User:Lieke Gautier/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Yemen

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
Yemen is a topic that is connected to this course, especially the history section. I choose it because I am particularly interested in the area, history and present situation in Yemen. I also have some background knowledge of Yemen, especially about the civil war that is happening right now in Yemen. I thought that is great to have if I want to evaluate a certain topic, that is another reason i choose this topic.

lead section
The first sentence of the lead section gives a good introduction to the topic. The first paragraph gives a good summary of the geographical information and the things which are the same for all countries in the world. However, the following paragraphs of the lead section are way to detailed and dive straight in to the history of the country. In my opinion this information should be removed out of the lead section and in to the history section of the article. It also keeps the attention away from the readers, as it is to long. However, the first last paragraph talks about the current situation in Yemen, including the civil war. This is a good way for readers to get neutral correct information about the the situation in Yemen, this current situation is for most readers who search for this article the reason they searched up Yemen in the first place, so they will be immediately find the answer on their question.

content
The article covers all information necessarily for a country. It starts with a very elaborate history of Yemen, which is divided into different sub sections, covering all major historical events. Furthermore the article covers geopgraphy, politics, economy, health, education, demographic and culture. These topics are the main topics which give a country it's shape (as we learned at geography in school). it is all covered in a neutral tone, although sometimes the writers choose for a subheading to elaborate on a certain topic more. You could say that if you choose to write an entire sub heading about al Qaeda, a terrorist organization, in the chapter of history, you also have to write sub headings about a lot of other organization in Yemen, so i personally would give space for an entire sub heading on al qaeda. Al content is covered in a neutral tone. the content is up to date. But the history stops at 2017, that is 5 years ago, so in the section for history and the current situation, the content could be updated with the most important things that happened since 2017.

sources and relevance
The sources, which i checked are current and there are a variety of different sources covered. Books, news articles, the QUran and scientific research articles. However there are not much sources in arabic, although i found multiple sources in chinese, which i can not check on reliability or actuality. If there are sources in chinese i would expect multiple arabic sources as well, as the country is Arabic. However, Al jazeera is used multiple times as a source. Most (scientific) books and articles that are used in the history, culture and geography section are from before 2012. More then ten years old, a lot of sources are even from before 1995. Maybe i would try to replace some sources with some more current sources that cover the same information, if possible of course. I don't want to say that the sources used are not correct, and of course the information about history and geography (biodiversity) doesn't change so much in 20 years. The content is accurately referenced and almost all information in covered with a source. All the links i checked worked, although i could not access all the books via internet. From what i could find, the research used in the article is mostly done by English, American scientists. I was surprised to see few arabic/ yemeni researchers in the references. There could be a lot of improvement there, it would be more balanced if researchers from all nationalities and affinities with the subject were cited in the article. The statistics used (from the UN, CIA, etc.) are very up to date, mostly updated in 2021, for the topics it is used for (ex. demographics) it is up to date enough to be accurate.

organization and writing quality
The article is clear written and well organized. the article is divided in multiple clear and accurate sections and sub sections which cover all important information. Readers can find the information they are searching for in this sections very quickly. i didn't find any errors or spelling mistakes, which doesn't mean the article is clear of it. The article is well written, but the sentences aren't always easy to read. Especially in the introduction I was a bit taken back by the chaotic sentences.