User:Kit19/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Choctaw code talkers

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I wrote about Native Americans in WWI for a class last semester, so I actually know about the topic and have a good idea of what it's lacking. The topic itself matters because the Choctaw Code Talkers helped defeat the Germans at Forest Ferme in 1918 (less than a month before the armistice), which pushed them further back towards their own border. They also provided the US military an example of how Code Talkers could aid the Allied effort once WWII broke out. My first impression of the article is that it is very short for such a complex topic that involved so many different people and entities.

Evaluate the article
The lead section of the article, is lacking since it consists of only three sentences. It does not mention when they were first used as a code breaking unit or what battle they were used in. The content of the article is older as is evident by the fact that, under "Further Readings," William C. Meadows' Comanche Code Talkers book from 2003 is listed even though he just published a book on the Choctaw Code Talkers last year. Additionally, the article leaves out important aspects such as where their language was utilized (what battle(s)) or opposing view points on the position of the Choctaw being the first official use of a Native language for Code Talking purposes. It seems to take on a biased tone since it implies that it is an established fact that they were the first Code Talkers, when William C Meadows, the author listed numerous times later on as a source for "further reading," cites other possibilities in his 2021 book. Also, it makes it seem as if this was the first time the military had ever used an indigenous language as code, when that is not the case. Additionally, the article focuses on the make up of the code (which are important) and leaves out what actually happened when it was used. For sources/references, the article's mainly draws from material printed in the 1900s (specifically newspapers). Those being cited in the papers and those who are writing them are primarily white, which allows for a certain level of bias pertaining to the topic to influence accounts. There was only one citation from the Choctaw Nation or Native Americans more broadly (that I know of). The article could have referenced Meadows 2021 Choctaw Code Talkers book, Thomas Britten's American Indians in World War I, or Russel Lawrence Barsh's American Indians in the Great War. The organization of the article is not bad. I think it relies heavily on quotes and needs another section or two, but otherwise the writing is clear and easy to read with no errors. There are two images in the article, each with descent descriptions and there is also a video linked to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting that does not have another other description. The talk page includes no conversations, just a few comments concerning edits that were made. The article itself was given a C grade and is part of the WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America, Oklahoma, languages, and military history. Overall, I think that the article is under-developed; there is much more to the story and it needs updated in order to give readers a better idea of what the unit was and their impacts. Its strengths consisted of listing the known Choctaw code talkers and describing them a bit as well as providing a discussion surrounding the road to recognition of their efforts. Its weaknesses consist of not placing the unit in the broader context of WWI, making repeated mentions of the Navajo, and failing to speak more about the code itself.