User:Paisley.mederios/Evaluate an Article

Jennie Finch
Jennie Finch

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I have chosen this article because I was sorting through the C class articles, and I came across "C-class College Softball Articles". This section caught my eye because I played softball for a majority of my life, and because there is no professional league, the sport often gets over-shadowed. When scanning through the article's Jennie Finch's article caught my eye because she is known as one of the best softball pitchers ever. I thought it would be an interesting article to evaluate to find out more information about her and evaluate the article to see where it could use future improvements.

Evaluate the article
Lead

The first sentence does a good job as the lead sentence by describing Jennie Finch's full name as well as why she is well known. The lead start off doing a good job giving a brief description of the articles sections. Both cover Finch's college career, Olympic career, and National Pro Fastpitch career. However, it falls short by leaving out major sections of the article such as, "Media", "Personal Life" and "Retirement". However, the lead does a good job of not including information in the lead that isn't mentioned elsewhere. The lead is concise however it could talk less about her softball career and mention her personal life a little better.

Content

While all of the content in this article is relevant to the topic, I feel it isn't very up to date since the Retirement section speaks of what Finch said in 2010. I believe all the content belongs, however the Manager section only has two sentences about her Manager career, this information should be expanded upon, added to another section, or be taken out completely. The article does speak on equity gaps by mentioning how at one point she pitched to Major League Baseball players. It mentions a few quotes referring to the fact that Finch likely gave the MLB players a difficult time at the plate, but doesn't mention how many specifically.

Tone and Balance

The article does stay neutral throughout, and seems well-balanced. It doesn't seem as if the writer was bias one way or another.

Sources and References

The sources are split 50/50 between reliable and questionable. A few of the reliable ones are NFCA.org and NCAA.org. While the unreliable ones consist of The New York Times, ESPN, NBC, and The Daily Telegraph. I would say these sources reflect the available literature on Jennie Finch. A few are dated back to Jennie's prime time (ranging from 2008 to 2016 which is understandable). But some are more recent in 2020. However, overall they are not the most up-to-date. The authors come from a diverse spectrum of authors of all genders and races. I found one better website that might be worth mentioning due to it's more recent date of 2022. However, it is written by Forbes so wouldn't be on the most reliable side. All of the links I clicked worked.

Organization and Writing Quality

Overall, this is a well-written professional article. It is well organized and easy to follow. However, it is important to mention that someone who doesn't understand the sport of softball may not understand some of the terminology, but none of it is rocket science that can't be explained with a quick google search. I didn't find any spelling or grammar errors and found the sections easy to follow and reflecting the major points.

(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.)

Images and Media

There is only two pictures of Jennie Finch which does allow the reader to see what she looks like (or at least looked like at the time of her prime). The images are well formatted, captioned, and follow copyright regulations. However, more recent photos or action shots of Jennie Finch pitching could definitely be beneficial for the article. However, I really like that the article included Jennie Finch's statistics from each team she played for. They're well organized and easy to read if you understand softball statistics.

Talk Page Discussion

The most recent addition on the talk page was a review in 2020. However, there was discussions on sources to incorporate, image use, and the correction of information that couldn't be backed. The article is rated C-class and is a part of the following WikiProjects; WikiProject Biography, WikiProject Olympics, WikiProject Baseball, WikiProject Softball / College, WikiProject Women's History, WikiProject Women's Sport / Softball, and WikiProject Women.

Overall Impressions

Overall, this is an okay article. Considering it is covering a somewhat outdated topic/celebrity, it does a good job trying to fill in all the holes. It's overall status I would give a 5/10. It's strengths are the organization and overall spread of knowledge on the topic. However, it is a difficult topic to find very reliable sources. It can be improved by continuing to keep it up to date on Jennie Finch and her current life. It could be better developed in this way.