User:Vercingetorix2112/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)

I am evaluating the Physical Organic Chemistry article.

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 it because it is an Organic Chemistry article, and thus would be relevant to the Organic Chemistry class I'm taking and its Wikipedia project. I also chose it because it was a specific topic of interest, and because it has a warning banner on the top of the page, indicating it might be a good candidate article to edit for the project. The article seemed to be pretty long and covering the broad topic of the physics/thermodynamics/kinetics of Organic Chemistry used to help understand the basis for why organic reactions happen, why they take the time that they do, and properties of organic molecules.

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.)

Below, I will review the article according to each of the sections in the instructions.

Lead Section
The intro sentence describes the field it is referring to well. The lead section, in just 3 sentences, introduces many of the various subtopics of Physical Organic Chemistry covered later in the article. The sentences are a bit long and could be broken up somewhat. The lead section is relevant, only referring to Physical O-Chem.

Content
There are a large number of sections relevant to Physical Organic Chemistry, and many of them are well-developed in the volume of content. However, the "History" section only contains a single sentence and is thus lacking. Interestingly, the article lists a source under "Further Reading/History" which could potentially be used to expand the History section, but no one seems to have done that yet.

Tone and Balance
Generally, the article refers to factual information, and there aren't a whole lot of controversial topics covered; the tone remains pretty neutral throughout much of the article. However, there are some times when potentially problematic/exaggerating language is used. For instance, when describing the benefits of X-ray crystallography over other spectroscopic techniques, the writer asserts, "Unlike spectroscopic methods, X-ray crystallography always allows for unambiguous structure determination and provides precise bond angles and lengths totally unavailable through spectroscopy" (italics are mine, and refer to the language I find problematic). Wikipedia's article on X-ray crystallography describes some limitations of the method, while this writer's language implies it is failproof.

Sources and References
This is perhaps the component of the article that needs the most work. Some sections, like "Application" and "Chemical Structure and Thermodynamics/Acid-Base Chemistry", lack citations entirely. In addition, even when in the sections where there are a significant number of citations, there are frequent footnotes saying either a specific page in the book being cited is needed or a non-primary source is needed. Despite these drawbacks, this article still tends to cite scientific articles and textbooks as opposed to opinionated news sources, and the links to the sources cited appear to work.

Organization and Writing Quality
The article seems relatively easy to understand, especially for those knowledgeable in Chemistry. The main subtopics relevant to the topic at hand are all present, but as noted earlier, the "History" section needs more development. The "Application" section is the first section in the article, and appears even before the "Scope" section; I think it would be more logical to have "Application" at the end of the article after the linear-reading reader is more acquainted with what Physical Organic Chemistry is, the methods used, etc. I was unable to find any spelling or grammar errors.

Images and Media
Wireframe diagrams are used in most of the figures, and positively contribute to the understanding of the article for those who understand wireframe diagrams and chemical mechanisms. I was unable to find any copyright violations; the images generally have Creating Commons, GNU, other free licenses, or are ineligible for copyright.

Talk Page Discussion
The near entirety of the Talk Page discussion seems to be between a pair of graduate students working to revise the article for a school project and some other Wikipedians in 2013. At the very end of the article there is a section about the article's nomination to Wikipedia's "Did you know?" column. The Talk Page appears to not have been edited since. There may have been other Wikipedians editing the article content since 2013, but probably not major changes or else they probably would have signaled their intent to make changes on the Talk Page. Despite the improvements the pair of graduate students made, the article is ranked "Start-Class", the second-worst rank on Wikipedia's quality scale. The Talk Page also says the article is rated "High-Importance", meaning it should be a priority for Wikipedians to make improvements to the article.

Overall Status
The article covers a broad topic; it is long and well developed in the amount of content in most sections. However, the "History" section needs much more development, and many more citations are needed to make the article more verifiable. Given the article is both "Start-Class" and "High-Importance" it would be a good candidate for improving in the project, but the topic may be too broad and I may instead need to focus on a particular reaction.