User:Mnhasel/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)

I chose to evaluate the Helen Willa Samuels article.

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 to evaluate this article to evaluate to learn more about women active in the archival profession. This article not only provides information about the archivist Helen Willa Samuels herself, but also provides information about her noteworthy publications and contributions to the field through her documentation strategy. My preliminary impression of the article is that it is well organized, unbiased, and provides information about both the archivist and her professional work drawn from verified sources.

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.)

Lead Section: The lead section includes a concise, two-sentence introduction to the subject of the article. All of the information present in the lead section (name of the archivist, field of study and career, and items that she is best known for in scholarship and methodology) are succinctly stated. The major sections include the article subject's biography, major contributions, and selected publications, all of which are briefly mentioned in the lead.

Content: All of the content in the article is relevant to the topic, as well as up-to-date. The most recent citations are from within the last decade, as is the material included in the page itself (for the list of publications, for instance, the material is up to date through at least 2011 honoring Samuels' work in the field of archives). There is not any content or material that feels unrelated to the topic. The article could deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gap by addressing a topic related to women's history, however, it does not address historically underrepresented populations or topics.

Tone and Balance: From my perspective, the article is neutral and there are no indications of biased claims. There are no overrepresented or underrepresented viewpoints, nor does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of positions.

Sources and References: The facts in the article about Helen Willa Samuels are backed up by reliable secondary sources, including peer-reviewed journal articles, archival finding aids, and formal academic publications. The sources are both thorough and current, with the most recent materials coming from less than ten years ago. All hyperlinks and DOI are active.

Organization and Writing Quality: The article is concise, clear, and easy to read; there are no visible grammatical or spelling errors. The article is broken into basic biographical and academic sections related to the article's subject.

Images and Media: There are no images in this Wikipedia article.

Talk Page Discussion: There are no conversations occurring in the article's talk page aside from an initial comment from the article's creator in 2018 with a question about a citation error. The article is included in Wikiprojects related to Science and Academia Biographies, Libraries, and Women writers, though for the latter two projects, the article is categorized as "low-importance." This article is not discussed very differently than materials discussed in class as it is a biographical page, rather than a critical discussion of a specific topic or critical argument.

Overall Impressions: I believe that this is, although relatively minimal in scale, a well-written and well-developed article about an individual in archival studies. The article successfully highlights Helen Willa Samuels' career and contributions to the archival field, including more information about the strategies and analyses that have been instrumental in the changing archival field. If I were to improve the article further, I might consider adding additional details about the particular initiatives and moments of involvement that were central to Samuels' career that are only minimally described in the article.