User:Ntallon/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)

History of the Peloponnesian War

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

Reading this primary source in my History of Ancient Greece class, this article matters because it set a standard for historians and the methods used to ensure data and information can stand the test of time to accurately account the past. My preliminary impression was that the article does include more than simply information immediately surrounding the text and the author and can give some context in the impact and time it was written.

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 of the articles does a good job at summarizing the content of the book in a way that is easily understood by any reader regardless of expertise and gives the reader a general idea of what ideas are in the book. This lead section does dive into arguments on the analysis of the text which would work better later on in the article as it was confuse readers that have no prior knowledge of the source yet.

The content surrounding the source is plentiful with this article talking from everything about the method Thucydides used to form these books and why he might have made them in the way he did. This information is very helpful to readers learning the basics of this source to understand the full context showing how his origin, religion, Greek myths before him, etc might be impactful to the source. The article does go stray in content when talking about the navy and talking about how it impacts modern day shortly which can distract readers.

I do believe this article takes a neutral stance dedicating an entire section to the different interpretations and translations that comes with ancient primary sources being translated. This article also summarizes various prominent debates and arguments surrounding this primary source to show the audience that there are many interpretations for it not overly playing into any argument made but simply laying it out for the reader.

The overall organization is good and gives the reader a solid path to follow while learning about the primary source. I would adjust the arguments over interpretations from the introduction of the article and move it to the later section with other interpretations but overall the organization is good for readers.

Most of the images included do not add much to the article which is a struggle of ancient primary sources. There is one good picture captioned well about the translation of a manuscript yet other pictures do not add much to the article and have little captioning.

I found that this articles has had 802 edits and I would say this article is well developed it is very good at giving new readers looking at this primary source for the first time a summary and the context surrounding Thucydides and Greece at the time to be able to make an informed discussion. This article also is good for laying out previous arguments and issues with interpretations of ancient texts. This article can be improved to be better paced for new readers by not bringing up opposing arguments in the introduction but later on after the reader can learn some context. Improvements can also be made to better explaining the military technology section as it is brief and gets off topic quickly when it should focus more on Athens and how their naval power was influential context to understanding the text more accurately.