User:MayaColohan/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
1st Moroccan Division (1939)

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
'''The first and foremost reason is because this article caught my interest. I was curious about the role of African based infantry divisions in World War 2, something which isn’t typically discussed or seen within the overall history of World War 2. It’s important to make infantries like these seen and credited for their part in the war.'''

Evaluate the article
Lead Section: The lead section is fairly short. It has a decent introductory sentence, explaining briefly what the 1st Moroccan Division was. It does not, however, include an abstract of each section of the article that follows. The only major section mentioned and linked within the lead section is The Battle of Gembloux.

Content: The article is relatively short, but remains relevant to the topic throughout each of its major sections. There is a section for each of the major battles that the division has participated in, and has details on the division itself at the very end. I found this to be confusing, and I believe it would be better if the article were to organize the sections so that the information of the division itself (composition, artillery, infantry, division commanders, etc) would come before the details of each battle. To add to this, there was no information about the said details of the division anywhere in the lead section.

Tone and Balance: The tone of the article is relatively neutral, if not slightly biased towards the 1st Moroccan Division. In some parts of the article, however, the writing seems to be styled to sound a little dramatic, as though it is trying to tell a story about the division rather than provide information about it.

Sources and References: There are only two sources, and both of them are in French. Though I wasn’t able to read either of the sources because of the language, one appears to be from a book dating back to 1952. The other led to a website of memoirs, but the specific page linked in Wikipedia was not found. It is questionable whether or not these sources are reliable.

Organization and Writing Quality: There are a number of spelling errors within the article; the dates are lacking in the ‘th’ suffix at the end of numbers, and there are some spaces within sentences where a comma could be added. The writing style sounds informal at times, and is vague in sections which could potentially be relevant. For example, in the paragraph explaining the Battle of Gembloux it is written: “---orders were given for retreat along the V.F de Tilly; a difficult maneuver.” Simply stating it was difficult and not focusing on the effect the struggles of this retreat could have had on the infantry feels lacking. There are a couple of runalong sentences as well as sentences that feel shorter than necessary and out of place.

Images and Media: There’s not many images in the article. One is of a member of the 1st Moroccan Division, while the rest is a collection of photos depicting commemorative plaques to the division. While the context of these images are explained further within the article, the captions are vague and may have readers confused about the images without the article.

Talk Page Discussion: The article is part of the WikiProject Africa and the Military History WikiProject. There is no discussion about the article, and the talk page is overall very blank.

Overall Impression:  The article does a moderate job talking about 1st Moroccan Division considering how little known the topic is, but could definitely use some improvement. The article did the best at providing information for the battles that the division participated in, but was generally unorganized and confusing in most other sections of the article. Both of the sources were questionable, and are most likely outdated. The article could definitely be improved one way or another in each of its key aspects.