User:Rkitam/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
I am evaluating Louis Sullivan's Wikipedia article:

Louis Sullivan

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to evaluate his article as he is relevant to our course material. Through evaluating his page, it would give me a more in depth understanding of his career and life. My first impression looking through the article is that it cover his career concisely, with the article following a somewhat chronological order starting from his early life to his famous high-rise architecture and then ending with his legacy. However some parts of the writing had minor tone issues and lacked in footnotes that made me question where these information come from.

Evaluate the article
Lead section:

The lead section covers the achievements he had in his career concisely and gives an overall description of who he is what he is notable for. It only includes information that later gets elaborated further and it has enough links and footnotes to make the information reliable enough. However, the first sentence does not feel as neutral, as it includes that he was known for being called as "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism" which I believe is too subjective to be put in the first sentence. I think the first sentence should instead talk about where in U.S. he was prominently active in: Chicago, and put these names later in the paragraph along side with his prestige and achievement in influencing American architecture.

Content:

The article content is very relevant to the topic of American architecture and Sullivan's contribution. It covers his early life, his notable career as a modernist architect and his legacy, making the article successful at covering his overall life and his current legacy he holds. It even has a section about his appearance in a fictional novel, which while does sound less relevant since its about a fictional Sullivan-like character, the information becomes somewhat notable as it compares and contrast with the real-life history of Louis Sullivan. Because he is a figure in the past, most of the content seems to be set in stone and has not been majorly changed or updated. However, the article seems to continue to update, with newer references from articles made in 2022 being linked to his page.

Tone and Balance:

The balance of information seems to be done successfully, as I don't see a specific section of the content being overrepresented or underrepresented. The large portion of the content is dedicated to his successful career in making sky-rise buildings and his ideology in 'form follows function' which is understandable since that is what he is mainly notable for. The legacy presents different opinions and perspective of what Sullivan is truly notable for, giving a good unbiased information of him. However, the tone in this article is somewhat questionable, especially in the lead section. The way the information is order seems to give a positive impression for Sullivan (presenting how he was known as 'father of skyscrapers' etc. in the first sentence) as a notable designer that shaped American architecture, making some what biased through the tone of the writing.

Sources and References:

Most of the sources seems to be legitimate and the amount being used to reference is large enough for the article to hold is reliability. There are couple links in the references that seems to be broken which should be fixed, but the information that link provides is cross referenced by other sources, making it less of a significant issue. However, the "Sullivan and the steel high-rise" section does not enough references and links, especially in the first part of the section. This is problematic as this section is the most notable part of Sullivan's career and has the largest portion of information. I barely see any footnote in this section, making it hard to find the source the information is being presented in this part. It makes me question where and what sources these informations are from.

Organization and writing quality:

The organization of the content is done in a logical sense as it has been split into sections that follow a chronological order. The sections are split and labeled clearly and is very easy to identify what information they will be covering in that section. The article overall is concise and did not overrepresent information. As for the writing quality, some parts feels colloquial making it feel less like bibliography as it loses that sense of neutrality.

Images and Media:

The images seems relevant as it shows his characteristics in his architecture, as well as examples of his actual work in the article. Many of these photos were taken and posted by the person, generously making public domain photos for it to adhere to the Wikipedia copyright regulations. The photo of Sullivan is a photographic portrait of him that was found in a published Circa in 1895, but the digital photo source link is linked to a tumblr post that no longer exists.

Talk page discussion:

The talk page discussion evidently shows notable changes made to the article, with some being about adding more links, changing the photo portrait of Sullivan as it used to show Victor Horta, and criticism/changes towards the biased writing in the "Later Career and Decline" section. This article is part of the WikiProject Illinois, WikiProject Chicago, WikiProject Architecture, WikiProject Craft and WikiProject Biography / Arts and Entertainment. In all of these projects, this article has been rated B-class, having mostly high-importance in the projects.

Overall impressions:

Overall, the status of this article is fine, as Sullivan is a notable figure to be part of the wikipedia archive, and the article provides concise and general content of Louis Sullivan. However it can be improved by adding more footnotes and links to the pre-existing informations in the article. Even to the information that has been footnoted, additional footnotes of sources would show importance and accuracy through cross referencing. The page seems to be popular enough that these informations will be updated by others sometime.