User:Srmerz/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: Women in musicology
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate. -- I chose this article to evaluate based on my interest in music and on the interest of academic and scholarly women who work in the music field describing and teaching theory.

Lead

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
 * Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
 * Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
 * Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?

Lead evaluation
The Lead does include a very concise introductory sentence that describes what the article is about, but is lacking an overview of WHAT musicology is. It does contain hyperlinks to other pages on Wikipedia to give you further detail. The overall Lead is small, comprising of just a few sentences, before it jumps into descriptive details about notable women musicologists. The only other section on the page is one titled "Ethnomusicologists" and there is no mention of that anywhere in the Lead. The Lead itself could be improved upon with more description, but not TOO much description.


 * Content
 * Guiding questions
 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
 * Is the content up-to-date?
 * Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?

Content evaluation
The content within the article is relevant to the topic and has been updated as recently as May 2019. There is definitely room to improve the page, as it is rated a Start-Class page by the editors on this site. There is tentatively content missing, but I do not know enough about musicology or prominent women involved in it to properly dissect what is not there. I will say, there could be a section that goes into detail about who prominent musicologists are, what their theories entail and how the involvement of women in classical music blossomed and grew. The only thing that I felt was disconnected was the bottom section on Ethnomusicology. There was no mention of it in the primary Lead so it seems disjointed and like it could have a page on its own? There is only a small margin of content, so it probably seems like it would fit best on this page anyway.

Tone and Balance

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article neutral?
 * Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?

Tone and balance evaluation
The overall all tone is neutral. Any kind of biased language, such as a reference to a scholar, is done in quotes and is cited. There are are certain topics that are just glanced over, like the more complex theories of couple of these musicologists and they could really benefit from having a more in-depth look and edit. At face value, there is no open persuasive writing that is done on the page, whether trying to make you think musicologists that are women are better than men or putting down certain types of music. It is primarily neutral, but could benefit by having additional information and sources.

Sources and References

 * Guiding questions


 * Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
 * Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
 * Are the sources current?
 * Check a few links. Do they work?

Sources and references evaluation
The facts and names listed on the page are relevant and have hyperlinks to the notable women in the article. There is one body in the text that has no citation material whatsoever. It may be linked to a book citation, which there exists at the bottom of the article but it does not link anywhere. Similarly, the other two articles that are listed in the citations DO, in fact, work, but one is an obituary and the other is a school-wide article from Harvard listing the promotion of a musicologist there. It could greatly benefit to have more links and hard facts.

Organization

 * Guiding questions


 * Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
 * Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
 * Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?

Organization evaluation
I think that the article could really stand to go under a massive edit, both in content and layout of the page. While there is no abject and blatant spelling errors, the over all format just looks a little sloppy. I think that certain aspects and points that make this page notable (see: relevant) are glazed over and could stand to be redone in a more tactical and informational way. There are choices in the style of format that don't necessarily make sense within the text, such as a picture of a prominent musicologists on the page but there is not actual mention of her in the article other than her name being listed as being notable. It just seems odd.

Images and Media

 * Guiding questions


 * Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
 * Are images well-captioned?
 * Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
 * Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way?

Images and media evaluation
There are two pictures on the page and it is of two musicologists. The first is listed in the primary portion of the page where the listing of the musicologists are nearby. It doesn't necessarily fit with the content being explained but it also isn't entirely out of place. My only issue is that the photo of the woman is there but there is not description of her impact on musicology in the body of the article. The caption itself is informative and includes a hyperlink to her obituary (one of the three sources of cited material on the page). The other photo is of an ethnomusicologist and it explains who she is and what she did. It hyperlinks to other pages, such as her Wikipedia page and others describing the music that she studied. The images are small and not at all very stimulating, but do follow along the guidelines of copyright for Wikipedia.

Checking the talk page

 * Guiding questions


 * What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
 * How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
 * How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

Talk page evaluation
On the Talk page, I saw no conversations between the contributors or the editors of the article. It is listed as being a part of three groups -- the WikiProject Women's Writers, the WikiProject Roots music and the WikiProject Classical music. The article is rated at Start-Class both for the Women's writers and for Roots music. There is no rating for the Classical music page. Since there is no topic discussion on this page at all, I would say it differs greatly from how they say discussion is supposed to be carried out. There is absolutely no communication happening on this page.

Overall impressions

 * Guiding questions


 * What is the article's overall status?
 * What are the article's strengths?
 * How can the article be improved?
 * How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?

Overall evaluation
I would say the overall status of the article is Needs Improvement. The strength in it consists of trying to be comprehensive in who prominent musicologists are but does a poor job telling us what makes this important for us to know. I clearly want to know more about musicologists, especially women, in a field, such as classical music, that is dominated almost primarily by men. I think that the article could be improved by having more details about the history of women becoming musicologists, how the practice began, how the academic atmosphere improved to allow women to become more prominent and how their theory has impacted musicology today. I believe that the article is underdeveloped. The originator of the post had the right idea and I appreciate what they were doing, but it definitely needs more details and to be fleshed out further.

Optional activity

 * Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback

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