User:Puffles cafe/Evaluate an Article

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

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 due to my familiarity with this city. Contributing to significant trading history of India, Kozhikode holds incredible historical and cultural value. It was important to crosscheck the information presented with my prior knowledge and other sources. Although the article seemed to cover a lot of different aspects of the city, from its detailed history to its current affairs, there seemed to be a running undertone of conflict between the usage of the city’s two names - Kozhikode and Calicut. The back-and-forth switches between these two names make it harder for a reader unfamiliar with the city to follow the text.

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 Lead section purely acts as an introduction to the city, which is achieved in a couple facts that have been shortlisted from the article and compiled in this introductory paragraph. There is no clarity in exactly what will be covered, but rather a suggestion of locational, and historical significance (These two ideas are expanded later in greater detail). Overall, this lead section could be structured better to improve clarity.

The article covers a good range of content from the historical contributions of the city and the cities current state - with respect to its leading parties, economy, demographic and more. However, it fails to further expand on the city’s recent achievements, that were briefly mentioned in the leading section. Considering these achievements, would bring about a better balance between the country's historical significance and current relevance.

For the tone and balance, the article maintains a factual tone for the most part, keeping it neutral overall. However, there is possibly a heavy tilt towards the representation of the historical aspect of the city's history (as aforementioned), that implies a bias towards the records of past. Since the purpose of the article is to inform the reader of the city, there isn't an explicit intent to develop a positive opinion of the city, however this is achieved in the facts shared, that generally paint a good picture. Preferably to further improve the neutrality of the article, it would be better to mention conflicts and darker moments of the city’s development. This would develop a fairer representation as to both sides of the city.

When it comes to sources, some sources are from online news articles, and others from academic and scholarly publications or books available online. The links do work in most cases, although some need to be updated (as the pages appear to no longer exist). A few of the sources are more recent than others. It would be good to consider some more scholarly articles or books as references, especially with it comes to the detailed expansion on the history of the city.

The article is clearly divided into sections that discuss different aspects of the city, however some of these remain underdeveloped compared to other sections. Furthermore, while the text is easy- to read, the overall clarity could be improved by paying greater attention to the structure of some of the paragraphs. When it comes to images and media, some appear to be less clear in what they intend to convey, or their significance to that section in the article. A few clearly present statistics, and data to the reader to help better their understanding as well.

The talk page does cover different perspectives/ conflicting opinions when it comes to the names used to refer to city- Kozhikode and Calicut. It also shows consideration towards matters such as pronunciation of significant words and terms. The most recent discussions involve files that should be deleted and reconsidered. It is a level 5 vital article in the C-class, with 3 main Wiki Projects showing interest to this article.