User:User5843/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Provide a link to the article here: Smelting

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I've chosen an article about smelting due to its relevance to course material and interest in the topic, considering I live in and have worked at a smelter in my hometown. This article is important to evaluate to ensure the information provided is correct since smelting is a common industrial process. Upon reading the article, my preliminary impression of it was that it was a fairly good source of information and was written well.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

After reading the article, the opening sentence of the lead section provided a clear and concise description of the article's subject. In the lead section, only one of the major sections was explained but was not clearly defined, in addition to other major sections. Aside from this, the lead was concise and provided a good overview of the article topic. When looking at the content of the article, everything presented was related to the main topic, and some were up to date. But in some sections of the article, there is information lacking, such as the air pollution section. When evaluating the article's tone and balance, the article provided a neutral viewpoint on the topic and was unbiased. The information is presented in a way that does not sway the reader to one side or the other. Upon reviewing the references, not all of the sources utilized represented good sources, and some of the sources were included twice. In the reference section, both the first and second references provide links to the same source, indicating an improper citation. Some of the sources provided in the article were reputable, including some academic press and peer-reviewed articles, but others included could have been replaced with other peer-reviewed sources. Some of the sources were up to date but most were not, and upon checking some of the links all of them worked. The article was organized in a clear way, with defined sub sections that were related to the main topic of the article. Upon review there were no spelling or grammatical errors observed, and was easy to read. The images provided in the article also supported the main topic, and had clear captions detailing the image contents. The images were consistent with wikipedia's copyright regulations, and were laid out in a visually appealing way. Much of the conversation on the talk page is discussing revisions of content and the reference section to better reflect more current information available. The article is rated a C-Class article and is part of the WikiProject Vital Articles. On the talk page of this article, different users are sharing their knowledge related to the different components of the article to provide a comprehensive description of the topic, whereas in class we are typically provided with a brief overview of the topic that would not cover other information presented on the talk page. Overall, my initial impression of the article was not representative, and upon evaluation was lacking in many sections. Though the article did provide a good lead, some of the content was poorly represented and could be improved with the addition of that missing information. Thus far, the article is poorly developed and could benefit from additional information in some of the sub sections, as well as changes to the reference section with the addition of more reputable sources like peer-reviewed articles.