User:Patroklean/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Arch of Constantine

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
The Arch of Constantine is a significant piece of Roman Imperial architecture. The Emperor Constantine, in whose honor it was constructed, was one of the post historically significant leaders of Rome, as his conversion to Christianity was responsible for a considerable shift in popular and state religious values and attitudes away from traditional Roman polytheistic paganism and towards monotheistic Christianity in the Later Roman Empire. As the article states, the arch is the largest of the Roman Triumphal arches and its design was inspired heavily by triumphal arches constructed by other Roman Emperors, including Septimius Severus, Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius. The article itself is C-class, meaning that it contains substantial content but is still missing some important detail, contains irrelevant information, or requires copyediting and cleanup.

Lead section
The introductory sentence clearly and concisely describes the article's topic and the following sentences provide important introductory/background information. However, the section as a whole could do a much better job of providing an overview and description of the article's major sections, and some of the more detail-oriented information (such as the Arch's exact dimensions) should be moved to the body of the article.

Content
Most of the article's content appears to be relevant to the topic and up-to-date. I could not identify any extraneous information, nor could I identify any sections which appeared to be in need of an exceptional amount of additional information, aside from perhaps the Controversy section. This section introduces the reader to several controversies and academic debates surrounding the origins of the Arch. It tells us that some scholars believe that the arch could potentially have originally been constructed or conceived of by either Hadrian, Maxentius, or Domitian, but none of the details of these scholars' arguments are contained or even alluded to in the section. The section thus informs the reader that a controversy exists but does not explain why the Arch's origins are controversial to these scholars. This is a section which could stand to restate more information from the sources it references.

Tone and Balance
The tone of the article is generally neutral and the viewpoints expressed appear to be balanced. There are occasions, however, in which the article's editors veer into the use of value-laden language or appear to reproduce historical opinions or anecdotes which seem out of place in a an encyclopedia article. Phrases such as "On this occasion they also said many prayers," and "Whatever the faults of Maxentius," in the History section, for example, should likely be excised.

Sources and References
The sources references in the article appear to be scholarly, reliable, and up-to-date for the most part, however there are a number of sections in the article which are in need of further citations in order to substantiate their claims. The Symbolism subsection on Maxentius in the History section, for example only contains a single reference and it is unclear how much of the information in the section can be reliably traced back to this reference's source. This is especially true of the Iconography section, whose introductory paragraph does not contain any references. Furthermore, the entire subsection on the iconography of the Arch's Attic also cites no sources.

The section on Sculptural style is well-referenced but appears to be over-reliant on direct quotation.

Organization and writing quality
The article appears to be well-written in terms of grammar and syntax. I could not identify any obvious spelling or grammatical errors. The general organization and structure of the article also appears to be satisfactory, although the Symbolism subsection should likely be re-titled or reworked since it's more about the historical relationship between Constantine and Maxentius as expressed through the structure of the Arch than it is about what the Arch symbolizes. Additionally, I believe that the Arch's dimensions should be moved from the Lead section to perhaps the Sculptural style section.