User:Prismarose/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?

 * Social Informatics: Social informatics

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 describes the field of discipline our class, Social Informatics, is based upon and discusses its theoretical origins, applications, and future.

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:

The introductory sentence does provide a relatively clear description of the field of social informatics; however, I think I would replace the phrase “information and communication tools” with a more specific and easily understandable description of information technology, such as “information and communication technology (ICT).” The article is relatively brief, containing only three sections after the lead: Research, which outlines the academic origins of social informatics and how it relates to preexisting sociological and technological inquiries and studies; Future, which explores how social informatics is evolving as a relatively recent field from the perspectives of multiple social informatics researchers; and In education, which covers how the field is applied within the context of computer science education and issues with students’ awareness of the social implications of developing communication technologies. The lead mainly focuses on summarizing the Research portion of the article and does not mention any details related to the Future nor the In education sections, which could be considered more minor segments of the article versus the Research section and the main definitions of social informatics noted in the lead. It mainly describes the field and how it explores social issues and applications within technology, but does include some information about how it is connected to the concept of a “biological community” in relation to how people interact with technology that is not returned to in later portions of the article. Besides the sentence that describes how social informatics is compared to the concept of a biological community, the lead appears to be a relatively concise description for the social informatics article. However, the paragraph does appear to contain some redundancies, particularly with the quote cited from the Center for Social Informatics at its conclusion; this could potentially be condensed further to make the lead more brief and easier to follow for readers unfamiliar with the discipline.

Content:

The content of the Social Informatics article appears mainly relevant to the field and discusses its origins, applications, and future as a theory. The “In education” section may be somewhat off-topic, however, as it more heavily relates to the broader concept of addressing social issues in computing within computer science education as opposed to the immediately relevant discussion of the field of social informatics itself. The information appears mainly recent with multiple sources from the 2010s, but it could be updated with more recent literature on the social informatics field as of 2024. This is especially critical for the “Future” and “In education” sections; the former notes the newness of social informatics and the latter discusses current issues with teaching social informatics concepts to computing students, which may have changed over the course of the past few years. Overall, the content covered appears sufficient for describing social informatics, but the “In education” section may be slightly off-topic and could benefit from being more directly linked with the rest of the article. While the article does not directly discuss topics related to equity gaps or historically underrepresented populations, it could potentially benefit from including information about the field’s contributions to combatting or researching technological disparities, given its status as a field rooted within both technological and sociological bases.

Tone and balance:

Overall, the article retains a neutral and non-persuasive viewpoint in discussing social informatics and its applications. A presentation of multiple viewpoints can be seen in every section, and no claims appear to be particularly biased to one position or another. The idea that social informatics is a complement to other fields of similar research seems to be discussed often, but does not appear often enough to the point of imbalance. There are no major fringe viewpoints noted, as the only main “perspectives” arise from viewpoints of social informatics concepts being applied in computing education and debates on the field’s status as an individual discipline rather than being combined with other fields like community informatics.

Sources and references:

Nearly all facts appear to be cited properly with a reliable secondary source of information. No “missing citation” marks are present in the article. One sentence that discusses the biological community angle to describing social informatics, however, is slightly unclear in whether it is a citation from the successive sentence, which highlights a more general definition of social informatics. The sources are thorough in exploring social informatics and cover a variety of topics within the discipline, such as educational uses and the future of the field, as well as arguments surrounding the definition of social informatics. However, they are somewhat dated, with some originating from the 1990s and the most recent sources being published in 2016. One of the links to a book, The Sociotechnical Perspective: Information Systems and Information Technology, notably did not work. Nearly all of the sources cited are from authors with education and authority within social informatics, of which historically marginalized groups are most likely a minority. However, there is a brief discussion of a conference presentation, Supporting articulation work: Aspects of a feminist practice of office technology production by Lucy Suchman, that discusses feminism in relation to social informatics applications. Despite their datedness, the credibility of the sources appears strong, with most citations originating from peer-reviewed articles and scholarly books.

Organization and writing quality:

The article appears to be well-written, but could potentially be more concise in its presentation of social informatics concepts. No grammatical or spelling errors appear to be present, but the article could be more effectively organized; for instance, the “Research” section could be divided into a discussion of the field’s origins and its connections to other fields, while the “Future” and “In education” sections could be combined into a single, briefer section that more completely discusses the present state, applications, and potential future of social informatics.

Images and media:

There are no images in this article, but the theoretical nature of the topic is likely a contributing factor.

Talk page discussion:

The only talk page discussion occurred from 2009 to 2010 and concerned a debate on whether the article should have been merged with the Community Informatics article. A social informatics and community informatics teacher, user Katewill wrote that she had her students participate in editing the social informatics article, but received critique from another user, Mootros; they noted that the article appeared too lengthy and overly-detailed in its presentation. The two users worked together to organize the social informatics article and transfer relevant information into the community informatics article. The article is rated “Start-class,” and is of low-importance to the Libraries and Sociology Wikiprojects. Community informatics and its potential overlaps with social informatics as research disciplines were novel points of view to me, and differed from how social informatics has been discussed in class as a distinguished and unique field more than a decade after the article’s talk page discussion.

Overall impressions:

Overall, the article appears well-written and well-sourced with scholarly citations, but is brief and could be more clearly organized into sections that better encapsulate the past, present, and future of social informatics. It contains many trustworthy sources from peer-reviewed journals and scholarly books, and has no glaring spelling or grammatical errors. The lead section is also mostly effective in achieving a summary of the topic, and the article is not heavily persuasive in nature, presenting a variety of viewpoints on the discipline in different contexts. However, the article could aid from a different organization, such as by combining the “Future” and “In education” sections, as well as from including more recent sources given the newness of the discipline. Issues such as the broken link mentioned above and the condensing of the quote in the lead section would also benefit the article’s presentation, as would briefer and more concise sentences explaining the topic. “Social Informatics” is somewhat developed from a source and grammatical standpoint, but could be more clearly presented and organized, and appears worthy of its current “Start-class” designation.