User:Rocko Lunchbox/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Bassari people

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because this is my assigned article for the Wikipedia project and I wanted to get a head start on understanding what needs to change.

Lead Section
The introductory sentence is concise though a little misleading, as it states "The Bassari are people who live in Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau." It is helpful to know we are talking about a group of people but the wording may give someone the impression that all people who live in these areas are referred to as the Bassari. The introductory sentence should be rephrased to explain that the Bassari are an ethno-linguistic group.

The lead does not include all of the article's sections. In fact, the article's one and only section, "Religious Belief," is entirely neglected from the lead.

The lead does include population statistics that can't be found anywhere else in the article. Only the introductory sentence has a working citation, the rest of the lead's three sentences are followed by "Citation Needed."

The lead is very concise in the way it presents information, but grammatical errors render the information hard to read. "This areas is" for example.

Content
The content of the article all seems relevant to the Bassari, though its reliability is questionable.

The statistics found in the lead section are uncited and most likely out of date. Some sources seem to be more recent, such as Bassari Migrations from 2019 and The Geographical Spread of Climate Change Impacts in the Bassari Landscape from 2020. But these sources are only used for one sentence each and fails to elaborate beyond the bare minimum. They're also connected to facts are are misplaced within the article, being citations for food and geographical information yet being found in the Religious Beleif section. There is a great deal of content that is missing, given that this page represents an entire ethnicity of people and yet only has one section and really only gives about one statement each per a handful of facets of the culture.

This is most definitely in connection to Wikipedia's equity gaps though not entirely Wikipedia's fault, as the page is about an underrepresented ethnicity that hardly has any scholarly material within my university's library, the MELCat, and the WorldCat, let alone just Wikipedia.

Tone and Balance
This articles language is entirely neutral. There doesn't seem to be any claims that exhibit any bias, though this may be just because of how barebones the article is in the first place.

Sources and References
There are many facts within the article that are followed by a "Citation Needed."

I will now go through each of the article's sources in order to give a general impression on whether it's trust worthy.


 * Joshua Project is a missionary foundation who catalogues ethnicities and tracks their conversion progress. They are a biased and untrustworthy source of information and any contribution they have to the article should be removed.
 * Exploring Africa is a travel and photography blog that partners with SafariAdv tourism. Though they seem to work with locals to source their information they are still an unacademic source and should be used sparingly.
 * Ethnologue is a medium for separate language databases to pool their data and offer their information as a subscription service to academia. They also print catalogues, and their 2005 edition is what was used in this article. They are a trust worthy source, though this information is dated.
 * LICCI is a climate change project that collected data that gathered socioeconomic and phenological data between June of 2018 and May of 2023. This is an international research organization funded by the EU. They are a trustworthy source of information.
 * Bassari Migrations is an academic book published by Routledge and written by Riall W. Nolan, an anthropologist from Purdue University. It is a trustworthy source of information.
 * The Routledge Dictionary of Gods and goddesses, Devils and Demons is an entry in the Routledge Dictionary series of Routledge publishing from 2005. It is a trust worthy source, though this information may be out of date, and most likely provides limited information as it is a list of many short definitions rather than a long explanation of a few things.
 * Les Migrations des Coniagui et Bassari is a french book from 1967. While I can't give a proper evaluation due to the language barrier I can conclude it is dated.

It seems that the majority of sources listed (excluding the Joshua Project, Exploring Africa, and possibly Les Migrations des Cnoiagui et Bassari) are all trust worthy sources of information. The data is here, it just needs to be greatly expanded upon in the article.

Organization and Writing Quality
This article has almost no underlying structure, and it doesn't have any structure that the text actually abides by. Religious diversity and mythology are correction written within the Religious Belief section, but so are random factoids about Bassari cuisine, seasonal migrations, language and relations to neighboring groups. This information needs to be sorted to their own sections, as well as included within the lead passage. Information within the lead section that isn't found anywhere else in the article also needs to be properly sorted into new sections.

The writing quality is substantial at a glance, but could use some rewording. There are some grammatical errors regarding plural language. The biggest issue with the article is the overall ambiguity of information, as every sentence is a new fact with little follow up, exhibiting a lack of comprehension on the topic.

Images and Media
There are no Images or Media.

Talk Page Discussion
There are no discussions on the article's talk page.

The article is surprisingly incorporated into five different WikiProjects; those being Africa, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Senegal. WikiProject rates this article a Stub, which I full heartedly agree upon. It has also rated this page to be of Mid-Importance, which means this page is 1 of 1,916 other Stub articles of Mid-Importance. WikiProject Gambia marks this page of Low-Importance out of 385 Low-Important stubs. WikiProjects Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal have not assessed this article.

We have not discussed this topic in class.

Overall Impressions
This article is certainly a start to something, but it needs a major restructuring and expansion.

Its strengths are its sources surprisingly, there are some good leads here. However the article itself represents the information in a rather poor manner and is in desperate need of upkeep. If given a proper frame, I think the article could be the beginning of an underdeveloped piece.