User:Merry Goblin/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Social learning in animals

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it is relevant to animal behaviour and is on a subject that sounds interesting to me. In the field of animal behaviour the learning of behaviour is obviously important and many animals are social, so it seems to me that it would be a fairly important topic. My initial impressions of the article were generally positive. It is not the most detailed or splashiest Wiki page I've ever encountered but it is definitely not the most anemic or poorly written one either.

Evaluate the article
The overall status of this article, per the Talk page, is C Class in all 3 projects it is associated with. It is part of the WikiProjects Animals, Psychology, and 'Articles for creation'. It is rated of mid importance to the Animal project but low importance to the Psychology project. Though I lack detailed knowledge of this subject, given its generally well-written and well-cited nature, I would guess that this article earns the 'C' rating through lack of content rather than inclusion of irrelevant material or poor formatting/citations.

The article lead is concise but informative, though it does include a (cited) mention of a topic not elaborated upon in the rest of the article. This topic is the brief discussion of the kinds of environments in which social learning is more or less beneficial. Overall, in terms of tone and content, it is generally good and includes only relevant content, arranged logically. The tone is neutral and does not give the impression of strong bias (though again, I may be lacking enough knowledge to judge this appropriately e.g. if some major perspective in the field has been excluded entirely). The citations are academic and varied in terms of which journals, books, authors, etc. are cited.

I did find at least two typographical / grammatical errors in the text while reading, and a few instances of the usage of scientific language that is not explained or linked. Most notably, the distinct usage of 'naive' and speaking of evolutionary 'fitness benefit' with absolutely no context to indicate to a non-scientist that this means something different from the plain-language English use of 'fitness'. There is also some redundantly arranged paragraphing regarding chimpanzees and visual behavioural imitation and the 'At different life stages' section could be fleshed out more or entirely re-organized.

These issues do not inhibit the article's clarity overmuch, though, and it is still generally good. I can only speculate on what might be the bigger weaknesses in terms of content--perhaps inclusion of additional topics such as cross-species learning or information about the history of the study of social learning or current issues in the field would be beneficial. Making connections, even just in the 'see more' section, to topics like eusociality and sociobiology might also be a way to improve the article's content.

The article has clearly not received significant attention. There is only one comment on its talk page, from a user suggesting renaming the page to 'Social learning in non-human animals' to be more accurate to the page contents which do not deal with human learning at all. No one replied to this and the article title has, evidently, not been changed to such. The page history shows that most activity has been bots adding appropriate links and minor copy-editing, at least recently.

It's greatest strengths lie in its (seemingly) thorough coverage of the mechanisms of social learning and teaching.