User:Stonecoil/Evaluate an Article

Virtual Community

Nick Degnan

Not everything in the article is relevant to the article topic. For instance, most of the section “On Communication” seems superfluous since it is not specifically about communication, and rather extensively discusses the opinion of one specific author. Some of this information does seem out of date. Most of the studies mentioned in the article seem to be from the mid 2000s, and since the rapid advancement of technology deeply affects this topic, even a decade or two is a significant amount of time. Statistics about current virtual community participation could be added in order to make this article more tangible to the reader. Overall, it reads somewhat like an opinion piece, and contains many transition sentences that do not fit the style/format of a typical Wikipedia article. Most of the article appears quite biased in favor of virtual communities. Negative aspects of virtual communities seem to be mentioned quickly just to be refuted, instead of fleshed out in any detail. There are gaps between citations that contain information without citations. Additionally, some of the citations fail to contain links, or are not user-friendly. An example of this is one sentence for which the citation refers to a whole book, with no page numbers specified. Fortunately, the sources do seem to be mostly academic in nature, with the source of bias probably coming more from the author of the Wikipedia article than from the sources themselves. The talk page consists mostly of constructive criticisms about the pages content. People are suggesting cutting out the parts that are opinionated and poorly worded in lieu of Wikipedia’s standard cogent and objective formatting. I either could not find the rating for this page or currently there is no rating. This topic differs from the ones we’ve discussed because it does not present the topic in a way that is both factual (including accurate and useful citations) or objective. It is written more like an essay.

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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)
 * Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate.

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?

Content

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 * 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?

Tone and Balance

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 * 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?

Sources and References

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 * 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?

Organization

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 * 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?

Images and Media

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 * 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?

Checking the talk page

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 * 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?

Overall impressions

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 * 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?

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