User:Pmbdanni/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Abiotic stress)

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose it because it relates to some of my class's topics. Abiotic stress is how non-living factors can negatively affect living organisms or the environment, so it is important to understand the mechanisms behind it. It gives semi-detailed summaries but could be added to and re-worded in a few places.

Evaluate the article
Article Evaluation:

Lead section: More information could be added to the introduction, it feels a bit short. It gives brief details into what abiotic stress is and contrasts it to biotic stress. In the second sentence of the lead, the definition could be rewritten into plainer words.

Content: In the "Examples" portion, "Extreme temperature", "Cold", and "Heat" seems repetitive. Especially since a lot of the examples use the same source for their information. It could simply read as Extreme Heat and Extreme Cold. The examples of abiotic stress affecting plants is way more detailed than abiotic stress affecting animals and endangered species. More information could be found and cited for those last two sections. "Lastly, abiotic stress has enabled species to grow, develop, and evolve, furthering natural selection as it picks out the weakest of a group of organisms. Both plants and animals have evolved mechanisms allowing them to survive extremes." This could be further elaborated on as it's not exactly how evolution works. This is an over-simplification and could lead to a misconception that natural selection purposefully "chooses" the weakest individuals to die.

Tone and Balance: This sentence: "Abiotic stress is the most harmful factor concerning the growth and productivity of crops worldwide." could be construed as an opinion. "the most harmful factor" can't be proven because there are a lot of negative factors that impact crop productivity.

Sources and References: There are 34 sources cited. However, some sections heavily rely on one or two sources rather than multiple. The "Examples" section needs another source to offer more examples of abiotic stress or to back up the examples that are given. Links appear to be functional.

Organization and Writing Quality: No obvious grammatical errors.

Images and Media: Only one image was used. More could be added to fill in the blank space at the top of the page.

Talk Page Discussion: Student editors have worked on this in the past. This article is a part of the following WikiProjects: Ecology, Biology, Molecular Biology, and Physiology.

Overall Impressions: This was set as a C-rated article. The article's strengths were shown in the detailed section of plants' responses to abiotic stress. However, more information is needed for the less-developed sections. Great article to start with!