User:KirstenSW821/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)

The article I evaluated is called Neanderthal Anatomy. I looked for this article by using the "Find Articles" tool button on my Dashboard and simply looked up the keyword "Neanderthal." The link to this article is this:

Neanderthal anatomy

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

The main reason why I chose this article was because since this class, the evolution of the Genus Homo, Neanderthal information is extremely interesting to me. Though there were numerous articles about Neanderthal's, I chose the anatomy aspect because I also find it interesting looking at the bone structures of different species within the Genus Homo. Along with this, Neanderthal's have one of the most distinguished bone structures between modern humans. As a result of these reasons, I chose this article because I was interested in the Wikipedia information of the anatomy it has. Lastly, I mainly chose this article because I am interested in helping the article and putting my own research and work into it.

My preliminary impression about the article was that it was short. After reviewing the amount of information this article had, I realized that it had a C-class grading, which desires more information and work on the article as a whole. After realizing this, I began reading the contents of the information the article had, and I further understood why it was receiving a C-class grading. I noticed parts that needed more of an explanation rather than just a sentence do define a whole section. I also noticed that the article was lacking some resources that it could further examine. I think that this article is a great kickoff for receiving information and looking more in depth to this research and finding acknowledgeable sources to support the statements that need to be made in this article.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

As I stated above, I believe that this article is a great starting point to what this article can really present with its information about Neanderthal anatomy. After reviewing the article and realizing it is graded as a C-class, I noticed points as to why it was a C-class. Following the notes above for this exercise, I considered each of these aspects below.

 Lead Section 

After reading the lead section of this article, I noticed that it went straight into the the information and material about Neanderthal anatomy compared to modern humans. Right away it states that Neanderthal anatomy is more robust compared to modern humans, and even provided bone measurements to explain the differences. Once the lead was over it then went into the specific sections to explain more about what the article is about. With this, the lead section is not made clear, as there is no introductory sentence that clearly describes the article's topic. Though it does include information that is further explained throughout the article, it begins the article with material and statements to help the reader understand the difference in bone morphology between modern humans and Neanderthals. As a result of this, I can already clearly figure out where topic sentences are needed, brief descriptions of main topics, and make sure the lead is not overly detailed.

 Content 

Though the article does lack a lot of information, as it is a work in progress article about Neanderthal anatomy, the content that is already there is very relevant to the topic. With the information that they had also, especially with research and references that have been peer reviewed and critically acclaimed, the content of the article is up to date. Some of the research I noticed were from scientific articles just within the past five years. There is still a lot of information that is missing and needs further research on. The article does not deal with Wikipedia's equity gaps where it talks about an underrepresented population. Fortunately there are numerous articles about the different aspects of Neanderthals. The numerous articles just need to be well finished and be further researched to produce Ann excellent article.

 Tone and Balance 

I feel that the article is neutral, as there are no one sided statements, or persuasion methods, or argumentative sentences/comments in the article between Wikipedia's editors. Though there might be some viewpoints that are underrepresented within the article, but that is mainly because the article is not finished and needs to further carry on with its information and research. All the topics and statements within the article so far are aligned with the article's main topic and provide only researched information that is appropriate for the reader.

 Sources and References 

One thing that I noticed with this article was that it was lacking with sources even though its footnotes has 39 different references. The sources that were used were up to date and relevant to the topic about Neanderthal anatomy. As before mentioned, the sources are from newer scientific publications within just the past five years. The beginning of the article with what is supposed to be the lead section, and the section called "Distinguishing Physical Traits," have a lot of information, but little sources to back up their claims. This can even be seen by comments in blue next to a heavy information sentence or at the end of a paragraph that just gives material. Towards the end of the article there is numerous sources being offered, but I noticed that a great deal of the information was coming from a singular example about "Shanidar III." With this then, there could be more examples and more sources than just one main idea to better explain the topics that article has. Checking a few links I noticed that most of them were scientific sources that have peer reviewed and published, but I noticed a couple links were directed to blog pages that are too biased for a Wikipedia article. Making sure that this article is receiving non-biased and neutral publications will ensure that this article is excellent for Wikipedia.

 Organization and Writing Quality 

Overall I thought that the organization of the article was acceptable. Obviously this article needs more information and more topics about it, but what it has so far is very clear and helps the reader understand some bone structure differences, and even interesting points to trauma and fractures that Neanderthals show in their bone structure. I also did not notice any misspelled words, or grammatical errors.

 Images and Media 

The article does include images, and they are relevant to the topic, as a majority of the images are depicting Neanderthal bones and skulls. Most of the images also provide well-captioned statements to fully understand what it is and how it's relevant to the topic. Not all of the images I feel adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulation, because I noticed at least two of the images did not have links as to where they were from. Though I do feel that they were laid out in a visually appealing way, because the images correspond next to the main topic and section that the image is mentioned in.

 Talk Page Discussion 

After going over the Talk Page of this article and seeing all the conversations, I noticed that a majority of the conversations were making sure that information someone wanted to put in was first real and not fake information, and making sure that the information was not too biased. I also noticed that this article has not been last edited since 2021 and the talk page seems short. As a result of this, I feel that the contributors to this article are searching for information that is correct and non-biased to be able to add anything new. Much of the Talk page was unfortunately contributors realizing that either their sources or others sources were fake or recently founded to be disproven. This article is rated a C-class for these reasons, but it is an article of interest to five WikiProjects. The way Wikipedia discusses Talk pages that is different than what we have talked about in class is that I noticed some replies seemed rude, and that there were a lot of deletions without comments as to why it was deleted. Reviewing the Talk page though has made me realize how important this article is and how much more information it desires to make it a good article, as I have noticed that a lot of conversations were debating if the information they wanted to input was worthwhile or not.

 Overall Impressions 

I feel that this article is going to take time and effort in finding reliable sources and good mannered Wikipedians to contribute their un-biased knowledge towards the subject. I feel that what the article has so far is a great start to what could be an excellent article. Though there are many places for improvement in this article, the strengths that is has was shown through the Talk page because conversations about realizing that some information was bad happened there and did not make it to the actual article. The article showed that reviewing their information first was their biggest strength, because I know that the information that it has on it now should be un-biased and correlate appropriately to the topic. The article can be improved greatly with just more information and a wider range of topics within Neanderthal anatomy. The completion is just below half, and the the score is a C-class, but with more contributors to this article I feel that it could be great.