User:Wyogirl1/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Gender studies

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it has a clear and direct connection to this course. I also think that evaluating this article will help me to have a fuller understanding of the field of gender studies and its goals. I have never taken a gender studies course so I believe that this article will help me improve my basic understanding of the field.

Evaluate the article
Lead

The first sentence in the article is clear, concise, and general enough to serve as an introduction to the full article. The lead of this article references the history of gender studies, the interdisciplinary nature of gender studies, and briefly mentions criticisms of the field, which are the article's main sections. The lead does not include any information not present in the rest of the article, besides it's brief overview of the field. Finally, the lead is concise, easy to read, and broad enough to be representative of the entire article.

Content

All of the article's content is related to the development and the current state of the field of gender studies. All of the content appears to be up to date and includes references as recently as 2021. In my opinion, there is no missing or out-of-place content in this article. All of the content in this article serves to form a complete understanding of the field of gender studies and the complexities that exist within it. The article also helps to fill a Wikipedia equity gap. It directly addresses gender issues and dynamics in Asia and Polynesia, and how this is addressed.

Tone and Balance

This article appears to be neutral, using academic language and a variety of perspectives. There are not overly biased claims, and several points of view are represented, especially in the "criticisms" section. Fringe opinions are clearly stated and mostly exist in the "criticisms" section. The article does not aim to sway readers one way or another, but rather to provide an unbiased overview of the field.

Sources and References

All facts in the article are accompanied by in-text citations. To my knowledge, the sources reflect the literature available, including older literature on the history of the field. Nearly all of the sources are very current, with the exception of sources used in the "influences" section, which are obviously older. The authors included in the references section appear to be diverse both in race and gender identity aspects, which is of course essential to understand the field of gender studies. The sources are almost exclusively taken from peer-reviewed sources and journal articles. However, not every source has a link, making it difficult to evaluate all references.

One section, about Judith Butler, relies only on primary sources and has no peer-reviewed references. This needs to be fixed but this issue is well identified to readers.

Organization and Writing Quality

The article is well organized and easy to follow, even as a reader without much prior knowledge on the subject. The language is also all academic while being palatable to all readers. There are no clear grammar or spelling errors.

Images and Media

There are only two images in the entire article. The article is long and dense and would benefit, in my opinion, from the use of more pictures to enhance the written content. I would not say that the article is visually appealing. However, the photo was taken by the editor who posted it, so it does not violate copyright rules. The caption on the photo is also clear.

Talk Page Discussion

The discussion on the talk page involve including more sources and contextualizing more material on the page. These are both improvements that I believe would benefit this article. There is also discussion of the complexities of the topic at hand, including a comment about adding more diverse authors and rethinking the use of works by some authors.

The article is rated as a level-5 vital article and is rated C-class on the content assessment scale, meaning that it is missing important content. It has been used as a part of courses at Idaho State and CSUN.

The discussion on this page is more niche than our class discussions, which make sense as the talk page's main goal is improving the accuracy and representativeness of the article.

Overall Impressions

At first glance, this seemed like a perfectly well-rounded article to me, because the article provided diverse perspectives and a plethora of peer-reviewed sources. However, at a closer glance, the article seems to be a bit lacking, which can be derived from both the talk section and Wikipedia's ratings. The article could be improved by adding more diverse sources and making sure all sources include links so that readers can be better informed. Much like the field of gender studies itself, this Wikipedia page should be in constant development.