User:Mlbeach18/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Visual communication

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
With being in communications 101, I wanted to dive deeper on some different forms of communication. This article gives me the opportunity to learn more about visual communication.

Evaluate the article
Lead Sections

For the lead section of this Wikipedia article, I believe it to be a strong introduction into what the article is going to be talking about. The author begins by defining what visual communication is and the provides readers with the characteristics and representations of it. It then gives an overview of the point of writing this article which is the debate about the nature of visual communication. They define the importance of this to our everyday lives and create a rather strong start to the article.

Content

The article content seems to be relevant to this topic, however I feel some pieces need to be explained more in depth. There are some things mentioned in the lead sections of the article that don't really get explained or further developed later on during the article. I also believe the content may need some updating on time relevance. A lot of references seem to use dates of the past and it could become stronger if they include information from more current references. Keeping information up to date strengthens articles and tells the readers that people are keeping up with information being told.

Tone and Balance

I would say this article has a pretty neutral tone or balance overall. I don't think you can really take one side over another in this article because it is generally giving information about visual communication. Through reading this I didn't really feel persuaded to use visual communication. I feel it gives an overall view point on why people believe it to be a strong form of communication without trying to force the readers to believe this is the best form available.

Sources and References

I would say overall that this article holds strong with references and sources, however it does fall short in some areas. When you go through the article, you can see where people noted that there was unverified sources and it brings to question whether or not you can trust that information. They use a wide variety of sources and a lot of them to provide information which is good. A lot seem to be scholarly or journal articles about this topic and they all tie together to provide us with valuable information. When reviewing this article, I would be careful noticing that they give warning about reliable sources. From the first glance it looks reliable but it is being questioned. You don't want to be given the wrong information. I would also note that a lot of the references used are older. They need to maybe bring in more current articles to make it more relevant to 2022. It would also help for them to review the references they gave because some of the links don't work which can lead to major problems if the article was taken down in the past or something else. I do believe including more currently peer-reviewed articles could strengthen this wikipedia page majorly.

Organization and Writing Quality

I believe this article overall is easy to read. They get to the point of what they are trying to explain without going overboard. I do think some spots need more evaluation and explanation to provide the reader with more background. I would say there aren't many errors grammatically in the writing which is a good sign. There also seems to not be many spelling errors which also strengthens the writing of authors. Wording seems to be clear and concise.

Images and Media

I would say this wikipedia page is a tad underwhelming when it comes to images and media. Within this whole page there is only a total of two images with very short descriptions. The descriptions do seem short and to the point which is good, however, I think I would like to see more pictures to emphasize visual communication. Maybe images of visual aid or other things that can help you picture what the writers are talking about. This is an article on visual communication but it seems to be laking media or images to support it.

Talk Page Discussion

When looking at the talk page discussion, I think it brings to light some minor issues that someone might not notice at first glance. It questions its references first off which means that the information included may not 100 percent be trustworthy. It also brings to question the idea that some things mentioned in the beginning of the article are not further explained and need to be for the reader to be able to get a full understanding of this topic. Another critic was adding images to maybe help the readers visualize exactly what they may be talking about which could be interesting to add for reference. This article was listed as a level 5 which means it is not of extreme importance but that does not mean the information can not just be made up and unsupported. It is in the "start" category which means that many reviewers believe more information needs to be included to make it a strong wikipedia page.

Overall Impressions

I would say overall this article holds strong to its topic. It doesn't seem to run all over the place and rather gives you examples of visual communication and its components which is important. The only thing I question is whether all the sources are reliable and where this idea of a debate comes into play. It seems like it gives an overview of visual communication but not really the arguments people have over it which is interesting. It seems that more work needs to be done on this article in defining everything explained in the overview and giving references that are reliable. I would say this is a bit of an underdeveloped article and needs some more work to be strong.