User:Ra5en/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: (link) Cao Yu
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate.
 * I choose this article to work because I have learned Cao Yu's play, Thunderstorm in high school as a required material and watched the Huju version of this play produced by a Shanghai theatrical troupe. I have some knowledge about Cao Yu, and I am interested in this great playwright's life.

Lead

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?

Lead evaluation
The lead includes an introductory sentence that briefly and clearly describes the article's topic: Cao Yu. In this section, Cao Yu's background, representative works, and titles are well listed. Though, there is not a brief description of the article's major sections. In this article, the content is closely build around Cao Yu's life trajectory chronologically, but it is not mentioned in the lead section. The lead also mentions his award, which is not present in the article as a separate section. Overall, the lead is concise, and I think it can be a little bit more detailed.

Content

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * Is the content up-to-date?
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?
 * Does the article deal with one of Wikipedia's equity gaps? Does it address topics related to historically underrepresented populations or topics?

Content evaluation
The article's content is relevant to the topic mostly. The content follows a chronologic order and introduces Cao Yu's life along with his publishes. I think those parts should all be put into one large section, named "biography" instead of separate small sections. The content is quite up-to-date, but not detailed enough. In the "bibliography" section, there are only the names but lack of introduction about the works, including genera, literary format, publish information and content summary. All the information about his works are set into different sections when introducing the works along his life trajectory, though I think the "bibliography" section should take the role of reorganizing all the information and displace them in a clear way. Also, Cao Yu is a pen name, there is no description of the origin of the pen name, by just present the his origin name and the pen name together without explanation may make the viewer confused. Besides these, I think the article's clear.

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article neutral?
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?

Tone and balance evaluation
The article's written tone is neutral. I didn't see any claims that are obviously biased toward any particular position. Basically this article just summarizes Cao Yu's whole life from born to death. There is very little content that mentions other people's review on Cao Yu and his works. It is necessary to include some of the reliable comments on Cao Yu by other people among the same time period to draw a multi-dimensional view on how Cao Yu was like under the historical background. This article itself was written in a quite neutral tone and doesn't attempt to persuade the views of one position or away from another.

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
 * Are the sources current?
 * Are the sources written by a diverse spectrum of authors? Do they include historically marginalized individuals where possible?
 * Check a few links. Do they work?

Sources and references evaluation
The facts in the article are backed up by reliable secondary sources. Most of the proper nouns are redirected to other Wikipedia articles, and the citation and paraphrasing sources are listed in the "reference" section, but NO footnotes. The sources are mostly academic publications about Cao Yu and history of Modern Chinese literature studies, they are closely relevant to the topic and are reliable. The sources used in this article are all published after 1999, and the newest one is a book published in 2007, I would say they are also current. It also includes the Spanish-language Wikipedia article of Cao Yu, restricted in 2006 as a source. I am not sure if this one is acceptable, since we don't know if the content in the Spanish page are all reliable. The sources are written by different authors and published by different presses, most of the links work well. The portrait link should be updated.

Organization

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?

Organization evaluation
The article's language usage is easy and clear to read. there is no spelling errors and the grammar are good from my view. One thing needs to be improved is the organization of the article. As I mentioned in the Content evaluation, The sections of this article should be reorganized. The first seven sections of this article are all different time period of Cao Yu' life, I think they are all belongs to one biography category. Besides, the name of those sections should be renamed. some of the sections are named by his work, like "thunderstorm," but some others are named by events like "during the Japanese occupation."

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
 * Are images well-captioned?
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way?

Images and media evaluation
The article includes one Cao Yu's photo in the info box. There is also a photo of Cao Yu's secondary school while introducing his student life. Both of them are well-captioned and adhere to copyright regulation. They are laid out in a appealing way.

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

Talk page evaluation
In the talk page, there are conversations about transcriptions of Chinese characters and the formation of this article and some new link addition. The original version of this English Wikipedia article was translated from the Spanish page in 2006, therefore, there were couple of problems appeared at the very beginning. Several editors worked together to make some improvement on this article, including adding new resources, and changing some of the original words to made it more readable. This article is of interest to three WikiProjects, and is rated B-class in WikiProject Biography, WikiProject China and WikiProject Theatre. Wikipedia views the article as a whole seeing if it meets the quality scale, that provides a comprehensive view and a complete content. Also this article are rated as mid-importance in WikiProject China and low-importance in WikiProject Theatre, which means the relevant content for those two fields should be refining, right now this article seems to be less important for the viewer who has interest on those two fields, since this article doesn't contain enough and attractive contents.

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions


 * What is the article's overall status?
 * What are the article's strengths?
 * How can the article be improved?
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?

Overall evaluation
The overall status of this article is good, but needs a lot of improvement. The article provides very detailed depiction of Cao Yu's life, and build strong relations between his life with his works, leads the viewers better understanding how the works were produced, under what kind of historical background. However, the organization of the article makes it a little bit hard to read. For people who want to talk a look at a specific part, for example, Cao Yu's representative works and the brief introduction, it will be very hard to find. All the informations are mixed together, it requires the viewer to find out where is the content they want to read. I would say this article is underdeveloped. A lot of work need be done to produce a well-developed version.

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

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