User:NadiaCarneiro1/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
"Zora Neale Hurston"

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because Zora Hurston is a relevant author that we have been studying in my class. I want to see if the article about her on wikipedia is full of accurate, in depth, and cited information.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The lead section is well done. The topic sentence introduces basic personal information about Zora, while also including some of her major accomplishments throughout life as well. The information mentioned in the first couple paragraphs are discussed in the later paragraphs. There is nothing that stands out as irrelevant and it is not overly detailed because of the elaboration that comes later in the article.

Content

The content is relevant. Not only does the article explain the significance about her famous works, but there is also a fair amount of information on her personal life, education, and jobs. The writers of this article even go into some detail on critiques against Zora. A wide range of information is covered to provide a full understanding for the reader. When I look over the bibliography, I can see that the information is up to date. The latest update is information used from articles that were written in 2020. It shows that Zora is still a prominent author talked and thought about today. The part that I believe is particularly well done is the "Literary Career" part. It goes in deep about her journey as a writer throughout her entire life until her death. It illuminates Zora's depth. She isn't described simply as a writer, she is known to be a woman of politics and she did a lot of anthropological work too. I have seen many articles on African-American peoples where they are underrepresented, but I don't think this is one. More can always be said though, I am sure there is a lot more to be said about this woman.

Tone and Balance

The article is neutral, it veers away from personal opinions that would be irrelevant for the wikipedia page. Whenever there is information about Zora being mentioned, so all of it, writers use pronouns like "she" or "her" indicating that they are only writing information down that has been proven by Zora herself. As mentioned before, there is even a "Critiques" section on the page, which further emphasizes the fact that there is no bias present, and no side being taken.

Sources and References

As I look through the reference page, I recognize many notable publishers like "Oxford University Press." I clicked on a couple references that looked unreliable to me, but then realized that those websites used reliable sources for their own articles. I also noticed a familiar critique in the list that I know is a person of colour: Richard Wright. After searching up a couple of more names, I learned that many people of colour have written the reliable sources used on Zora's wikipedia page. It would not be good enough to have a bunch of sources written by white authors, it is a diverse source list.

Organization and Writing Quality

The article is organized with sub-headings and headings. In other words, there are topics and sub-topics. It is fairly organized, but one thing I would change is the fact that they added her anthropological work with her biographical information. If I am looking for the work she has done within her life, I would expect a topic like that to be under the "Career" heading where the rest of her life works is listed. It makes it easier for readers to go exactly where they need to when they are searching for a certain piece of information. In addition, there is no obvious spelling mistakes, which indicates it has been edited well.

Images and Media

The article has 4 photos present. All of the photos are pictures of her, and they are all properly captioned (concise and to the point). It is important to have a picture of her, so that readers can match a face to a description, but I think that more photos of her works could have been beneficial. For example, what did the first edition of "Their Eyes Were Watching God?" look like? A more wide variety of pictures overall would give this page a better look. 4/5 pictures is enough, just not the same kind of pictures. The most interesting picture on the page would have to be the one of her on one of her research trips. It is very authentic and I would assume to be a rare find. Some searching probably needed to be done for that image. I think the pictures can be more spread out for a more visually pleasing experience overall. They are a bit clumped up together.

Talk Page Discussion

It is interesting to read the talk pages. It shows an entire writing and editing process. I noticed that writers are trying to teach others, and it seems like people are learning. For example, I am reading about how the biography came about specifically, and someone made a comment about how disorganized it was. Through addressing mistakes, they were able to fix the problem. Many mistakes have been called out, which leads me to believe that this page wasn't as good as it is now. I wouldn't say this is a perfect article, but because of the talk page, it has definitely improved greatly.

Overall Impressions:

One of the article's strengths is that it is easy to read. One of the reasons why it is easy to read is because if there is something that I don't know that is referenced, then I am able to click on that specific thing and be told what it is exactly. It improves my understanding on the subject as a whole. It would not be a good read if I was reading without understanding anything that I was reading. Another strength that it has is that there is a good amount of information written about her on there and the sources that I looked over were reliable. There is definitely more on this wikipedia page than what I just learned in my class. A couple of weaknesses of this article is that the pictures could have been chosen more thoughtfully and the organization of the information could be better. The information is present, but when people go to look for information, they want it to be a simple process. Readers will get frustrated if they are having trouble finding what they want to (all of this has been mentioned by me already in the previous paragraphs). I wouldn't say that this article is complete. There are still conversations happening on the talk page that need to be resolved. Even though a sufficient amount of information on Zora is written here, a couple of pages of writing isn't enough to grasp an entire life of an accomplished woman. There is still more to be learned and added to this page.