User:Pavneetah/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Freshwater acidification

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
Freshwater is an invaluable resource of Earth, critical for the survival of many life forms including humans. Freshwater acidification had been discussed in one of my other courses with the context of fertilizer runoff. My decision to evaluate this article was influenced by the lack of detail present in the current article and the absence of some sources of acidification.

Evaluate the article
Evaluating Content

Despite the majority of the content that is written in the Wikipedia page for “Freshwater Acidification '' being relevant, the article as a whole lacked clarity. As a reader, wikipedia is usually the first source of information from where you get base knowledge to jump start the rest of your research from. This article was not successful in building this base knowledge as it lacked important background information, depth of information and the form in which the information was presented was not coherent. To begin with, it felt as though the author of this article jumped straight into the ‘meat’ of the freshwater acidification without providing the reader the necessary background information. In many cases, there are people that have no background knowledge in a topic like freshwater acidification. It would have been useful for the author to outline what freshwater sources are and what is the meaning of acidification. Without the basic background information, it sets up the rest of the article to be difficult for the reader to understand. In many areas of the article, there were terms and abbreviations that are not general knowledge listed without any information on what they are and what they meant. For example, the abbreviations for sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides (SOx and NOx respectively) were introduced in the background and were continuously mentioned throughout the article. Despite this, there was no mention of the full form of the abbreviation or even an explanation of what they were. This also goes for many different terms that are not general public knowledge including runoff and buffering capacity. Furthermore, the article itself was broken down into only three main subsections: Freshwater vs. Ocean Acidification, Causes, and Harmful Effects on Aquatic Ecosystems. Each of these subsections were inadequately explained and lacked a depth in the information. As a reader, it felt as though there was not enough information to fully grasp the different aspects of freshwater acidification. The information was inadequately researched with only one to two references per section and the length of the sections were small comparative to Wikipedia pages that are sufficiently researched and well written. Along with that, although the article was structured in a logical way, the author was not coherent with the information that they provided. This means that they did not follow the given structure and the information provided was in various parts of the article. For example, despite there being a designated section for the comparison of freshwater vs ocean acidification, the author would randomly place facts about ocean acidification throughout the other sections of the article. This, in return, distracts the reader as they think that the information that is being provided should be for freshwater acidification but is actually for ocean acidification. Throughout the article, the information was incoherent and hard to follow as it does not seem to have been edited. There were many sentences within the article that were run-on, or the author would use incorrect words or tenses. Without the sentences being structured correctly, the reader can find themselves having to reread sentences as they cannot understand what the author was trying to say. Overall, this article lacked basic background knowledge, information depth and was not coherently written rendering it unclear and an insufficient resource. However, the author does a good job of keeping the tone of the article neutral. This is because the information provided in this article is based on facts and is not biased towards any one or any group.

Improvements

Overall, there is a substantial amount of improvements that can be made in this Wikipedia page. To begin with, the content should be structured in a way that is easy to follow and the given information is found only in the designated subsections. This way it does not feel as though the author is writing the information incoherently with no sense of direction. This will ensure that the article is concise and readers that are referring to the article for specific needs can easily find all of their information in the given subsections. Along with this, the article should have an easy to understand and thoroughly explained background on freshwater acidification to set up the tone for the whole article. This will provide the reader with relevant and adequate information to understand the in-depth information in the following subsections. Furthermore, more research on the topics should be performed to be able to form larger and more detailed subsections to ensure the reader is getting a good background knowledge on all of the aspects of the topic. The current version of the freshwater acidification wikipedia page lacks depth to the different sections and also fails to explain in detail other important causes of acidification including agricultural runoff. The ‘harmful effects on aquatic ecosystems’ section is inadequate as it does not have any in depth information about these effects while only mentioning a few examples. Acidification is a very important problem for aquatic ecosystems and thus this section fails to capture its importance and effects and leaves out very important information such as eutrophication. Along with that, the article should be edited for grammar, coherency of sentences and conciseness.

Talk Page

There is no discussion about the article in the talk page with the exception of one use mentioning the edits made and an addition of ocean acidification section. This topic, although quite important given the fact that the majority of the drinking water is drawn from freshwater sources, is not getting much representation. The discussion about this topic should consist of many key elements such as the impact on the freshwater pH from agricultural runoff and an in depth discussion about eutrophication of lakes due to acidification.

Source evaluation

The author has used peer reviewed journal articles for most of the sources and which seem to be accessible. However, one website that the author used to describe ocean acidification does not seem to work. Despite having journal articles for the most part the wiki article does not appear to be well researched as it misses some key points discussed in the papers. The article lacks the mention of agricultural runoff and how that contributes to increasing the pH of the nearby rivers, lakes or any other freshwater bodies. Furthermore, the article also lacks depth while talking about the impact acidification on the biodiversity of the freshwater sources. In the article by Muniz, I (1990), the author discusses eutrophication and the loss of biodiversity in freshwater bodies due to acidification.