User:Msicker/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Bologna FC 1909

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to evaluate this article because Bologna FC is a team that has been tearing up the Serie A this season despite them not having a winning history, a high transfer budget, a renowned coaching staff, or the best players. Against all odds and predictions, they have been immensely successful as of late, yet when inspecting their Wikipedia article there is no reference to their recent success, and there are a couple of glaring issues marked by Wikipedia itself, resulting in an interesting and historic team not getting the love they deserve from their wiki article.

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 article's lead section is somewhat lackluster. The introductory sentence is satisfactory however the intro as a whole is longwinded, contains unprofessional and biased language such as "unfortunately," lacks a general framework for the rest of the article, and introduces information that isn't restated or explained anywhere else in the article. The lead contains unnecessary details but also lacks other key details and frameworks that would make it a good lead section.

Content: The content is definitely not up to date with the current season and it additionally doesn't focus enough on key players, matches, and events in the clubs history. Whilst the content is likely the strongest aspect of the article that would require the least change, there is definitely chunks of information missing that could be very useful to include. Additionally, reformatting the page to mirror the structure of the wiki pages for larger clubs would be beneficial as the organization feels disjointed and it feels like the least important information is at the top.

Tone and Balance: The article struggles with tonal issues, as it is far from neutral, exhibited through the use of words like "unfortunately" that indicate a negative emotion in response to something that occurred within the club. The language and tone would need to be shifted to a more academic and neutral stance rather than an opinionated one. Additionally, the language used isn't necessarily professional or befitting of an academic article, with both these tonal and linguistic issues being cited by Wikipedia themselves at the top of the article.

Sources and References: The article lacks citations for major parts of the article, specifically the sections regarding the stadium and sponsors. In it's defense I would imagine that finding reliable sources to cite for all of these may be difficult, but the information was hopefully transcribed from some source so realistically there should be a citation for all of it unless it was made up. The sources the article does have aren't necessarily current but they regard the clubs history so I don't think it is of major concern. The talk section is relatively bare bones and there seems to be a low amount of previous authors for a club with rich history.

Organization and writing quality: As mentioned in the Content section, both the organization and writing quality could be improved to flow better, read better, be more concise, and be more academic and less colloquial.

Images: The article does contain some images however each image lacks a good caption to explain the image's context, and there are problems regarding the sizing of the images and their placement within the article contributing to a cluttered and not visually appealing page.

Talk Page: The Talk page only houses 3-4 discussions regarding primarily issues with external links. The article is rated a Start-Class and is part of the Football: Italy WikiProject.

Overall Impressions: The article has many places for improvement, however provides a decent skeleton for an informative article. The primary issues are regarding its language, organization, and citation, which are all surface level issues that can be solved relatively easily, however it can also benefit form adding new information and removing unimportant information. It is definitely underdeveloped but presents an interesting topic and provides in depth history on it.