User:Mnozawa/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: Great Migration (African American)
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate.
 * I chose to evaluate this article because it was the topic I felt most knowledgeable about in comparison to the remaining options. I thought that choosing a topic that I knew most about would allow me to focus on evaluating the source's delivery and efficacy instead of spending time figuring out the history or details of the topic itself.

Lead

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?

Lead evaluation
Paragraph one of the lead includes a concise introduction that clearly defines five 5w's (who, what, when, where, why) in short and direct words. Its following paragraph also includes a comprehensive overview of the Great Migration's demographic trends discussed immediately after the lead. Furthermore, the subsequent citation, quoted from a credible source, is also appropriate and useful in understanding the topic. However, the final paragraphs of lead are less effective/suitable for the lead; while it is informative to bring related events or common misunderstandings of connections with the Great Migration, perhaps further explanation into the migration's effects, including discrimination of African Americans and white reaction, is beneficial for audiences that read this article to learn about specifically the Great Migration. Therefore, while the lead does not address all aspects of the article's major sections, it does provide sufficient information to understand the topic.

Content

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * Is the content up-to-date?
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?

Content evaluation
The article remains relatively updated, with its most recent revision on February 19, 2020, in which a new quote was added underneath "Discrimination and Working Conditions". According to the article's revision history, there have been monthly edits from over ten users in the past five months. As I have mentioned in the lead evaluation, I still find the section on the second and new migration unnecessary to the article. While it does add a related research field to the topic, I feel that this short section disrupts the article's flow in discussing the causes than effects of the Great Migration. If this section were to remain in the article, it should be placed after the causes and effects to show its relevance as a related topic rather than a direct connection to the original content or event.

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article neutral?
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?

Tone and balance evaluation
The article is well written in that is utilizes a neutral tone, relying primarily on statistics to describe the Great Migration and support its points on the event's causes and effects. The article makes multiple short claims on different cultural, demographic, or economic effects of the Great Migration, but are immediately supported with relevant statistics. For instance, the article writes that "African Americans made substantial gains in industrial employment, particularly in the steel, automobile, shipbuilding, and meatpacking industries." This sentence is then followed by the evidence that "(b)etween 1910 and 1920, the number of blacks employed in the industry nearly doubled from 500,000 to 901,000 from African Americans and the American Labor Movement" and includes a proper citation at its end. However, the tone does sound slightly more emotional in the section describing the white southern reaction to the Great Migration. Here, the diction sounds more dramatic, using words such as coerced, hemorrhaging, extreme discrimination, and exodus. Although this sways the reader to believe the significant impact of the Great Migration, it does not create a heavy bias towards the movement or the different racial groups involved.

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
 * Are the sources current?
 * Check a few links. Do they work?

Sources and references evaluation
An abundant number of 52 sources were utilized in writing this article. However, there remains one section in the final two paragraphs under the "Demographic Changes" subheader lacking a proper citation. This absence of citation raises suspicion about the claim's validity in these paragraphs, claiming that "(p)eople tended to take the cheapest rail ticket possible and go to areas where they had relatives and friends." Works cited vary from a wide variety of source locations and dates, ranging from a 2017 online New York Times article to a 1945 non-fiction book. Other sources include peer-reviewed academic journals, along with censuses from the 18th to 20th centuries. While some references are outdated, they remain valid sources because they are used to look at population data from previous years or depict first-hand experiences of the Great Migration. In contrast, a potential bias or inaccuracy from the used citations is the dominance of white professors as authors of the credited publications. Finally, while most of the sources work, there are misspelling in the titles of unlinked sources, including the misspelling of "city" for the book, "Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City."

Organization

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?

Organization evaluation
The article is written clearly and avoids distracting points or wordy sentences. Other than the misspelling of the book title I mentioned in the evaluation of the sources, I did not notice any spelling or grammatical errors. Overall, the article is well organized; the headers divide the different topics discussed in the article and allows readers to efficiently search for specific information. However, I continue to feel that the short section of the Second Great Migration irrelevant and hence, should be placed at a later point in the text if it were to be kept in the article.

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
 * Are images well-captioned?
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way?

Images and media evaluation
The article features images of graphs, maps, and photographs, which all include a concise caption. The graphs greatly enhance the reader's understanding of the topic, as they provide a visual representation of the trends during the Great Migration written in the article's text. Hence, the graphs complement the text, allowing readers to easily see the various patterns in migrations and its effects like racially motivated murders. Although the photographs in the effects section provide less information to readers, they improve the article's visuals and remain relevant to the article's context. Finally, all images are laid out in a visually appealing manner; placing all of the visuals to one side of the text keeps the word layout uniform and organized.

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

Talk page evaluation
There is a minimal discussion happening in regards to this article. In the talk history, only one question is raised, which questions whether the Great Migration serves as an example of ethnic cleansing. However, this discussion is a matter of opinion rather than any discussion regarding the article's content or validity. Likewise, the article rates as a C-article and used in four WikiProjects: African diaspora, Chicago, United States History, and Sociology. The article presents a more logical perspective of the Great Migration, focusing on demographic trends through statistics, as well as its various causes and effects. In contrast, our class discussions focused more on emotion and the experiences of the involved individuals because our studied texts came from more emotional and first-hand encounters.

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions


 * What is the article's overall status?
 * What are the article's strengths?
 * How can the article be improved?
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?

Overall evaluation
Overall the article is well structured, informative, and accurate. All text and supporting visuals in the article remain directly related or at least relative to the topic. The piece utilizes both ample and reliable references that are properly cited, as well as accessible via an online link by readers when possible. In contrast, improvements include revising minor misspelling errors in its bibliography, along with removing or relocating the brief section about the second Great Migration in both the introduction and body of the article. Additionally, the article requires an additional citation for a claim presented in the article's body. However, these faults are minor to the article's overall contribution and content quality.

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

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