User:Thisnameisforschool/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Parasitism

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I am a biologist by training, so I believe I am able to understand the article enough to evaluate it. This article is classified as a Good Article, which I wanted so that I could see the standards expected of a well-written Wikipedia article. With a very brief skim, I could already tell that there is a plethora of information concerning all types of concepts about the topic of parasitism.

Lead section
The lead section provides a very good, broad definition of parasitism as understood within the field of biology. It goes on to describe the many different types of parasites that we know of, including single-celled and multi-celled organisms. I did think that the quote by E. O. Wilson seemed a bit misplaced in this first paragraph and could have been moved down to a later paragraph in the lead section or into the Cultural Significance section.

Content
As a broad topic, it certainly is not easy to provide a completely comprehensive description of all aspects of parasitism. I thought that there were plenty of topics gone over that would serve as an introduction to the topic and many of which link to other Wikipedia pages where the discussion can be more specific.

It looks like the content is up-to-date, although I don't think that every incremental discovery in parasitology would lead to an edit in this article. I checked the History and there were 5 edits made in January 2024 to date, indicating that the currency of the article was being adequately maintained by contributors.

Tone and Balance
Yes, the article maintains a neutral point of view as expected of scientific articles.

Sources and References
The cited references are numerous and include textbooks, review articles, and other encyclopedic articles. I did notice citations to various non-review studies, which I recall was frowned upon in the training, but they were peer-reviewed so perhaps it's acceptable.

Organization and writing quality
The writing is certainly dense, but well written for the appropriate audience.

Images and Media
The article has lots of great pictures with descriptive captions. I did not check every single picture, but all of the ones that I checked were under Creative Commons licenses.

Talk page discussion
There is not much in the Talk page, suggesting that there was not much dispute in the construction of this article. Actually, the Talk page reveals that this article was edited through a Wiki Education project from a parasitology course at SUNY Plattsburg in 2018.

Overall impressions
It is clear why this article deserved a Good Article status.