly represents the negative effects that fur farming has on the environment.

Sources and References

Most of the facts in this article are backed up by relevant and reliable sources. Some of the sources are at risk of being biased, however. For instance, there's an article from a source called "The Green Vegans" which likely has a pre-existing bias on the situation going into it. There's also a moment when the writer mentions the "World Bank" as a source but doesn't cite it. That's just one discrepancy I picked up on from skimming the article. I feel that the sources reflect the current literary consensus on the issue. The sources here mostly seem to be peer-reviewed and scholarly. There might be some more recent studies that would look better, but nothing here is older than a decade. The links to all of the sources work.

Organization and Writing Quality

I didn't find any writing or grammatical issues in this article, but the paragraphs often jump from topic to topic without much of a transition. I feel the content could be organized better. Otherwise, the article is written well.

Images and Media

There's only one image on the article and it's of a sad animal in a cage, which may be seen as biased or using pathos in getting those to sympathize with the opinion that fur farming should not be taking place. By the same token, it is representative of the fur farming industry, so I'm okay with it being on the article. I think there should be more pictures and media on this article in regards to the fur farming process and of the actual product when finalized. Perhaps it would be nice to include images of animals popularly used in fur farming. The image used is appropriately captioned and attributed.

Talk page discussion

There's a nice dialogue here about how the overall article can be improved with a back and forth from the author and peer reviewers. However, it was last updated in January. The article is rated as a C-Class. It's a part of the WikiProject for animal rights.

Overall Impressions

Overall, the article is really nice but could be stretched out and added to a bit. The biggest problem is organization and even then it isn't too bad. The article has a good number of sources and touches on most major aspects of the topic that I could think of. A little bit more development and it could be fantastic.