User:Ryan Phang/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.) Dried meat

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

As I was browsing the list of stub articles, dried meats stood out to me as such a simple concept to be a stub. It seemed like due to the novelty of the process and it's importance as a food source throughout human existence, that it would be a comprehensive article discussing, not only types of dried meats, but the molecular process behind dried meats and it's ability to act as long term food preservation, as well as possibly the archeological history of dried meats. Yet what I found was simply a list of dried meats, there was almost no information, and sources seemed to be largely blogs and news articles. Given the importance of drying meat as a food source throughout human history it seemed like it should have a far more comprehensive article.

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 is relegated to a single line, "Dried meat is a feature of many cuisines around the world." While the concept of dried meats is relatively trivial, and it's prevalence in world cuisine is near universal, the fact that there is no further explanation of what dried meat is or for that matter any other information is underwhelming. It is far less of a lead section, and more of a lead sentence, which, at the very least describes the content of the article, in the following sentence, "examples include."

The content of the article is equally underwhelming. It is merely a list of thirty to forty different forms of dried meat originating in various cultures throughout the globe. There is very little content to evaluate, and as described earlier there is on first thought, a lot that can be contributed to the article. Content on the molecular process of drying meat, as well as the history in human evolution are just some preliminary ideas for additions to the article. While the article does do a good job of listing examples of dried meats, it seems like the author simply just listed every version of dried meat that they could think of. Further this article does not include any media or images.

Due to the brevity and short length of the article, little can be said or critiqued about the tone and balance of the article. The article does not seem to put emphasis on one form of dried meat over another, which at the very least shows neutrality in the article. Similarly, for how little content there is, it is to be expected that the organizational structure and article as a whole is relatively good. There is not much to read, but for what little there is, it does seem to be well enough written with no clear grammatical errors. There is also no real ability to organize the article considering that it is only a single section.

The sources seem to be the most disappointing part of this article. There are three recipes, each for a dried meat listed above, none of which are particularly robust or well written (one was also in Spanish). There is one product page for Bak Kwa, a Chinese style dry meat which is a dead link. And finally one news article or blog on "Chinese Charcuterie" from 2014 that is pay walled. To put it simply these sources are abysmal, and are of no real substance to the article for obvious reasons.

There is no talk page discussions.

Overall the article is in extremely poor shape with little to no content. The article as a whole may as well be a requested article with the quality of information and sources. There are no real strengths to this article and it seems as if the author haphazardly threw the article together in a matter of minutes to simply fill the void of a requested article. There is not much more I feel I could say on this article, especially because this evaluation is longer than the article in it's current state.