User:Sarah.Logan55/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Chinook salmon

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I grew up fishing in California and have always been fascinated about learning about Salmon, so I was wanting to look more into them, and one of the specific species.

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 statement clearly states that the topic is about the Chinook salmon and what exactly they are. The lead also states some important facts regarding chinook to kind of hook readers in. However it doesn't really talk about other sections that the site will be talking about or discussing the main sections of the page. All of the content is focused on the chinook but the most recent data is from 2010 so it is kind of out of date by now and could use some fresh date or a comparison with new data. The page briefly touches on the population decline of salmon but doesn't really go into much detail or what people are doing to change the trend. It would be nice to have a full section with more detail on the salmon population issues and the decline trend or what it looks like now and specifically what's causing it as well as what efforts are being done to improve their population. The management section only briefly touches this. The site does have a section on cultural aspects of salmon and discusses indigenous people within it, however I feel like this section could really be expanded because salmon was and is a large part of native Americans food and culture. The tone throughout is neutral and is strictly focused on providing information. It doesn't have any opinions or viewpoints listed. The reference page has a lot of valuable pages listed from a wide variety of sources. However like I mentioned above the data is out of date and therefore a lot of the sites are also out of date. The article could be really improved and refreshed with new and recent sources. The overall page is organized well and each section is straight and to the point and specific to what it is covering. However most of the sections feel brief. This page covers so much about salmon, and different locations, and I feel like there is a lot more information that could be enclosed on each region more so just because it feels very brief. For example the authors talk about New Zeland pretty heavily within another section when it probably could have had its own section. Yet Lake Michigan had its own sub headline regarding fishing that was extremely short. The site does include graphs that really help the article and are sited correctly. Though the placement is poor because they are small and off to the side and it is hard to see them and easily able to be passed without seeing. When looking at the talk page the site is rated as a B and there are multiple topics being discussed within it. For example there was a lot of discussion on one of the graphs used as well as there being no distinction between red and white chinook. Overall I feel like this is a good article and with some work could be a great. The data needs to be updated to more recent or compared to more recent data to show the trends. Also expanding on some of the topics or making more subtopics to better organize the sections and allowing the topics to be expanded would also be a great improvement. The data listed is good and relevant but I really feel like updating it could really enhance the paper the most.