User:Lettuce124/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Barnacle

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I know nothing about barnacles and wanted to learn more. My first impression was that the author/ editors put a lot of thought behind this article. In addition, the verbiage was easy to follow/ read, especially since I do not know many things about barnacles.

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.)


 * The lead section could have been more concise. For example, the phrase "and is hence related to crabs and lobsters" could be deleted to do this. The lead section however does give the reader a good overview of what a barnacle is and how they interact with their environment.
 * Content-wise, the article is informative. Different facets of barnacles are explored including their taxonomic history, their uses, and life cycle. If someone wanted an overview of barnacles, this would be a good article. The content is mostly balanced, with each category having a decent amount of information. However, most sources are dated from more than 10 years ago, and there could be more recent information about barnacles used in the article.
 * The tone is neutral and personal viewpoints are not present, which aids its educational purpose.
 * A diverse selection of sources are used from different kinds of academic journals from marine science to biomedical engineering.  Book and encyclopedia sources are also used. The links work as well. Like with the content, more up to date sources could be used if they are available. There are a few missing links in the beginning paragraph.
 * The organization is good. Some sections could be switched, like history of taxonomy and fossil record. Even further, the history of barnacles could be the first sections before ecology and life cycle if the sections were to go in chronological order. In addition, the article is concise and easy to read.
 * The images and videos attached to each section added on to the written information. Foe example, the video of the barnacle feeding and the images of the barnacles themselves helps in visualizing these animals and how thy interact with their environment. However, the images justified to the left (like in the fossil record section) could have been laid out better, possibly in the middle of the webpage.
 * Overall, the article's biggest strength is its easy to read language, but the organization of the sections and the leading section could use some work.

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