User:Khiggin1/Evaluate an Article

For my article, I chose to evaluate the Wikipedia page for the Kinsey Scale. As I read through the article, everything mentioned was pertinent to the understanding Alfred Kinsey and his scale. Sexuality is an ever-changing and growing topic of discussion and I noticed that most of the references that were included were dated. The latest bit of research that was included was from 2012; a lot has been examined and discovered since then. Although the page did mention a study done on the Kinsey scale where solely minority groups were included, the bulk of the research included on the Kinsey scale was not very diverse. The lack of diversity may not be due to nobody contributing the information to the page, there may just be a lack of it in published scientific research, or the evaluation of minorities on the Kinsey Scale may be a bigger topic that requires it's own conversation because it strays too far from the original topic.

The page is neutral in its evaluation of the topic. There is no language that leads you to either agree or disagree with the scale's approach to sexuality. One thing that stood out to me was how binary the language was concerning gender and sexuality was. This could be due to the nature of the scale and how it is binary and not due to the writers themselves.

Throughout the page, there are many hyperlinks that take you to varying important topics that help you learn key elements to better understand the scale. As previously stated, the article was heavy on binary language; however they added a hyperlink for the phrase "sexuality is fluid" to let you learn more about current views on how sexuality isn't fixed. Important figures are also linked to aid in the understanding of research thought processes. Besides the hyperlinks, the article contains 29 sources that are cited at the end of the page. These all seem to be credible, unbiased sources with research from The Sex Research Journal, The American Health Institute and The Psychology of Human Sexuality to name a few. It is important to point out that many of the references throughout the article in defense of Kinsey's scale are from The Kinsey Institute and from his own research, which may indicate that further references should be added.

On the talk page, this article is apart of a collaborative WikiProject on Sexology and Sexuality. I did not find it surprising to find that it was only rated as a "Start-Class" on the quality scale. This means that although there is a good amount of usable content, it is very weak in many areas. Most of the conversation in the Talk section reflects this rating in their questions and revisions. Users are asking why important and similar but distinctly different terms are used interchangeably. It also pointed out weaknesses that I did not have realize in the first read through; for example, one user added that while they did add studies that include the Kinsey Scale, they gave very little information on how Kinsey formulated the scale or the history behind it. The talk page made me realize the weaknesses I had not noticed before and also brought up the same questions I had.