User:Kat975/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
1977: National Women's Conference (1977 National Women's Conference).

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I used the C-Class article link provided in the exercise to find this article by focusing on women in politics and looking for a specific event. As this is for a Gender & Politics class, I felt a political event focused around one gender would fit the theme. My initial impression of the article was positive as it has a good format, no spelling or grammatical errors in the lead, and seemingly good citations & references.

Evaluate the article
The article's lead does provide a general overview of the topic of the article. However, it also provides overly detailed information and information that is not a main point of the following article. The information is generally accurate, but does not provide a summary or overview of the rest of the article. Portions of the lead would be better suited for subsections in the article itself.

The information discussed in the article is relevant to the topic (the 1977 National Women's Conference) and cited throughout. There does not seem to be any significantly missing content, although it would be possible for the article to expand upon certain paragraphs (including some of the 26 planks in the National Plan of Action) as these sections are significantly shorter than other parts of the article. In addition, there are some sections that seem only tangentially related to the original event (e.g. the subsection focusing specifically on Catholic women) without much explanation as to these sections' relation to the larger article. The article does attempt to address minority groups in its discussion of this event, particularly how women from racial minorities were included in the conference. It briefly mentions disabled, aging, and sexual minority women, but the article does not go into as much detail about their involvement.

A major problem with this article is that it does not contain a neutral point of view. The article seems to contain a liberal feminist view as it spends more time focused on positions related to this viewpoint compared to other viewpoints. The article does mention alternative viewpoints, but spends significantly less time discussing these viewpoints. In addition, portions of the article are written in the style of a persuasive academic article that is attempting to convince the reader of a certain view supported by facts. Although this writing is professional, it is not neutral as expected of an encyclopedia entry.

This article includes relevant citations that come from a range of sources, including peer reviewed journals present in both the citations and further reading sections. The article further includes citations to historical documents or records of the event. However, other sources seem problematic as they may have significant bias in the way they reported on this event (e.g. the article cites a source from a feminist blog). The majority of the citations in the article are working and lead the reader to the relevant website or document. The links to other Wikipedia articles found in this article are also working, except for several in the section on Catholic women.

For the most part, the article is well-written and organized in an efficient manner. The article divides major points into subjects and presents the information in a logical order. The only issues with writing quality are occasional grammatical errors, the previously mentioned persuasive writing style, and inconsistencies in the length of sections.

The article contains a few relevant images taken at the event in question. All images are good quality, well-captioned, and relevant to the article. The images include pictures taken at the conference, an official poster used for a portion of the conference, and a picture taken of women carrying a torch to the event in question.

The article's Talk page contains a few suggestions from different Wikipedia editors. Many of the suggestions include improving the neutrality of the article, expanding on certain sections, and editing the presentation of some topics (e.g. First Ladies at the conference) to make these topics fit into the overall topic. As this article is considered to be of relatively low importance, there are not a lot of discussions in the Talks page and the most recent suggestion is from 2018. The Talks page does reveal that this article is part of three Wiki-Projects: WikiProject Feminism, WikiProject United States, and WikiProject Women's History.

Overall, this article contains solid information about the topic it aims to explain, but can still implement significant improvements. The factual information in the article does not necessarily need to change, but its presentation and tone should be amended to fit the neutral view expected of Wikipedia. The article's strengths lie in its robust presentation of information relevant to the conference and its use of trustworthy academic sources. The article's weaknesses lie in its clear bias to liberal feminism and the style of its writing, which often mimics persuasive academic writing. The article is well-developed, but needs additional work to be considered complete.