User:StaceyLeee/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Theropoda

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because my partner and I are looking to pick an animal in the Theropoda clade for our design project. At first glance, this article looks like it contains a lot of information since it has a long list of subsections and many references.

Evaluate the article
The lead is short and concise, giving the reader a brief introduction to this particular clade of dinosaurs. The final sentence of the lead also introduces the Theropods relation to modern day birds, which will be revisited in the final sections of the article.

I appreciated that the biology was subdivided into 10 categories. However, I felt that the final category labeled "Swimming" felt a bit out of place. I understand that the ability to swim is an important feature to include in the animal's biology, but I felt that it could have been added into the Forelimb Morphology or Forelimb Movement section especially since only one study was referenced to support a hypothesis for a swimming Theropod. I also liked that certain sections included Theropod specific information, while providing the link to the main article for the reader to reference back to.

One of my favorite things about this article is the inclusion of a family tree with illustrations. The only downside is the over generalization of Theropods relation to birds. In the illustration you can see two dinosaur like creatures, then right next to it is a pigeon. The other images seem to be well captioned and are linked to its appropriate references.

The information presented in this article seems to come from a wide variety of references including books, peer-reviewed articles and studies, online articles, etc., and they all have working links that take the reader directly to the source.

The talk page shows that this article is actually listed as a C-class, meaning that it is substantial but it is either missing information or contains irrelevant information. While the quality is on the lower end of the scale, the article topic is considered of high importance because it provides extensive information to general readers. Most of the contributors of this article seem very interested in maintaining the accuracy and quality of information presented. They have constructive discussions and you can see they have made appropriate corrections afterwards. There is one discussion that I found a bit inappropriate because they did not present their arguments in a professional tone.

Overall the information presented in this article was helpful in gaining basic information on Theropods. I think it is well-developed, but can still be improved upon. With more research, additional sections can definitely be added. This can include Theropod genetics (which was briefly discussed in the Talk Page), metabolism, ecological role, etc.