User:Lucipheric/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.) Strategic Defense Initiative

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

This article is related to class material. I used the sources linked in this article to create discussions.

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 has a good introductory sentence. The lead section includes a brief description of some of the article's major sections. The lead section does include information that is not present in the rest of the article. The lead section is concise.

Content: The content is relevant to the topic. The content is up to date in the lead section, but not in the article. No content appears to be missing. The article does not deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps.

Tone and Balance: The article is neutral in tone. No claims appear heavily biased. There may be some overrepresentation of criticism against the program, and underrepresentation of the things it did accomplish. Minority and fringe viewpoints are described as such. The article does not attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position, however it does have far more information on one viewpoint.

Sources and References: The facts in the article appear to be bakced up by reliable sources. The sources are thorough. THe sources are written by a diverse spectrum of authors. There may be some better sources available. Many of the sources are journal articles or newspaper works - not scientific pieces. Most of the links work, however some of them link to pages that require paying to access - such as The New York Times. A few of the sources have no links.

Organization and Writing Quality: The article is well written and easy to read. The article does not have any major grammatical or spelling errors. The article is well-organized and broken into sections. However, a few of these sections are underdeveloped. Two sections are only a single sentence.

Images and Media: The article includes images that enhance understanding of the topic. The images are well-captioned. All images adhere to wikipedia's copyright regulations as far as I can tell. They are mostly in the public domain, and all include sources. The images are laid out in a visually appealing way.

Talk Page Discussion: There is no conversation behind the scenes. The article has two C class ratings, and one B class rating. It is part of four wikiprojects, one of which is inactive. The class discussion had more detail about the particulars of some of the projects and how they worked, (or didn't work). The Wikipedia article only has short summaries.

Overall impressions: The article needs some work. It has some strengths, many of the sources are quite good, the images are good, organization and writing quality are fine. The article could use several points of improvement. Several sections are underdeveloped and have very little content, there is very little recent information, references could be made to modern technology originating from the SDI, the timeline section is by this point oudtaded, and recent information is referenced in the article lead, but nowhere in the article body. Overall the article appears to be well--developed in what it has, but is substantially lacking in several areas. It would require a good deal more expansion and improvement to be a good learning resource.