User:Lbatesro/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Charles W. Mills

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I find pages about historians and modern philosophers have dense talk pages and a lot of room for improvement when it comes to editing in more (better) citations and editing out editors personal opinions. Mills is a particular figure that I enjoy reading about and sharing with others. The article about him and his contributions is shorter than expected but dense with citations so it seemed like a good place to practice evaluating what was and wasn't there.

Evaluate the article
Lead section: very brief and does not reflect who he was as a person or the contributions he made to the philosophic community. Would need more clear details beyond what and where he gained his higher education. I think more brief description sentences that tie into the section subjects is needed.

Content: Again, I can see why some edits that added more in-depth information were removed (folks were making arguments in favor or against subjects Mills wrote about, taught, or represented) but that doesn't mean more content isn't needed.

Tone and Balance: I think there has been heavy focus on tone which has perhaps made the article a bit unbalanced in the sense that information is still missing/lacking under certain sections. Opinion and argument have been removed countless times under most sections; I can see a pattern of folks also struggling to paraphrase instead of plagiarize or copy and past quotations.

Sources and references: all reference links work and most are peer reviewed sources. Again, I do think more content could be added drawing on the references currently provided.

Organization and Writing Quality: What is there is written well. I think the organization of content is lacking, it needs to be consistent, some of it is chronological and some of it is highlights from academic and private life. The sections do not flow into one another seamlessly.

Images and Media: No images; wondering if finding non-copyrighted images of Mills or one of his books is difficult? A rabbit-hole to get stuck into.

Talk Page Discussion: Quite a heated debate as to his nationality and ethnicity, which I found ironic, but having read the talk page, it now makes sense why the personal life section has the line "Mills has been described as "Afro-Caribbean", "Caribbean", and "Jamaican". He described himself as "Caribbean-American" with so many sources attached to it. The page is attached to "Biography: Science and Academia" and "Philosophy: Philosophers/Social and political/Contemporary" WikiProjects. And photographs are the most requested addition currently.

Overall Impression: I would say this is the type of page I would be interested in editing because I would love for Mills' impact on the world of philosophy and thought to be better represented in this space. It would be nice to flesh out the page more so that folks who are interested in certain larger areas of thought or social constructionism would find their way to Mills as a figure and therefore his works. It also seems like there hasn't been much done on his page in the last almost two decades; he produced much more work and influence in that time though he did pass in 2021.