User:Modrake21/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Birtle Indian Residential School

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this topic because of the recent news regarding mass graves found at native residential schools. My first impression is that the page is short and seems newly-created, but most of the citations seem reputable.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The lead section includes an introductory sentence stating what the school was. It has a content box showing the different sections of the page. It is very concise (it could be slightly longer, but again, the article seems new).

Content

Overall, the content is lacking, but I suspect that is mainly because this article is relatively new and needs to be worked on more. There are only 3 substantive sections, and each of those sections could be fleshed out a lot more. There is also mention of the discovery of unmarked graves at native residential schools in Canada, but there is no update to say whether this particular school has been searched or not. Although the "Principals" section is simply bullet points (and no additional info), it does seem to list every principal as well as the years of their tenure. However, the page does address a topic related to historically underrepresented populations/topics.

Tone and Balance

I think the author(s) did a good job of maintaining a neutral, fact-oriented tone throughout the article, despite the sensitive issues it raised. There don't seem to be any heavily biased claims, and the author is not writing persuasively, but factually.

Sources and References

There are 9 sources, but since the article is short, that is a good amount relative to the information provided. Although the author does use a couple of news-based sources, they do so in reference to current events that they describe in the article. The other sources seem to be a mix of university and academic-based work, but there are also some questionable sites, like the Manitoba Historical Society and the National Trust for Canada (which are not affiliated with the government and the info they have seems hard to verify).

Organization and Writing Quality

The article is concise and well-written, though I did spot at least one grammatical error. It is -organized by topic, although there are two sections that relate to each other closely and the article may benefit from one of them being made a sub-section of the other.

Images and Media

There is one picture of the school at the top of the article. It is visually appealing and seems to meet Wikipedia copyright regulations: it is cited as from the Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, and it says that the photo is in the public domain. As a history nerd, I would love to see more photos, but for the size of the article, one photo seems appropriate.

Overall Impressions

Overall, this article is at a good starting point, but there is definitely room for growth. I would say the article is underdeveloped and definitely could use more citations to non-biased, neutral sources and even government records regarding the school if they exist. I would like to see the existing sections fleshed out more, more sections added (daily life of students there, ownership of the school through the years, updates on searches for mass graves, etc), and more citations to peer-reviewed and/or governmental sources.