User:Mlb341/Choose an Article

Article Selection
Please list articles that you're considering for your Wikipedia assignment below. Begin to critique these articles and find relevant sources.

Option 1

 * The Missing (novel series)
 * Article Evaluation

Lead Section

This lead section does include an adequate introductory section that concisely describes what The Missing is in a technical aspect. However, it takes a few more sentences for the article to get into what exactly is happening in the novel series, which, in my opinion, is understandable. It does not include a brief description of the article's major section outside of the contents table. The lead does not include any information that is not present in the article. I feel the lead is pretty detailed but I wouldn't say overly detailed. Since this is for a novel series, it needs to set up the intentionality of the series, all the book titles, and the overall theme of the novels before going into each novel and character specifically.

Content

The article goes into a summary of every novel within the series, main protagonists, and main antagonists throughout the series which I would consider relevant to the topic of The Missing. The series finished in 2015 and this article has every single novel included with main protagonist and antagonist character analyses for all novels as well. It is indicated in the talk page that this is a combination of the Wikipedia pages for the individual novels. If this is the case, I think there should be at least a Critical Reception section for the series as a whole and how public opinion shifted for the series over time. Also, this was quite a formidable series for a lot of children so I am sure there are literary critiques who have dissected the series and it's impact on child development. This could potentially lead to another section being added but could also be included in the new Critical Reception section if there isn't enough information out there. I would say all the information that is included as of this moment does belong there. The article does not deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps. It does not address topics related to historically underrepresented populations or topics.

Tone and Balance

The article is neutral. If this was another series with more nuanced characters for who is the protagonist and antagonist, then this article may be considered biased through the which it organizes character descriptions. However, this novel is incredibly didactic and very clear in regards to who are the protagonists and who are the antagonists in this series. Aside from not relating this series to historically underrepresented populations or topics, I would say the viewpoints are pretty logical and follow the plot of the novels throughout. The shorts are pretty underrepresented in the article but I am personally unsure of their impact. It would be nice to expand that section and hear a bit more about that. There are no minority or fringe viewpoints represented. The article does not attempt to persuade the reader for or against the novels.

Sources and References

All of the facts in the article are backed up by reliable secondary source information. The sources are thorough for the topics covered, however, this does not include a critical reception or literary analysis section so we don't see many literary analysis or academic sources. The sources are current but are majorly based in Simon & Schuster and Good Reads for summary sources outside of the novels themselves. This does not represent a diverse spectrum of authors or a wide range of opinions. Since the spectrum of source authors are not diverse, then they also don't include historically marginalized individuals at all. There are a few literary blog posts available to be linked to this article and bulk up the resource section but I have been unable to find peer reviewed articles as of yet. The links tend to work in the Resource section of the article.

Organization and writing quality

The article is well written and organized into clear and concise sections. There are no grammatical or spelling errors.

Images and Media

The article includes images of some of the book covers for the individual novels within The Missing series. These are helpful to pull readers of the article back to which novels they may recognize as having read as a child. However, I wish there were more images of the covers for later novels in the series as there were for the first few. The images are well captioned but not cited to any particular image source. As a result, they are not adhering to Wikipedia's copyright regulations. The images are laid out in a visually appealing way.

Talk page discussion

The are two conversations going on within the Talk page discussion for this Wikipedia page. First, someone proposed the idea for a full merge of all the individual pages for these novels into this page to hold all the plot summaries and character overviews. They completed the merge in April 2015. Second, someone noticed that there was a section copied from another site for the novel "Sent" within the page. They removed the copied section and correctly cited it. The article is rated as a start-class with low importance to the following WikiProjects: Novels, Children's literature, and Women writers. This is in line with other talk pages I have seen through this class thus far.

Overall impressions

The article's overall status is Start-Class and it is noted at the top of the article page that there is a lack of inline citations throughout the article despite there being an adequate amount of sources listed in the Reference section. The article's strengths are the factual plot and character information which is incredibly extensive given there are 8 full novels and two e-book shorts to be analyzed. I think it could be improved by including more information about the e-book shorts, adding a Critical Reception and/or Analysis section, including more diverse and historically underrepresented viewpoints (in both sources and analysis), and adding a few more inline and image citations to be more aligned with Wikipedia's copyright rules. I would say the article is developed but there is room to grow. Nothing on this article is incorrect or should be removed but there is definitely more to expand upon given it is an entire series.


 * Sources (none)

Option 2
Lead Section
 * Article title
 * Esperanza Rising
 * Article Evaluation

The lead includes an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic. The lead does not include a brief description of the article's major sections. The lead does not include information that is not present in the article. The lead is extremely concise and, in my opinion, on the verge of bare bones (not enough detail).

Content

The article's content is relevant to the topic. The content is generally up to date but it is a bit hard to determine this as the novel is quite old. I think after all of us added our sentences to this article, there is definitely some misplaced information (specifically the sentence at the beginning of the Pedagogy section). The article does deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps and address topics related to historically underrepresented populations or topics.

Tone and Balance

The article is a bit in favor of the novel, specifically in the Critical reception section. I would love to research if there are other opinions out there with a more negative reception of the novel and present those arguments in the same section to provide more balance. There are no heavily biased claims toward a particular position. If we discuss someone's opinion, then there is a clearly cited person who stated said opinion. Again, the positive viewpoints of this novel are overrepresented but that may also be what aligns with the research of this novel. We need to add minority/fringe viewpoints and the article does attempt to persuade the reader to read the novel themselves or have the reader's children read the novel.

Sources and References

Most facts in the article are backed up by reliable secondary sources of information. However, the Background section, cites several statistics with little backup to support these claims. I think these need to be validated before accepting them as fact. The sources which are cited are thorough and mostly current. The sources are pretty diverse in type but the authors all seem to be female. I can't confirm if some of these women are women of color or not as several of the links don't work (lead to "Page Not Found"). If some are, that would be evidence of representation of a historically marginalized individuals but there are definitely better sources out there (https://blogs.iwu.edu/edu270literature/2014/05/26/esperanza-rising/ https://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plans/esperanza-rising-learning-not-be-afraid-start-over for example)

Organization and writing quality

The Plot synopsis section is incredibly detailed which Wikipedia flagged as "too long or excessively detailed" in November of 2021. The article is reasonably easy to read but the excessive use of quotes in the first paragraph of the Critical reception section may be seen as poor writing quality. I did not catch any grammatical or spelling errors. The article is well organized.

Images and Media

The article only includes the image of the book cover which does enhance the understanding of the topic. The image is correctly and well-captioned. The image does adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations. The image is laid out in a visually appealing way.

Talk page discussion

The conversation on the talk page are generally surrounding what information needs to be added to make this article more complete. As I mentioned earlier, there is a conversation regarding the need for more citations and improved relevancy for the Background section. Also, the Character List (newly added as of March 2022) is incomplete with no description of each character. Lastly, there is a film adaptation of the novel which some editors feel should be added to the article to improve information details. The article is rated Start-class, is of Low-importance for both WikiProject US/Hispanic and Latino Americans and WikiProject Novels, and is of Mid-importance for both WikiProject Children's literature and WikiProject Women writers. The way Wikipedia discusses this topic is more about the details and accuracy of the page whereas, in class, we dive more into the literary implications of the novel.

Overall impressions

The overall status of the article is Start-class as there is a lot of editing and additional citation needed for this page to be considered anything higher than this. The strengths of this article are the extensive plot summary and critical reception section. However the improvements that need to be made as soon as possible are as follows: cleaning up the background section, removing quotes and making the the critical reception section flow, expanding the character list with descriptions, and cutting down the plot synopsis section. I would say the article is partly complete and underdeveloped.
 * Sources
 * https://blogs.iwu.edu/edu270literature/2014/05/26/esperanza-rising/
 * https://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plans/esperanza-rising-learning-not-be-afraid-start-over

Option 3
Lead section
 * Article title
 * Debbie Reese
 * Article Evaluation

The introductory sentence is concise and clear but also a bit brief considering how influential Reese is in the Native American community. The lead does not include a brief description of the article's major sections. The lead does not include information that is not present in the article. The lead is extremely concise, which is good, but it could highlight a few more of her accomplishments touched upon later on in the article.

Content

The content is relevant to the topic and generally up to date. There is a section for early life and education in addition to personal life which are both extremely brief and underdeveloped. The article does not directly deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps which, in my opinion, is an easily fixable issue as the page is about a female of color who is an incredibly influential author and academic within and outside of her community.

Tone and Balance

The article is incredibly neutral with no viewpoints of bias. The article is generally unfinished with limited detail so there is no opportunity for viewpoints to either be overrepresented or underrepresented or minority/fringe viewpoints be portrayed. There is no persuasive writing in the article.

Sources and References

All facts in the article are backed up by a reliable secondary source of information. All sources are thorough, current, and written by a diverse spectrum of authors. Several of the articles are sponsored by projects which encourage historically marginalized groups/individuals to have their viewpoints more readily visible in the media (Huffington Post article for example). The sources used are mainly accredited news sites which are all good sources to cite for the information given in the article. However, the lack of overall detail in the article suggests that more sources could be utilized (this article from the AICL for example) or more details could be cited from the articles already uses. All the links I clicked on worked.

Organization and writing quality

The article is well written, concise, and easy to read, but definitely lacking in detail of Reese's life. There are no grammatical or spelling errors. The sections presented now are well-organized and complete but the details within them are lacking.

Images and Media

There is only one image used which is a blurry image of Reese at the Association of Children's Librarians Institute in 2016. The image is well captioned and the citation adheres to Wikipedia's copyright regulations. That being said, a more appealing image could be chosen as the primary one for her description (Kweli Journal for example) and more images could be used throughout the article to make it more visually appealing to the reader.

Talk page discussion

There are no conversations happening on this talk page at this time. The article is rated Start-class for the following WikiProjects: Biography, Indigenous peoples of North America, and Women. Also, the article is rated of Low-importance for the WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America.

Overall impressions

The overall status of the article is Start-class. The strengths are the current sources attached to this article. However, this article could be improved by using these sources in a more detailed manner to add more of Reese's accomplishments and life information to this page. Also, there are a wide variety of articles written about her on other academic sources which are left out entirely from the article. I would say the article is incomplete and underdeveloped. The work which has been done thus far is good but definitely a lot of improvement to be made.


 * Sources
 * https://www.huffpost.com/entry/under-pressure-scholastic_b_9010900
 * https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/
 * https://www.kwelijournal.org/sing-the-truth-blog/2020/4/12/sing-the-truth-with-debbie-reese

Option 4
Lead section
 * Article title
 * Children's poetry
 * Article Evaluation

The lead does include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic. The lead does not include a brief description of the article's major sections. The lead does include information that is not present in the article (final sentence for example). The lead is overly detailed given the topic of the article is Children's poetry.

Content

The article's content is relevant to the topic but is not up to date (there is little mention of poetry in the 20th century and beyond). The content all belongs but we are definitely missing modern history and examples of children's poetry. Also, the importance section is extremely lacking and under developed source wise. The article not does deal with any of Wikipedia's equity gaps. However, a few of the authors mentioned in the Notable children's poets section have their influence on vulnerable populations and historically underrepresented communities pointed out.

Tone and Balance

The neutrality of the article (specifically in the Notable children's poets section) has been disputed as of March 2018. However, I found no evidence of these conversations on the talk page. I see how some points in this section (Ronald Dahl for example) have the opinion of the author thrown in there but other than this section, the article is generally neutral. Although neutrality is rightly disputed, I don't think any of the claims are inherently biased towards a particular viewpoint consistently throughout the article. There is only one viewpoint represented in the importance section which I think could be challenged or more evidence of the validity of this opinion could be added. There are no minority or fringe viewpoints described. To find these would require more research on the importance section. The article attempts to persuade the reader that children's poetry is positive on children's literacy development.

Sources and References

Most of the sources used at first glance appear to be reliable secondary sources of information. However, as mentioned above, some sections are better cited than others (more citation definitely needed for the importance section for example). The sources are pretty thorough and represent a diverse spectrum of opinions. Also, the sources seem to include authors that have been historically marginalized due to their identity. However, the sources are also not current (no secondary sources after 2015). There are several databases and analytical journals which are dedicated to children's poetry and go unmentioned in this article (Poetry Foundation for example). All of the links I clicked on worked.

Organization and writing quality

The writing in this article is clear, concise, and easy to read. I did not find any grammatical or spelling errors. The article is well-organized with the sections it currently holds given the topic of the article. However, more information and citations may be needed to add to these sections to make the article well rounded and complete.

Images and Media

The article includes images that enhance the understanding of the topic all of which are well-captioned and adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations. The images are generally book covers of various children's poetry collections which are laid out in a visually appealing way which makes the article more clear.

Talk page discussion

The conversations behind the scenes on the talk page of this article are mainly about cleaning it up to be more professional. For example, one person removed a link that added no value to the article and one person rephrased the information sourced from encyclopedia.com that had been copied straight into the article from the source. The article is rated Stub-class overall with High-importance for WikiProject Poetry and Top-importance for WikiProject Children's literature. Our discussions in class on this topic have been more focused on the importance of this type of literature for children and how poetry can be used to tell a story. The discussion in the talk page is sincerely only about technical issues with the article itself and not about how children's poetry is important to literary analysis.

Overall impressions

Overall the status of the article is Stub-Class. As a whole, the article's main strength is its history section which is incredibly detailed and well cited prior to the 20th century. What can be improved is adding 20th century and later history of children's literature, adding more information and literary analysis to the importance section, and cleaning up the language of the notable children's poets section to allow it to fit within Wikipedia's neutrality and citation guidelines. As a whole, this article is incomplete and underdeveloped.


 * Sources
 * https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/children
 * https://www.encyclopedia.com/children/academic-and-educational-journals/childrens-poetry