User:Nchiulli/Evaluate an Article

Article Evaluation

 * Name of article: Antidepressants and suicide risk
 * I chose this article to evaluate because it is loosely related to my research project for this semester and is something I know a good amount about, as I have done research on antidepressant effects in the past.

Lead

 * The lead does have an introductory sentence which establishes the general subject of the article, however the rest of the paragraph isn't very effective in describing the subtopics. It does not actually mention most of the major sections or aspects of the debate, and instead only announces the existence of a debate in the first place. The lead does not include any extraneous information which does not appear in the article that follows, but it does mention one certain study which seems too specific to be included in this section. Other than that, if anything the lead is overly concise. It does not note the major points of the rest of the article at all.

Content

 * All of the information presented is relevant to the topic, and there is a good amount of data that comes from recent sources. About half of the sources listed were published between 2014-2019, with the other half being from the early 2000's. As such, the data that is present seems to be accurate and useful. However, there is not much data given in the first place. The article is very short, with two sections consisting of only one sentence each. It could definitely be further developed with the addition of more significant studies to the body of the text, along with more information about the science behind how and why antidepressants can potentially increase suicide risk.

Tone and Balance

 * The article is neutral and does not appear overly biased toward any position mainly because it does not establish solid proof of either side of the matter. There are sentences which explain findings of a study which point to a positive correlation between antidepressant use and suicide risk, but in the same breath declare that said study was inconclusive or did not have clear results. One could say that the opinion that antidepressants decrease suicide risk is underrepresented, as it is only explicitly mentioned in one line of the very last section, however I personally think that neither position is developed enough for this article to be considered biased one way or another.

Sources and References

 * There are many facts presented in the article which are missing citations entirely. Based on a quick search of our own BU database, these sources do not seem thorough at all. My search returned a massive variety of literature on the topic, in great contrast to the limited pool represented by the few sources cited here. About 50% of the sources used are from the past ten years which seems recent enough to still be relevant, however the other half are mostly from the early 2000's and could possibly include outdated information. One a positive note, all of the links I checked worked.

Organization

 * The article is concise and rather clear. There are a few minor grammatical errors, but they do not make the article much harder to read. In my opinion, the article is poorly organized. The subtitles chosen seem random and are not an effective way of categorizing the little information they do provide. They are also ordered in a way which does not make much sense and can be hard to logically follow.

Images and Media

 * This article does not include any images or media.

Checking the talk page

 * The primary conversations going on in the Talk page consist of sourcing issues and questions. Most of the comments note facts which are not cited correctly or at all and/or provide other sources which could be useful to the topic at hand. There is even a big red flag from Wikipedia itself which suggests that a piece of the article has been completely plagiarized, though the users claim that it is an issue with Wiki's algorithms rather than an actual case of plagiarism. One other major conversation regards a section which used to be included in the article, called "Antidepressants decrease suicide risk." Users removed this section because they felt it was too biased toward that side of the argument. This article is rated C-class, and it is part of three WikiProjects - Death/Suicide, Medicine, and Pharmacology. The second two projects are rated Mid-importance, while Death/Suicide is rated Low-importance.

Overall impressions

 * The article definitely has a lot of room for improvement. I suppose a strength could be that some of the sources included provide valuable information which is recent and useful to the topic at hand. In all honesty though, I'm not sure I'd consider that a strength so much as a bare minimum requirement. I think it could be improved with the addition of much more information and a larger variety of recent sources, as well as a new approach to its organizational structure. Overall, I would asses this article as underdeveloped.

Optional activity

 * Link to feedback: Talk:Antidepressants and suicide risk
 * I don't know how to link my specific feedback so I linked the talk page, I added a small question underneath the "Antidepressants decrease suicide risk section should be removed completely" subtitle