User:ProudScottsTot/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)

Link: 2023 Al-Aqsa clashes

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 of our recent discussions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the context of the Palestine Writes Literature Festival. This article matters because it describes a recent violent conflict between Israeli and Palestinian people at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the most important religious sites for Muslims. Overall, my preliminary impression of the article was that it seemed relatively neutral and comprehensive regarding its statement of the facts without introducing biases.

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 opening sentence concisely and clearly describes the topic of the article
 * The lead section doesn't include a brief description of the article's major sections, though I personally don't think it's very necessary to explicitly do so for this type of article.
 * The lead does not include information that is not present in the article, though it does state something as a fact that is missing a citation.
 * The lead is concise without leaving any necessary information out.

Content:


 * The article's content is very relevant to the topic.
 * The content is up-to-date.
 * There is no significant content that is missing (at least from my first impressions) or doesn't belong.
 * This article does not deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps or address topics related to historically underrepresented populations or topics.

Tone and Balance:


 * The article is very neutral and matter-of-fact, especially given the fact that it's about such a controversial political topic.
 * While the article is not significantly biased one way or another, one thing I will note is that it cites and paraphrases Israeli sources in the "Reactions" section noticeably more often than Palestinian sources. However, I don't think this is significant enough to compel readers to think a certain way about the topic.

Sources and References:


 * Overall, the cited sources seem reliable given that a large majority of them are from major news outlets
 * It should be noted that while some outlets (e.g. Al Jazeera) are sometimes known to be biased, these sources are used in a balanced manner. Given that this is a fairly recent event, I would think it would be unlikely for writers editors of this article to find academic research publications about this topic, so I think the writer(s) of this article did the best job possible with the sources and references.
 * Upon clicking a few links, I can confirm that they work.

Organization and Writing Quality:


 * The article is well-written, well-organized, with no noticeable spelling or grammatical errors.

Images and Media:


 * There is only one image in the article, which I think is appropriate given the article's relatively smaller size.
 * The included image is well-captioned and is a part of the Wikimedia Commons, which means it adheres to Wikipedia's copyright regulations.

Talk Page Discussion:


 * I found one especially interesting conversation in the Talk Page about whether to call the conflict a "clash" or "attack." These words have very different connotations, with "clash" being a more neutral term that doesn't imply blame on any one side, but "attack" implies that one side was to blame for the conflict (e.g. "A attacked B" implies that A was at fault). As of now, the article's title includes the word "clash" instead of "attack," which I definitely think was the right decision to avoid bias.
 * Overall, I think that given the recency of this article, there aren't very many discussions on the Talk Page apart from this one that are worth analyzing further.
 * This article is rated C-class and is of interest to multiple WikiProjects.

Overall Impressions:


 * Overall, I think this article is well-written and as neutral as possible: this is a very controversial topic and I can tell that the writers and editors did their best to make the article as unbiased as was possible, which I appreciate.
 * One thing that could be improved is to add more historical context regarding the 2023 Al-Aqsa Clashes; for example, while looking for an article to review, I saw another article about the 2022 Al-Aqsa Clashes, which is direct historical precedent that this article doesn't even mention once, let alone anything about the underlying Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other related events. I think the addition of this information would help readers in understanding the content a lot better.