User:LuInEd/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Arabesque

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I wanted more of a concept than a certain object and this is something we will talk about throughout the course. I also checked to see that it is a c-class article, because that seemed to be the best fitting for this exercise.

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.)

Lead section:

The lead section goes into overtly much detail, especially around the art historical definition of arabesque. This discussion is however not actually part of the article. The article and lead also contradict each other wherein statements about the religious connotations of arabesque in Islam are dismissed in the lead but uncritically represented within a section of the article.

Content:

The section on Western arabesque is very detailed and seems to be up to date. The section on Islamic arabesque makes a lot of broad statements few of which are cited. A lot of content seems to be missing and different authors within the page make conflicting arguments, like first claiming that geometric and arabesque ornamentation are removed from one another, but then citing a popular book on geometric Islamic art to make sweeping statements about arabesque's in different locations. There are also references to early 20th century writings on Islamic art, which are now mostly overhauled and dismissed by art historians.

Tone and Balance:

The article does not seem to be very balanced, especially the "Significance in Islam" section seems to be written in the way of an essay with no citations present. Generally it does not seem like an article that has been treated with the expected caution and care.

There are also multiple places where value judgments about art are made, such as describing certain patterns as being inherently more beautiful.

Sources and References:

There are multiple problematic or misconstrued references used in the article. For example David Wade, who created a popular design book on geometric Islamic patters, is cited, even though his work is not actually related to arabesque designs or academically backed. Furthermore some sources are misconstrued, for example the citation for Yasser Tabbaa's text is not representative of what is said in those pages of his book.

A lot of the links in the citations are dead. It also references a lot of dictionary and encyclopaedia sources instead of academic research.

Organization and writing quality:

There are not many errors in the writing, besides the contradictions within the article. It could be better organised by being split into a few more sections to include more about the historic development of arabesques and geographic differences.

Images and media:

There are multiple good examples of arabesques, however some of these are placed in a way to support certain arguments within the article.

Talk page discussion:

There have not been any additions to the talk page since 2019 and no substantial ones since 2017. Around 2011-2012 there is an archived section of the talk page where first the article was divided into a arabesque (European) and arabesque (Islamic) page, which were eventually re-joined following a discussion on the talk pages.

Besides a banner on the "Significance in Islam" section about missing sources there seems to be no current ongoing discussion about the problems in this article.

A user, Johnbod, seems to be following the article closely, he was a major part of the discussion in 2011/12 and has been making changes to the article as well as reverting other users in the last month and on various occasions over the last two years.

Overall impressions:

This article needs a rewrite to be actually comprehensible and well cited. At the moment large sections of writing are without citation or with a citation that is wrongfully interpreted by the person who placed it.

It could be a lot better developed, for example with sections on different kinds of arabesques or historic development. Currently the only passable section of the article is the one on Wester arabesque.