User:Rebscar/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: Prelingual deafness
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate.
 * I decided to evaluate this article because I find it to be an interesting topic. As a student studying both Behavior & Health and Deaf Studies, I am used to learning about Deafness from both the medical and cultural standpoint. However, I noticed that this article focuses on Deafness from a medical perspective, and hardly mentions Deaf culture. Throughout the article Deaf is spelled with a lowercase "d." I have also noticed that there are no images or visuals in this article, and there is some room for improvement.

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 a straightforward introductory sentence that concisely defines the topic of the article. It defines prelingual deafness, the age that it is acquired, and the definition of congenital hearing loss However, the Lead is relatively short and does not mention or describe any of the major sections of the article. Since the lead is so short, it doesn't include any information that is not present in the article. It mentions some terms that are present in the first major section of the article, but doesn't mention any of the other topics discussed in this article. It is very concise, and I think it may be too brief.

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?

Content evaluation
The content of this article is relevant and up-to-date. It includes many topics relevant to prelingual Deafness: statistics, causes, treatment, social and cognitive impact, language acquisition, neuropsychological function, sociocultural factors, and early intervention. However, as I previously mentioned, this article hardly mentions Deaf culture. Because this article tends to focus on the negative social impact of prelingual Deafness, I believe that it could benefit from a section that discusses Deaf culture and the social benefits of being a part of the Deaf community.

Although all of the content in this article can be related back to prelingual Deafness, I believe that the subject of sociocultural factors may not be necessary. This section discusses the impact of socioeconomic status on the education of Deaf individuals. However, these socioeconomic factors are universal, regardless of hearing status. Therefore, it may not be completely relevant to this specific topic.

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
This article seems to have a neutral tone. It presents facts in a neutral way, and doesn't seem to have any heavily biased claims towards any particular position. However, this article does tend to take more of a medical standpoint when discussing Deafness. In the "Social and cognitive impact" section, the article states that individuals who lose their hearing before acquiring language have a much lower linguistic achievement level, and are socially isolated. Although the article briefly mentions Deaf culture, it fails to expand upon the fact that there is an entire Deaf community that is socially inclusive of Deaf and hard of hearing individuals. The article doesn't necessarily attempt to persuade the readers in favor of a specific position, but it does fail to include details about the Deaf community.

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?
 * Check a few links. Do they work?

Sources and references evaluation
Most of the claims made in this article are cited. There are 14 citations in this article, and all of them seem to come from credible sources, such as medical journals or books. Not all of the citations were linked, but the links that were included did work.

Although there were many sources that seemed to be relevant, there were some that I think could be improved. One fo the sources was not cited correctly. This citation included an author, title, and year, but had no other information regarding the type of source that it is or where to find it. The dates of the sources ranged from 1991-2012. Although the latest source was from 8 years ago, the information presented seems to be current.

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
This article seems to be well organized. It is concise, clear, and easy to read. I did not see any grammatical or spelling errors while reading this article. The article is broken down into relevant sections that reflect major points of topic. However, I believe that some of these sections could be organized differently. One section of the article is titled "Language acquisition," and it has many subsections including speech acquisition, sign language acquisition, neuropsychological function, sociocultural factors, and early intervention. While most of these seem relevant, I believe that sociocultural factors and early intervention could be relocated to a different section, or could be made into their own sections.

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
There are no images present in this article. Since not all readers are familiar with the topic, I believe that the article could benefit from images so that readers can visualize what is being discussed, such as cochlear implants and sign language.

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
This article is part of WikiProject Deaf. It is rated as Stub-Class on the quality scale, and has not received a rating on the importance scale. There have been six student edits, but there are not many discussions on the talk page, and the most recent comment is from 2007. These comments discuss the language used in the article and some of the claims made. There is a short discussion debating whether the appropriate wording is "prelingually deaf" or "prelingually deafened." Another user commented about the claim made that individuals born Deaf have much lower linguistic achievement, and cannot attain perfect speech. It has also been proposed that this page should be merged with congenital hearing loss. However, although prelingual deafness does include congenital hearing loss, not all prelingual hearing loss is congenital.

As I have mentioned previously, the way Wikipedia discusses the topic differs from the way we've talked about it in class, because the article and comments discuss Deafness from a medical standpoint, rather than a cultural perspective. The article and talk page could benefit from some discussion about Deaf culture.

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
I think this article is straightforward and does a good job at presenting facts in a (mostly) unbiased way. However, as I've stated before, I think that it could benefit from a section on Deaf culture, and the organization could use a bit of work. Overall, I think the article is well-developed, aside from these few improvements that could be made.

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

with four tildes — ~


 * Link to feedback: