User:JustBort/Evaluate an Article

Why I chose this article to evaluate
I have chosen A Dream (Blake poem) to evaluate because it is a poem and from an author that I had never heard of before and it has an underdeveloped Wikipedia article. This interested me to learn more about it and evaluate the article.

Lead Section
In this article, I will be evaluating the the Wikipedia page for A Dream (Blake poem). The lead section of this page is quite short, but it does concisely introduce the poem described in the article by stating the collection it's from, the author, and when it was written. No other information is stated in the lead, so no other details connect with other sections of the poem. The lead section could give a much better overview of the following sections in the article.

Content
The background gives some information about the collection of poems that "A Dream" comes from. However, this background focuses much more on the collection of poems rather than the poem itself. I believe this section could benefit from adding a more details about the background of "A Dream"' if there is a proper source discussing it. This section also relies a little bit too heavily on quotes from a scholar. By paraphrasing these quotes, an author could make the information easier to digest for readers and possibly make the content more concise. Some content from the "Structure and summary" section supply good information about the background of the poem but is not in the background section. The content in the following section is well said, but is quite brief. I must admit that I had to look up what an emmet was when the analysis kept mentioning it. Maybe the article should say somewhere that this is an ant because the term "emmet" which comes from Cornish English is not commonly known.

Tone and balance
The article has a very neutral tone and claims are paraphrased from reputable sources. I did not feel persuaded by the article.

Sources and references
To my knowledge, all fact are from reputable secondary sources. However, some of the sources are not referenced properly, but this seems like an easy problem to fix. Apart from one of the author's links improperly going to an incorrect Wikipedia page, all of the links seem to be fully functional. The sources also come from a good variety of different authors which can help identify notability.

Organization and writing quality
Some minor grammatical errors could be fixed. Some phrasing in "Structure and summary" section is quite strange and informal for a Wikipedia article, like the expression "no wonder". Overall, the article is easy to read, with minor errors. Some sentences could be more concise and some concise could be elaborated more upon. The organization of the article is logical and easy to follow.

Image and media
There are two pictures in the article of different versions of the written poem. The images enhance the message of the article, but I do not think both are necessarily needed to be included because they are quite similar. I believe the images follow Wikipedia guidelines.

Talk page discussion
There are no conversations about the article. The article is in WikiProject Poetry and listed as C-Class for its quality. It is also marked as mid-importance, but rated High-importance by the William Blake task force.

Overall impressions
The article in its entirety has some great strengths and weaknesses. The article contains some very strong sentences in terms of content, but lacks in most other places. The content of the page is extremely brief and could use elaboration and expansions. It also does not connect the main idea of the poem and article together in a cohesive way that would tie it all together. The article could use more depth in every section and connects between its sections to be improved. Overall, the page is strong and well-developed in its current content but need more information as a whole to become properly developed.

comments on your evaluation
1. Your reasons for choosing the article are compelling. And if you don’t know Blake, it’s worth looking into his work.

2. As you note, the lead is adequate as far as it goes but probably not sufficient.

3. Also as you note, the Background section relies too much on comments by one scholar, quoted rather than paraphrased. Without more context, those comments are probably of little use to a general reader (this is true of quotations from critical sources in other sections too). You make a good point about material from the Structure section being perhaps more appropriate for Background. Similarly, comments about theme could go in the Themes section. By the way – I did find a clarification of the word “Emmet” (in the Structure section). But maybe it should be given sooner – by then I too had looked up the word.

4. To add to your comments about tone and balance:  The first paragraph of Themes and critical analysis might be improved by a footnote at the end, not just after the first sentence. As it is, the analysis there seems unattributed, as if it were the opinion of the article.

5. The faulty link is an interesting discovery.

6. You make a good point about “No wonder” and the language of the Structure and summary section, which seems to me not quite neutral. It sounds as though the article is paraphrasing an unidentified source.

7. The two images are indeed similar from the perspective of the text itself. The differences might be of interest in an article about illustrations of Blake’s poems, but there’s no mention of Blake’s graphic art here.

8. In your Overall impressions section, your well-founded criticisms of the article may outweigh to some extent your evaluation of it as generally strong.