User:Kirstenstanis/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Ctenophora.

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose it because I am researching the Lampocteis cruentiventer, and this species is part of the ctenophora phylum.

Evaluate the article
Lead section:

The lead section does include an adequate lead in sentence. It does not include a brief description of the article's major sections, but it does include a small Contents table that outlines the major sections. It just does not give brief descriptions of each. However, there is a lot of information on this phylum, so perhaps adding too much detail into the lead section would be overwhelming.

Content:

The article's content is very much related to the topic. Overall, the content is up to date, with some information being recently gathered within the last decade. However, there is still lots of information in the article that is from the 1980's and 1990's. While I understand ctenophores are still being researched and discovered, I think it's very important to keep information as up to date as possible. Perhaps as this article is updated with newer information, some of the information gathered from other scientific journals from the 1980's can be replaced. However, in a general sense, this is still fairly recent. There is no content that does not belong and no content that is missing. It does not represent any of Wikipedia's equity gaps, but this is a scientific topic about deep sea organisms, so I do not think this would be relevant anyway.Tone and Balance:

Yes the article is neutral, much like all other Wikipedia articles on scientific topics. There seems to be no biases or viewpoints that are overrepresented or underrepresented. There are no minority viewpoints to be discussed in the first place.

Sources and References:

Not all facts are backed up by reliable sources. For example, there are a lot of facts in the lead section that are not cited, such as the second, third, and fourth paragraphs. In order to improve this page and not be accused of plagiarism, these facts should be cited.

Organization and writing quality:

Yes, this article is written clearly and concisely. It has no grammatical or spelling errors. The Description section is extremely well organized, with mini-headings that separate each part of the ctenophore body and its features. The taxonomy section is also extremely well organized to follow. Overall, this is a well organized page.

Images and Media:

The article does include images that are helpful for understanding the topic. However, I think it would be helpful to include even more pictures. For example, the morphology of ctenophores is particularly difficult to understand, and I think readers would benefit from more diagrams of body plans. Currently, there is only one photo of the anatomy of a ctenophore. I think there should be more than one. For example, I find the body layers, cilia, and internal cavities to be hard to understand and visualize, and there are no pictures of these on the page. I know that this is a relatively broad topic because it is a phylum that encompasses lots of classes of organisms, but nevertheless, the page would benefit from some example species.

Talk page discussion:

There is a lot of discussion and disagreement in the talk page. For example, one user attempted to justify their edit and when someone else explained why they did not agree with their edit, the original user said they are being too nitpicky. Otherwise, people are very detailed on their critiques of the article, which is very helpful for improving the page. This page seems to be recently made; the oldest talk page comments are from 2018. The article is rated as a level 5 vital article in Biology, Animals, which is the highest level. It has also been rated as a GA-class. It is part of 3 Wikipedia projects: Animals, Arctic, and Marine Life. Wikipedia speaks of this topic much differently than the way we speak of it in class. In the talk page discussion, people discuss more technical and wording errors, while in class, we focus on the actual details of organisms.

Overall impressions:

Overall, I think the article is very well organized and detailed. I think the main improvements it can benefit from are using more recent sources and implementing many more photos, such as morphology diagrams, and examples of ctenophores. I think the article is fairly-well developed but needs more pictures.