User:Swanson04/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Bionics

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose Bionics because it is a subcategory of Biological Engineering which is a subject I'm interested in due to my major, Biomedical Engineering. Bionics is important as a type of technology that will be continuously used in society and therefore everyone should have a good understanding of what it is. My preliminary impression of the article was mostly positive as it gave a good introduction to what bionics is and how the name/idea originated. However, some of the facts and examples in the beginning section seemed somewhat random and didn't really have a coherent order.

Lead Section
The introductory sentence of the Bionics article gives a concise idea of what the article is about and an easily understood definition. In total the lead section gives a good summary of what information will be in the next sections of the article however it goes in to too much detail. It gives us in depth information that I feel should be in the later sections as some points in the lead section discuss information that isn't elaborated later in the article. It isn't overly detailed but the lead section should be more of a concise elaboration of later sections while this one feels more like random facts that are given to the reader.

Content
The content in this article is focused on bionics and appears up to date with examples that come from recent events. Some sections of the content could be more elaborated on such as the history or uses sections since they don't really have that much information and could be expanded on from facts given in the examples section. The examples section is the bulk of the content and, either, other sections should be expanded upon or the examples section should be broken up into smaller sections so the article is more balanced. The article also has a slight equity problem as most of the information is focused on the Western world science/engineering field of bionics while little to no information is given about its Eastern equivalents.

Tone and Balance
The article is mostly written in a neutral tone that just states facts about Bionics, however, there is a few sections that are biased towards the idea that Bionics is a desirable field of study. Basically some sections are attempting to persuade support for the advancement of bionic technology. The content that pushed the benefits of bionics is not followed by any alternative viewpoints so ideas rebutting the benefits of bionics is underrepresented. Fringe viewpoints are somewhat stated as such but more elaboration could be used to assure that the reader is clear on what they're viewing.

Sources and References
A major problem with this article is large amount of facts that are not backed up with any secondary source or citation. A lot of the research seems to be original research. However the sources and reference that are used in the article are thorough and most of the sources are from scientific books about bionics or respected institutions/universities. The information also ranges from the 20th century to modern times so the information used is up to date. The sources used give some of the best information about bionics since they're all mostly from reputable institutions and books, however, the unsourced facts could use reputable sources to back them up. Another problem with sources is that significant amount of the sources are from western (American and European) scientists and institutions. There could be more sources from Eastern cultures as they have information on bionics as well.

Organization and Writing Quality
The writing quality of the article is quite good as most of the article is well written, easy to read, and clear. There seems to be little grammatical error in this article's writing and there are no sections that are written in a way that makes them hard to understand. The organization could be much better. Some of the sections are too long and cover too large of an area so they should be split up into other sections in order to have clear areas of information.

Images and Media
The images already in the article are good choices to display bionic technology and they enhance the understanding of the topic. They are all clearly captioned to describe what is in the photo/video, however the layout of the images is somewhat boring and they could be enlarged to catch the readers eye more as they show important examples of bionics. There could be more images as well. There are tons of examples that are given and showing more images to the readers could help enhance the idea of bionics. None of the images or videos seem to be violating Wikipedia's copyright regulation.

Tale Page Discussion
The conversations that take place in the bionics talk page are mostly about fixing incorrect facts, clearing up information in the article, and the lack of sources for some facts. They have worked to eliminate biased statements that used to be in the article. The bionics article is part of two WikiProjects, WikiProjects Systems and WikiProjects Robotics. The article is rated as a C class by both Wikiproject groups it is part of meaning that more work has to be done to the article. While we only discussed biometrics in class (which is in a way a form of bionics, mimicking the act of human identification) this article goes into a much larger perspective of bionic technology. Further while we discussed if the implementation of biometrics is of value to society, the article has a much broader range of topics on bionics.

Overall Impressions
I think the article is in a good spot as it does give useful information about bionic technology, however it needs a lot more work (especially with sources to facts and organization of information) before its a solid article. Further more images and sections of bionic technology (like more uses or future predictions) should be added to the article. The articles strengths right now seem to be the editors who are checking the sources in the article and are trying to add more important information to the article. As of now I would say the article is poorly developed as it just needs more attention to organization and the elimination of the original research that is present in the article.