User:Laukes/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Copper mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it is related to my course material. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) contains some of the highest grade copper reserves, but the article does not go into much depth. At first glance, I thought the article was short and lacking sections.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The introductory sentence locates where most copper mining takes place in the DRC. It does not describe most aspects of the article's topic. The rest of the lead section is somewhat lacking and only discusses cobalt mined from copper mines (while related to copper mining, it should not be its entire lead section). The only major section discussed in the lead section is geology.

Content

All of the content relates to the article topic, but the article has not been revised since 2017. Copper mining in the DRC is a broad topic, and the article only has a small section on geology, a larger section on its history, a list of shareholders, and a table of mines. There are some short descriptions under each shareholder and how they acquired their share. The table of mines includes some links to their own pages, but not all of them. How the copper is mined and most science pertaining to mining in the DRC is not included. There is also a history of mistreatment of miners that is not deeply discussed.

Tone and Balance

The article is generally neutral, just lacking information, heavily discussing the history and high amounts of cobalt.

Sources and References

Some statements are not clearly referenced, and most of the references are news articles. Most of the sources are from the last 15 years, but they are not heavily diverse and none are from marginalized groups.

Organization and Writing Quality

The article is easy to read and is grammatically correct. For the information that is there, it is decently organized.

Images and Media

This article has no images or media.

Talk Page Discussion

There has been no activity on the talk page since 2017, but all discussions were around modifying references. The article is part of the WikiProject Mining and has a C rating.

Overall Impressions

This article is underdeveloped, but does give a blurry picture of the history of copper mining activity in the DRC. I would recommend going into more depth on types of mining in the DRC and how it has impacted surrounding populations. More peer reviewed articles should be researched to develop all aspects of this broad topic.