User:Valochoa23/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Molecular genetics

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 chose this article because it's the theme of the course I am currently enrolled in and it seems like it needs more work done for such an important area of biology. Before enrolling in this course I had been introduced to both genetics and molecular biology but not to molecular genetics. My first impression was that for being a field that incorporates the central dogma of biology, it has a superficial general idea of the field and needed to be more elaborate. The first thing I noticed was the lack of citations, which definitely impacts the reliability of the information presented.

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.)

As far as the lead section, I think the article presents a good general overview of the topic, which allows people with very little or no background in the area to have a basic idea of what it's about. It is clear, concise and not overly detailed. However, I think the content could be improved and was really surprised to see that one of the fathers of molecular genetics (S. Brenner) it's not mentioned at all. It's also lacking information in the field of plants (plant biotechnology, cloning, GMOS), which is a fairly understudied yet important field of molecular genetics. Even though model organisms are mentioned, the article fails to address how those organisms became models by omitting the key researchers that contributed to their use to this day (Thomas Morgan, S Brenner, Alfred Sturtevant). The article is also missing information about CRISPR-Cas9, which is a very important gene editing tool and came to be what it is today thanks to the innovations in the field of molecular genetics. The tone and balance are good, as the article has a neutral point of view, claims don't appear to be heavily biased and don't attempt to persuade the reader towards a position. Sources and References are needed, and the good thing is that Wikipedia is aware of it, so they encourage people to work on it. The sources and references are fairly up to date, but need to be increased with no doubt. As far as the organization and writing I think they have done an excellent job as the reader can easily follow the ideas with a clear destination. It communicates scientific findings using some technical vocabulary in a good but not oversimplified way. The article presents information in the order readers expect it and need it. Images and media are useful to understand some of the content presented, they are neat and simplify information, which allows it to target a broader audience. All images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations. The talk page discussion is very helpful in understanding the main purpose of the article and its classification indicates the importance of contributions. Some of the points discussed by instructors I had not thought about but agree should be taken into consideration. It definitely helps you think about the edits and improvements that could be made to make it a well-rounded article. Also, being part of the WikiProject makes it a good candidate for improvement.

Overall, the article presents a good general idea of molecular genetics in a communicative rather than informative way. If I am someone completely new at biology, I would find all the information interesting and complete, but if I have some background in the field, I would definitely inquire more elaboration. The organization and writing helps the reader maintain a good transition throughout the whole page. The length is also ideal for a quick brief overview of the topic. In general terms I think editors did an excellent job, they just need to incorporate some key information that would perfectly fit with what's already in the article.