User:RotNoord1C/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
The article about the paterfamilias. Pater familias

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
The paterfamilias has been an important topic of discussion in the first few weeks of the course Introduction into Roman history: Roman Women. There is a very clear introductionary section and to prevent confusion for people that are searching the movie paterfamilias with the same name it has a link to that page. There is a big reference list and almost al the sections have the same amount of information. The overview section is clear.

Evaluate the article
Lead section:

The lead includes a introductiory sentence that captures the essence of the concept discussed. it gives a clear definition. There is a context schedule which clearly formulates the to be discussed topics in the article. Furthermore the introduction explains some of the most important features of the concept discussed, which makes it clear to the reader what the essence of the concept consists of. It is neither to long nor to short.

Content:

The article speaks about the origins of the paterfamilias (it's legal foundations), it's duties and it discusses the roles of the people whom fall under it's supervision. Which seems to suffice. 6 edits have been made only in 2022, which would suggest that the article is up-to-date. All the information that is given deals directly with the paterfamilias or gives neccesary background so that other information about the paterfamilias becomes clear.

Tone and balance:

The article is neutral in that it sticks to information know from other reliable sources and does not give a judgement about let's say some of the duties the paterfamilias had. There are strong claims being made about the moral duties that the paterfamilias should have had. That he was supposed to be a goos citizen. This of course in theory is how the romans looked at the role of the paterfamilias. What is missing in this context might be a nuance that in practice (with some references to this) paterfamilias also had their flaws. The role of the wife is the smallest part of the article and could perhaps be prolonged somewhat. the article does not try to point the reader in some sort of direction about the subject. No moral judgement is made by the article about the paterfamilias itself.

Sources and references:

Altough i probably need to learn a lot in this area myself, it seems as if the introduction section misses some references. There quite a big statement is made about the role of the paterfamilias as being a good citizen and al that this encompasses. There i don' t see a reference to a legal book or something supporting this. Other than that the referenct list seems very extensive and there is a plurality of authors on the subject that is being reffered to. The links that are being given in the reference list do forward to the right books. But there are only a few. It would be nicer if most of the articles that are being referred to had their DOI links as well.

Organization and writing quality:

With regards to the organization of the article it seems to have a very logical build up. The introduction gives definitions and a good overview of the whole article. After that it focusses on the paterfamilias itself and his duties. After that is focusses on the roles of the household in a logical order, wife-children-slaves. The writing quality seems adequate. The article does a good job of explaining the subject despite the fact that a lot of the language originates from Latin, which could make it difficult for readers to follow. Still more focus is required to understand this article due to that fact, the article itself does a good job in that regard.

Images and media:

Only one image is being displayed in the article, which adds to the part of ;  As priest of familia, gens and genius  . Although the image is well-captured and the reference is good, it does not add that much value to the subject. It might give the reader an idea about that small subject, but the rest does not become clearer. And the depicted image displays a genius and not a paterfamilias itself. People might actually be confused about this, since the article's subject is the paterfamilias and the only image being displayed is one of the genius of the paterfamilias.

Talk page discussion:

The talk page discussion shows that their has been quite a lot of debate at the start of the article. The one who wrote it didn 't right up to par with the normal quality of good Wikipedia articles. After that more discussions took place over sementics. Although i' m a bit lost as to where to find the rating of the article, the article is part of two WikiProjects, namely WikiProjects Classical Greek and Rome and WikiProject Latin.

Overall impressions:

It seems to me that the article covers al of the important aspects of the paterfamilias, from what i myself have read in articles and what has been discussed in class. It goes far beyond the knowledge i accuired actually but always in a neutral tone and with references to good sources. As mentioned before it feels like every part of the article is linked to the paterfamilias and in so does not give unnecessary information. Especially the build up of the article is it's strength. As mentioned before the order in which the information is presented makes a lot of sense.