User:Ravanvoo/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Climate change and ecosystems

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to evaluate this article because it is highly important, but could benefit from updated material and the inclusion of more information. A focus on organization and information consolidation to avoid straying from the topic would also be helpful. Improvement of this article could provide more holistic, relevant information to those trying to study the impacts of global climate change on ecosystem health and function. My preliminary impression of this article was that it had good bearings, but was not thorough/effective in its content or delivery of information.

Evaluate the article
Overall, the Climate Change and Ecosystems article seems to need quite a bit of work. Covering such a broad topic with a variety of themes requires the writer to be very clear and intentional throughout the piece. In general, the organization of the article is good, but it is not uniform in content or scope which makes the article difficult to follow. The author(s) utilize relevant, reliable sources, although updated material would be a beneficial improvement. If the article included these changes and had a more holistic impression of ecosystems and climate change, I believe it would be extremely helpful.

The lead section of this article is weak in my opinion. It is only two sentences, which could be acceptable if they were more representative of the article as a whole. I like that there are multiple links in the lead section, but some of them are completely irrelevant to the rest of the content. For example, there is reference to "tundra", and "caves", but this is the only time in the entire article that these topics are mentioned. A better lead section would be more effective in framing the rest of the article. Outlining the ideas of climate change and ecosystems and how they are connected would be helpful in understanding what the article has to offer. Becoming more specific as to what the article will be focusing on, the order of contents, and how they will relate ideas to one another would be a more reasonable angle for this section.

My impression of the article was that it was heavily focused on global warming and not climate change as a whole. I think this could be a great topic, but since the article's title is specifically "Climate change and ecosystems", it should better outline other ways in which the climate is changing outside of global temperature increases. Also, in the first sentence of general content it states that global warming will affect "terrestrial ecoregions", but the article covers terrestrial and aquatic systems. This opening statement is misleading. Indicators of climate change rather than just global warming could be a good way to better outline this article and include content in a linear way that makes it easier for the reader to follow along. I also feel like it would be helpful for the author(s) to differentiate between biomes and ecosystems. Although these two are very similar, it may help the author include more abiotic factors involved in the functioning of ecosystems.

I believe the tone and balance of the article was neutral and unbiased. Although the topic is pressing, the author(s) have done a great job of highlighting issues in a way that is bold yet objective. I did not feel persuaded to follow one path of thought. Ideas in the article are supported by relevant and reliable sources that are cited and easy to find. All of the references are clear and genuinely contribute to the article. Links work and are also helpful to the understanding of general ideas and topics. My only recommendation for this area would be to incorporate more current sources that are representative of modern changes/findings/trends/etc.

The organization of the article is good for what they have included thus far. I believe it could be restructured to improve the flow of ideas and how they relate to one another, but each section is identifiable. Other than the sporadic layout of ideas, I did not feel lost in navigating the article. Inclusion of media and images was helpful as well. The images were visually appealing, although the captions could be expanded on in the content.

Transitioning to the Talk page, many of my suggestions had already been referenced by other contributors. A better consolidation of topics and scales was listed multiple times and it seemed that others desired more completeness. There were 4 Wikiprojects listed: Ecology, Environment, Climate Change, and Future Studies, all of which were rated Class-C mid- to high- importance. These topics could benefit from including climate change indicators in the article and making each section generally more robust and reliable.