User:Keelykaupu/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Environmental science

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to evaluate the environmental science Wikipedia article because I could not find an anthropology articles to evaluate, but in anthropology we are also learning about environmental events and the affects people have on the environment. Environmental science is important in understanding how we affect the environment, as well as how we interact with it. My first impression on this article was that it is an informative introduction to the broad study of environmental science.

Evaluate the article
The lead section of this article is good because it is concise & explains which scientific fields are used to study the environment, the aim of environmental scientists, and how environmental science came about. However, there are only two sources cited in this section, which, to me, is a bit inadequate. It also doesn't include a description of what the article is going to cover. The content is evenly balanced and, from what I know, is relevant and up-to-date. One negative side of the content is that it dumps a lot of information on the reader without explanation, and it could get confusing if this is the first environmental science article they are reading. The tone of this article is neutral and informative, but it is not very well balanced because there is a lot of scientific terminology and subjects incorporated, without any explanation from the author. This article is definitely lacking in sources, because many facts are stated without a secondary source sited. The sources that are sited all come from different authors, but when I tried to check one of the sources it did not take me to a specific article, but instead a main page of an environmental government organization, so there was no way I could fact check what was sited. 7 out of 9 sources are outdated, with the oldest source being from 1994. I think the organization is the biggest issue in this article and I noticed a handful of grammatical errors. The information is not organized in an easy-to-read way, and it is very hard to understand. This could be improved by elaborating on the topics in the article in a sentence or two. There are well laid out, quality images within the article which pair well with the topics discussed and have brief descriptions to help understand the images better. The discussions on the talk page are very negative, saying this article "does not describe environmental science" and is "unfocused". People in the talk page suggest ways to clear up the article, but many suggest starting over from scratch while providing a helpful template. To me, the overall status of this article is incomplete and poorly developed; it states many points which are not elaborated on and is really confusing, and not to mention has a lot of grammatical errors. The strengths of this article is that the lead section is strong, and the content is relative to the topic.