User:Oliviadey/Evaluate an Article

Article Evaluation
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: The Media Elite
 * I chose this article because the novel that the article is centered around is one that I have always been interested in reading. In my government class in high school, my teacher recommended that we read this book because it dives into the positives and negatives of journalism and how it skews peoples views on a topic. I thought that this was very relevant to this class and I found this article particularly interesting.

Lead
Guiding questions:


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?

Lead evaluation
Since this article evaluates a novel, the introductory sentence does a great job of describing exactly what the novel is, and when/by who it was published by. The lead also explains the main idea of the book in one short sentence, while also stating one conclusion from the study that was particularly important. Everything that was included in the lead was in the article, but there were some sections that were not mentioned. I would say that the lead is concise, and does a great job at giving the gist of the information to come.

Content
Guiding questions:


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * Is the content up-to-date?
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?

Content evaluation
The article is filled with relevant information to the topic, and dives into much deeper depths surrounding the consequences of mass media. All of the content is also very up to date politically. All of the information present in the article is relevant and there is no content that seems like it doesn't belong. It is also good to note that the last edit made to the page was on August 14th, 2019 so again, the majority of the information is up to date.

Tone and Balance
Guiding questions:


 * Is the article neutral?
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?

Tone and balance evaluation
Even though the article was based on a novel that had said they found the elite media has a liberal media basis, it still remained pretty neutral. While reading though, the novel used many news sources like The Washington Post and the New York Times which are particuarly left leaning media sources. The author does a great job of keeping a neutral position on the topic, even with the load of information about a liberal media, and continuously puts information and statistics about both left, middle and right leaning percentages.

Sources and References
Guiding questions:


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
 * Are the sources current?
 * Check a few links. Do they work?

Sources and references evaluation
All the facts that were present in this article were either gotten from the famous novel The Media Elite: America's New Power or two other sources that were related to it. It is great that one of the sources is a full novel that conducted a full study, so there was extensive research put into this. On the downside, these sources were written in the late 1980's which makes them a-little less politically correct now a days, because times are every changing. In addition, many of the links worked, but the references included no links.

Organization
Guiding questions:


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?

Organization evaluation
In my opinion, I feel as though the article is well written, with a clear outline and describes the novel and its main ideas very well. There were no spelling/grammatical errors, and it was very easy to read, while still being a very sophisticated article. It is well organized, but I think the last section on Nuclear Power did not have a place in the article. This one was specific example that the author used to explain his findings, but I think there should have been more specific examples included to make the article feel more complete.

Images and Media
Guiding questions:


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
 * Are images well-captioned?
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way?

Images and media evaluation
Surprisingly, the article includes no images, graphs etc. I feel as though if they were to add one image of the cover of the novel, it would have made the article look even more cohesive and appealing.

Checking the talk page
Guiding questions:


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

Talk page evaluation
The conversations that were said on the talk page were basically negative comments about some of the content in the article. When I tried looking for the content, I realized it had been removed by editors. The majority of them said how the article leaned heavily in certain directions, specifically right which I found interesting, but to my surprise ti had already been edited and removed. The article is ranked a c-class, which I do not believe to be that great in the grand scheme of Wikipedia articles, and it is apart of many Wikiprojects like Conservatism, Books, Media, Journalism, United States, Sociology and Politics. In addition, I feel that Wikipedia feels very formal when discussing these topics, while in class it is very informal and personal opinions, neutral or not, are accepted and can be said without backlash. While on Wikipedia, it can be very detrimental to the article if it is leaning a political direction politically.

Overall impressions
Guiding questions:


 * What is the article's overall status?
 * What are the article's strengths?
 * How can the article be improved?
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?

Overall evaluation
One of the articles strengths is its ability to address the both sides of the argument represented in the brook, and keeping a neutral tone while describing the novel that is based on leftist statistics. As I stated previously, I think the article could be improved by creating more sub-sections like the Nuclear Power topic. By doing this, the readers of this article can get a deeper understanding of the novel by just reading this article, and the flow of the article will be much smoother. Due to this, I was say that it is a well-developed article, but could use some additions to make it even better.

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback with four tildes ~


 * Link to feedback: Talk:The Media Elite