User:The Computer Consigliere/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Economic history

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose the economic history article because I've always enjoyed economics. On first impression, it seems to meet with the standards expressed for Wikipedia articles--it provides a deepening level of information from the first sentence to the first paragraph to the remaining sections, appears to have well-cited sentences, and links for further reading.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section - the introductory sentence and paragraph described the article at a very high level but was sufficient to tell me what to expect of the content, and the remainder of the lead section did a good job of references to other major sections in a logical format and quick links. It wasn't overly long with only three short paragraphs.

Content - economic history isn't a dynamic topic requiring constant updates, but the article did well to split early work and today's approaches into separate sections. It also reflects updates and citations from publications this year (2021). More importantly, the article did an exceptional job of including references to other Wikipedia articles, including academic journals and societies, an exhaustive list of notable works in economic history, and a large variety of economic historians so the reader can easily move to expand their understanding of the multidimensional topic. If I were to make a criticism, it would only be that the article has a bias towards US and UK economic theory; though I cannot definitively say that there are notable economic historians or research conducted outside the US and UK, it seems a safe assumption.

Tone & Balance - While economic history has the potential to be a politically-infused discipline, the article does not evidence a bias other than the US/UK-centric discussion noted previously.

Sources & References - Citations were plentiful (42) in the article and were made to scholarly sources, with the vast majority made to peer-reviewed journal articles or books and a minor handful to news sources like the NY Times and Atlantic. As noted before, sources ran the gamut from 1933 to 2021. Beyond the citations in the main writeup of the article, references to economic historians and notable works were included separately and appear to be exhaustive as well.

Organization & Writing Quality - In general, the article was well-written and sectioned appropriately. Only one section, the History of Capitalism, seemed to be out of place or orphaned, as economic history includes substantially more than just capitalism; this section could be removed without impacting the content or scope of the article. I did not notice any spelling errors or grammatical issues.

Images & Media - The images included in the article, including a chart of GDP by country and some pictures of notable economists, seemed appropriate and contributed to the feel of the topic. The appear to have been properly cited and included appropriate captions.

Talk Page Discussion - The Talk page is surprisingly short; it appears the discussions have focused on whether to include particular economic theories in the content. I did notice that my idea of removing the History of Capitalism was debated on the talk page ("I don't think this should be on the economic history page. Looking at the authors mentioned in the articles it seems to be primarily a social analysis of the history of a particular type of economic system. There's a pretty big methodological gap and difference in subject between the two" by Samael92).

Overall Impressions - Even though there are some improvements that could be made to the article, in general, it is comprehensive, provides strong links to other Wikipedia articles, and has been kept up to date from a formatting and content perspective.