User:PanteraPyre/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Criminology

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
It relates to my major so I had an existing basis of knowledge to look at it from. It appears to be well managed, concise, and backed up by a lot of sources.

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 is mostly good, it has the origins of the name and what Criminology is in the first sentence, but personally I would organize the information a little differently, focusing more on what Criminology is used for earlier on, and then describing what research it pulls from, but I don't think there's much problem with it. I think the level of detail is good for such an expansive topic's introduction.

The article is mostly made up of different schools of criminological thought, which I think should be included and is relevant to the topic, but a majority of them would probably do better in their own articles so that they can be sufficiently detailed, this especially applies to the fields of study mentioned in the article. It covers old and new schools of thought that definitely span Wikipedia's equity gaps, as many of these theories deal with underrepresented populations and common misconceptions about crime.

I would say the balance in this article is pretty good, I think all of the schools and fields of study were explained equally and objectively. There is one section where neutrality is disputed, but it doesn't seem glaring to me. The only thing I noticed were some language choices felt too familiar or too suggestive of personal ideas, but it was nothing that damaged the overall quality or information of the article.

On sources and references, for the most part I think the article did a decent job. Most claims are cited, though some paragraphs lack any citation, even if the training said there should be at least one per paragraph. I looked through the sources and most of them are either academic journals or were from University websites on the studies conducted in their institutions. There were also government websites listed for statistics. The sources come from a variety of journals and places around the world, not just the United states. A lot of the sources are pretty dated, but that is to be expected when researching the history of an academic discipline, including old schools of thought. All of the links I checked worked.

I would say the article is pretty well written! For the most part it is easy to follow and understand, especially from a perspective of someone who isn't familiar with the topic. I would personally do more for article organization by breaking up the information more, the schools of thought section is incredibly long and bulky and could do with some separation to make it easier to follow. I didn't notice any grammatical errors in my read through.

There aren't many images present in the article, so I can't give much of a rating on attractiveness, but both images are in the public domain and are accurately captioned, though I'm not entirely certain what the leading image really has to do with representing criminology as a whole.

The talk page asserts that this is part of a school project, which makes sense. Most of the conversations are on if the information included in the article should be separated into their own articles or not, as well as discussion on necessary links. Most of these comments are old and seem to be resolved. The article is rated as a Class B level 4 vital article, and is associated with psychology, crime and criminal biography, and sociology. Some of the discussions feel a little mean spirited if I'm being honest, but for the most part it is what I expected.

Overall, I think this article is pretty good! It has a lot of detailed information that for the most part is backed up by reliable sources and can definitely be used to get a general idea as to what Criminology is. I think it does a good job of laying out all the subsections of criminology and important context for understanding the listed schools of thought. I would say it needs the most improvements in language choices and it could use even more citations in certain parts of the article. I would say it is pretty developed, and just needs some touches to reach its' full potential.