User:Samsmith428/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
I chose to evaluate an academic field article entitled Earth Overshoot Day (Provide a link to the article here.)

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I am an Environmental Studies major and I was interested in what information the article would hold about it. Upon the first skim, the article seems quite well written.

Evaluate the article
The introduction was strong and remains neutral in tone. However, some of the sentences are unclear and/or weak. For example, they wrote "In 2020 EOD lands on August 22 more than three weeks later than 2019..." which isn't proper grammar and doesn't signify what year.

In addition, some of the sentences are repetitive, such as repeating "Global Footprint Network" multiple times in the same section. Additionally, this phrase was also hyperlinked twice. It is only necessary to do so once. Some of the hyperlinks also include more than the term itself. In addition, some of the claims are not sourced. For example: "They admit..." or "According to them..." should have footnotes.

There is one table which shows "Past Earth Overshoot Days" but it does not have any useful caption. There are no photos.

There seems to be no issue with organization, though the article could likely be fleshed out more with more sources added. The references that are used are quality and the Further Readings section is well put together.

The talk page did not consist of much information and has not been edited since May 9, 2020. It is unclear how up to date the content is, or of its accuracy. Apparently, the article was originally intended to be about "Ecological Debt Day" but information was replaced with "Earth Overshoot Day." It is seemingly the same concept. One other person proposed an addition for a less politically charged image.

The article is not poor, but it definitely is in need of work and fine-tuning. There needs to be more fluid, concise writing and additional references. The article could benefit from more information regarding science than political think tanks. The article needs to be more specific and leave out fluff sentences/phrases. The article would likely benefit from a bit more variety in references as well.