User:Kennedydreiman/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article

 * George Floyd Protests in Portland,Oregon: Talk:George Floyd protests in Portland, Oregon
 * I have chosen to evaluate this article because in our class we have been reading about two people who have a difference of opinion on "getting rid of the police." The death of George Floyd has been a major topic of the need to reevaluate the police and their power over people.

Lead
The lead of this article was weak and confusing. It does not give a sentence that describes the topic of the article. It randomly talkies about police being injured but not talking about protesters being injured. It does sort of line out the articles major sections and gives an overview of the important things they have been following in the news. Im not sure the article fully touches on the things they mentioned in the lead but rather comes up with new points. It is concise and not overly detailed.

Content
The content of this article is very good. It gives specific examples of items in Portland,Oregon that are being destroyed because of the George Floyd protests. The items that are being destroyed each day have been updated each day. The article could add reform ideas that could help end the protests or add the specific locations in Portland where the protests are centered. It mentioned protests in other cities which could be a separate article instead of being included in this one that is only labeled Portalnd,Oregon.

Tone and Balance
The tone of the article is not neutral. I believe that is bia towards putting all the blame on police officers, especially white officers. Even a question/ discussion was made about how the article is somewhat biased. The claim is that they are not giving enough coverage on the police officer shootings because the media is trying to hide whats really going on in Portland. I do not think the article tries to persuade the reader in favour of one position it just only seems one sided. They could balance the information out and give both sides.

Sources and Reference
The sources and references of this article were okay. They could have been better. They even had a section of the article that said they had more sources but were saving them for later. The article used a lot of reliable news sources and definitely helped prove what the article was about. They were current because the protests have only been happening recently over the past couple of months. They could have incorporated historical events like the marches the MLK and Malcolm X use to be apart of as well. They did not use a diverse spectrum of authors. The links that I checked did work and were a good representation of the articles topic.

Organization
The articles organization is a little hard to follow. It was all over the place. A better way to organize this article would have been to start with day one of the protests and then followed it all the way to current protests in Portland. This would help the reader follow along better. The grammatical errors were limited, not many at all. Sometimes there were just words missing in a sentence. I would definitely improve the organization of this article.

Images and Media
The article only included two images in the whole article that did not enhance the understanding of the topic. However they included several links to videos and articles that would enhance your understanding much better. They were very good videos to watch and to get a better picture in your head of the protests that are going on. I think that they could have included images to draw the reader in and they would have been visually appealing ( not in a good way) but good for the reader too see as they were scrolling thorough the article. It also would have helped show the importance of the statues and building being destroyed in Portland.

Checking the talk page
The talkpage has very little activity. I am surprised by this because many people have been talking about the protests over the past couple of months. Their is no conversations but there is frequently asked questions. Others are asking if it has to say white police officers and why does it have to say killing instead of death/murder. These are valid question which people answer in very good ways to clear the confusion up. The article is rated C-Class low importance but it is of interest of Wikiprojects that are C-Class high importance for example the WikiProject Black Lives Matter.

Overall impressions
Overall this article was very interesting and informative. I believe that it gives a lot of good examples of the protests that are going on in Portland and how dangerous it was/is. It paints a vivid picture in whoever is reading the articles head and allows us to understand what is going on just by reading. By giving us the different media types in links it helps the reader visually see while reading. It could be more well developed and improve so it is easier to follow, maybe by doing it by the days of the protest so we can see how it has escalated or died down. But overall the topic was good and something that definitely needs to be talked about.

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