User:Lydiaham/Evaluate an Article
 | Evaluate an article
Complete your article evaluation below. Here are the key aspects to consider: Lead sectionA good lead section defines the topic and provides a concise overview. A reader who just wants to identify the topic can read the first sentence. A reader who wants a very brief overview of the most important things about it can read the first paragraph. A reader who wants a quick overview can read the whole lead section.
ContentA good Wikipedia article should cover all the important aspects of a topic, without putting too much weight on one part while neglecting another.
Tone and BalanceWikipedia articles should be written from a neutral point of view; if there are substantial differences of interpretation or controversies among published, reliable sources, those views should be described as fairly as possible.
Sources and ReferencesA Wikipedia article should be based on the best sources available for the topic at hand. When possible, this means academic and peer-reviewed publications or scholarly books.
Organization and writing qualityThe writing should be clear and professional, the content should be organized sensibly into sections.
Images and Media
Talk page discussionThe article's talk page — and any discussions among other Wikipedia editors that have been taking place there — can be a useful window into the state of an article, and might help you focus on important aspects that you didn't think of.
Overall impressions
Examples of good feedbackA good article evaluation can take a number of forms. The most essential things are to clearly identify the biggest shortcomings, and provide specific guidance on how the article can be improved. |
Which article are you evaluating?
[edit]Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
[edit]I chose this article because I am interested in the demographics of the US, and because I wanted to try an article outside of the psychology field. This matters because it helps us understand how the population may be affected by popular religious beliefs by region. My initial impression was that this article was well formatted with a lot of information.
Evaluate the article
[edit]The lead section was a bit long, but overall, provided a clear picture of both the background of U.S. religious traditions as well as the changing demographics of religious practice over time. The divisions of major sections is not super obvious, but the lead hints that it will be based on different types of religion and perhaps in chronological order. It's not quite as concise, but there is a lot of info to cover.
The content is balanced and covers a wide range of topics. It was updated recently and seems to have relevant and recent information. I didn't notice any key information missing.
It seemed pretty balanced to me, without a major bias towards any one viewpoint.
There were a lot of cross-referenced articles. The authors included a variety of references for each subtopic, which helps credibility. Some census data, surveys from reputable organizations like the Pew Research Center, published encyclopedias, and traditional news sources like CNN, were some of the different sources used. The links seemed good.
Organizationally, this article was good, but not perfect. The intro was a bit long, but most sections were concise without being too sparse. Spelling and grammar were both done well. The article was split into clear sections which were logical.
Images were used periodically to depict different religious places of worship and other paraphernalia. They were captioned well, giving detail and citations.
Conversations in the Talk page were focused on syntax and ensuring an unbiased viewpoint. The article was rated B-class, as were most subtopics.
The best thing to develop this article is to update with more recent data, some of the data was from as early as 2004, so potentially finding new sources for similar studies that are more recent and reflect changes in the population.