User:Serodr/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article
This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.


 * Name of article: (link) Environmental science
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate: Environmental science can envelope several scientific fields, such as alternative energy and sustainability, I was curious to see how the article broad or how in-dept it addressed subcategories within the subject field. Additionally, due to increasing environmental concerns, I wanted to assess how up-to-date the article was, and if it took on any biased approaches.

Lead evaluation
The lead clearly and briefly sets the stage of what the remainder of the article will discuss. One critique of the lead paragraph is the history of environmental sciences being placed at the end, as opposed to the beginning. I think the history should have been placed in the beginning to highlight its important aspects and relevance to continued research. Although many of the terms highlighted in the lead weren't addressed in the body of the article, there were hyperlinks available to explore more in-dept many of the sub-categories and related subdivisions listed.

Content evaluation
The article appears to be missing a substantial amount of information in which it only has a few paragraphs relating to the subdivisions of environmental science. Additionally, there doesn't appear to be current research findings included in the article. When looking at the references, it appears the most up-to-date research article used was from 2008, which indicates the article requires more updating and editing.

Tone and balance evaluation
The article doesn't take on any point of view nor does it attempt to persuade the reader toward a specific viewpoint. Additionally, the article takes on a neutral tone of laying out facts without the insert of opinion or speculation of facts. The article doesn't address any topics that are unrelated to environmental sciences.

Sources and references evaluation
The reference articles do not appear up to date, with the most recent article dating back to 2008. For a discipline such as environmental science where there is research conducted and information constantly changes to reflect the behavior of climate over time, there should be more recent articles. When clicking on the articles included in the references, the links all worked which indicates the sources are still accessible.

Organization evaluation


The beginning of the article is written too much in list format, which can appear difficult to read due to the point of the sentence being lost in the long list of names. However, the body of the article is clear and concise with a neutral tone that is easy to understand. There do not appear to be any grammar or spelling mistakes, and the overall formatting of the article is well-organized.

Images and media evaluation
There are several images included in the article that are well captioned and clear to see. The images are also related to the topic it is accenting, which helps accentuate the sub-category. The images are also organized rather than being thrown into the article just for the sake of having an image included. The images are not distracting, either.

Talk page evaluation
The article is rated as a level-5 vital article, c-class. After looking through the talk page, it seems like there was a lot of disagreement as to how the article should be structured and formulated. There were many critiques about unrelated information, paragraphs that didn't belong in this page, bias tones and language, as well as people pointing out out-dated information and articles. It appears the reason the article is missing so much information is because many of the paragraphs were removed due to a disagreement in the validity of the information, topics unrelated to environmental science, and articles not being updated. There are many edits that have occurred over the last few months in which citations and images are added, information is revoked, and authors collaborating on what to add and their overall opinion of the article. One editor even went out and called the article "a mess" due to there not being any structure or relevance in the body content.

Overall evaluation
While the current article might be an improvement from what it was, it still requires a great deal of work and updating. Many of the topics mentioned in the lead paragraphs are not included in the body paragraphs. Additionally, there should be more up to date articles from recent years included rather than the most recent article being from 2008. The article seems to be a work in progress with editors adding and editing information as well as cleaning up any misinformation or unrelated content. I think with such a broad topic such as environmental science, the information presented should be concise and overarching with a way to connect all the subdivisions under a common goal of environmental science.

Optional activity

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