User:Noor Machtoub/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
This article was selected because the climate conferences are the most notable periods in which world leaders gather to discuss the climate crises. This topic matters because important actions and decisions are taken or not taken during this summit to mitigate the impact of climate change. My preliminary impression of this article is that it is well-organized with an overview/recap of the conference.

Evaluate the article
The article presents an introduction that is fairly detailed, but also concise. It begins with an introductory statement explaining what the acronym "COP26" stands for and when and where the conference was held. This is a an adequate introductory statement because the purpose of a climate conference is pretty self-explanatory, therefore details like the date, location, and the stating that it is the 26th conference are necessary introductory details. The introduction highlights the main ideas that will be reviewed. However, it does not highlight every detail like the importance of the non-attendees. However, the introduction is concise with a good amount of detail to the main topics.

The content is relevant to the conference. The article describes and lists the attendees and non-attendees. It describes important negotiations, the ratchet mechanisms to enforce participation in these negotiations, the reception and the presidency of COP. It also lists some criticism and updates on the negotiations towards the end as well as the event organization (such as stating the criticism the menu received and wheelchair limitations. It does include some updates but not many. All the information, however, is relevant and belongs. There is no information that distracts from the purpose of informing. The article does not include anything about equity gaps or underrepresented topics or populations. It could have spoken in more detail when describing developing countries wanting to be removed from the commitment draft in more detail. However, there is nothing specific of detailed about equity gaps or underrepresented populations.

This article is very neutral. In areas where bias could have been presented, there is none. For example, when describing the organization of the event, menu items are mentioned. The article states that "60% of the menu being meat and dairy based" resulted in criticism. However, rather than presenting bias, it stated an oppositional statement that came from the head of catering saying that the menu had been in fact sustainable. Moreover, a section for criticism is clearly stated towards the end, however, it is simply restating critics and new sources that have voiced criticism of the conference and its negotiations. The viewpoint of developing countries is not elaborated on in much detail, however, is presented towards the end of the article.

The article is backed up by secondary information. All the citations are relevant and recent the latest of them being from 2020. Most the sources are thorough with some exception of short news sources and poorly written sources like one resource taken from MSN. No the sources aren't written from a diverse spectrum of authors. Many of the sources listed are news sources, especially those of which are known to illustrate bias in their news reports. There are definitely better sources, although some of the sources are peer-reviewed and with one being directly from the COP26 website, there are certainly more diverse authors and options of sources out there. All the links are working.

The article is concise and clear with little to no grammatical errors. There are times were there are run-on or very long sentences making it difficult to follow along. However, overall each section effectively presents its information in a concise manner. Some sections have subsections when needed and are equally organized in length, with the exception of some shorter less relevant sections.

Personally, the images didn't really grab my attention. However, they are well captioned and follow copyright regulations. They are not as visually appealing or presented as one would like. However, they do offer illustrations of certain information throughout the article like the section of attendees followed by a picture of well-known representatives.

The talk page is insightful in explaining the reasons to the ways in which the article and its information is presented. You can see people effectively communication why they believe certain things need to be edited or changed. For example, the photo of the Indonesian attendees wearing their traditional clothing was originally captioned "Colourful attendees." This came across to many patronizing and vague to many, providing little insight or relevance. Many collaborated on a new caption and searched for where these attendees where from. It seems that each person had been building off each other, which some recent edits towards the end of November.

Overall, the article effectively presents important information relating to COP26. The article does an effective job in listing out negotiations and key pieces of information that highlight the importance of the summit with critiques and opinions in an informative and neutral way. The article could be improved by including a more detailed briefing of the history of these conferences and the significance of this conference compared to previous ones. It could also have presented more relevant photos, although one does illustrate a minority attending the conference, not all seem to hold much value in relation to the article. The resources could've been more diverse almost every sources was taken from a news outlet rather than a scientific critique or reliable source. The article is well developed with some minor improvements that can be made.