User:Quercusfanatic/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Wood fuel - Wikipedia

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I have chosen this article because I am very passionate about botany, and cut, cured, and sold firewood during my teenage years, so it is something I am familiar with and interested in. I also thought it was a good choice due to being a natural resource. It matters because wood fuel is not only an important from a historic and anthropological standpoint but is also of much importance economically in the past, preset, and future. My preliminary impression of it, was not good. It was missing a great deal of items we were taught in our Wikipedia training, which I will get into.

Evaluate the article
Clarity:

Clarity can be thought of as the article coming off as clear and concise. The grammar, syntax, etc, was not horrible, but the organization of the article was very poor, leading it to have poor clarity. The lead section should provide a concise, brief, and easy to understand introduction to the subject, where the reader can attain a basic understanding of the topic. Clarity should also be maintained by placing images, headings, and subheadings in the correct areas/order. The images in the article seem to clearly relate to the text in the same sections, but the headings, subheadings, and paragraphs absolutely need work. The introduction is not clear, it is much too long and meandering, not giving the reader the proper introduction, as discussed. Further, the introduction spends more time on the history of wood fuel, than on the definition of it. It is fine to briefly mention the history in the intro if it is important in understanding the overall concept, but the introduction does not clearly define what wood fuel is.

Structure:

The structure is poor. There are some good, relevant headings, but it is not well organized. For example, the headings: "Historical Development", "Fireplaces and Stoves", "1970s", "1980s", and "Today" would be better used if it was changed to having "Historical Development" as the heading, and the other three as the subheadings under it, since they are all facets of Historical Development. The article attempts to organize information chronologically some areas, and by theme, in others. It results in a jumbled structure that can be improved by.

Balanced Coverage:

This article needs to be more balanced. For example, in the section "Usage" only covers the topics of: Europe, Asia, North America, and Australia in terms of using renewable energy technologies. For Asia, they only cover Japan and South Korea, and they are the shortest entries (one sentence!).They leave out Australasia, South America, Africa, etc. This is unfortunate because these are just a relevant to the topic as the four mentioned. This seems to be a continuing theme in the article: favoring The West.

It is important to include many of these often-tropical nations because they house a great deal of Earth's most valuable and fragile ecosystems where logging is carried out, and where things like pellets and other technologies are needed. The lack of their productions should be just as interesting and relevant as North America or Europe. This page also only goes into the Western use of wood fuel and does not discuss any indigenous use from around the world from a historical perspective but goes into fine detail about European use. Very little is devoted to the actual wood fuel itself. The article does not mention the most common unit of heat measurement with wood fuel, which is the British Thermal Unit (BTU), but instead seems to "ramble" about obscure information regarding land clearing in ancient times in Northern Europe. The article also seems to favor wood pellets over firewood logs, which I go into in the "neutrality" section. More information about the uses and green benefits of firewood in log form would make the page more balanced.

Neutrality:

Continuing on from the concept of balancing, this page strongly favors a western viewpoint. Almost nothing is mentioned outside of western nations, and when there is mention, it includes Asia, but only mentions Japan and South Korea under that subheading. It is also the smallest subheading, but Asia has the most people, and longest written history. Under the heading of: "Fireplaces and Stoves" Only western examples are given. It is organized as a chronology, but only for western examples. I also noticed a small issue with neutrality in regards to the article not favoring wood fuel. A large portion is devoted to the health issues posed by burning wood, another competitivity large portion is devoted to alternative's to burning wood in its natural state, but rather in pellet form. There is not evidence that pellets are greener than firewood, although implied in the article. This is implied by value statements by the author(s) by stating all the health and environmental issues with wood, with sources, and then refers to wood burning advocates without giving their perspective in anywhere near the same detail as the anti-wood burners. These are called "weasel words" and need to be replaced by referenced facts. They go on to claim that pellets are a superior option from wood, but they do not mention wood has most of the same green benefits ad pellets.

Talk page:

The talk page was very interesting. I just read it, and one person noted exactly what I did in my previous comments. They said that there is no references to places like South America, or Africa, where in many rural places, wood fuel is the sole source of heat and fuel for cooking. They also pointed out the strange units used for demonstrating the heat energy within wood fuel. The Talkpage has some decent recommendations, such as those just mentioned, but this, and other comments seem slightly hostile, which implies that the article is in fact not neutral, and is bias. The talk page also mentions

References:

The references in this page need a lot of work. The introduction lacks any references at all. In the intro, it is discussed how Neanderthals first used fire. This obviously must have been studied in an academic setting, and then published in a journal. This is not common knowledge. I looked this fact up and have provided a reference:

Rosell, Jordi, and Ruth Blasco. "The early use of fire among Neanderthals from a zooarchaeological perspective." Quaternary Science Reviews 217 (2019): 268-283.

The first reference does not start until the 3rd paragraph. Further, the references are only placed at the end of each paragraph, where there should be citations after every fact that can be cited. The paper needs many more citations. The citations in "References" section are done properly, though. There are 26 total, but should have more. When an article lacks sources, or they are done improperly, or lack footnotes, it is often a sign of incomplete information.

Improvement:

This article could be improved by making the material more balanced. They need to list the benefits of Wood fuel, not just the drawbacks. They also need to have a more complete collection of information from around the world. This article could almost be called "Wood fuel in the West". More and complete references are needed, and the structure needs a lot of work, mainly the organization of the headings and subheadings. These are some of the criticisms, but there are some good points as well. The topic is a good one, and the author(s) used many relevant images in the article. There is a lot to work with, but also a lot of improvement to be done.