User:KorrynKarau/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Community policing

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.)


 * 1) I chose this article because the broad topic that I have chosen is Community Policing.
 * 2) I believe this article matters because it talks about what COP is, the history, methods, the Dallas and Cincinnati experiments, the comparison between traditional policing and community policing, Nordic countries and Camden, NJ and their community policing, high conflict zones, community alienation, evaluation of COP, randomized controlled trials, benefits, and criticisms.
 * 3) This articles states at the top that this article has multiple issues. It stated that the article's lead section may be too long and that this article's style and tone are one sided and doesn't support the encyclopedic tone thats specifically used on wikipedia. I think that bringing in another person's perspective and research would help this article not be so one sided and will help balance out the opinions in it.

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.)

Lead Section:


 * 1) Yes, I believe that the lead of this article clearly and concisely describes Community Oriented Policing (COP) and what it entails.
 * 2) This article to me does not have a "summary" of what this article entails and what it's main focuses are. You only know by what the headers say.
 * No, the lead does not include information that is not in the article. The lead focuses on community policing and what it is which follows throughly throughout this article.
 * 1) The lead is clear and concise, the way it should be.

Content:

Tone and Balance:
 * 1) The content of this article is relevant and isn't too old from my knowledge. The topics chosen to talk about are relevant to Community Oriented Policing. It has a few experiments and trials that were completed explain in it as well providing some insight on departments that have been evaluated and have tried it.
 * 2) For the most part. Some sources are old but that may be for the history section of the article. I know that there could be some newer sources used to represent where it is standing today.
 * 3) A main component of community policing to me is social media. This article does not cover any use of social media in community policing and I think it's a crucial component of the community itself. I think another component that is missing is relationships and how to build them. It states that law enforcement "polices" a certain area to get familiar with it, but it should talk more about how they build that relationship with those citizens/community.
 * 4) I would say that for this particular article that there really isn't an equity gap or a underrepresented population or topic, but I would say that this articles shows us to better communicate with the communities in which we live in order to better policing ideology. So, we could say that the communities themselves are underrepresented in a way as their voices haven't been heard by the traditional policing style, but this is nothing new to us so it's not like it's not talked about.

Sources and References:
 * 1) I would say yes, but most of the information is coming from the same sources which leads to a certain tone or style which could indicate that it's not the most neutral.
 * 2) Well, in the section "comparison with traditional policing" it very much talks about how traditional policing is not the way togo because this type of policing isn't stopping crime and in the "method" section it's basically saying that community-oriented policing is more successful because officers are assigned to a certain area and then from there they learn how to reduce crime in that particular area because it's there area of focus.
 * 3) I think that honestly, traditional policing is being underrepresented because if it was such a bad thing, why are many police departments still practicing it and why haven't they incorporated or fully practiced community-oriented policing then?
 * 4) I feel as if the this article leans pretty well both ways and there are pros and cons to both types of policing. I think there is some spots in here that have a lot of negativity but that can be fixed. I wouldn't really say that this article has an fringe or minority viewpoints, it's one style of policing vs. the other.
 * 5) Well considering this article is titled "Community policing" it is mainly about community-oriented policing and it is quite in favor of incorporating this into all police departments. But it does talk about a decent about of traditional policing and what the pros and cons of it are which is a good thing because that is the method we have been using for years previous.


 * 1) I would say that yes, the sources they used are credible and this article is peer reviewed.
 * 2) Yes, the references in this article seem to have a decent understanding on the topic as the information presented by them is close to the articles I have researched myself.
 * 3) Yes, for the most part the sources are from the 1980's and up. This article does contain some history on policing which has been around for awhile and how it has evolved into community policing in certain areas.
 * 4) I would say that yes the reference list comes from a diverse list of authors as different towns, different people, and different perspectives on community policing is diverse in general.
 * 5) In my opinion, yes peer reviewed articles are better for this topic because it's a topic that fairly new. One thing to note about this topic is that it is also a top that is talked a lot about in police journals. News sites also like to talk about the topic as its becoming more popular throughout departments.
 * 6) The 5 references that I clicked on do bring up real publications, even some that SMSU has available to us!

Organization and writing quality:


 * 1) Yes, this article is easy to read and concise, but some sections drag on and on. The font is easy to read and the sections/topics are easy to locate due to being bold. I would say that the article flows by the order of the sections/topics as well.
 * 2) For the many times I have read through it, I have yet to see a grammar error.
 * 3) Yes, the article is well-organized, it is broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic.

Images and Media:


 * 1) Somewhat. The 3 images this article has shows community policing in 3 styles. 2 of which are in the US and 1 in Dudley, United Kingdom. The two in the US officers are still dressed in uniform interacting with the public and in the UK they're wearing safety vests on bikes for foot patrol.
 * 2) Yes, the images are captioned well as they say where they're located and a description of what is happening in each.
 * 3) I would say yes because you could easily look them up and they haven't been taken off yet which allows me to assume that all restrictions and regulations have been correctly followed.
 * 4) Yes, the pictures are appealing and have great color, catching the eye.

Talk Page Discussion:


 * 1) I wouldn't say that there are many conversations, but I would say that there has been a lot of editing behind the scenes. From sentences and paragraphs being taken out to editing the ones still active in the article to many people adding to what is already there based on the research they have conducted, this article is very active.
 * 2) This article is not highly rated as it has multiple issues. This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Law Enforcement.
 * 3) I wouldn't really say that it differs any as community policing is not a topic that is often talked about or brought to attention. One thing that this article brings to attention is where community policing is present and some studies that have been done on it to see if it's an effective to police your community or not. It's nice to see that they put some pros and cons in this article to make sure that you can see it from both points of view as most departments are still stuck in the traditional policing method.

Overall Impressions:


 * 1) This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale and rated as Low-Importance on the importance scale.
 * 2) Some strengths of this article include organization, concise, easy to read/follow, credibility, topics chosen to discuss, and the images portray the message of community policing.
 * 3) The main improvement that can be made is the length of the lead section. Another thing that could possibly be improved on is that of the tone and style. I would also like to add a section in here about social media and how it correlates with community policing. Some departments use social media to keep their communities in the loop and I think it's a great way to spread the word or show positivity as social media is a huge part of today's day and age.
 * 4) I would say this article is underdeveloped because there is room to improve.