User:Tahliafarr/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Fossil fuel - Wikipedia

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I choose the article titled "Fossil fuel" as it directly relates to a topic we have covered in class. It is important to evaluate this article as fossil fuel emission is currently a major problem, specially how we mine specific fossil fuels and their effect on the environment. Before reading the article, my preliminary impression of it was that it had multiple sub headlines with important information, and I was excited to dive into the page.

Evaluate the article
Lead section:

- The introductory sentence is concise and informative, and directly explains what a fossil fuel is

- The lead briefly describes certain sections that are in the article, specially the environmental and economic effects. They also describe the role of the industrial sector and their plan to decrease fossil fuel emissions.

- I think the lead was a tiny bit overloaded with information and contained a section that I could not find in the rest of the article. It discussed different agencies and agreements on the decrease of the emissions and their effect on the climate crisis, however the detail on these treaties is not mentioned in the main segments of the article.

Content:

- The content of the Wikipedia page is relevant to the topic as each of the subheadings specifically states their relevance to fossil fuels and why it is important that they are discussed.

- The page was last edited on Jan 23 of 2023, showing that new changes are being continuously made to better improve the information on the page.

- I think this article did a wonderful job on explaining important properties of fossil fuels and how they contribute to climate crisis and other environmental issues. I think there could have been more detailed information on the economic impacts of fossil fuels, especially since their last statistic was from 2018. I think the article also did a great job on how fossil fuels (detailing specific ones like coal, carbon and natural gases) can lead to illness and death in many communities across the world.

Tone and Balance:

- I believe the article is written in a neutral tone as best as possible with the information presented. It is known that fossil fuels have a negative impact on many themes within science and the environment and I think the writer did a good job to portray that.

- I believe that the economic impacts of fossil fuels is under-explained as the last source that was quoted in this section is from 2018, making the information 5 years old. I think new sources need to be evaluated and new statistics need to be established.

- This article does a good job explaining the issues and background knowledge needed to understand fossil fuels and their emissions without putting a bias or swaying the audience.

Sources and References:

- All of the sources provided in the reference list at the end of the page are from reputable websites, publishing's or books that are quoted to provide correct and useful information

- Even though there are a ton of sources, not all of them are current. Some of the oldest sources are from 2009, making me think they should be updated, as information on this topic often can be updated quite frequently.

- The links I checked do work and provide accurate information on fossil fuels.

- I believe the sources in this page are quite variable (many of which are reputable websites and published papers)

Organization and Quality:

- This Wikipedia page was easy to read and the language was concise and to the point in most sections of the page. The only time the information got a word heavy was when different organizations and agreements were discussed. The first sentence of every section was concise and allowed the reader to better understand the topic right away.

- No grammatical errors that I can see

- The article is broken down into sections that allows the reader to understand the topic and not get confused.

Images and Media:

- Yes, the article includes multiple images that enhance the readers experience to better understand and follow along with the topic.

- The captions of the images allow the reader to understand what they are and the significance of the image to the page (we have a variety of images, graphs and photographs that enhance the topic of the page).

- The images are versatile and laid out in a visually appealing way that allow the reader to continue understanding the different sections of the page

Talk Page Discussion:

- In the "talk" section of this page, there are multiple conversations about how to edit the page correctly and certain topics that need to be addressed. One specific conversation that stood out to me, was a thought I previously mentioned, about how the statistics need to be updated as most of them range from being anywhere from 5-10 years old.

- For all of the Wikiprojects involving science, environment and climate change, this article is rated of high to top importance.

Overall Impression of the Article:

- Overall, I liked the article as I believe it shows the important information regarding fossil fuels and their emissions, but selectively includes the most important information.

- I enjoyed the layout of the page and the sections the author decided to break the topic into

- I think the article could improve on updating the resources it has used to provide the statistics, for example in the Illness and Death category, the last updated statistic for deaths caused by global air pollution was done in 2018.

- I think the article was developed well, but could use some adjustments to the sources and information used.