User:QueenofDorklings/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Wishing well

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to evaluate the article on wishing wells as they have a good amount of significance in certain cultures beliefs and also have the staying power to still be present in modern day society. My first impression of this article is it has potential to be a good article, however as it stands currently there are many flaws that need revising or adjustment before it can become a good article. These would be my suggestions to help it reach its full potential.

Evaluate the article

 * The article is not balanced very well, with the lead section not giving a broad enough overview and subsequent sections being disproportionally large to others. As a passing by reader, I would learn very little of wishing wells if I were to simply read the lead section due to a lack of substance. The Germanic and Celtic tradition section has much more information than the Norse mythology section and especially more than the extent section. I feel that those two sections need greater expanding to help them balance out the article. I am unsure of the relevance of the Oligodynamic effect section, mainly because none of the claims in this section have any supporting evidence and as pointed out in the talk section, may be entirely unfounded. The last thing that needs work in the content of the article would be how it is sectioned. The section on extent is extremely small in comparison to the history section, and they should be a bit more balanced. I think it would also be beneficial if there was more content added about the wishing wells and beliefs that surround them in different cultures, as well as in modern society.
 * Without supporting links for claims that are being made, this article comes off as being written from personal beliefs or unchecked facts. In addition, certain sections of this article receive much more time than others, without good justification for their overrepresentation.
 * The sources for this article are in need of dire change. Much of this article has no references to back up almost all of the claims that are being made throughout it. The sources that are included are very lacking according to Wikipedia standards. Three of the articles lead to dead links with one of them being recovered by the way back in time machine. In addition, the one source that is correct, the article from Reuters, appears to fall into the close paraphrasing infringement by Wikipedia standards we have learned in this course. It appears that the source that was recovered by the way back in time machine, the article on Viking use of archery, would also fall into the close paraphrasing infringement as well. My suggestion would be that the places where these two are cited need to be rewritten, or these sources and their text need to be removed. In addition, there need to be more sources added to back up all claims that are being made in this article.
 * There are a few images and other content included with this article that serve to better illustrate the topic of the article, but they have a few issues. The placement of images is unintuitive and looks rather harsh on the eyes to have all of the images placed onto one side of the article. I think it would make the article look more pleasing and easier to read if the images were spaced out better and one or two were placed to the left close to passages that they could be associated with.
 * There are a few places where there seems to be grammatical issues in this article, namely one that has already been pointed out that is referencing a subject with no subject being defined. I will say that the photo and extra content captions are worded poorly at times, which makes them difficult to read.
 * There hasn’t been any discussion about this article on the talk page since 2012, with the exception of a single post from a bot that was never responded to. There have been changes being made though, which in my mind can be slightly problematic. In the course we have been taught that we should be communicating on the talk page to ensure that others understand the edits we are making and there can be collaboration. I would suggest that those who are working on this article collaborate further with one another to ensure higher integrity of this article.
 * Overall, this could be a good article in the future if it receives the proper care and attention to rectify all of the issues that it is currently suffering from.