User:SeanP71/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Transvestite pass

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
We breifly went over this article in class. and I found it's topic interesting. I had never heard of the transvestite pass before, although I had been aware generally of progressive ideas relating to gender identity and transgender people in Weimar Germany. The article is short and concise, and directly relates to the course material.

As a first impression, the article is quite short, but covers the broad topic of the transvestite pass in Germany. I notice a banner encouraging users to expand the article by drawing on the German version, which appears to be slightly longer.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section:

Given the short length of the article, the first paragraph serves as the lead section. It does a good job of describing the basic idea of the transvestite pass, the time periods in which it was in use, and identifies a major supporter of the pass, Magnus Hirschfeld. I find the lead section to be well done. It lays out the basic ideas of the article in a couple of sentences, mentioning relevant information without overloading the reader or going into unnecessary detail.

Content:

The body of the article is very short. Where it goes into detail, it is well done, but it leaves some gaps in the topic. The basic history of the pass is relatively well laid-out. It mentions key figures Magnus Hirschfeld and Karl Abraham, notes the typical demographics who received passes, and includes a quote from a primary source, the Berlin police headquarters. Where it fails to elaborate is in the later history of the transvestite pass. All the article says is that "after the Nazis came to power, most passes were revoked or German police refused to recognize them." This raises more questions than it answers.

Were passes revoked immediately in 1933, or was it a gradual process?

Were there some individuals who did not lose this privelige?

What was the public reception of the transvestite pass when the Nazis came to power? The passes seemed to be relatively rare; were they common knowledge, or would only those in the transgender community have known what was happening?

Was there pushback in the queer community against the revoking of the transvestite pass?

There are plenty of examples of relatively simple, fact based questions about the transvestite pass that the article fails to address, especially in regards to its dissolution under the Nazis. However, as the topic is quite obscure and deals with a historically marginalized group, it is entirely possible that this information simply does not exist in way that could be cited to Wikipedia.

Tone and Balance:

The article does a good job of taking a dry, neutral view of the topic. It simply lays out the facts without making an attempt to influence the reader in any particular direction. The information given seems to meet expert consensus and is well cited.

Sources and References:

The article is well sourced. Every piece of information has been cited with an up to date source. The sources come from a variety of authors, all of which have been written in the last decade or so. The topic is niche and relatively obscure, but there are a good variety of sources cited despite this. Again, I would have liked to see more discussion of the later history of the transvestite pass, but it is very possible that there simply are not an abundance of sources that can provide this information.

There is a mix of scholarly and non-scholarly sources. All 6 links to the sources work.

Organization and Writing Quality:

I noticed no errors in the writing. Spelling and grammar looks good and the article is easy to read and understand. Organization is well done, but this is pretty easy given the length of the article. In such a short article, it probably would have been more cumbersome to separate it into sections.

Images and Media:

There are two images in the article: a fascimile of a transvestite pass, and a photo of Hirschfeld and a transgender friend of his. They are both captioned well, of good quality, and add some substance to the article. Both include the source of the image.

Talk Page:

The talk page is empty for this page, unfortunately.

Overall impressions:

The article on the transvestite pass is, in general, done well. The only significant area to improve is its length; I wish there was a little more detail given to the history of the pass. However, the parts of the article that are present do a good job of giving an overview of the topic at hand, mentioning key people involved in the conception of the pass, and in general presenting the information that is available about the transvestite pass in both scholarly and non-scholarly sources. The length of the article is a pretty major concern, however, and this hurts my overall impressions of it. It feels more like a lead section of a high quality article than it feels like a high quality article. An edit that treated its current state as the lead for the rest of the article would be very beneficial. There is a lot to expand upon, and plenty of questions left to answer.