User:Ochoajaz000/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Marion Mahony Griffin

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
My professor provided a few links to topics and designers related to class discussions. I chose it as the subject of the article is a woman designer, which I think is important to evaluate due to a heavily male-dominated career. My initial impression was that it seemed like a neutral article with a consistent list of resources, with minor tone issues.

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.)

Lead Section: I believe the lead section is efficient and concise. It contains the subject's full name, birth date, occupation, location, and impact. Although I do notice that the lead section refers to "Prairie School ideals of indigenous landscape", which I believe isn't expanded upon in the rest of the article.

Content: The content includes early life and education, architectural career (other designers the subject worked with), death and legacy (including exhibitions), and architectural works. The content in terms of titles and layout of information is split up nicely. It mentions the influence of the Chicago Fire in her early life, as well as her college career. I believe the architectural career section falls victim to what the article mentions, which is that "her talent was seen as only an extension of the work done by male architects." If any, I think it's important to include information about whether or not she had more of her own work independent from when she worked with the two male designers in the article.

Tone and Balance: I found two minor tone issues in this article. Under "Early life and education", author called Griffin "highly talented." Again under the "Work with Frank Lloyd Wright" section, author refers to Griffin's watercolor renderings as "beautiful". These seem to weaken the flow of the neutral position of the overall article. There is only one mention of the word indigenous, its important to expand the connection between Native American land and American designers at the time, especially in Chicago.

Sources: There are several links to resources within the article. Some sentences may lack one, but that may be a summary of information in the writer's words. The few links I clicked on worked properly and took me to a different page. The resources themselves are from within the last 30 years, oldest one being 30 years old from 1992 and the most recent one from 2021.

Organization: I believe this article is easy to read and organized efficiently according to relevance and importance of the article's subject. Like I mentioned above, more information of indigenous peoples is important when speaking of American designers at this time and may need its own section.

Images and Media: The article includes seven images. Three of them are well captioned, while the others (the blueprints) seem like they may still need location and year. Only one of the images is extremely far down on the page, breaking up the visual flow of the rest of them. Otherwise, they are relevant to the information and are appealing.

Talk Page: The talk page isn't too large. The first section says: "This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment." Other Wikipedians have brought up issues with lack of information and links. For example, user Beadmatrix brings up a question about how "Marion was influenced by her cousin." User Carptrash replied to a comment asking if Marion had any children by saying it may not be relevant. The last comment reveals that another used "modified one external link" in the article, asking others to review their edit.

Overall Impressions: The article is rated C-class to these WikiProjects: Arts and Entertainment, WikiProject Women artists, WikiProject Architecture, Chicago, Veganism and Vegetarianism, Women's History. A banner at the top of the talk page even says this article "was created or improved at an Art+Feminism edit-a-thon in 2016." Getting straight to the point with relevant information and summarizing the important points of the subject's life/career are these article's strengths. I will say it is well-developed because of its strengths, resources, images, and importance. My suggest way of improving this article may be to add other details about the subject, like children and explanation of influences (as mentioned by other Wikipedians) and definitely the addition of Native American land and their connection to American designers.