User:Marciewallace27/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: Joyce Fairbairn
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate. I chose this article because it is about a female politician, and therefore relevant to this class. The article is more than just a stub, but not as high quality as it could be, so there will be positive and negative points to assess.

Lead

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic? Yes
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections? No. The article is not long enough to be divided into sections.
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article? No.
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed? It is concise, perhaps too much so, as it is only one sentence long.

Content

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic? Yes, it is all related to her political career and legacy.
 * Is the content up-to-date? Almost, but there is one sentence that says her namesake school is due to open in fall 2018, which has already passed.
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong? What content is there is relevant, but it could all be expanded upon.

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article neutral? Yes, it sticks to objective facts.
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position? No.
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented? No. The only potentially controversial section is about her continuing to vote in the Senate after she was declared legally incompetent due to Alzheimer's. However, this information is presented briefly and factually, and does not contain viewpoints from either side of this issue.
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another? No.

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information? The first half of the article has no citations at all. The last half cites reliable newspaper articles.
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic? Yes, but only for one paragraph of the article. The other aspects of Sen. Fairbairn's life are not referenced at all.
 * Are the sources current? Yes.
 * Check a few links. Do they work? Most of them do not. Only two links still connect to the correct article.

Organization

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read? In general, yes. However, there are a large number of sentences in the passive voice: "It was reported," "It was revealed," "It was announced," which could be made clearer by being phrased in the active voice.
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors? No.
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic? It is organized chronologically. However, there is not enough content to be broken down into sections.

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic? No
 * Are images well-captioned? N/A
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations? N/A
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way? N/A

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic? The only post on the talk page is from a bot that detected a dead external link.
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects? It is part of WikiProject Biography and is rated as "Start Class."
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class? N/A (no discussion on talk page)

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions


 * What is the article's overall status? Its rating as "start class" is appropriate. It has the bare bones of a good article and simply needs to be added onto.
 * What are the article's strengths? It is chronologically organized, technically well-written, and cites reliable news sources.
 * How can the article be improved? It could be longer and more detailed, organized into sections, and include more citations that are correctly linked.
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed? It is certainly underdeveloped, but what does exist is of decent quality.

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

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