User:PricklyFish/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
I am evaluating the article Altitudinal migration.

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 it is a topic that is fairly new to me and I wanted to see how well this article could deepen my understanding of the topic. This article is important as it explains the concept of a special type of migration pattern seen within various animals. My initial impression of this article was that it seemed fairly easy to follow along with but could greatly benefit from better organization of topics within the article.

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.)

The opening sentence within the leading section gives a clear and concise definition on what the article is about. The leading section itself however does not clearly define what the subsequent major sections will entail. This section tends to give more animal based examples which demonstrate altitudinal migration rather than defining what will be talked about within the article. The leading section could benefit from removing some of this information and move it to another section to make the article flow better while adding more information on what the subsequent sections will discuss.

The content of this article does contain some relevant information to the topic of altitudinal migration but there is also quite a bit of information that does not seem to be relevant to the topic. The section "Conservation implications" does not fit into the scope of describing what altitudinal migration is and why it occurs. This section mainly focuses on climate change, mildly mentions how this behavior occurs, and how it can be beneficial for seed dispersal.

The article is written in a fairly neutral tone, however there does seem to be some bias present. It is stated within the article that food abundance is the most accepted hypothesis as to why altitudinal migration occurs as seen in the subsection titled "Food abundance and nutrition". The "Food abundance and nutrition" subsection is also the most developed within this section compared to the other subsections which contain much less content and are less developed.

Not all of the statements made within this article are backed up by secondary sources. There are some statements made within the article that are not cited and have left me wondering where this information was drawn from. An example of this is the second paragraph within the leading section as nothing in this paragraph is cited with the exception of the last sentence. The sources used within this article do seem to be slightly dated as the most recently published article used was published in 2014. The sources used within this article come from peer-reviewed articles written by various authors, but 6 out of the 21 citations listed are from the same primary author.

The article is not clear or concise and is different to follow at times. The article does contain grammatical errors such as run on sentences. An example of this can be seen within the first sentence of the "Temperates" subsection. The subsection name "Temperates" is also grammatical error as the name of this climate region should be "Temperate" rather than "Temperates". The organization of this article is fairly well done. The section "Conservation implications" does not seem to fit well into this article as it does not focus on the main points of describing what altitudinal migration is and why it occurs.

The images used within this article are not that well-captioned. The first image does not depict what is occurring within the photo. Furthermore, the second image used seems to give the same description of the photo as the source rather than using an original description. The photos used do offer the chance to physically see some examples of animals which demonstrate altitudinal migration. This can enhance the learning experience of this topic by viewing living examples of animals that display this behavior. The images used do follow Wikipedia's copyright laws as the hyperlink within the photo caption state that the photos are open source or permission is given to use the photos. The images are placed within the top half of the article which is not visually appealing.

There are no discussions present within the talk page of this article. This article has been given a ranking of C for both of its associated WikiProjects. The WikiProjects that this article is associated with are WikiProject Birds and WikiProject Animals. This article is rated mid-importance for WikiProject Birds but low-importance for WikiProject Animals.

This article is a good starting point for an article, but would highly benefit from editing. The article does give a good initial definition of what altitudinal migration is and it does present the reader with various examples of animals which do participate in altitudinal migration. However, there are various improvements that could be made to this article. This article would deeply benefit from proofreading to remove present typos and other grammatical errors. The addition of reputable citations to back up every statement made would also be beneficial. This would prevent questioning of where the information used within the article was drawn from. The removal of unnecessary content within the article would aid in the improvement of this article, such as removing the information within the "Conservation implications" section. Another improvement that could be made would be to integrate more relevant photos into the article to make it more visually appealing to readers, as well as the addition of original photo descriptions rather than copying descriptions from the source. Overall, this article is underdeveloped but does have the potential to be developed into a great article.