User:Kai Mitko-Perkins/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
100th Infantry Battalion (United States)

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article to evaluate because it is deeply intertwined with the 442nd infantry regiment which I had direct family in. The 100th infantry battalion were primarily Japanese-American second generation citizens who were imprisoned in American Concentration camps during the second world war. This aspect of history is not well explored in school and I believe that it is very important for us understand the more taboo aspects of American history. I believe that there might be misinformation and bias wrapped up in the topic due to its controversial nature.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

The first sentence in the introductory sentence section does not provide accurate information and leads to confusion. Stating that the 100th battalion is the only battalion in the army reserve without giving a date or any follow up to that information later to that sentence given leads to some confusion. Also this sentence does not give the reader the most known or introductory element to the 100th Battalion's most well known. The paragraph then goes on to explain its involvement in direct combat in world war II, how it was comprised of mainly second generation Japanese immigrants and how it later became attached to the 442nd battalion. In the next introductory paragraph it explains its revival after WWII and its involvement in Vietnam, and Iraq wars. While this section does cover some of the major topics it does not provide introductions to the battalions major involvement in the battle of midway or its involvement in Monte Cassino. It also provides very little on the Iraq and Vietnam war involvement even though it is mentioned in the introduction. However, overall it is fairy concise even though it spans two paragraphs.

The article is very balanced and does not push off topic in the majority of areas. There is a little more detail on some sections but there is no overwhelming difference in information between sections. The talk section shows that the article might be out of date, the major topics of discussion are nearly twelve years old in some sections and this implies that the article might be out of date. There is content missing the Africa and Italy section of the article in comparison to others, however, there is not any out of place information that is not related to the topic. This topic is related to a social problem, that being the treatment of Japanese-Americans during WWII the article points out to the mistreatment and injustices related to the American Internment camps or volunteer soldiers in the 442. It also give some mention to mistreatment in the training section.

The article has issues pointing out issues and not breaking the point of view of neutrality. There is usage of words like heroic that tend to shift the overall viewpoint however, at no point is there complete bias in one direction. In some ways there is biases in the presentation leaning to heavily on the injustices in first section but this does not last for long and only seems to serve to send the base information of being classified as 'Enemy Aliens'. The majority of the article seems to be represented in a purely informational point of view that does not focus too hard in one particular area. The article does seem to want the reader to believe that the 100th battalion were war heroes at points near the end.

Of the fifty one sources there were sources that either did not exist when clicked on or were underdeveloped and outdated. Though most of them were scholarly articles or .org webpages there is a possibility that some of them are biased towards one direction. For example there were a fair bit of them which came directly from the US Army site which may have some leaning towards other directions. Also many sources also came from newspaper articles or books from the time which may provide a more accurate look into first hand information. These sources are fairly diverse but sometimes not all the links work because of how old this article is. Some sights are out of date but with a collection of fifty sources there is a pretty wide array of accounts.

The article is concise and easy to read in a professional matter, there are occasional sentences that do not flow correctly and occasional grammatical errors related to sentence structure but overall it works well as a professional document. It is broken down into different subjects and does not have to large of sections to hinder readability, however, there are some short sections related to each other such as Africa and Italy, could have been combined with another section that falls in line with what they were doing during WWII as this section is a little too short.

The pictures adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations. There are only a few images but the five that are involved in the article are both well captioned and well sourced in the references section. The design and layout of these images are not fantastic. Four of them are put at the end of a section which separates two different areas. However, the pictures are too small to see and too close together, they should be evenly distributed throughout the article and as they stand right now are grating to look at and make the rest of the article baren. These images are also not all related to said section it would make more sense to evenly distribute them.

There are a few conversations that went on the talk page. Mainly related to the first sentence and its confusion. They have also pointed out dead links and source issues. The talk section is not very long and the majority of edits and comments are very aged with the newest one being from 2017. However, this article is related to the Asian Americans Wikipedia project. After going through and evaluating this article I found that the way information is gone over in an article and the way it is handled in a lecture are fairly similar with some key differences. Both discuss the topic thoroughly and attempt to engage the audience. Wikipedia though attempts to remove bias for the desire to have an informational focus. This is great as the more bias there is in the source to learn that information the more information will be lost when it is taught in future. People tend to point out issues in the talk page and engage without fighting or being uncivil, both parties have goals to learn and improve the article and the talk page helps them achieve this.

Overall this article is not terrible, it has some minor issues but it does not provide false information, it has a lot of balanced sources from many diverse places, it has some grammatical issues and structural issues related to media and quotes but ultimately, the article provides an informational look into the 100th battalion and some of the injustices that they and similar groups went through during this era of united states history. Structure needs to be greatly improved, by changing where pictures are enlarging them and balancing areas of the article. There should be less small section with three sentence paragraphs and more accurate information added to some sections. In conclusion the article is underdeveloped and needs work but it is not useless and still functions to inform audiences about the 100th battalion.