User:StolteKate/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Natural disaster

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
Natural disasters have a great impact on the Earth's ecosystem and economy. Natural disasters are important to this course, Resources of the Earth, due to the connection of resource management to the occurrence of natural disasters. Natural disasters are more prevalent in certain geographical locations, therefore it is important to be knowledgeable on this subject to be prepared for management and adaptation.

Evaluate the article
Lead section


 * The article includes an introductory sentence which clearly described the topic regarding natural disasters.


 * The lead section is easy to understand, concise, and summarizes contents. However, it would be more beneficial to list examples of natural disasters with their major group of geological, hydrological, meteorological, wildfire, and space disasters, as opposed listing the sub-groups of flood, hurricane, tornadoes, etc. Listing only certain subgroups gives the idea that only those topics will be covered in the article.
 * The 2015 Nepal earthquake is mentioned in the lead section but is not rediscussed in the "earthquake" subheading.

Content


 * The articles content is relevant to the topic as different categories of natural disasters are discussed.
 * The content is up-to-date; however, it would be valuable to provide recent examples of each natural disaster.
 * Every heading is vague and provided limited information regarding the topic causing a knowledge equity gap.

Tone and balance


 * Some citations are from news articles which creates a biased view.
 * Some subsections, such as wildfires and ice storms, are underrepresented as little information is presented.

Sources and references


 * All facts in the article are not backed up by reliable sources, as newspaper articles which are not credible are used.
 * The majority of sources are current and written by a diverse spectrum of authors.
 * However, there is an overall lack of sources. Information is presented and does not include a source; for example, the subsection "blizzards" contains no citation to give credit where the information was retrieved from.
 * There are better and more reliable sources available that can be used as replacement, as well as give additional information to the article. For example, the news article by The Guardian can be replaced with a journal article by Navarrete-Aldana et al. (2014) . This journal article presents the same information in a peer reviewed, unbiased manner that states lightning frequency increases due to specific infrastructure materials.

Organization and writing quality


 * The article is split into sensible sections and is concise. However, the article is very concise to the point that it is lacking important information and further sources.
 * The article has good grammar which makes it easy to read.
 * The article is well organized, but presents arbitrary sentences that require further support.

Images and media


 * The article includes images that enhance the readers understanding. However, these images are not in close proximity to the associated text. This makes the images not visually appealing and frustrating to the reader to match the image to the information.
 * The images are also not referred to during the text which can cause the reader to become confused as to where the images compliment the text or disregard the information presented in the image overall.

Talk page discussion


 * This article has been rated C-Class on the quality scale.
 * This article is part of 2 WikiProjects: WikiProject Disaster Management and WikiProject Death.
 * Wikipedia discusses this topic more broadly regarding its impact on the Earth. In class, carrying capacity was discussed to be impacted negatively from resource depletion and breakdown in civil order. The cause of this resource depletion can be attributed to these natural disasters which affect the agriculture, leading to limiting resources, and a break in social order.
 * The Talk page emphasizes the need for improvement of sources and giving credit where credit is due.

Overall impressions


 * The article's strengths include a good structure and organization of information. Improvements on organization would be to focus on the images and their relation to the text.
 * I would assess the article's completeness as underdeveloped as many natural disasters that are discussed are vague and could provide more information. The paragraphs that have no source need to be addressed immediately as this would be an act of plagiarism.
 * It could be discussed on a Talk page if it would be more suitable to have the section "Disproportionate impact on women" as a separate article. This section introduces a diverging topic that focuses on the socioeconomic aspects following natural disasters.