User:Rca001/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?

(Provide a link to the article here.)

Tyrannosaurus

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 because due to it being part of a subject and topic I enjoy learning about, non-avian dinosaurs. I also chose the article because it appears to be quite reliable, as it is a featured article and belongs to the Wikiprojects Dinosaurs page. This article is important as it's likely the most popular article relating to dinosaurs, and therefore likely experiences a lot of traffic and needs to be very accurate. My preliminary impression of the article is that it's quite extensive since a lot is known about Tyrannosaurus. There are many images and figures to enhance the article and it contains many references to all of the information given.

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 sentence of this article succinctly defines exactly what Tyrannosaurus is, a term to describe a genus of theropod dinosaurs. The following few sentences and paragraphs in the lead give broad information about Tyrannosaurus that is discussed further in the article, such as biology, description, and the history of its research and paleontology. The table of contents is very descriptive and has both categories and subcategories. Despite containing a lot of information, the lead is quite concise when compared to the rest of the article. There is one claim in the lead that the article states isn't referenced as of January 2021, which states that Tyrannosaurus was one of the last surviving dinosaur species before the mass extinction event over the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.

The content in the article is very evenly distributed and covers all topics pertinent to Tyrannosaurus. There is no extraneous information that I could find that isn't relevant to the topic. The topic is extremely up to date, as edits are made very frequently, one as recent as January 31, 2020. The article does well to mention which information about Tyrannosaurus have been controversial between scientists, paleontologists, and taxonomists. Any information a user would want to know about Tyrannosaurus is available in this article and easy to find.

This article is from a purely neutral point of view. It doesn't attempt to sway the reader into thinking that Tyrannosaurus is better or worse than any other animal, nor is it trying to portray Tyrannosaurus in a certain light. The claim that Tyrannosaurus is one of the most popular and archetypal dinosaurs isn't biased in any way, as the article mentions the numerous cultural appearances Tyrannosaurus has in many different types of media. Fringe or controversial information are included and described as such in the article, and no viewpoint is given priority over another.

Following the lead portion of the article, whenever a specific claim is made or specific information is given, it is cited to the proper source. In the article there are a total of 194 sources that that are referenced at some point in the article. The sources appear to cover much of what is readily known and available about Tyrannosaurus. There are several sources that date back several decades, but that is likely because the information in these early studies is still considered accurate. There are also many very recent sources from the years of 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, which suggest that newly sourced information is constantly being added. Most of the sources are peer reviewed papers in scientific journals and magazines, but there is a small amount of press material. The links that I followed worked and took me to the appropriate page, although there is one instant of a red link that doesn't have a corresponding page.

In terms of structure, the article is quite concise and presents all of its information in a clear way. There aren't any unnecessary adjectives or adverbs that take away from the information presented. When scientific or unfamiliar words are used, they are explained and defined for the reader. In my skimming of the article, there don't appear to be any egregious spelling or grammatical mistakes. The information is presented in a logical way, starting out with how Tyrannosaurus was discovered, presenting all of the information known about it, and finishing with its cultural significance as a sort of conclusion.

The article has dozens of images, charts, and figures that further enhance the reader's understanding of Tyrannosaurus. All of the media are captioned and cited when necessary, and some contain links that take the reader to other Wikipedia articles. All of the media used are placed near the article text that the pertain to, and none of them dramatically draw away from the text itself.

The talk page on the Tyrannosaurus article is quite active, as the last post was on January 31st, 2020. One post suggests adding more info about when/how Tyrannosaurus became extinct, while another suggests adding the age of the earliest fossils found, since age information about some of the later fossils is included. The users on the talk page appear to be very passionate about the article and are dedicated to making it a reliable, inclusive, and extensive source of information about Tyrannosaurus. This article is featured and is rated both top and high importance on WikiProject Dinosaurs and WikiProject Paleontology respectively.

The Wikipedia page on Tyrannosaurus appears to be one of the best articles the site has to offer. Since it is about an extremely popular subject, it is constantly monitored, improved, and updated by many Wikipedia users. The article's strength is it's lead paragraphs, which do a great job of giving broad baseline information about Tyrannosaurus that the reader can see immediately, and all of the information given in the lead is broken down into great detail later on in the article. The article can use a number of small improvements, including verifying the claim in the lead that T-Rex was one of the last surviving dinosaurs in the body, and removing the non-existing leak. The moderators that maintain the quality of this article are doing a great job keeping it reliable and constantly adding new sources and information, and ensuring that readers who view the article are receiving correct, reliable, and up to date information.