User:Nick Baratta/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Information ethics

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it is something I deal with on the regular. I work in a Medical Records department at the moment, and ethics are constantly brought into play (for example, sometimes we are forbidden from doing certain things with our information due to breaking HIPAA laws, even if it would be more convenient), and I am involved with the software/hardware modification scene as well. I think this article has a good base to it, a sort of sub-topic to ethics and a sub-topic to Information Technology as well.

Lead Section
The lead section does include an opening sentence that does not describe the topic, but defines it. It uses this definition from a cited source, pulled from a dictionary. The definition, however, describes the topic to a T. The lead section, however, does not entirely discuss the contents of the article and lead into them. It has several subtopics of the main topic, which is all well and good, but it doesn't introduce them very well. It discusses things like environmental issues, moral agency, and the life cycle of information. The contents of the article to not seem to mention this. I think sections like that could stand to be added, or the lead section could mention the subtopics in more detail. However, I think the lead section does a very good job of summarizing the topic in a brief way.

Content
The content of this article is very relevant to the topic. It provides a basic history, and goes in depth into what surrounds the ethics of information, such as censorship, security, and what different branches of ethics exist under the information umbrella. The articles content is somewhat up to date. It has sources that are either not listed with a date, or are subjective with topics that I believe would see a drastic change in opinion today. However, the content is dated well enough. I think the Ethics of Downloading section could stand to be improved or removed, as it becomes less and less relevant as the topic of the section becomes more and more dynamic.

Tone and Balance
The article does take a fairly neutral stance on the topic. It does not seem to take much of a stance at all, actually. It presents information as is and includes information from multiple viewpoints of the topic, going back as far as British philosophers from the 1800's to published pieces as recent as 2019. I think, if anything, this article leans towards the pro-security pro-ethical stance, but I think such a thing is natural, when you consider the opposition of that side. However, both sides are heard.

Sources and References
This article and its contents are heavily cited. It uses citations almost every other sentence and uses a total of 33 citations. It also pulls multiple ideas from a single citation, which could prove slightly dangerous if not checked. However, these multiple citations are pulled from works of literature that are peer reviewed, so I think in this case it might be acceptable. As for how current the sources are, it varies. It pulls from ideas from different time periods, but this proves to be acceptable as a large portion of this article is about the history of information ethics, and the other parts of the article that discuss more modern facets of the topic use more modern sources.

Organization and Writing Quality
This article uses many large paragraphs to delve into one facet of a subtopic of the article. I believe that these long passages are written well, have a good structure, but are so frequent that they could stand to be broken up, or shortened a bit. Some of them (like the final passage in the Security and Privacy section) feel as if they are just presenting info about the topic, but do not connect it all together very well, in my eyes. But other than that, I think this article is written well and I did not find any glaring mistakes.

Images and Media
This article does not contain images or media.

Talk Page Discussion
This article has a small talk page. It is discussing many things I have mentioned above, with the most relevant discussion being things similar to what I have discussed in here, that the lead section does not lead into the rest of the article very well, and that some sections of the article could stand to be fleshed out a bit more as opposed to one large section. (though, the talk page hasn't been used in almost a decade...)

Overall Impressions
The article is in a good status. It does its job at discussing the topic and goes into detail from viewpoints of both sides. It uses plenty of well cited sources of information and uses them decently. There is some parts of the article that need work, mainly the sections that talk too much about one thing for too long, but overall, it is decent. This articles strengths are the viewpoints and citations used. As previously mentioned, this article uses many many citations from across many time periods and uses them very frequently, and efficiently. I would say this article is comfortably underdeveloped. It could use more development to further flesh out its sections and the information it presents, but it still presents its information well enough.