User:Medubois/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Symbiogenesis

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to review this article because I am familiar with the theory of symbiogenisis, but I have not learned about it in a while and am interested in expanding/refreshing my knowledge. The article is relevant to this course and symbiogenisis is an important part of microbial symbiotic history.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section: I like that the lead section of this article start out with a list of the different words used to refer to this theory. I knew it previously as the endosymbiotic theory and it is important to make sure everyone knows there are different terms for the same thing before reading the article. The second sentence of the lead paragraph is confusing to me and seems like it should be reworded so it isn't a run on sentence. The phrase "taken one inside the other" is confusing to me as well and should be reworded or clarified. The lead section does touch on the history of the theory a little bit before going more into it in later sections as well as touching on the other topics that are discussed later. I think the lead section is overall weak and could be reworded in a less confusing way. It has a lot of run on sentences and ended up confusing me more than it helped me. Another issue I found with the lead section is that there are barely any citations and I am unsure of where the information is coming from or if it is accurate.

Content: The content in the history section of this article is great. I think whoever wrote it provided a good amount of background history that is necessary for understanding the theory. I like the inclusion of the word meaning as well, I didn't know that the word had such a literal translation of it's root words. I like the extensive list of evidence for why this theory should be considered true, it provides the reader with information that is needed to trust the theory. I think the date section is somewhat irrelevant to the rest of the article and could be removed or could be added to the history section. The secondary endosymbiosis could be expand

Tone and Balance: I do think that this article is written from a neutral point of view. There are some pieces of information included in the article that are not 100% proven. The author does a good job of including that they are not 100% proven by using words like possibly. It also discusses a few different hypothesis of gene transfer instead of choosing one the author may believe in. I think the article discusses many different ideas surrounding the topic without talking about them as if they are true.

Sources and References: The lead section is definitely lacking in cited sources. Most of the information in this section is not common knowledge and needs a citation. The sources used in this article are not all recent, but I think that is ok since there is discussion of the history which may need older sources. Most of the sources are from earlier than 2011, so I think this article could use some additional information with more current research that has been published on this theory. The sources are reputable sources and the writer included a lot of primary literature. There are a lot of sources and they are referenced in the writing.

Organization and Writing Quality: I noticed a lot of run on sentences in this article that distracted me from the content of the article. For example the sentence "Chloroplast genomes in photosynthetic organisms are normally 120–200 kb encoding 20–200 proteins and mitochondrial genomes in humans are approximately 16 kb and encode 37 genes, 13 of which are proteins" could be split into two sentences or could be split up using a coma. There are a lot of instances where I think the sentence structure is lacking clarity, making it hard to read. It seems like multiple people have contributed to this article in different areas because some paragraphs have much better sentence structure. The organization of the article makes sense to me since it starts with the history, outlines the theory, then goes into more specific details. I think the evidence section is not necessarily needed and could be instead incorporated into the rest of the article. It may also be better to make it into a paragraph with more details instead of a bulleted list.

Images and Media: I really like the images that are used in this article. The first image is slightly confusing, but has bright colors and is visually appealing. It can be understood after looking more closely, so maybe it isn't the best image to start out with. The other diagram images are also visually appealing and drew my attention as I read the article. The captions are all well written, they are brief but give enough information. Overall they contributed to the article and did not take away from it. The layout of the images could definitely be improved. The images are mostly on the right side of the page all in one area. I think it would be more effective if they were instead put evenly between each side of the page.

Talk Page Discussion: Reading this talk page was interesting to me. I noticed that the article was nominated for a good article nomination. I thought the article was confusing and structured weirdly, but maybe I am not educated enough on the topic. The article is rated B-Class, and I somewhat agree. Since it is also listed as a level-4 vital article (a wikiproject), I think it should be improved to keep the B-rating it has. The talk page discussion in this project is very long. There is a student editing it and people who are helping her edit it as well as people telling her not to edit it. There is a lot of discussion of items to be added and taken away. No one has mentioned anything about the sentence structure which I am surprised about.

Overall Impressions: My overall impression of this article is that it has potential, but needs some work. The sentence structure in a lot of the article takes away from the information being presented. I also thing the article could use some restructuring as well as additional information in some sections. The article is somewhat developed. I think it is a good draft and could become a lot better if a little work was put into editing it. The strongest features of this article are it's neutral point of view and the images that are included alongside the text. The history section is the strongest written part in my opinion.