User:Sedith7/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Columbia_River_Basalt_Group&action=info

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 this article because of my interest in flood volcanism. I believe this matters because the knowledge and study of flood volcanism is relevant to many different areas of study from climatology, geochemistry, igneous petrology and more. My preliminary impression of the page for the Colombia river flood basalts was that it is well written and cited, however that there is pertinent information missing that could be added. It is my intention to do my final project on contributing to this article.

Alex Ovas

101115412

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.)

Alex Ovas

101115412

The lead section of this article is very well structure, it includes an introductory sentence which is concise and detailed. It includes a contents table which correctly covers all the main sections of the article. The content of this article is all pertinent to the topic, from its formation, geographic extent, dating, speed of emplacement, major deposits etc.. The article contains citations/references ranging from 1992 - 2011 so it seems to be relatively up to date given the topic and specificity. The article does have information missing or rather information that could be added, such is my plan. For example there is no information pertaining to volatile degassing of the Colombia river flood basalts even tho there are many articles and research papers available on this. The article is neutral in its presentation of the material discussed, as the numerical data and geological information that is provided is well cited. It does not overtly discuss any points of view or try to persuade the reader, rather it gives a well rounded and supported summary of current knowledge for the points discussed in the article. All the facts listed by the article are obtained from a wide variety of credible research papers listed in the sources section at the bottom of the page. The sources are peer reviewed and relatively current (as recent at 2011) with what has been availably published on the Colombia river basalts, they are also from a wide variety of authors and the links to said sources work. The article is well written without any grammatical errors, it is very informative with regards to each aspect of the Colombia river flood basalt group that was discussed. There are 3 main sections in the article past the introduction that are further broken down with related subcategories that directly relate, the main sections include "formation of the Colombia river basalt group, the major Colombia river basalt group flows, and related geologic structures". This gives the page a very well ordered structure that is easy to navigate. The page includes many images that do aid in the understanding of the topic, these include diagrams of the geographic extent of the flood basalts as well as images of the respective deposits themselves. Each image is well captioned telling the location of the picture as well as what it is that's being depicted in the cases of the diagrams. The images used include credit to the photographers as well as citations of where they were obtained from and thus complies with wikipedia copyright regulations. The pictures are organized with, and relevant too, each of the sections and is both visually and informatively appealing. I have not been able to find any discussion of the article other than the revision history which contains mostly minor edits such as including new citations. The articles overall status is rated as a "B". The articles strengths are that it has clear organization and is well divided into sections and subsections that are relevant to the material. However, I believe that this article could be improved by adding further information about the topic that has yet to be added. For example data on volatile emissions that have been thoroughly research and published are not contributed anywhere in this article. This is as a weakness in the article that I wish to remedy. Aside from this, the article is well developed and includes a lot of very well informed information, thus I would not describe it as poorly developed, rather than it could just be improved on.