User:Sintegral/Evaluate an Article

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Evaluation of the Feral Cat Article
The bulleted questions from the template have been replaced with bulleted answers.Sintegral (talk) 23:53, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Lead section

 * The lead section for Feral cat is clear and concise.


 * For the most part, the lead section includes a brief description of the sections in the article.
 * The lead section does not have any information in it that is not included in the article's main sections.
 * The lead is very concise, perhaps with a slight lack of enough detail.

Content

 * The articles content stays directly on-topic and has no extraneous information that deviates from the target content.
 * The content is up-to-date however, due to the nature of ever-evolving research and the difficulty of closely observing feral behavior, there are certain areas that can be added to.
 * All notable topics concerning feral cats are addressed, however many of the references are old or link-broken. Updating with modern sources may provide more information.
 * The article is not associated with Wikipedia's Equity Gap.

Tone and Balance

 * The article maintains a neutral perspective, but the Talk page contains heated debate on content that has long been ambiguous due to opposing research.
 * Claims made in the article do not appear to have bias.
 * No non-objective viewpoints are made that require representation.
 * No minority viewpoints are presented that require
 * The article does not attempt to persuade the reader toward any opinion or perspective.

Sources and References

 * This is where the article suffers most of its weaknesses. Many of the sources are outdated, have broken links, or are based old data over 15 years old.
 * The sources that are actually updated and available are of peer reviewed research and of good quality.
 * May sources are outdated or have broken links.
 * As far as I can tell, the sources are written by people from all over the world.
 * There are some better sources available, but research level sources are sparing.
 * Many links are broken.

Organization and writing quality

 * The article is well-written and concise, but there could be far more detail with better sources.
 * The article has no grammatical errors, although there are some arguments on the Talk page concerning incorrect terminology.
 * The article is sectioned properly. More sections could be made.

Images and Media

 * There are images, but there could be more and better ones.
 * The images are well-captioned.
 * All images adhere to copyright regulations.
 * The images are laid out well, one particular image is beautiful and is a great example of the topic.

Talk page discussion

 * Heated debate is going on over poor source quality and claims made.
 * The article is rated B-class under the parameters given by the WikiCats Project.
 * I do not think we have discussed feral cats in class so far, but I sure do want to.

Overall impressions

 * Casual readers will find the article sufficient, however any student or researcher may not find current research backed by recent data. There simply should be more detail about this topic. References and other links need a complete overhaul, and research newer than fifteen years needs to be implemented into the sources and detailed within the contents of the article's various sections.
 * The article is a solid layman introduction to feral cats, but if a reader want an in-depth analysis on their behavior, physiology, social habits, or detailed human interaction information, they may need to look into current research being published.
 * According to the WikiCats Project, a few aspects of content and style need to be addressed. Expert knowledge may be needed. The inclusion of supporting materials should be considered if practical, and the article checked for general compliance with the Manual of Style and related style guidelines. I agree with their B-class rating of the article.
 * WikiCats Project describes the article as "mostly complete and without major problems but requires some further work to reach good article standards." It has not yet been rated "good", but since the article is listed as being of "high importance", it needs to have some work done on it.
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Which article are you evaluating?
Feral cat

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I have been taking care of a community of feral cats that scavenges for food and shelter near me over the past few months.

Evaluate the article
The feral cat article provides ample detail to the casual reader, but can still be contributed to in many of its sections. A researcher might find the article lacking in depth and this stems from several issues. The references are a mess and need restructuring and updating. Many of the data driven sources were developed so long ago that new evidence and experimental data quite possibly contradicts them. This can easily be seen by the Talk page. Editors have gotten into heated arguments about the quality and correctness of several aspects of the article. One editor even recommends a full rewrite due to the flaws detailed in this evaluation. Overall, the article has a B-class rating under the guidelines provided by the WikiCats Project and just needs a little bit of editor research, reference updating and content building to become are stellar article.