User:Melissabridge20/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
John Greening (poet)

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article to evaluate because I am interested in poetry and learning more about different poets. I went to the unassessed articles on the Wikiproject poetry page and decided to evaluate one of them to help out. As I first read through it, I thought that it needed more information and more sources. The organization of information could also use some work.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The introductory sentence of the article gives a clear, informative overview of the topic. It does not include information that does not show up in the rest of the article. The lead section does not contain too much information, but at points it does read somewhat like a laundry list of Greening's publications. It may be simpler to state that along with his poetry publications, he has produced editions of other poets such as...., instead of listing all the editing that he has done. The second sentence of the section and the last sentence both work well. They are clear and concise. It gives a good overview of the sections in the article, except for the background of the poet.

ContentAll the information is relevant to the author John Greening, as it is all about his work. The content that is included is all up to date. There is not a lot of details on many aspects of his life. The background section is lacking many details of his life. It could benefit from more information about his family, such as his parents and any siblings. It also gives little information on his wife, beyond when they married. Information about how they met would be relevant. There is also no information on whether or not they have children, until later on in the section. It may fit better after the news of their marriage. All of this is relevant to the background of Greening, or could be put under a new section entitled personal life.

This section also states that he taught for much of his life, but only gives information on two years that he spent volunteering in Egypt. It then jumps back into information about his life with his wife, and then mentions their children. This section seems a little choppy, with lots of gaps. It is not very well organized. It jumps around to many different aspects of his background with little transition. It also does not seem to be organized into any sort of timeline.

The section "criticism and reviews" is much longer than any of the other sections, making the article seem somewhat imbalanced. The sections "poetry publications" and "other writings" could be condensed into one section, adding a little more balance to the article. Both of these sections once again seem like laundry lists of his works, and might benefit from some editing.

Tone and Balance

The article is from a neutral point of view and simply consists of the facts about Greening. There is no element of persuasion.

Sources and References

A lot of the facts in the article do not seem to be cited. More sources need to be found and referenced in the article. The sources are current, but most of them are the authors work or reviews of the authors work. There does not seem to be many scholarly articles listed, but they do seem to be hard to find. The links are all in order and working.

Organization and Writing Quality

The article is broken down into clear and relevant sections, but some of the sections are not well organized. Specifically the section about the background jumps around and does not have a clear timeline or organization. It might be better split up into different sections (such as personal life, teaching career, plays) and the information expanded upon in each of those sections. Some of the sentences are unclear. They might benefit from being broke up into smaller sentences, instead of trying to put a lot of information into one long sentence.

Images and Media

There is one image of the poet that is appropriately caption. The article probably does not need many pictures, but may benefit from a picture of one of the author's books or publications.

Talk Page Discussion

I do not see much discussion going on on the talk page, but it is part of two WikiProjects, Wikiproject poetry and Wikiproject biography. It is so far unassessed and needs to be evaluated. It has not yet received a rating.

Overall Impressions

The article is well done, but needs a little work. It is well-developed but could benefit from some added information and more sources and citations.