User:Toadstoolery/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Reginaldo degli Scrovegni

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose to evaluate this article because I found the topic of usury very interesting. I wanted to delve deeper into this specific topic and the portrayal of an individual who was categorized with it.

Evaluate the article
The lead section of this article begins with a sentence that gives a factual and unbiased explanation of who Reginaldo is. The rest of this section is used to describe the traits that landed Reginaldo in Inferno. The lead covers all of the article's major sections. There is a tangential mention of Reginaldo's son at the end of the second sentence that seems out of place, since the rest of the article pertains to Reginaldo's significance in Inferno. This is not to say that this information should be removed, but more so that more information should be added to justify the placement of this information in the article and ground Reginaldo's existence outside of the fictional representation presented in the Divine Comedy. While the mention of his son could be portrayed as relevant to the topic of usury, it is not elaborated on in any way after this, meaning that it does include information that is not present in the article. The lead is concise in that it does encapsulate everything mentioned in the rest of the article, but I still feel as if some aspects of it could be elaborated on a bit more within the actual article for the sake of relevance.

The content in this article is definitely relevant. Nothing seems out of place. I particularly like that the text provided from Inferno includes the surrounding context of the supposed mention of Reginaldo. It helps aid the person reading the article in understanding the punishment the usurers suffer and paints a picture of the setting in which Dante places Reginaldo. The article seems to be up-to-date, only because there isn't any abruptly surfacing information on the topic. It feels like there really is missing content. The mention of "research into Dante's time period" (in the first section of the article) is ambiguous and does not specify which information helps people recognize this Inferno character as Reginaldo. It seems that the only reliable indication, according to this article, is the coat of arms. In addition, the aforementioned reference to Reginaldo's son seems out of place, but not irrelevant. There could certainly be at least a little more information on him included in later parts of the article.

Despite the potential lack of readily available information, this article is explicitly factual. There is no writer's bias in any of the content, and it focuses more on definition and exposition of Dante's reasons for portraying usurers in this way instead of expressing an opinion on their lifestyle. It is difficult, however, to determine which parts of the article the citations at the bottom of the page are associated with. The sources in the citations area are all books, and only one of them links to an online text that makes the information accessible and verifiable to internet users. When I clicked on the one linked source, it provided a great deal of information on Reginaldo's son and his desire to atone for his father's sins which would have been entirely appropriate for this article, but was for some reason left out. I'm not entirely sure what prompted the exclusion of this information, but I think it would be advisable to incorporate it in the article somehow.

Since the article provides a description of the scenery Dante creates surrounding the usurers, I think it would be a good idea to include some artwork portraying this section of the Inferno. It could serve as a good visual aid to the person reading this section of the article. There are not very many relevant images to be put in the article, but, since there is existing material, I think it should be applied.

Overall, there is adequate information to qualify this as a useful article, but there is a lot of potential for improvement and inclusion of more information. There is a lot to be elaborated on, and it could be useful to more directly reference Reginaldo's son and his connection to the usury that makes Reginaldo infamous.