User:Mickinahan/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Riparian buffer

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it is an important topic in the  world of conservation and restoration but also because it was a poorly rated article that needs some work. It is also a topic that I am fairly familiar with and therefore, could be more critical of the information I was reading.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The lead section appears to be wordy, and although it covers the main topic, it does not touch on all the main topics throughout the rest of the article. It also touches on pollution, which makes no other appearance within the article. It also makes no mention of economic incentive, which is brought up numerous times throughout the article.

Content

There is a great need for citing sources in all sections of the article. There is a lot of good information with no source to back it up. The sources that have been used are slightly out of date with the youngest being from 2016. There is a lot of new and relevant information that could be used to update this article. Some of the writing also seems to be out of place. Either sounds simple or complex. And there are some sentences that seem to be thrown in to lengthen the article or section but that have little to no context within the topic.

Tone and Balance

The article seems to be written in favour of riparian zones, with some of the subtopics reaching in order to persuade for riparian zones. An example of this would be the economic benefits section. There are views against riparian zones, especially within the agricultural sector that are not represented.

Sources and References

All of the sources appear to be from peer reviewed journals or government pages, but they are not all current or thorough. For the length of the article there needs to be more references. Also, the NRCS link does not work, link 1.

Organization and writing quality

The article has too many subsections. Some could be grouped together with multiple paragraphs and the writing could be more succinct. It is fairly well written, although there are parts that are written in a simpler language and some that are more complex. It seems like that article is too broken up that the reader still walks away wondering what a riparian zone is.

Images and media

The first picture gives a great example of a riparian buffer and is very visually appealing.

Talk page

There is not much going on in the talk page. There have been no edits since 2019. The page has a C ranking but is of mid-importance for the wiki forestry project and of high importance on the wiki rivers project.

Overall impressions

Generally, the article has good bones. Some of the main points are there, some need to be further rounded out to generate a better understanding of the topic while others get too specific and need to be generalized, such as the riparian species by zone. The most important thing for this article is to add more sources and current sources. The article is poorly developed. It has good information but needs to be better organized so as to have a more succinct flow that gives the reader a better understanding of the topic in general.