User:Stickystingray/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?

Asiatic Lion Reintroduction Project

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?

I chose this article because it directly relates to conservation biology, and I also love animals, so reintroduction projects are important to me in terms of saving species from endangerment/extinction and maintaining biodiversity. This article matters because it describes a reintroduction project for the Asiatic Lion in India to save this subspecies of lion from extinction. My preliminary impression of this article was that it would explain the process of their reintroduction project, why the Asiatic Lion was nearing extinction, and whether the project was successful.

Evaluate the article

Beginning with the lead section of the article, the introductory sentence clearly described the article's topic nicely, and was followed by supporting sentences that outlined what would be further discussed later on. While the lead does not specifically mention that there will be a history section, report section, etcetera, each sentence within the introduction has pieces of information that are more throughly revisited throughout the rest of the article, and does not include information that is not further discussed. The lead is very concise and applicable, showcasing to the reader exactly what will be included in the article within just one paragraph.

As for the content, the article has relevant topics including the history of the Asiatic lions, the workshop and report leading up to the project, the project framework and the reintroduction into the national park, the translocation plan, and the oppositions made by the state government about the translocation. This content is relatively up to date, with the most recent year mentioned being 2020. I do not think that there is any content that is missing or does not belong in this article. At first, I was confused as to why they were talking about the introduction of African lions in Sheopur, but as I read on, I understand why they had included that information. I also did not find this article to have any equity gaps, and did not feel as if it addressed historically underrepresented topics/populations.

The article's tone and balance was very neutral, and did not appear biased. It was informative rather than persuasive, and did not overrepresent or underrepresent any viewpoints. There also weren't any minority or fringe viewpoints throughout that needed to be described. Overall, the article did not attempt to persuade the reader in anyway, and stuck to the facts of the project.

As for the sources and references, the links that were provided work and direct you to the work that was cited. Many of the sources cited were thorough, peer-reviewed journals or articles, with the exception of a few websites, and were written by a diverse spectrum of authors. While some of their sources date back to the late 1990's, the cited works were relatively current, being published within the past two decades. I did not find any facts within the article to not be cited.

The article did not have any grammatical or spelling errors, and was well-written in the way that it was concise and clear. The article was well-organized in terms of major sections as well, however it was a bit hard to read in terms of the order of the sections. It seemed like it could have been arranged better in a way that was more chronological. I found myself going back to sections mentioned previously to better understand the order of events, and I felt that some sections were out of place. For example, I believe that the introduction of African lions in Sheopur was mentioned to preface the concerns of the government that was later discussed at the end of the article. However, the African lions in Sheopur were first mentioned in the 'History' section at the beginning of the article, which left me confused. I don't think that the Sheopur introduction needed its own subsection, as it wasn't extremely prevalent to the reintroduction of the Asiatic lions. If anything, I don't think the subsection should have been at the beginning of the article, as it seemed out of place and premature.

The only media within the article were two maps and two pictures of Asiatic lions. I think that the maps were beneficial in terms of understanding because they have the readers any idea of where different reintroductions had taken place and where the last natural habitat of the lions was. The two images of the lions were helpful in aiding readers to visualize what this species looked like, but I wish they could've included images of lions that were apart of the reintroduction program. The maps were well-captioned, but I think that the photograph of the male lion could have included more detail. The caption, "A male Asiatic lion", is broad and could use more of a description. I also would have liked to have seen photographs of the protective area that the lions were kept in to better understand the layout of the area. The images do, however, follow Wikipedia's guidelines for copyright regulations, and they are laid out in a visually appealing way.

The talk page includes comments in which external links were modified, the article was cleaned up, and paragraphs were removed. These were all listed to have on record, but nobody responded to these modifications. The only conversation held was between the original author and a reader, in which the reader stated that they didn't feel like this article was necessary since the text provided was also contained in two other articles that were already on Wikipedia. The author responded by saying that the article serves the purpose of describing the project in more detail, and so that all of the information was in one place, and the reader didn't respond. This article is apart of WikiProject India, and was rated B-class on the content assessment scale. Our class has not discussed this topic specifically, and we haven't ventured into a chapter about reintroduction projects just yet, so I do not have anything to compare this article to at the moment.

Overall, I think that this article deserves its B-class rating. The article has strengths such as the content, sources, and tone used. However, on the other hand, I think that the images/media provided and the overall organization of the article could be improved. In the future, I would like this article to be put in a better order chronologically, and to have less unnecessary sections. I also would like to see more information in this article overall (if applicable), as it is fairly short and could use more detail. While what the article contains at this time is well-developed, I think that it could be better if there was more information and detail added.