User:Trentjohnson17/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Water security

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
Water security is a pressing issue for a large portion of the world. I wanted to find an article that had a good amount of information to be able to get practice looking for things that need to be added and things that might need to be changed/edited. This article has lots of information for a C-class article so I thought that it would prove challenging to find ideas for more content to add.

Evaluate the article
Lead section

Within the Lead section there is a detailed first paragraph providing a definition of what water security is as it relates to it as a resource. The beginning of the lead discusses Water security as a premise of sustainability and safety and outlines, in basic terms, at which this premise of water security will be obtained. This informative introduction is then followed by a lengthy mission statement/problem outline from an organization involved with water sustainability and security called the Global Water Partnership. This statement is quoted as the entire passage, which seems like an issue to me because the content of the organization's website is copyrighted. Realistically, this mission statement does not include much more information than is included in the opening paragraph, and anything that is not already included can easily be worked into subsequent introductory paragraphs that elaborate on the current workings of the issue, the benefits of focusing on it, and prospective solutions. It also seems like a slightly biased inclusion since the interested organization indicates that their focus is a mandatory aspect for a better future; it may be or it may not be, but leaving that for the facts to prove would probably be best.

The statement is then followed up by a brief statement on the disproportionate impact of water insecurity in various parts of the world. This portion of the lead section seems out of place for the reason that there is no brief coverage of any other ideas that will be discussed, a problem in itself. By not including general statements on other topics to be covered (for example: fresh water as a resource, international conflict and policies, etc.) this single general statement seems to appear out of the blue. To fix this they could include brief introductions of other topics as well, which should be included in a lead section anyway.

Overall, the lead section is actually not as informative as it should be. It does not discuss things that aren't discussed later in the article, but that is only because it doesn't discuss much outside of the mission statement. The mission statement itself should probably not be included in the manner it is currently, but it does have some useful information in it that can otherwise be used. The objective of the lead section is clearly laid out and you can get a very basic understanding, if slightly vague.

Content

Upon reading the table of contents there appear to be some questionable choices in the article creating some fragmentation in otherwise related concepts. For example, the Threats section talks of the pressing issues relating to fresh water (fitting because the previous section was on Fresh Water), namely water scarcity. The following section is about Research, which is followed by Most Affected Countries. The Research contains both information about studies showing the current state or water scarcity, energy production, finances. This section contains fragmented ideas that would be better suited in each idea's respective section.

As far as recent knowledge goes, only a select few articles were published prior to 2010, practically any that were published prior to 2005 are either manuals or tracked current events that occurred in their respective years. Overall, the article does a good job at keeping to sources within the decade. Although a decade is more than sufficient time for environmental studies to rapidly progress it is clear that the sources have been updated to track and reevaluate recent happenings. There are roughly 10 references to 2020 literature.

All of the content of the article seems relevant to the issue at hand, none of the sections deviate from the issue of water scarcity, preservation, and renewal. The section relating to Water Desalination with Solar energy is severely under sourced and lacking in information. Rather than making a blanket statement that it is possible (again, there is no citation for this), there should be an inclusion of current projects involving this method, any places where this is being tested or intended to be tested, and the basic concept of how it works. A similar problem can be seen in the section relating to Wars. More information is needed on what wars have been allegedly occurring or are predicted to occur in the future over water. It is also important to consider that this will be a contentious point, so providing strong evidence that these were a direct result of water scarcity is required. The wars section can probably be included with a section relating to International/Intranational competition or Threats.

The United States has it's domestic policy as a section, which is good considering the importance and scale of US consumption and policy. I think having other super power and highly populated countries ' policies would further add to our understanding of international politics for this subject. As far as underrepresented views go, I think the inclusion of some of the global Indigenous populations would be beneficial in tackling issues such as over use of the resource in Indigenous lands.

ToneThis article is clearly solely serving the purpose of informing about water as a resource, the current state of its consumption, prospective futures, goals, and policy. For almost the entirety of the article it remains neutral. I did take issue with a few uses of single words that did make a select few sentences imply bias or calls to action. Under the Blue Peace section the author writes that it is a "unique" approach. While it may be an unexplored approach, that needs to be demonstrated before making such a claim, and not by an individual with stake in the concept such as the one quoted following the sentence. Next, there is a sentence that claims "need" for procedures and organization in the conservation sector (in the Water Utility Security section). This seems like a call for action regarding this topic. It is not cited and it is not neutral. An easy fix for this would be to indicate that researchers have drawn conclusions that these things will be on the top of priority lists or future developmental plans, but only if a citation for who has drawn that conclusion is available. Otherwise this single sentence (which exists in a paragraph of its own, leading me to believe that it was added by a separate author) needs to be removed.

Balance

Although pretty neutral in presentation of facts, the article tended to only present viewpoints relating to the utmost importance of water security and the current state of water scarcity. I would like to highlight 3 issues I have with this. First there is the issue of wars being spurred by water scarcity, assuming it is that pressing of an issue. One article I found takes the informed viewpoint that there have been no wars directly spurred by water scarcity. The Wikipedia article simply states that wars may be a result and provides a citation to an article supporting this prospect. I find it equally important to include a citation refuting this prediction such as this one by Dolatyar and Gray. At the very least, the article could make mention of the fact that intervention may be required, but the prospect of future wars is still low in the view of some analysts.

As I previously mentioned, the inclusion of a passage from a mission statement as well as the inclusion of stats simply stating that water scarcity is an issue for a large portion of the world gives the indication that water scarcity is a pressing issue without more context. These opening paragraphs give the notion that water may become a rare commodity, and that it is a currently rare for a number of climate issues and rainfall. Yet I found an article very quickly that took a stance stating that while soft intervention is required involving usage of water, the reason is not because of physical water shortages but rather mismanagement. Both of these stances may be true, one may prove more true in the future, or these ideas may develop to intersect. But it is important to mention that there are some who take the stance of physical shortage of water on Earth being an overblown concept.

Lastly, as previously mentioned, viewpoints from Indigenous populations may provide an alternative stance relating to over consumption and poor supply of water as a utility. Often felt to be neglected by governments, their views might bring balance to a conversation often revolving around continued overuse with modifications to renewal of the resource.

Talk Page

This article is rated C-class on the talk page. This means that there may be some information in need of removal, modification, or further support, as I have previously mentioned. There will also be information or sections that need to be added. Some information may be unreliable as well, which needs to be verified.

The page is a part of 6 WikiProjects, 1 lists it as low importance and another lists it as high importance. These projects include Water, Food and Drink, Politics, Technology, Sanitation, and Sustainability.

There are some good conversations involving the reliability of the article. The person who created the article specifically states that conversation and editing is welcome. The contributors have taken the approach of suggesting mergers with other articles (namely Emergency Preparedness (done) and Water stress (done) due to the similarity of the content) for the purpose of consolidated information. Two particular posts highlight serious issues with credibility. One post suggests that a number of sources are unavailable or non existent. This user remedied two of the dead links, but the first two still exist, one of which is used in the Lead section, bad optics for an article that strives for accuracy and reliability.

Another user suggested very recently that some information scientifically false in the Water Footprint section. Unfortunately the original editor has not replied in defense of this section to include his rationale for its verifiability, but there are 4 linked articles attempting to back up the other wise sound premise of reduced water use by alternate means or agriculture. A few conversations actually have responses between editors that ultimately resulted in mergers and maintained article separation. If more of these types of back and forth discussions occurred there might be less dispute on factuality of ideas, or alternatively more disputes on factuality based on each person's background expertise that ultimately improves the reliability of the article.

Sources

As I stated, there are a number of instances where some statements are absolutely not backed up with sources. Some things like final statements in a section attempt to draw conclusions based on the information in the section, but do not provide further evidence for the conclusions inferred (ie. statements like solar desalination of water being cost effective needs to be cited the first time it is said). Unfortunately, some citations are completely unavailable. I counted at least 4 instances where the resource was unavailable (1, 25, 51, 55), the first citation is un available and it is pertains to the reliability of the very first sentences of the introduction. As I said, that is a bad look for reliability.

In some instances, the sources provided do not seem to be the best possible option for what is being cited. For example, The Sun is listed as an unreliable source but one of the citations referenced the Herald Sun as a source for current events. Rather than finding a known fact checking, international news paper, a potentially unreliable one was used for its national coverage. This further adds to the questionability of some of the sources. I also noticed a particular lack of citations to primary literature and studies. There are a plethora of future projection models, studies of current trends, and upcoming and pipelined technology from a scientific and analytic standpoint Yet this article seems to rely primarily on reviews of topics and reports. There is nothing wrong with these sources, but I still find something to be desired in terms of modern research.

Lastly, as previously mentioned, I do not find there to be enough sources for underrepresented/marginalized populations. Especially in a case where these populations are disproportionately affected, having no articles pertaining to these voices seems rather tone deaf and absolutely uninformed.

Overall

Overall, this article is informative if somewhat unreliable. There is questionable word choice that calls into question the neutral tone of some sections, whether intentional or not. There is adequate coverage of the issue at hand, but there appears to be a lack of information on the implications of the problem (wars or the lack thereof, depending on the view being expressed). There is also a a lack of policy component on this article aside from the USA. No doubt a key player in water consumption, there are numerous countries aside from the USA whose policies and consumption should be addressed to better understand the world dynamic revolving around water security (example: UK, Canada, China, etc.). Not only is this one area of severe information deficit, but some general topics are introduced and not expanded upon at all.

I would say this article deserves the class ranking it has.