User:LisaTruong3/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Biodiversity loss

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I have chosen this article to evaluate because this article requires up-to-date information, provides insufficient information about the topic (classified as a rated C-class despite the article's importance ranging between low to top in five Wikiprojects), and has information that does not originate from the citation. I was surprised that this article did not provide a greater amount of information as biodiversity loss is a frequent topic that is mentioned in ecology and species extinction. Furthermore, as an individual that has greater knowledge about environmental related topics than the general public (including biodiversity loss), it is likely that I can further contribute and improve the article based on knowledge that I have obtained during my studies.

It is important that the article is improved and up-to-date because biodiversity reflects the health, functionality, and productivity of many ecosystems. However, with urbanization and human population increasing, our dependency for resources from ecosystems and our unsustainable lifestyle have consequently impacted the biodiversity of many ecosystems on Earth. Thus, it is important that this article provides adequate information about biodiversity loss to the public because Wikipedia is a commonly viewed site (billions of page views per month) and it is essential that correct, up-to-date information is displayed.

My initial impression of the article was that it lacked information, information under several subheadings were poor or unnecessary, and some sentences were difficult to read (sentence structure did not easily flow).

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The lead section of the article was excellent; it defines what biodiversity loss is, easy to comprehend and is concise (sentences structure flows nicely), provides relevant information, specific words have links associated to them for easier access to other Wikipedia articles (e.g., extinction, environmental degradation), and summarizes and provides the importance of the topic nicely. Additionally, the lead section only contains information that were included in the article. However, one of the links associated with the term "Ecological effects of biodiversity", does not provide a preview of the Wikipedia article, it displays a comma. Therefore, this would need to be corrected.

Content

The article's content sections requires significant improvements. For examples:


 * There are three headings that are too specific for biodiversity loss to be displayed as headings, which are “Insect loss”, “Birds loss”, and “Earthworm loss”. These subheadings can be placed under a heading that encompass these information, such as "Biodiversity loss in terrestrial environment."
 * Content demonstrates an imbalance of information. For instance, there is only information about loss in insects, birds and earthworm population, but no information about aquatic (freshwater), marine, or arctic biodiversity losses. With global warming and climate change, the biodiversity in these ecosystems will be affects. For example, because of climate change, this results in eleven Arctic species to be greatly affected (according to WWF), which will cause Arctic food webs to change.
 * To improve the imbalance of content, other credible sources should be used and additional headings and subheadings should be added to provide greater depth regarding biodiversity loss in other ecosystems.
 * There is a imbalance of information in some sections: there is a lack of information regarding the effects of invasive species on biodiversity loss. Invasive species can be major factors in why an ecosystem is losing biodiversity as invasive species typically become the dominant species, can out-compete native species, and change an ecosystem for their survival. More information should be added as there have been many studies and research published regarding invasive species impact on native species and the ecosystem. Furthermore, there is a minimum information about potential solutions to biodiversity loss: only one article was used in this section, which was published in 2014. Therefore, the information in this section is limited and requires current knowledge. Other information that can be included in this section would be the restoration of ecosystems to reintroduce native species, or classifying the area as being a "protected area" to minimize human activities on specific areas.
 * In some sections, additional information is needed. For instance, there is no information regarding economic losses in this article. Many economic losses can arise from biodiversity loss; less services and goods are produced if an ecosystem lacks biodiversity. Furthermore, the effects of genetic variation due to biodiversity loss can be discussed; can lead to population bottleneck, affect species' survivability, etc.
 * In specific sections of this article, there is a lack of citation. This is demonstrated in the section titled "Environmental organizations", where two paragraphs did not have citation. As a result, this prevents readers from knowing where the information originated from and whenever these statements are factual or accurate to the original source.
 * There were many errors in the "Pollution" section:
 * Same source was used, but is numbered differently; citation [9] and citation [15] directs to the same source (same issue with citation [16] in another section). Not only is this unnecessary and needs to be corrected, but it also indicates that there is a lack of information in this section as only one source was used. Therefore, more credible sources are required to add to this section.
 * Partially incorrect information or lack of clarification: although I am uncertain whether particles from the remains of fossil fuels stays suspended in the air after combustion, but once fossil fuel are burn, they release carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide, which can remain suspended in the atmosphere and dissolve in water droplet (cloud condensation nuclei), before accumulating and developing in size and falling back to the Earth's surface. As a result of the emissions reacting with water droplets, precipitation becomes acidic, resulting in acid rain, and this can contribute to the soil and ocean acidification. Furthermore, the website that was cited for explaining how "pollution from burning fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas can remain in the air as particle pollutants or fall to the ground as acid rain", does not mention this information. Therefore, this indicates that either this source was not used, or the editor that included this link did not fully understand the information or know how to rephrase the sentence, resulting in the information to be written incorrectly.
 * There are grammatical errors within this section. For example, “Moreover, Carbon dioxide…”. Carbon dioxide in this sentence should not be capitalized and Earth should be capitalized when talking about the “...earth’s surface”.
 * Some sections needs updating: In the subheading "Change in land use", it provides statistical information about rare, endangered, and threatened species in 2006. It would be best to find recent published statistical information to add or replace the statement because ecosystems are always changing, especially with the affects of climate change, global warming, human activities, and other factors.
 * There are some hyperlinks that are associated with a specific term more than once. According to Wikipedia editing, it is unneeded to include links for specific terms every time that term appears. The link only needs to be included once when the term first appears. This is seen with the term "invasive species" under the "Food and agriculture" section (not needed, link can be removed).
 * There are several broken links in this article. For example, the term for "overuse" in the "Food and agriculture" section no longer exists. Thus, the link needs to be removed.

Other comments


 * Majority of the content in the article is relevant to the topic, supporting the claims of the article, with some sections that are up-to-date. There was no presence of warning banners. However, there are some areas in the article that need additional information or other improvements (as listed above).
 * Tone and balance: the article is neutral; no signs of bias from the article or from original source. Also, there was no promotion or advertisement of specific organizations when environmental organizations were mentioned.
 * Sources and References: Moderate variation of sources that came from different publications and authors are used.
 * Note: the lead section only consists of the citation of one article. It might be best if another article was used to compare or confirm the information (greater repetition of information from other sources ensures that the information is correct). Also, the link that was used in the lead section did not work.
 * Note: Same source was used in the “Pollution” and “Invasive species and over exploitation" headings, but were numbered differently. Additionally, the information from the headings “Pollution” and “Invasive species and over exploitation" does not reflect the information written from the original literature.
 * Some sources that were cited were from current or recent information. However, not many sections demonstrated multiple sources being used. Thus, not all facts in the article were supported by credible secondary source (more peer-reviewed articles needs to be included in this article)
 * Organization and writing quality: the article contains some grammatical and spelling errors and some paragraphs need to be separated (not well-organized). However, the article seems to be well-written, excluding the section titled "Invasive species and over exploitation" and “Pollution”.
 * Example of a sentence that sounded awkward was in the section “Invasive species and over exploitation”, where the sentence was, “Human over harvesting of biodiversity example through over fishing will finally lead to their extinction.”
 * Images and media: the article includes images that support and are relevant to the topic, visually appealing, and are well-captioned. However, one image in the "Environmental organizations" section seems to lack citation (does not include original source link), so not all images follow Wikipedia's copyright regulations.
 * Talk page discussion: there was no discussion occurring in the "Talk Page", only an unrelated comment regarding the article that was posted in 2019. However, the article has been edited in the past for grammatical errors, information being added, and other reasoning. A point that I would like to further discuss regarding the article is the "Pollution" section as many problems were noted in that portion of the article. For example, the information regarding particles emitted from fossil fuel burning was not mentioned in the original source. Also, this article is rated as a C-class and seems to lack significant contribution, despite having importance in five Wikiprojects.

Overall impressions of the article

To conclude, this article requires significant changes and improvements to be at Wikipedia standard; the article is subpar and underdeveloped. Some strengths of the article is that good images were used and well-captioned, well-written and detailed lead section, and contains general information about biodiversity loss. The article can be improved by more citations and information from peer-review articles or other reliable sources, ensuring that correct information is displayed to not mislead or misinform readers, reformatting of certain paragraphs to follow Wikipedia's guidelines, correction of grammatical and spelling errors, and further contribution from other Wikipedia editors is needed to complete the article. Another major shortcoming of this article is that incorrect citations were used for several paragraphs in various sections and information displayed on the Wikipedia article differed from the original source (as seen in the section titled "Pollution").