User:Moose1917/Evaluate an Article

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

This is the talk to the article I chose. The article was reviewed and as well as the discussion in the talk page

Talk:Autotroph

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 this article as it relates to one of the topics discussed in the class. Ecology is the study of interactions between organisms and their environment and this article discusses what a type of organism. I feel like this article looks incomplete as there is much more that can be said about this topic.

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.)

The lead section is quite detailed and has many references to other wikipedia articles. It may even be overly detailed but it is all quite accurate in discussing what this type of organism does and how it functions in the environment as well. There is not a brief description of other article sections.

The content in the article is slightly uneven, with more details regarding function than discussion. For example the lead goes more into the chemical discussion of light usage for autotrophs than the subsection photosynthesis does. There are also no extensive examples and environments that these organisms can be found in, and traits that these organisms could share. The content does belong where it is supposed to but there is a lack of content in certain areas because they were discussed in depth in other areas. This is not a major issue to the overall article but could be improved upon.

The tone is quite neutral and I enjoyed this. It was quite informative, however, there seemed a heavy focus on the chemical processes than the function of these types of organisms which I think should be elaborated upon. There is no position that is heavily favored than another.

The sources are well cited in the paragraphs and there are many links to other wikipedia pages as well. The sources come from different textbooks, years, and names, making me think that it is well researched and has a variety of sources. There is not biased noted from the sources but the sources come from journal articles, articles, and I believe 2 textbooks.

The photographs and diagrams are well captioned and relate to the topic at hand, however, could be better chosen as they are a bit full with content and thus makes them confusing.

The talk page goes into the missing subsections, incorrect statements, and lack of explanation in the article, alongside critique of the images chosen. These being the lack of mention of animals, the lack of autotrophs in water, and the incorrect statements on what autotrophs do.