User:Zh3538/sandbox

Article Evaluation
Maternal Behaviour in Vertebrates

I chose to evaluate this article because it relates to animal behaviour, specifically, maternal behaviour, which I find quite interesting. Another reason I chose to evaluate this article is because it is a C-class article, and I would like to find ways that it could be improved.

Lead Evaluation
The introductory sentence fails to relay the main topic of the article. The lead does not include a brief description of the article's major sections. It does briefly describe mammals, which is expanded on later in the article but the lead also has a lot of information that is not touched on anywhere else in the article (E.g. Parental risk). The lead is overly detailed and lengthy. It does give the reader a good idea of what to expect in the main part of the article.

Content Evaluation
The content in the article is relevant to the topic of maternal behaviour in vertebrates and the information is up to date. There is a lot of information missing in the content, including further classification (E.g. Subclasses of mammals). The content does not talk about all the different types of vertebrates as the title of the article ("Maternal Behaviour in Vertebrates") makes it seem like. For example, the article does not have any information about maternal behaviours in fish or amphibians (two large classes of vertebrates).

Tone and Balance Evaluation
The article is not neutral when comparing maternal roles versus paternal roles in caring for offspring. The article is largely over representing the viewpoint that maternal roles and maternal behaviour have significantly larger implications on vertebrae than paternal roles and paternal behaviour. The article tries to persuade the reader that maternal roles and behaviour are more important that paternal roles and behaviour when it comes to raising offspring. The article does not provide equal amounts of information on paternal care, behaviour and roles on raising offspring, as it does on maternal care, behaviour and roles.

Sources and References Evaluation
There are many facts in the article that are not backed up by a secondary source of information. However, the sources that are present are thorough sources. They are all academic papers and/or journals. The sources are current and the links to the sources work well.

Organization Evaluation
The article is not concise, clear, not easy to read thus, it is not a well-written article. With that being said, the article is well organized as it is broken down into sections which reflect the main points of the topic. Although rare, there are some spelling and grammatical errors.

Images and Media Evaluation
The article does not include any images. This is a major flaw as images are an important learning tool for the reader as they help further entrench the information that is being read.

Talk Page Evaluation
There are no conversations present in the Talk Page. The article is a part of a few WikiProjects including WikiProject Animals, WikiProject Evolutionary Biology, and WikiProject Ecology.

Overall Impressions
The article's overall status is C-class. The strength's in this article include the layout and organization of the information. There is plenty of room for improvement in this article. Some ways to improve the article include providing more sources for the facts listed, as well as including more information to encompass the whole vertebrate subphylum (including information on fish and amphibians) instead of only talking about mammals, fish and birds. The article also needs to be expanded to include more information on birds and reptiles as one paragraph can not possibly entail the maternal behaviour of these classes. This brings me to the conclusion that the article is far from complete and it is very underdeveloped.