User:Rdery/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Microplastics

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose it this article because it was about something that was discussed earlier in the class I am editing Wikipedia for. Microplastics interest me because they are a relatively new phenomenon, yet have become nearly ubiquitous. Moreover, microplastics will only continue to be an issue for water quality as plastics take thousands of years to break down.

Evaluate the article
The article's lead section is well organized, easy to understand, and provides a good summary of what the rest of the article talks about. It provides a useful enough description of what microplastics are to a reader who only reads the lead.

The content of the article is up to date and organized so that it covers all aspects of the topic. There is space given to the classification, sources, distribution, effects, solutions, and legislation of microplastics. It was not biased nor did it give over/under representation to any one view or part of the topic. It does not try to sway the reader to any viewpoint. The content is kept factual.

The article is very well sources with nearly 200 sources used. The sources are from reputable secondary sources with some being from primary research. The sources seem to cover a broad section of the field. Most sources are recent but some are from before the year 2000. The links that I checked worked. Some sources were behind a pay-wall.

The article is broken down into easy to follow sections. The writing is clear and concise. The desired type of prose for Wikipedia is used. There were no spelling or grammar mistakes that I saw.

The images used were all sourced and had captions. They added to the overall quality of the article and were not intrusive.

The talk page showed evidence of productive discussion around the topic. There is talk over what to include and how to structure the article. There is also discussion about helping people access sources which were behind a pay-wall. The article is rated C-class and is part of the environment, water, and technology wikiprojects.

Overall, I thought this was a very strong article. It was well organized, easy to read, and well sourced.

Rdery (talk) 03:24, 12 September 2021 (UTC)