User:Vanessabear/sandbox

Evaluate an article exercise:

Pseudoscience (Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article because pseudoscience is intriguing and it matters because it is often misunderstood. My preliminary impression of it was that it's bias because it would be tough to stay neutral on a controversial topic.

(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.)

Lead section:

The opening sentence is neutral. Mention of the scientific method to qualify something as science is fair. It becomes bias in the second paragraph when using the words "widespread agreement" that a specific list of subjects are pseudoscience in quotations from a vague source, which proceeds to group things like homeopathy and astrology in the same category as Holocaust denialism and climate change denialism. There should be mention of a range that distinguishes positive-natured pseudoscience from ones fueled by politics and denial, because the negatives take away validity from things that may help people on a personal level, by mere association. Although, this issue is semi-corrected later on in the article by distinguishing passages.

Content:

The subparagraphs consist of adequate coverage of the topic, covering more than the basics, but there's still room for more information and examples.

Tone and Balance:

There is not much mention that things humans may not understand or haven't evolved consciousness for yet, shapes reality in a grand scheme of life, in comparison to the strict dominant view. It narrows down humans and their abilities to left-brain thinking, and neglecting the other half of the brain, metaphorically half of the story we cannot see, to be able to perform the scientific method. It seems like a write-off of anything that exists that isn't physically tangible and can't be measured, with implications that those things are not real because it's subjective rather than universal. There is a tone that pseudoscience is a permanent condition and has no room for discoveries in subjects, like if in the future new information is discovered that provides proof and ability to conduct the scientific method. To balance out the viewpoint, it should state that that pseudoscience is not science until proven otherwise, to make both sides of the coin happy. It's safe to say that science involves trial and error, and evolution of knowledge. This article has a complicated and varying view of defining science.

Sources and References:

There are over 100 sources and references. This leaves a lot of space for getting diversified and cohesive information. It makes it harder to check with the overwhelming amount, but I can note that some are news articles and others are research papers.

Organization and writing quality:

This article is not at its fullest potential of organization or professionalism, due to the variety of differing information.

Images and Media:

This article includes four photos, which makes the page look more official, but these photos are places more towards the beginning of the article and don't follow through to the end, which makes it seem like the page just gave up, and makes it less exciting to read in the lengthy last half that only contains an abundance of words with no visuals.

Talk page discussion:

This is a B-rated article. The talk page mentioned some ideas I already critiqued. There was a lot of controversial discussion. I wasn't too surprised that Wikipedia put caution sign reminders of how people should perform on this site.

Overall impressions:

My overall impression is exactly like the B-rating, it is decently accurate but not perfect. That is understandable due to many opposing opinions.