User:Khdoyle18/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: (link) Pamela Ronald
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate:
 * I have chosen this article to evaluate because it talks about crops and research techniques that I'm interested in. My grandparents are farmers and my mother has always had a garden so anything to do with crops is very interesting to me. Also, the concept of genetically modified food is very interesting to me as well.

Lead

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?

Lead evaluation
The lead includes an introductory sentence does a good job of very briefly setting the scene for what the article will be about. It includes a nice description of what the article is about while not going into too much detail. It just touches on each topic and doesn't go into depth. The Lead is concise and a great opener to the article.

Content

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * Is the content up-to-date?
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?

Content evaluation
The article's content is relevant to the topic, but there are some parts that need to be elaborated on. For starters, the "Life" portion of the article skips from young childhood to graduating college without any in-between. I was left wondering if there was something significant that might have happened during those years that might've been left out of the article. Also, when describing Ronald's new methods after her retraction, there is no detail about what her new methods entailed, the article just informed us that there were new successful methods used. Other than that, the article covers life events up to 2019 so it seems pretty up to date.

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article neutral?
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?

Tone and balance evaluation
The article is very neutral. It fully informs the reader what he/she is reading without giving any negative connotation to anything written. I think that since the article is neutral that no point is very represented. Th one criticism I have is that they fully emphasized the importance of Ronald's rice plant work yet didn't go into detail with the research she did in college.

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
 * Are the sources current?
 * Check a few links. Do they work?

Sources and references evaluation
Basically every sentence is cited, so everything matches up. All of the sources are reliable and thorough. They go all the way up to 2019 so they are current. After clicking on a few links, it is evident that all of them work.

Organization

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?

Organization evaluation
This article is very well-written. Everything is clear and concise with still providing the correct amount of information. The section that the article is broken down into are very beneficial and help the reader fully grasp when the content is taking a shift in another direction.

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
 * Are images well-captioned?
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way?

Images and media evaluation
The images are the one major downfall of this article. There is only one picture which is a picture of Ronald giving a speech in 2017. While this picture is accurately captioned, I do not feel like it a good representation for what the article is about. It is hard to distinguish what Ronald actually looks like in this picture. Also, the majority of this article as about Ronald's experiments with rice, yet there is no picture related to that. The image does meet the copyright regulations and is in a visually appealing spot, I just think there needs to be more pictures.

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

Talk page evaluation
The main conversation that was going on the talk page was that people were concerned that the article wasn't neutral since a main contributor of the article had close relations with Ronald. This conversation happened in April 2012 and nothing has been said in the talk page since. It looks like this article is not apart of any WikiProjects besides this current one that I am working on with Maura. Bringing up the fact that the article was mainly written by someone that is close with Ronald is not a topic we have brought up in class but, it is an interesting conflict of interest.

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions


 * What is the article's overall status?
 * What are the article's strengths?
 * How can the article be improved?
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?

Overall evaluation
The article's overall status is relatively complete with a few small holes. The article does a good job of being concise yet providing a good amount of information. The article needs to have more in-depth explanations for Ronald's methods for how she does experiments and what her college life research consisted of. The article is very well developed.

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

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 * Link to feedback: