User:Njkleb/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Methanobacterium

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
This article describes a genus of microbe, which is related to the focus of this microbiology course. Currently, the article has very little information, and most of the information that already exists is focused on taxonomy and identifying the species within this genus, but there is essentially nothing about the actual biology of these species.

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.)

The lead section is relatively brief and does provide some important and useful information about the topic, but it contains very little information and is not structured in a super digestible way. It could be improved by branching out to briefly mention a larger variety of topics (assuming those topics will all be covered later on in the article) and by flowing smoothly from one topic to the next.

The only content within this article deals with the taxonomy of the genus, which is somewhat detailed but also does not address many other important aspects that should be mentioned in this article.

The article is written from a neutral point of view, though once again it does feel heavily focused on taxonomy with very little information about the other distinguishing characteristics of this genus.

There are a good number of sources for the amount of content that is included in this article, though once more content is added, there will need to be many more sources as well.

Although the lead section is a bit difficult for an average reader to digest, there are links to many of the more obscure terms. Otherwise, it does seem to be written pretty well, where the main information is communicated in a clear and concise manner. There are currently no images, although there is one phylogenic tree which serves as somewhat of a graphic. It would be nice to include at least one picture of an example of a species from within this genus.

There is no conversation on the talk page, and the article is rated as "low-importance" and "stub-class," so it is likely not a very high profile article and that is why it hasn't received much attention.

There is definitely a lot that can be added to this article in order to improve it, most prominently from the perspective of biological processes and characteristics. Describing some of the key features that may make this genus distinct from other related genera or identifying commonalities with other species may provide more context and help readers better understand the important aspects of this genus.