User:S.obadia/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
I am evaluating the article for the 2009 novel The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner).

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.)

I chose to evaluate this article because The Maze Runner was a culturally significant young adult novel when it was published. This book was published around the time that other young adult dystopian fiction books really took off, like the Hunger Games and Divergent series. Readers enjoyed reading and talking about this book and the consequent novels and film adaptations set in this world constructed by James Dashner in this first novel. Because this book was popular when it was published and continues to be read by readers growing out of children's literature, it is important that its Wikipedia page is complete and accurate. At first glance, this article seems to have many of the categories that should be present in a thorough article about this work, but it seems like many of the sections need to be fleshed out with more information and more thorough, formal writing.

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.)

Lead Section:

The lead section of this article has an effective first sentence. The language used is concise and it establishes the most important, relevant information about the book clearly. However, the lead section does not include a description of the article's main sections, besides the "Contents" box that provides links to each section of the article. Additionally, the lead section also includes information about the publication of this novel that is not present in the body of this article. The writing of the lead section, however, is concise and straightforward.

Content:

The content included in this article is all relevant to the topic. The film adaptation of the novel is discussed on this page even though there is a separate Wikipedia article dedicated to this adaptation (The Maze Runner (film)). Most of the content of the article is up-to-date. However, the "Reception" section only includes a few sources that noted the impact of this novel during the year that it came out. It may be helpful to update this section to include more recent scholarly work about the novel. Besides a lack of in-depth reporting on the reception of this novel since it was published, there does not seem to be any major gaps in this article's coverage. This article does not address any of Wikipedia's equity gaps. Although this book and its film adaptation include some characters from populations that have been historically underrepresented in fantasy literature and film, this article does not explicitly highlight their presence in this work.

Tone and Balance:

This article has a neutral tone. Because the Wikipedia editor who created it relies on simple, straightforwards sentences and many quotes from Dashner's work and the writings of commentators, there is little bias seen in this article. The viewpoints of commentators who wrote about the effect of this novel when it came out are overrepresented in that there is no comments included from critics or writers who have considered the impact of this book since its release in 2009. For the few viewpoints that are included in this article, there is no note of whether these perspectives on the effect of this novel were popular or more esoteric opinions. This article does not have a persuasive tone at any point, as it reads more like a list of facts and quotes related to the topic.

Sources and References:

This article does have sources for every fact that is listed. The majority of the article is a plot summary and character descriptions, which the article does not cite because this information can all be found in the novel. The "Development," "Reception," and "Adaptation" sections are backed with reliable secondary source cites. The sources that are cited in the article seem to reflect the early scholarship that was published around the time that this novel was released, but there are not many recent sources cited about the lasting impact of the novel. The sources are not written by diverse authors. Most of the sources cited were written by white men and women in the U.S. There are more recent peer-reviewed articles available that could be added to this page. Many of the sources cited in the article are newspaper articles and interviews with the author. More scholarly work could improve the quality of this article. The links to the sources currently cited do work.

Organization and Writing Quality:

This article is clearly written and easy to understand. The paragraphs in the "Characters" section each start with a clause instead of a full sentence, but the other sections seem to be grammatically correct and free from spelling mistakes. The article is well-organized into sections, but some sections are much more detailed than others. For example, the "Plot" and "Characters" sections are much larger than any of the other sections that address the creating and reception of this novel and its film adaptation.

Images and Media:

This article only includes one image. The box in the lead section includes one picture of the cover of this novel. It is captioned well. It is cited well, so it seems to adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations. The image is placed in a logical spot and is clear and visually interesting.

Talk Page Discussion:

The conversations on the talk page addresses some of the problems present in the article's character descriptions. One user notes that the article implied that a few characters are in more than a platonic relationship, although this is never formally mentioned in the book or the movie. This issue seems to have been addressed since this user made this comment. Additionally, there are comments noting that the plot summary is confusing and the "Theseus" myth should be mentioned since it is very similar to the plot of this novel. All these comments are separate. There have not been many true conversations between editors on this page. This article is rated start-class, mid-importance for the WikiProject Novels and start-class, high importance for WikiProject Children's literature. The way Wikipedia discusses this topic is different from how we talk about it because we talk about children's literature as being important for literature in general, not just within its own genre.

Overall Impressions:

This article's overall status is start-class. The article is strong in that it provides a thorough plot summary and list of characters. It begins to address the development and reception of this novel, but those areas could be developed more fully. This article could also be improved with the inclusion of more recent sources from scholarly publications that address the reception and impact of the novel since it was published over a decade ago. This article is underdeveloped, but may be dramatically improved with a few updates.

Examples of good feedback
A good article evaluation can take a number of forms. The most essential things are to clearly identify the biggest shortcomings, and provide specific guidance on how the article can be improved.