User:LeeLaiben/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Monastic garden - Wikipedia

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I didn't know anything about the gardening practices of monks, and therefore I would not be able to fill in any gaps with information I already had. When editing things I have a habit of leaving out information or not realizing it's missing at all because I know something not included in the writing. With this article I was able to avoid this problem.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section - The first sentence does not provide any useful information about what the article is about. It says that many people used monastic gardens for many things, but it does not define a monastic garden, tell us who those people were, or what they were using the garden for. The lead section defines "gardening" and talks about its importance, but does not specify a time, a place, or the people who found gardens so important. Never in the lead section does the article actually say what a monastic garden is.

Content - The article speaks briefly about the evidence of gardening in the Middle Ages, pointing to a number of primary sources. The writer or writers cover what types of plants were grown and what their purposes might have been, dividing the list into medicinal and food categories with a short note at the end about orchards and cemeteries. Little information is provided about what set monastic gardens apart, and information about peasant and manor gardens is freely mixed in.

Tone and Balance - The article remains neutral, but the tone is casual and shallow. Not much in the article gets more than a mention and the longest sections are lists of plants grown in gardens. This article is full of links to other Wikipedia pages, and most of the information is from primary sources.

Sources and References - One section of this article is entirely dedicated to primary sources, and while references are provided from university presses, the four secondary sources cited do not have press or journal names attached.

Organization and Writing Quality - This article is poorly organized, and the section titles do little to convey what information will be provided. The section labelled "contents" is actually a description of the wall and irrigation systems, and the sections labelled "medicinal" and "food" detail what could often be found in the gardens of the Middle Ages.

Images and Media - The images provided are relevant, of a good quality, and do not seem to have copyright issues.

Talk Page Discussion - The talk page revealed that this article was originally about medieval gardens as a whole and was changed to monastic gardens as those are the gardens about which we have the most sources. Further edits should have been made to the article in order to streamline this, as now the title and the article do not contain the same information.

Overall Impressions - This article needs either to be rewritten or renamed. It also focuses on details such as what was grown in these gardens without explaining their impact or their importance. It is a small look into the "what" and nothing about the "why." All of the information included is interesting, and the primary sources provide a lot of information, but everything needs to be expanded upon.