User:RobieHillier/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Music of West Africa

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
We were asked to choose a culture to edit or write a Wikipedia page about. I have always been a fan of the rhythms associated with African music and reading about Neil Peart's travels cycling through West Africa, along all the people he encountered along the way, helped me pinpoint this specific area of Africa. I've been a drummer all my life so exposing myself to different styles can only benefit my musical repertoire.

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 section of the article introduces you to all the different genres of music to come out of West Africa, and does a good job of explaining how the music is influenced by both Islamic and indigenous secular music. It does a good job of explaining where the two styles tend to divulge, but it also goes on to introduce a wide variety of genres that aren't explained any further. It would be nice if each of these had a brief explanation in this article instead of being expected to go to each individual Wikipedia page to learn anything about them.

After the introduction the article does a good job of explaining the popular music that came out of there over the past 100 years but I think it can go a little deeper here. I am also wondering how much information is available from before these times. I cannot find any sources on music dating before the 19th century so that seems like the best place for me to try and dig. Most of the modern concepts can be expanded on at best, but I think my efforts are best used to bring new information as opposed to solidify existing. I think that the article tends to lean to a western bias as that is where the majority of the information focuses. The most complete section is the popular music section and the majority of the information focuses on genres that came out of Colonial West Africa.

The article doesn't seem to be biased or written with any ill intentions to misrepresent the facts. I think that the article was more than likely written by someone from a western background. When I read the article I worry that all of the issues I seem to be noticing are all things that have potential to effect me. Because I speak English I cannot access literature in other languages and this might be one of the reasons that the article has a tendency to show a western bias. I don't feel as though there is any persuasion going on. I think the author had good intentions when writing the article and gave a wonderful jumping off point.

The sources seem to be well chosen. Most are recent articles and the majority are academic journals so I think the author did their due diligence when sourcing this information. Fortunately it seems I have other sources that can add information that might be omitted so far such as rhythmic structure and scales. Every link I checked worked properly.

The organization and flow of the article is good. All information is given chronologically and in order of what the reader needs to know at that moment. I might suggest that the instruments go before the pop music but I think that is a personal choice as I don't think the instruments give any context that allows you to better understand the popular music.

There aren't many photos used and I think that could be a vast improvement that would make the entire article more interesting. Consider it the kitchen renovation of my suggestions. The images are where they need to be, it just seems as though the article isn't complete as in the list of instruments only some of them have accompanying photos.

The article is a part of "a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Africa on Wikipedia" and has a page that has more discussions and resources that will help me write this article. There is a call to delete the page as the person believes that the only purpose of the current article is to link you through to other articles. While I did notice that there are more links available than necessary, I don't think deleting the article is an appropriate action because it still contains valuable information. It does say an image was removes so perhaps I there was a possible issue that has been taken care of. There hasn't been much action on the talk page but I did notice that someone was commenting and editing the article in May so I wonder if they are still working on information as well.

I think the articles rating as stub-class is appropriate because there is plenty of room for improvement where it can be expanded on, or where new areas can be added to make the page more comprehensive.