User:Strobelight94/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Criminology

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article mainly because I have always had an interest in true crime and the history of crime, especially the psychology behind it.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The lead section does a good job at describing the who, what, and why of criminology, with special attention given to the groups involved in the creation of laws. The main issue stems from the fact the article itself is largely concerned with theory, rather than the subjects outlined in the lead section. This could be more of an issue with the article, as the article is largely made up of different theory in the subject of criminology, rather than description of what criminology is/does.

Content

The main content of this article is broken down into: a brief history of criminology, the schools of thought in criminology, types and definition of crime, and a brief section of subtypes. The longest section is the "schools of thought" section, which gives about a paragraph per each school and some slightly longer descriptions further down the list. The information is seemingly up to do, but it is hard to tell as most schools are defined by the scholar discussing those topics, rather than with specific dates.

Tone and Balance

While the article is written in a neutral tone, the main issue I have with this article is that it is heavily focused on the schools of thought within criminology, which is interesting, but all other sections feel lacking in comparison. The opening "History" section is only 3 paragraphs long and only mentions the United States and Europe. While the schools of thought are important, that section could be an article in and of itself, rather than taking up that much space on the article for the entire discipline. Alongside this, the article is very western-centric in general, which is ironic as the main photo for the article is an image of criminals in China. While the article does showcase criticisms of the schools of thought, there is not much discussion of the issues with criminology as a discipline.

Sources and References

Sources are seemingly accurate to the discipline and reflect the large swath of time the discipline covers, with some sources even dating back to the 1700s. There is also a bibliography section at the very end of the article which provides a wide range of books on the subject, although there is only one "external link" in the reference area. There are several "citation needed" footnotes throughout the article though, which could show that it may need to be worked on more.

Organization and Writing

The article is well written and very academic, although some parts of the "schools of thought" section come across as rather dense while other parts of it only include a sentence-worth of information. I do like that the "schools of thought" are sometimes followed up by a school that relates to the previous one, although not all are like this.

Images and Media

As addressed earlier, the main image for the article is one showing criminals in China, which is strange given that there is barely any mention of any non-Western theory or criminologists. The only other image is one of a person mentioned in the "school of thought" section, which seems somewhat out of place, as no other person mentioned in the article receives an image.

Talk Page

Most of the discussions on the talk page of this article are focused around the usage of discipline-specific terminology and disagreements with including certain aspects of the topic. One user does highlight specific links that may be subject to removal, highlighting the specific reasons for their removal. Another user is using this talk page to help craft another article, looking for users with more expertise than they have. Most of the discussions are from over 5 years ago, with the more recent ones focusing on strange questions such as "what is crime?" or critiquing the etymology of "criminology".

Overall Impressions

I was somewhat disappointed by this article, as while I do understand the importance of discussing criminology theory in the article on it, I was not expecting it to take up a majority of the article. I was also let down by how western-centric this article, especially when the main image for it is from China. It would be more interesting if the article followed the lead section and discussed subjects like: the role of criminologists, criminology across the world, prominent figures/works in the discipline, and a more expanded history of the discipline.