User:Sagealvarez04/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating? Lance Mackey
Talk:Lance Mackey

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
He is a very well known dog musher as there are many New York Times, CNN and other large newspaper articles about him, however his wikipage is very small. I though it seemed very undeveloped and outdated.

Evaluate the article
Lead Selection: I think the lead section in this article is well written. It is concise and describes the topic of the article well. However, it does not include a summary of the articles major sections.

Content: While the article covers a basic amount of content on Lance Mackey's life, I think there are many details missing. He has been mentioned in many newspaper articles and congratulated by a Senator. However, the content that is included is very relevant to his life. The article also seems to be missing information about the documentary of his life as there is only a small sentence written in regards to it.

The article also seems to be missing information about Mackey's life outside of the Iditarod, particularly his family/social history.

Tone and Balance: In some parts, the article seems slightly bias, and could be labeled as "peacocking" if there is no citation behind the claims. An example of this is the statement " This feat was considered almost impossible by many, and is considered one of the most impressive feats ever by a musher," which is written under the "Career" heading. This statement does not have any citation or backing to it and seems to idolize Mackey as a dog musher.

Sources and References: As noted above, there is an area of the article that is not properly cited. As well, the entirety of Mackey's "Personal Life" is uncited. While there are a few sources cited,a quick search reveals there are many more reliable sources available for reference. This article seems very limited in its use of references and sources. While one of the sources is from 2020, most of them are from 10+ years ago and do not include any current information on Mackey. The sources also seem very limited in diversity and generally only include newspaper articles. Since Mackey is a sports player, it is understandable that most articles would come from newspapers, however, there seems to be other information in the form of interviews and non-profit organization articles.

Organization and Writing Quality: Overall, the article seems well organized. Although Mackey is a well known figure in Alaska, most of the information on him is related to his career as a dog-musher, in turn, there are not many different categories for his article. Each section seems to reflect the topic well, however, under the "Career" section, there is information mixed in about his awards. Although these might relate to his career, they would probably be better under the "Awards" section. Depending on how much information is available on each race, it also could be helpful to break up his career further into the difference races he's participated in. The article seems well written without many grammar errors. It was mostly easy to read, except for a slight amount of confusion on the different dates of his races. I think it would be helpful to revise that section and make it easier to read.

Images and Media: There is only one photo on Mackey's page, which is a photo of him at one of the races. If more photos are available, I think it would be helpful to add photos of his dogs and maybe awards. I think the one photo is laid out well and captioned well.

Talk Page discussion: the talk page discussion is blank on this article.

The article is rated as a stub class article and is involved in quite a few wiki projects including sports/games, dogs, and alaska. These are very broad subjects and I am curious if there are any more specific Wikiprojects that this article can be involved in.

Overall Impressions: The articles overall status is a stub class article. While I would think the article is structured and laid out well, the amount of information is lacking. There seems to be gaps of information and much of the information that is included is not properly cited. There are also pieces of misplaced information that need to be moved. Overall, I think this article is undeveloped and needs added information.