User:VGonzalez7/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Recent African origin of modern humans

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because we recently talked about the the origins of Homo Sapiens in class and I thought that despite the uncertainties and debates that exist surrounding the details, it is quite an interesting topic. At a first glance the article seems to cover quite a bit of information with many reputable sources cited.

Evaluate the article
This article does a good job in its lead section by giving a brief overview of the topic and the following sections of the article without getting too detailed. This topic does have a lot of terms that the average person might not know, so the links to relevant pages or definitions are especially helpful in this situation.

The content of this article delves into the topic in further detail and is up-to-date. It is tricky to say if the content fills an equity gap since it is discussing the origins of humans, but since it is centered around Africa, it could possibly be considered to be filling such a gap. This article also does well in keeping a neutral point of view, which is especially apparent when any dates or interpretations are mentioned to have contentions. Any sites or findings that are debated in the relevant field of study are also noted as such, helping to keep this article as unbiased as possible.

The sources for this article are vast and thorough, and most of them were published within the last 10 years or so. While many of the sources are very reliable research studies or similar publications, there are a few popular news media articles included, which I felt could have been excluded, especially when they were referencing an actual research study that could've been cited instead. There appears to be some diversity in the authors of these references, although this is solely based on the authors' names, so the actual diversity of these authors could be different from how they appear.

The article is well-written; this is a somewhat complicated topic, especially the genetics section, but the article does well at explaining these technical ideas the best it can. There were no grammatical or spelling errors that I noticed, although I could have potentially missed some in my reading. The organization of this article is also done well in an easy to follow way that flows well. There are a few diagrams and images that help illustrate what the text is saying in a very helpful way for the reader. Some of these images are from specific studies, and these are cited appropriately.

The talk page of this article reveals that this page is part of several different WikiProjects (Genetics, Anthropology, Africa, Primates, and Archaeology) and is rated as c-class. There were also some debates about edits regarding dates and wording of the earliest Homo Sapiens, which featured quite a lengthy discussion on why these edits were made (to represent what the majority of the scientific community accepts). The article is a little more confusing than how we discussed it in class, but that could be due to the complicated nature of the topic and my own preferred learning style. It also goes into more detail about the genetic side of things than we did in class.

This article is very well developed and does an excellent job at explaining the topic while connecting it to other relevant topics. I think the only area of improvement for this article would be minor wording and phrasing changes, but I think given the circumstances and complexity of this topic the article explains everything well.