User:Rosetoval99/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Princess Caraboo

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I found this article under Linguistic hoaxes and thought it would be an interesting topic to evaluate. It matters because it provides an example of how linguistics can be manipulated by anyone with bad intentions. My first impression of this article is that it lacks some transition between events in the imposter's biography.

Evaluate the article
The lead section is very brief concise - it does not contain enough introductory information. Readers learn the name of the person (Mary Baker) that the article is about and what they are famous for (pretending to be a false princess), but the lead section could afford to also reveal how long exactly the charade lasted (if this information is known), which British town she fooled, and where she claimed she was from without presenting too many details. The topic sentence merely states that she was a "noted imposter" without elaborating until the next sentence, and these two sentences comprise the entirety of the lead section.

The article's content is relevant to the topic and appears up-to-date for information about an historical figure, including pop-culture references as recent as 2016. All of the text belongs in the article but the biography is lacking in some areas. Mary's background jumps around a lot without good reason - that is to say certain events are mentioned without appropriate context.

The tone of the article is neutral; nothing in the biography is worded in a way to persuade readers to take a particular stance on the subject.

There is only one source listed for this article - a book published in 1994. The book's author John Wells was also the screenwriter of the popular 1994 film (which the reader can navigate to using the embedded link). There are a handful of references, including reliable, reviewed ones like the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and The History Press, but there are also more obscure ones, such as a pamphlet written in 1817 by an anonymous author.

The article is well-written, though arguably not well-organized. The article's only contents are the biography and the popular culture sections. While the pop-culture portion is effectively divided into multiple kinds of representation (ex. film, literature), the biography does not flow nicely, or at least could be smoother with the help of transitional information. The bulk of the biography is covered in seven paragraphs, with a remaining paragraph under the sole subheading "Later life and death." This section could be edited to present the information in a more orderly fashion.

Two images appear in this article, both depicting Mary Baker as Princess Caraboo. Each artist is credited underneath the respective images. They give the reader a visual of the topic of the article, and are laid out appropriately. If the article were longer with text, another one or two images would be appealing.

The Talk page addresses questions that some readers had regarding unclear information in the article - multiple editors have commented on the same points of confusion to try and offer possible explanations for inconsistent info. The article is rated start-class relating to four WikiProjects.

Overall the article could use some editing and developing, especially in telling the story of Mary Baker and how she came to assume the identity of Princess Baker and how she got away with the fabrication for so long. For an article that pops up under the category of linguistic hoaxes, a part of it should delve more into the language/ accent that Mary Baker used as an imposter, and how she communicated with those that she fooled.