User:Rg0710/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Oil spill

Why have you chosen this article to evaluate?
My class is about oil and this article is about oil spills which is a very crucial sub-part of the overview of oil. Oil Spills are extremely dangerous for this planet and there is a need to explore the ways we can reduce the impacts it has on our environment and its organisms. To do that, we need to learn as much about oil spills as we can and this articles helps the audience to do exactly that. Since the stakes of this article are so high, it is important to keep evaluating it which is why I chose it.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section:

The lead section of this article looks very well. There is an introductory sentence that explains what an oil spill - "An oil spill is the release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment, especially the marine ecosystem, due to human activity, and is a form of pollution". It also covers a brief description of each major section that would be talked about in the article. The lead is very concise without any unnecessary clutter. However, it does contain information about "Political struggle concerning government response to oil spills and what actions can best prevent them from happening", but that is not talked about in the article in detail so I believe that should be taken out or more information regarding that should be added to the article.

Content:

The content of this article seems very relevant and it is equally distributed without focusing on a particular section as compared to others. It could however be more up to date, for instance, it has a table of largest oil spills but it does not have any record of oil spills after 2010. Oil spills like the 2020 Colonial Pipeline Gasoline spill or Sanchi Oil tanker Collison with CF Crystal (2018) is not included in the list. Other than being up to date, I think this article covers all the major relevant topics related to oil spills.

Tone and Balance:

This article is appropriately neutral and it does not appear heavily biased towards any positions. It provides the audience with information that is heavily supported by evidence and it just lets the audience decide weather or not they lean towards any particular situation. No viewpoints are underrepresented or overrepresented.

Sources and References:

This articles does a great job backing up all the facts by reliable secondary sources. They are very thorough because they represent a lot of the available literature related to the topic. For instance, it provides suggestions like "Nelson-Smith, Oil Pollution and Marine Ecology, Elek Scientific, London, 1972; Plenum, New York, 1973" and "Oil Spill Case Histories 1967–1991, NOAA/Hazardous Materials and Response Division, Seattle, WA, 1992" under further reading. There is a variety of sources that is a little older than preferred but the article has also provided various up-to-date sources. For instance, one of the sourced is from 2021 - " Dell'Amore, Christine; Nunez, Christina (March 25, 2014). '3 Surprising Sources of Oil Pollution in the Ocean'. National Geographic. Retrieved 2021-05-27". The sources are written by a diverse spectrum of authors and that adds on to this article being reliable. Most of the links seem to be working fine.

Organization and Writing Quality:

The article is very well-written in a professional manner since it is concise and clear. It is well organized in sections that helps the readers navigate easily. It does not seem to have any grammatical errors.

Images and Media:

The article includes various images that are relevant to the content and its sub-sections. All the images are captioned and credited. The images are also organized in an aesthetically pleasing way and in the same order as the content of the article which enhances the readers' experience.

Talk Page Discussion:

There are various discussions in the talk page that took place regarding this article. Some of these discussions were about citations being needed in different sections or rectifying a mistake that was done related the data provided. There were also some conversations that were not directly related to the content of this article like a person talking about wanting to see the cultural difference of terminology addressed in this article. This article is part of four WikiProjects - WikiProject Environment (Rated B-class, low-importance), WikiProject Fisheries and Fishing (Rated B-class, mid-importance), WikiProject Disaster Management (Rated B-class, low-importance) and WikiProject Energy.

Overall Impressions:

The article once again, is very well-written and it is a credible source to be used for research. It has all the major components an article would need. Something that could help improve it would be adding more up to date information. I would say that this article is well-developed.