User:Octobercosmos/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Gulf Stream

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
During the lecture that focused on life on water, the Gulf Stream was discussed. It has a significant impact on the climate that is experienced by portions of the eastern North American coastline and northwestern Europe due to it bringing warm water north from the Gulf of Mexico. I chose this article due to the wider application of the Gulf Stream as discussed in class and how climate change may alter it, which would impact the different ecosystems near the coastlines and agricultural practices on the mainland.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The lead section of the wiki article on the Gulf Stream is clear and concise. It defines the Gulf Stream and identifies the path that the current travels. Some brief overviews of other article sections are written about in the lead, but others are completely missing like the sections pertaining to gulf stream rings and future predictions. However, all the information that is mentioned in the lead is incorporated throughout other sections.

Content

While the article does discuss the gulf stream, its history, properties and other aspects, it tends to overly emphasize and provide minute details about certain topics while neglecting other sections. There are nearly 3 paragraphs that are dedicated to the history of the Gulf Stream whereas the section that is meant to be discussing the properties of the warm current is a few sentences and is overall lacking detail. The article does contain up to date information and briefly touches upon how climate change may influence the Gulf Stream. Overall, the article starts off fairly well, but becomes heavily detailed in certain areas while providing very little information in others which makes it appear as unorganized and hard to follow.

Tone and Balance

The article attempts to provide a somewhat neutral point of view and adhere strictly to information that is rooted in science and provides references throughout. It does not make any claims that are heavily biased. Despite the numerous sources cited throughout the article it comes across as

Sources and References

The list of references provided for the article is extensive. Information has been sourced from academic journals, textbooks, news articles and historical personal correspondence as pertaining to the Gulf Stream. However, not all the information presented is relevant and may have been misconstrued. The article includes a few resources that were published within the last few years that discuss the changes that are occurring to the Gulf Stream due to climate change. The links seem to be functioning properly.

Organization and writing quality

The article is written in a way that despite providing a lot of detailed information, seems to be ill organized in certain areas. There are no noticeable grammatical or spelling errors. It would be beneficial to rearrange the order in which the topics are discussed and to provide details relevant to the topic under its designated area, while eliminating unnecessary information to create a more coherent text.

Images and Media

The images included in the article are captioned and do contribute to an understanding of the topic. However, the placement of the image especially in the lead section could be better suited by an image that depicts the gulf stream's path rather than an image that depicts warm surface temperatures in the northern Atlantic Ocean. In addition, a few more images would have further helped illustrate the details provided in the article in a more visual way, like when the article discusses future of the Gulf Stream it would be helpful to see the other currents that are involved and may impact it. The images used follow Wikipedia's copyright regulations.

Talk page discussion

The most recent conversation on the article's talk page is regarding the potential collapse of the Gulf Stream as early as 2025 according to some scientists. There is also communication that seems to indicate that the article is in need of major changes due to the way information has been added to it over time, indicative of an 'edit warring' according to one Wikipedia editor.

Overall impressions

The article is a C-class article. One of the article's strengths is fairly well written lead. However, the rest of the article is in need of major editing that would require removal of some details from certain areas and addition of details in others. Also, the topics that are discussed would need to be rearranged and certain irrelevant sources removed from the article altogether. The article comes across as poorly developed.