User:Kuevans/Evaluate an Article

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

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it is relevant to my major. I am currently majoring in political science, and so by evaluating a comparative law article, I am hoping that I can gain insight into important topics in comparative politics that I can apply to my future political endeavors. When I initially saw the article, I saw how it could be beneficial to my understanding of my major.

Evaluate the article
When reading over the lead of the article, I, as the reader, immediately was able to identify the introductory sentence for the article and identify the article's topic (comparative politics). Furthermore, the lead also identifies the major sections to be discussed in the article (common law, civil law, socialist law, etc.) The only information that was presented in the lead was information that would be further discussed in the article. The lead was very concise and wasn't extremely wordy; it simply presented the information that the article would discuss briefly.

The content that the article covered on comparative politics was generally relevant to the topic itself. The information seemed up to date and could be traced back to comparative politics in current time. The article does an effective job in explaining why the reader should consider the importance of comparative politics (due to internationalism, economic globalization, and democratization). There did not appear to be any content that was missing or out of place. Finally, the article did not deal with Wikipedia's equity gaps.

The article felt as though it was from a neutral point of view. There was a lack of biased language and phrases, such as "most importantly" or "this is important because." I do not believe any of the claims presented in the article were heavily biased. Generally, the information appeared to be closely reviewed and cited accurately. I would feel inclined to believe that there was an over representation of information about classifications of legal systems, in reference to the other topics in the article. Minority/fringe points are introduced throughout the article and considered on and equal level as majority/popular points. Overall, there was no attempt from the article to persuade me of one point over another point.

Every fact that is presented in the article is backed by an appropriate and reliable source of secondary information. The sources were very current and thorough; I immediately noticed there was a collection of sources from different time periods, but most importantly, there were a good portion of sources that were published within the past 10 years. From my understanding, the sources were written from a diverse spectrum of articles. In fact, historically marginalized groups were discussed and treated equally in the article through the discussion of their laws (Muslim law, Jewish law, Hindu law. etc.) When I looked online, I did notice that there were some sources that could have been included in the article in order to better present the information of comparative law. However, the article included a great amount of excellent secondary sources on its own.

I felt that the article was concise and easy to read. I did not encounter any grammatical or spelling errors while reading the content. The article did a good job of organizing the information so that the major topics flowed into each other nicely.

The first image on the article does an excellent job of enhancing the reader's understanding of comparative law, specifically on the larger global scale. The images are well-captioned and accurately describe what the pictures are meant to reflect. The images appear to abide by Wikipedia's copyright regulations and are laid out in a visually appealing way.

There appears to be a few instances of conversations going on behind the scenes of the article, specifically in reference to the presentation of information in the article, such as the Introduction to America. The article is rated Start-Class on the quality scale and is apart of WikiProject Law.

Overall, this article is an excellent addition to Wikipedia. Some strengths were the article's organized structure and the inclusion of accurate and up to date sources. This article could be improved by adding more images for readers to better understand the information being presented. I feel that the article is a bit underdeveloped. More images could help the article in appearing more "complete."