User:Nicole Lizbeth/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?

 * 1) Governance
 * 2) Public participation

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?

 * 1) My PE organization, the League of Women Voters of Piedmont, is a well-established chapter of a larger organization, LWV (League of Women Voters). As a non-partisan organization advocating for voter rights and democracy, governance is critical for its operation as an influential community organization. The league operates as a participatory governance to increase informed citizen participation in state governance. By engaging with forms of governance, I will elaborate on the more significant function of community organizations such as LWVP in producing social change at a state/local level. I plan to add to the section on participatory governance and explain how participatory governance can be looked at as a solution to social issues such as affordable housing.
 * 2) I chose to evaluate the public participation article because it provides insight into how pubic participation manifests itself within organizations and how solidarity functions to produce general change. The article delves into the different fields public participation presents itself in, the increase in the public involvement due to the loss of trust in authorities and governance, and public participations enhancement of accountability and transparency. The article directly links to the previous article (governance) as it is a mechanism of participatory governance. I plan to add specifically to critical interpretations drafting a section describing the role of public participation in participatory governance and adding under the public policy section to demonstrate how public participation can increase the efficiency, legitimacy, and social justice of governing bodies.

Governance
Lead Section: The article's lead section is concise and provides a clear overview of governance and the different forms it can take. While it outlines the role and influences of a governing body in society, it does not provide much room for explaining the sections to come. Instead, the lead section is very definition-heavy and lacks history and context for the sections that proceed.

Content: The article's content is pretty up-to-date and provides a clear assessment of the roles of each form of governance. While brief, each section is clear and describes the process of each form of governance and its role in society. The article articulates how governance acts as a normative concept and explains what has come to be considered a good, fair, and effective governance on an international scale. The content, however, would benefit by elaborating on the small-scale impact forms of governance can have. The majority of the range uses examples of the World Bank and large governing bodies but lacks explaining the impact of local forms of governance and their role in social change. It may even benefit from a section on social movements and citizen participation in increasing the efficiency and fairness of governances.

Tone and Balance: The style of the article is neutral throughout the entirety and aims to provide a perspective that is not solely rooted in the western epistemology of governance. However, it can be critiqued for its limitations as it is based solely on research and not the first-hand observation of the forms of governance in other areas.

Sources and Reference: The origins and references throughout the article are relevant to the content of the text and provide a further understanding of the topic. The works of primary authors and definitions are adequately sourced and hyperlinked for easy accessibility. In addition, there are various sources cited from multiple authors. Finally, there is an even distribution of sources dating from the later 1900s to 2017 (reasonably given that governance discourse does not change as frequently as other topics).

Organization and writing quality: This article is well-written and easily digestible. It makes for an easy read, and each subheading allows the reader to know what will be presented. However, while there are no issues with clarity, the sections could benefit from a more in-depth analysis of the role of each form of governance at different levels and their potential for social or structural change.

Images and Media: This article uses no images. I feel this is done to remain neutral because governance is political. It can easily be misinterpreted if photos are seen as supporting one form or position over the other.

Talk page discussion: This article's talk page is brief and does not contain much material. However, the few suggestions presented have been resolved and were about adding a section on bad governance. There has also been a request to add images to improve the quality of the article, but as I discussed before, this has not been done, and I feel it is due to the sensitivity of the topic as it is highly political.

Overall impressions: Overall, this article is clear and concise and provides the reader with the necessary insight to generate a clear understanding of governance and its role within society. While there are a few shortcomings, it can be improved by providing clear examples of different scales of governance instead of briefly mentioning that governance can take form at local levels.

Public Participation
Lead Section: The article's lead section is concise and provides a clear overview of public participation, and entails its distinction from other forms of citizen engagement such as stakeholder engagement. The article does not directly outline what is to come in the following sections. Still, it does set up the article well by explaining how public participation can be leveraged in social situations. Its lead section briefly presents the different fields in which public participation has emerged and specifies that it is described in a Western cultural context.

Content: The article's content is relevant to the topic, but I note that it does stray away from the subject in some areas - specifically the fields section. For example, when explaining the fields in which public participation emerges, I felt there was a lack of description of the involvement, and which kinds of people get involved. Nevertheless, each section following this one is more directly linked to public participation and frames public participation as the central topic. While the content is not entirely outdated, given the current political climate and surge of public engagement and participation, the content does need to be updated to reflect contemporary forms of public participation. The article does not discuss the historical lack of access citizens experience in general issues and citizens' past exclusion. It briefly touches on it by discussing people with disabilities. Still, it fails to acknowledge the other myriad of categorizations imposed on people that have led to their exclusion in public participation.

Tone and Balance: The article's tone is neutral and does explain that it takes on the perspective of western culture. However, while none of the claims appear as bias, its weakness is that it refrains from discussing the injustices that stem from the lack of inclusion of groups in public participation and its inaccessibility to these groups due to structural dynamics. In addition, there is no form of persuasion throughout the article - it supports the claims with sources and remains neutral.

Sources and Reference: All of the information presented in the article are backed by what seems to be reliable sources ranging from journals to books and scholarly articles. Each fact either has a citation or has the corresponding topics hyperlinked. The sources used reflect the literature on the subject, producing a more cohesive and conducive article. In addition, the references are relatively current, with the most recent being from 2015, and are written by a diverse spectrum of authors. However, I do feel that the article lacks in discussing marginalized individuals because public participation provides a lot of room for this kind of discussion as people are currently still excluded from public decisions and issues. Ultimately, the sources effectively support the text in the article, and the links I clicked do work.

Organization and writing quality: This article is decently written and easily digestible. It makes for an easy read, and each subheading is relevant to the information below it.

Images and Media: While there are no photos in the article, there is a video. The video is clearly described and is an excellent supporting source for the importance of public participation and how the development would fail if it were to come to a halt.

Talk page discussion: This article's talk page contains suggestions for improving or strengthening the article by incorporating more sections. Some tips include adding a unit that links participation to Canada, the overlap between other participation articles, and science and policy edits. Unfortunately, I can see that not many of these suggestions have been implemented, but there have been more hyperlinks to other participation articles.

Overall impressions: Overall, this article does present the information clearly and is an easy read. However, it does not go into as much depth as it can with the historical content and current events. Because of this, I would say the article is slightly underdeveloped.