User:Lillet2/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Marbled murrelet

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
This page has a C rating, and I am interested in endangered species in the Pacific Northwest, especially birds.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section: The introductory sentence is clear and defines the focus of the page well. The Taxonomy section is covered briefly in parentheses after the bird's common name and again a sentence later, which could be more precise and include a bit more information, such as, "It is a member if the family Alcidae, which includes auklets, guillemots, murres and puffins." The information about its nesting habits is confusing in this section and could be abridged, leaving out the discovery of the nest in a tree - which I didn't see in the "Nesting Habitat" section.

Content: The sections are well-defined, but some of them have overlapping information or information that could be in a different section instead. For example, the descriptions at the beginning of the Taxonomy section should be moved to the Description section. The Nesting habitat section has quite a bit of information in it while the foraging and winter habitat sections either need more information or covered elsewhere.

Tone and Balance: The article is unbiased and does not include any opinions.

Sources and References: One link to another Wikipedia page is broken. Most of the references are from the 1980's and updated information should be included if available. Not all of the facts have references.

Organization and Writing Quality: There is information in several sections that would fit better in others. For example, the first sentence in the Breeding section describes it's nesting behavior. Some of the sentences are short and could be combined. Some of the sections could be combined; the habitat sections could be one, and the behavior sections could be combined into one, unless more information about the smaller subsections could be added. It follows the suggested WikiProject Birds structure for the most part, however the last two sections need to be renamed and more information should be included.

Images and media: There are only 2 images used in this article. If more could be found, they should be included. The image of the chick is in the Breeding section but labeled, "Marbled murrelet chick (taxidermy)" which doesn't make much sense. The image of the adult bird is small and difficult to see.

Talk page discussion: This page is rated as a C-Class article for it's quality, and is considered low-importance. It is part of the WikiProject Birds. Most of the work being done is modification of the external links.

Overall Impressions: This article has some great information about the bird's description, nesting habitat and breeding. More content needs to be added for the rest of the sections. The writing could be done a bit better and more images should be added. Updated references are needed and citations need to be added to several facts within the Breeding section. The article is a good starting point for editing.