User:Linohau/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Price of oil

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it had information about the topic I wanted to discuss for Inquires on Oil assignment.

Evaluate the article
This article contains an introductory sentence explaining that it is specifically about the prices of crude oil. It is very concise and not over-detailed, it is really just a few words explaining that it is about the cost of oil, it does not go on to explain the points they are about to discuss regarding the cost. This article was fairly up to date, the data presented was all the way up until 2020 which is recent. The content was relevant to the topic, the article goes on to explain why there are rises and falls in oil prices. I didn't feel like there was any unnecessary information. I felt like the article was pretty neutral in tone, the way they were speaking about oil prices was very matter of fact. There were no personal opinions about it or how it makes them feel. I don't think that the article was an attempt to persuade the reader to favor it in one way or another, simply to offer statistics about oil prices over the years and how it can be linked to supply versus demand and ability to have it imported between countries. I did appreciate the amount of links in the article. I was able to click on them and learn more about them. I was particularly interested in the term “Oil Glut” and was led to a few different articles that I was able to learn more about. Since the topic of oil prices is more of a timeline since the 1860’s there is some old information however I feel like it's not considered outdated since it is still relevant today. I did feel like the article was a little US centered since a lot of it is written on US dollar amounts and US wars. I felt like the article was a little hard for me to read since a lot of the information was dollar amounts and years. It was hard for me to understand the relationship between prices and historical events. I feel like the article could have been broken up into years, I feel like it would have been easier to follow the timeline better since I feel like it's more effective to compare and contrast the similarities and differences in each year that lead to increases or decreases. The images were not particularly exciting but I think that is due to the topic. There are a lot of graphs included that were helpful but not very eye catching. All the images were cited and linked so I was able to open them up and look closer which was nice. When reviewing the talk page I came across a comment from another editor that I really agreed with “The history section seems to be trying to use summary style without actually summarizing the articles. The reader shouldn't be forced to read another article to get an overview of less recent events in the history of oil prices.” Richard001 (talk) 07:35, 4 January 2008 (UTC) This is exactly how I felt when I was reading through this section. It was extremely lengthy when it should have just been summarized with links to further explanation if needed. Overall I found the article full of information which was helpful and not helpful at the same time. It was lengthy and full of numbers and statistics so it made it hard for me to keep track of what was going on. The strength is that there are so many links, so if you wanted to really dive into a specific time period and learn more you could. If you're interested in the 1970’s crisis you can follow links to that, or the 1980s OIl Glut you could too. I felt it was well developed but it could have reached more people if it was broken up more. I think some more imagery that wasn't so literal would make it more palatable.