User:LydenI/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Conch Republic

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I recently learned about the existence of micronations. These micronations proclaim themselves to be independent countries within an already internationally recognized and established country. However, these micronations are not recognized by the country's governance and are therefore considered illegitimate. A great example of this is the "Conch Republic" micronation which was founded with the state of Florida, USA. Such nations are detrimental to a countries safety and prosperity as they tend to disobey foundational laws enforced by such governments. A lot of times these nations are made for the sole purpose of gaining tourists attention, and are not useful in any capacity when it comes to helping surrounding communities. Some would go as far as declaring states of war against the very country they are founded against. When I read this article I found it humorous, and maybe that was the intention behind it, however, there are many things that were wrong and mis-informative about it. Ultimately, Wikipedia's goal is to provide factual information that will allow the reader to gain the knowledge to expand on such materials if need be, however, this article contains many elements that are lacking to do such a thing.

Evaluate the article
- The lead section states that the nation was founded upon a protests against the U.S. Border Patrol, and other concerns relating to citizens living in the city of Key West, Florida. However, there are no citations affirming such claims about these protests that supposedly occurred. Furthermore, the lead section references information that comes from a bias source, in such a case it comes straight from the Republic's own website (an illegitimate source of factual information, as everything can be made to fit their agenda). Also, it should be noted that sources that do open either do not work or are blog/news posts of individuals.

- In addition, there is an individual section displaying both the date of declaration/establishment, total area claimed, and population size, all of which are not cited. Almost all of the history section is not cited and so it hard to believe any of the background information. Events such as an invasions that took place in 1995 are also heavily under cited and are thus not credible.

- The section about their "military" also lacks several citations, and their is even annotation stating that a citation is needed. Also some of the citations that are present do not work either. It is very surprising that so many references do not work even though the page is regularly updated (updated at the time of this writing - 11 Jan 2022).

- This article could definitely use sections describing the legal status of the microstate and administration, along with some business operations that take place there (i.e tourism, sales, and many more).

- The article would also benefit from some background history explaining the background and upbringing of the founders themselves and maybe even elaborate more of the reasonings of establishing such a nation (with credible sources cited).

- When looking into the talk page, there are several people arguing with one another, especially in regards to the legitimacy of the the micronation and the "facts" presented. There have been several occasions were both real and fake users have added and removed things from the article when they are not supposed to. Furthermore, there has been purported several sock puppeteers who are allegedly adding and removing information for the sole purpose of "selling the republic". In other words, such users are tying to make the micronation more presentable to the public, and thus gain more attraction towards it for the purposes of sales and tourism.

- Overall, this article has many elements that are not cited, and it makes it very hard to believe any of the information written even though the tone is written in a neutral manner. Thus, there needs to be heavy reforms on the article itself and possible expansions as suggested by me earlier. For the time being, I believe this article is poorly developed and should generally be avoided by users of the internet or at least not take everything as a straight and undeniable fact.