User:MichKayla S/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Evolutionary ecology

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article because as an EEB major having a good wiki page about Evolutionary Ecology can help people better understand what we do. I firmly believe that science should be accessible to all people, including accessible to understand and wikipedia is a wonderful example of how to help that ideal. My first impression of this article is that it is a little old having last been updated in late 2017, but definitely a good start and would be a great framework to expand upon. The article could use some more content but is definitely a decent opener for evolutionary ecology.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section:

While the lead section is good, the lead is somewhat repetitive. The first and only paragraph of the lead explains what evolutionary ecology is, from two different perspectives and mentions several of the main fields of study in evolutionary ecology. The Lead mentions and links to pages relating to sub topics of evolutionary ecology and its major fields of studies but does not discuss these topics in the article itself, meaning it includes information that is not in the article itself. The Lead also doesn't describe what the articles major talking points will be. The lead is appropriately detailed for what it discusses but it should include some more information.

Content:

The article's content is applicable to the subject in the article, and all information seems to be up to date, except for a few things. One example is a info-graphic of the three Domains Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya, which is labeled as a phylogenetic tree of living things. The content could also go into more detail in some areas such as when discussing Richard Levins' model of specialization of species and the difference/meaning of fine-grained vs. coarse-grained spatial scales. The article could speak about and describe the major areas of study that were mentioned in the Lead but not discussed in the content of the article, as well as the sub categories of study. The article would also be improved if current debated theories were mentioned, such as the placement of Archaea and Bacteria in the Domains, where it is currently being discussed if Bacteria should be nested with in Archaea. The article does not deal with any of Wikipedia's equity gaps. It does not mention any female scientists but that can fixed if research shows their importance to the field of evolutionary ecology.

Tone and Balance:

The Tone of the article appears to be properly neutral from my point of view, with no attempts to sway the reader with biased representation or misrepresented importance.The article does not discuss any fringe viewpoints.

Sources and References:

Sources appear to be from a variety of peer reviewed papers or text books. There could be more sources to reflect the abundance of research already done on evolutionary ecology or to offer different presentations of the same information. The links I clicked on were all in working order. The sources are current enough, however more recent research has been done that can be cited for more up to date information or terminology.

Organization and Writing Quality:

The layout of the article seems arbitrary to me, with the order of topics discussed feeling random. The some topics feel like they could be sub topics to other sections, while some need sub topics in general. The writing and grammar are all good, but the lay out is a problem to be worked on.

Images and Media:

There are few images on this page, 2/3 are properly cited to their owners while the third an image of the 3 Domains layout does not have a citation nor does the author claim ownership of the image. The images are captioned simply but clearly, however they do not help the understanding of the article. The only image that I find to be truly useful is the portrait of Charles Darwin, and only in the purpose of showing the reader what Darwin looks like

Talk Page Discussion:

This article does not seem to have any current discussions occurring, with the three comments from 2007, 2011, and 2017. The quality of the article was rated C-Class and is a part of the Ecology WikiProject.

Over all Impression:

The article's strengths are that it can be used as a strong foundation and starting point to create an in depth and detailed article on evolutionary ecology and its main points of study. The article needs a lot more content and explanation on what technical terms mean instead of just linking to the wiki page that describes the term. I think the article is not finished but could be used as a good starting point.