User:Phinary/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: Māori language revival
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate. We discussed the revival of Māori in class.

Lead

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic? Yes
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections? It only mentions the Kōhanga Reo initiative and the Kura Kaupapa Māori, not the other three sections.
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article? Yes, the information about the historical causes of Māori language loss are only included in the Lead.
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed? It is fairly concise.

Content

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic? Yes
 * Is the content up-to-date? It's pretty up-to-date if one ignores the overall incompleteness. There are no current or historical data on the number of Māori speakers.
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong? All of the content belongs. As mentions in the previous bullet, statistics on the number of Māori speakers over time would be nice, as well as more data regarding the success or failure of the educational initiatives. A bit more about the historical causes of the language loss might be appropriate. The results of the effort described in the politics section stands out as missing.

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article neutral? It appears to be so
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position? None that I can find.
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented? Unless they are totally left out, no.
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another? I see no examples of that.

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information? Much of the lead is not, and the "Māori Language Week" section is not, but otherwise most everything is.
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic? Almost certainly not; searching "Kōhanga Reo" on Google Scholar yields 5,070 sources.
 * Are the sources current? The few sources present are fairly current; most are from the 2010's and all are from after 2000.
 * Check a few links. Do they work? I tried four and three worked.

Organization

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read? Yes
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors? None that I could see
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic? The sections seem too specialized to me. Definitely the "Kōhanga Reo" and "Kura Kaupapa Māori" sections could be combined into one, and the current "Politics" section could probably be added to that as well. The other two sections might be unified as "Government Action" or something.

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic? No
 * Are images well-captioned? N/A
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations? N/A
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way? N/A

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic? There are no conversations. One person described their edit, another claimed with no arguments that their contribution was necessary, and an anonymous user vented their frustration about the causes of the decline of the language.
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects? start-class, Linguistics / Applied Linguistics, Endangered Languages, and New Zealand / Māori.
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class? There is little discussion of the success/failure of the Kōhanga Reo movement, no m ention of the lack of fluent teachers, and less about the history of the language (though too much about that might not be appropriate for this article anyway.)

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions


 * What is the article's overall status? As it stands, the article provides a pretty fragmentary account of its subject, and suffers from poor organization.
 * What are the article's strengths? The writing is clear and encyclopedic.
 * How can the article be improved? The easiest changes would be improving the organization. As mentioned before, statistics on the number of Māori speakers over time and more data regarding the success or failure of the educational initiatives could be added.
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed? It is definitely not well-developed; poorly developed seems like a pretty accurate characterization.

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

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