User:Wormygal/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Collective animal behavior

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
The article is a C-class article that is adequately cited. There is some very valuable information about animal group behavior and why it is important to study large groups. My preliminary impression is that the article has great overall structure and a numerous amount of strong references. The sentence structure and flow of the article can be improved and more detail can be added to the article in future edits, which is why I have chosen to evaluate it.

Evaluate the article
The lead section of this article is well written and gives a general overview of the topic Collective animal behavior. The introduction contains a well summarized explanation about the usefulness of studying collective animal behaviour for humans. Information presented in the article is up-to-date and is relevant to the topic of the article. Each section of the article is well developed with a neutral tone and is appropriately formatted. There are some issues with the article regarding sentence structure and flow which can easily be fixed by rephrasing. Some of my suggestions are listed below.


 * "This can include the costs and benefits of group membership, the transfer of information across the group, the group decision-making process, and group locomotion and synchronization."

In the second sentence of the lead section the word "group" is redundant, making the sentence longer than necessary. This sentence could be simplified to, "This can include the costs and benefits of group membership, the transfer of information, the decision-making process, locomotion and synchronization of the group."


 * "An example of such a simulation is the Boids program created by Craig Reynolds in 1986. Another is the Self Propelled Particle model."

This sentence is short and disrupts the flow of the narrative. An improvement of this sentence would be "An example of such simulations would include the Boids program created by Craig Reynolds in 1986 and the Self-propelled particles model."


 * "...the focal animal will seeks to move towards a neighbor. The shape of these zones will necessarily be affected by the sensory capabilities of the animal."

These two sentences in the Modeling Approach paragraph are awkward and can be reworded, "...the focal animal will move towards a neighbour. The shape of these zones will be affected by the sensory capabilities of the animal."

Another critique of the article is the lack of adequate references in the lead and Modeling Approach sections. The lead contains no citations and should be further developed to give more information regarding the topic. The Modeling Approach section has no citations for the facts stated regarding the Boids and self-propelled particles simulation models.

Overall, the article contains valuable information about animal behavior that is supported by strong references. --~