User:Vmc24/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Disability and disasters

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I have an interest in how disabled people survive disasters and what resources they are provided with, as well as how disasters can affect their overall quality of life. I think the article is important because I, personally, have not seen any resources advertised toward disabled people in the event of a disaster. Therefore, I believe there could be a large disparity between aid given to able-bodied people vs. disabled people. My preliminary impression of the article was that I largely agreed with what was written. However, I then recognized that the article was very opinionated and was not coming from a neutral standpoint.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section Although the lead section of the article includes an introductory sentence that is concise, the sentence does not clearly describe the article's topic. The sentence is not definite and could be taken as an opinion. The lead does include a brief description of the article's major sections under the table of contents. The lead does not include information that is not present in the article. The lead is very concise, but it does not provide enough clear information as to what the article is about.

Content The article's content is relevant to the topic. The content is relatively up to date. However, many of the sources are from around fifteen years ago, and I believe there could be some new sources relevant to the topic from the past five years. There seems to be a lot of content missing from the article as it is very short and the information can be difficult to read and comprehend. More information should be added under the "Disability and disaster management planning" section that goes into more detail about organizations that deal with this issue, or the lack thereof. The article addresses a topic related to historically underrepresented populations.

Tone and Balance The article does not come from a neutral standpoint, and includes opinionated statements. There are claims that feel heavily biased toward the position that there is not adequate disaster relief for people with disabilities. The viewpoint that there is not adequate relief is overrepresented, and there is an underrepresentation of laws, organizations, and plans that do exist to aid those with disabilities in the event of disaster. Minority viewpoints are not accurately described as such and are not prevalent in the article. The article attempts to persuade the reader in favor of the position that there is almost no disaster relief for people with disabilities.

Sources and References All facts in the article are backed up by secondary reliable sources. The sources are thorough and reflect the available literature on the topic. The sources are current, but could be updated to reflect the past five years. The sources are mostly written by a diverse spectrum of authors, and include historically marginalized individuals. However, three out of eighteen sources come from the same author. There are better sources available. The links to the sources work. One source is not hyperlinked.

Organization and writing quality The article is not well-written. It is not easy to read the article. There aren't any grammatical or spelling errors. The article is broken down into major sections. However, there are only three major sections that are poorly organized and fail to properly provide information on the topic.

Images and Media The article does not include any images or media.

Talk page discussion Conversations taking place behind the scenes of the article include discourse about sources and tone, as well as modified external links. The article is a part of three WikiProjects: WikiProject Disability, WikiProject Disaster Management, and WikiProject Autism. For WikiProject Disability, the article is rated as Start-Class on the quality scale. For WikiProject Disaster Management, the article is rated as Start-Class on the quality scale and Top-Importance on the importance scale. For WikiProject Autism, the article is rated as Start-Class on the quality scale and Mid-Importance on the importance scale. The way Wikipedia discusses this topic differs from the way we have discussed it in class in that Wikipedia does not provide many external events that have taken place, nor does it delve into the laws surrounding the topic.

Overall Impressions Overall the article is weak and poorly organized. The article does a good job at providing a number of diverse sources. However, the article can be improved by adding more researched information that provides a more clear overview of the topic, as well as including different viewpoints. I think the article is underdeveloped and needs many more sections that are better organized and potentially include images and media to help the reader understand the topic. ~