User:Mipsallison/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Family in ancient Rome

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.)

This article is of interest to nine project groups (but low status for most of them), and it could indicate general family structures that were present/impacting Pompeii while it was a Roman colony. The article is somewhat short and doesn't seem as "fleshed out" as other articles.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)


 * The introductory sentence could be polished a bit, it mentions the various aspects of the Roman family but the language is not very informative about the content of the sections to follow.
 * The discussion of life-expectancy in the lead paragraph could be better researched (infant mortality, death in childbirth, etc)--it is called one of the dictating factors of family life but it isn't well described.
 * Sources in some sections (eg adoption) link to an internal Wiki article but don't cite the claims made within the section.
 * The content seems up to date, but there are certainly more sources available on family life to consult
 * Possible equity gap--could be helpful to go into more detail on the different family lives of girls vs. boys, or talk about how socioeconomic status in Rome impacted family structure (or even mention the bias in the sources? Why there are little writings on the family lives of anyone but the superrich?)
 * Not an informative tone
 * The article has lots of subsections, that are all not very fleshed out. Gives a good outline of the generally important things to discuss

This is a C-class article that is currently high priority for the "Rome" project. It looks like there isn't a lot of active editing being done