User:PhillipEGruenemay/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
2000s energy crisis

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article because its subject matter is relevant to another assignment I am working on for the same class. This article matters because the 2000s energy crisis tends to be forgotten today, and so recounting what happened before, during, and after the crisis is important to educate those who wish to learn about it. My preliminary impression of this article is that it is pretty good, but that it mentions potential causes in the introduction that are only partially covered in the article itself.

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.)

Lead Section: There is no introductory sentence in the first paragraph, however there is a preface in italics that when read could serve as an introductory sentence. The introduction includes brief descriptions of some of the topics in the article that are discussed in detail (such as supply and demand) but mentions others that are not (such as the impact of foreign policies and hurricanes.) For being two paragraphs, the introduction is relatively concise.

Content: The majority of the content is relevant to the topic, it is arguable for me that the section on ways to have mitigated the 2000s energy crisis is relevant for an article chronicling the crisis itself, but that particular content is well done. due to the historical nature of the subject, most of the sources are from 2004-2016, but sources up to 2018 are also included. More recent sources would be welcomed. Outside of the mitigation section that some might argue is not relevant, there were no other sections that did not belong. There were four mentions of developing nations or countries in relation to this subject, but none were names specifically - more mentions would help bridge the equity gap.

Tone and balance: The article overall is more or less neutral, as mentioned above more mentions of developing nations would be more helpful in bridging the equity gap. The source attached to the sentence in the introduction setting up the article's topics of supply and demand is ThinkProgress, a left-leaning site, and so it can be interpreted that the focus on supply and demand as factors that caused the 2000s energy crisis might be biased; more sources that talk about other causes or a similar source on supply and demand from a neutral site can alleviate this concern. I saw no minority or fringe viewpoints within the article. The sections on mitigation can be seen as trying to persuade those who do not believe in climate change to change their mind.

Sources and References: There is four instances of facts not having appropriate citations, and one instance of claiming a better source is needed (the source in question is the BBC, so to me this seems unwarranted.) As mentioned before, most of the sources are from 2004-2016, but sources up to 2018 are also included. Sources range from the New York Times and NPR to the Daily Telegraph and the Wall Street Journal. I would not know if any of the authors are historically marginalized. Most of the sources come from either journalistic (news organizations) or governmental sources, providing some scholarly sources would add to this article. The link for the source in the introduction concerning Hurricane Katrina is broken and the PDF is unavailable.

Organization and Writing: The article is well-written, I could not see any spelling or grammar mistakes, and it is well organized.

Images and Media: The article includes 4 images of graphs concerning crude oil prices and gas prices. The images are well captioned. I do not know if these graphs were made specifically for Wikipedia or not; there is no citation for either the information in the images or the images themselves if they come from another source. Because all four graphs are towards the beginning of the article, the rest of the article is not laid out in a visually appealing way.

Talk page discussion: The types of conversations on the Talk page range from whether to call the crisis an energy crisis or a petroleum crisis, whether it is relevant to mention the impact of hurricanes or not, and whether this event even happened in the first place, among others. The article is part of both WikiProject Energy and WikiProject Economics, receiving a B-grade from both of them. The way Wikipedia discusses this topic is in a civil tone, like how we would talk about it in class.'

Overall Impressions: Overall this article is pretty good. Its strengths are covering the causes of supply and demand as well as impacts and the end of the energy crisis. Its weaknesses are not including more causes such as foreign policies or natural disasters, having some more sources to balance any possible biases, bridging the equity gap, and include scholarly sources, and fixing editorial things like removing dead links and adding proper citations. I would say that this article is developed but could use more development to make it better.