User:Koafve/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Animal suicide

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I've chosen to evaluate this particular article mainly because the subject matter interests me. I feel that suicide is commonly talked about in regards to humans, but I haven't heard much on the topic of it being shown in other animals. I feel that this topic is important because it could shed light on the reasons someone dies by suicide. If you can figure out why an animal (other than a human) completes suicide, you may be able to compare and contrast that to reasons humans do. My preliminary impression of the article was that its information was lacking. I was expecting the article to have more information and talk about current literature on the topic, but it seems like it is just scratching the surface.

Evaluate the article
Content

Overall, I think the content of the article is lacking. The authors of the article rely heavily on specific examples of animals who may have died by suicide. They do include some history on the research of the topic, but I believe it could include more information about what the scientific community has found in a broader sense, or talk about specific studies that have results relating to the topic. I also believe that some information may not belong. For example, the information about the Lemmings "dying by suicide" at the end of the article. I do not think this information adds much to the topic of the article.

Tone

Largely, the tone of the article is neutral. There are no claims that seem biased towards any viewpoints, and different sides of the topic are presented equally without attempts at persuasion.

Sources

There are some facts throughout the article that need citations. An example of this is the statement: "there are anecdotal reports of grieving pets displaying such behaviour after the death of their owner, or monogamous animals refusing to feed after the death of their mate".

Many of the sources listed are from blogs and news posts, and many of the peer-reviewed articles used were written before the 21st century. With that being said, the sources used are relevant to the topic and do contribute well to most of the statements throughout the article. To make the article more sound, it would be a good idea to replace some of the blog and news post sources with peer-reviewed articles.

Talk Page

In general, the talk page questions this articles quality and reliability. It seems that many changes had been made in 2013 which substantially increased the quality of the article, but some state that there are still things that can be changed to further increase its quality. It is currently a C-class article that is a part of a few different WikiProjects including WikiProject Animals, WikiProject Biology and WikiProject Neuroscience.