User:Skelevander/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?

Acrylic paint

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?

I am an experienced acrylic painter and therefore will be better able to determine whether the information given is accurate or high quality at face value. Also, I've found that Wikipedia articles about especially newer art mediums are often bad since it can be difficult to find unbiased sources about them (often information is affiliated with a commercial brand), so I thought this article would have good content for evaluation.

Evaluate the article

The lead starts kind of strong but rapidly devolves. The first sentence is alright, "Acrylic paint is a fast-drying paint made of pigment suspended in acrylic polymer emulsion and plasticizers, silicone oils, defoamers, stabilizers, or metal soaps." perhaps going into too much detail in the second half. Someone wanting a brief summary of acrylic paint is not likely to want to know every potential substance in the mixture, so many of these can be added to a later sentence. Fast-drying is an important property, however I think saying most acrylic paints are water based (included in the second sentence) is equally important and should be moved up to the first. the rest of the first paragraph is a good summary. The second paragraph is problematic since it introduces the use of acrylic paint in houses, which is very different to its use in art. The rest of the article becomes somewhat confusing because it is unclear whether it is talking about acrylic paint's use in houses or art, and what it was initially designed to do. Perhaps the article should be split in two, one about artistic use and the other about home/industrial use. In fact, a user suggested something similar in the talk page.

The content of the article is primarily about the use of acrylic paint in art, which makes the second lead paragraph about house paint more confusing. In terms of artistic use, the article covers a good range of things someone would want to know, like the varieties of acrylic paint and its differences from other types of paint. The history section is underdeveloped and not caught up with the present. many relevant manufacturers are not included. Some sections are blatantly wrong (even according to their sources), for example the "Difference between acrylic and watercolor paint" section is both poorly written and very incorrect in its content. The page does not talk about how acrylic paint is a very accessible medium due to its relatively low cost and entry skill level. This is an important property of acrylic paint and one of the reasons it is so prevalent today compared to the more historically popular oil paint. The article could perhaps use a section on specific artists who use acrylic paint and why.

The article is fairly neutral. Looking at the talk page, it appears as if some self-promotional material was removed in the past. It is biased towards artistic use of the paint.

The majority of the sources used are from art websites or paint manufacturers and are not scholarly. It is difficult to find scholarly sources on this topic, though, since acrylic paint is a recent medium (invented in the 1970's) and does not have much historical context because of that. Sources published by paint manufacturers can perhaps be biased toward the paint or specific qualities of it, since they do not want to disparage their product. Many long passages are based off a single source, which may be problematic. Many sources are from internet archives such as https://web.archive.org/. I am unsure if this is a problem or not.

Some pieces of the article are well written, however many are not. Some sentences are confusing and seem out of place. For example, this is the first sentence of the second lead paragraph: "Water-based acrylic paints are used as latex house paints, as latex is the technical term for a suspension of polymer microparticles in water." The second half of this sentence derails the first and goes into too much detail, which makes the rest of the paragraph confusing. Some sentences lack sufficent detail to be understood well, like "Otto Röhm invented acrylic resin, which was quickly transformed into acrylic paint." This sentence lacks context about who Rohm was and why he invented acrylic resin. The second half of the sentence is confusing due to the use of the word "was," signifying that the specific resin invented by Rohm was made into acrylic paint, when it was appears to have been others over time who developed it into paint. the relation between resin and paint is also not explained. This is an issue throughout some portions of the article.

The sectioning could be done better, and the separation between industrial/scientific/artistic information could be improved. Some sections may be better suited to be subsections of larger topics, like the multiple sections about differences between acrylic and other paint types.

The images used in the article are not bad, though there could be more of them. More images of acrylic artwork and possible effects would be a good supplement to the article's content.

The talk page is pretty minimal, often with just one comment per section. some users complain about lack of detail about a certain topic but then do not write it themselves.

The most effective parts of the article are definitely about the types of acrylic and its uses, since I infer that these topics have more sources written about them by paint manufacturers. sources could overall be better and the poor organization and writing of the article makes it hard to follow at times. The history section and lead are the sections in most dire need of editing. The article has good bones, but needs reworking to make it coherent and usefully informative.