User:Ruthaxton/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article

This is where you will complete your article evaluation. Please use the template below to evaluate your selected article.

Name of article: Michigan Wolverines men's track and field
Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate. I am very interested in college athletics and this page is about a collegiate sports team. This was also a page with a "C-class" article, a ranking system done by Wikipedia.

Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic? Yes, the first sentence gives an overview of the team and which division they compete in. The next sentence includes supplementary information about the team and their accomplishments in collegiate athletics and also as professionals.
Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections? There is an info box which gives and idea of the sections included.
Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article? No, they discuss every coaching era in the article and their success at the Olympics which were both brought up in the lead.
Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed? The lead is concise but also includes random details which may not be the most important to add into this section. I think that the facts in the second and third sentence should be tailored to be a bit more broad and summarize the overall article.

Is the article's content relevant to the topic? Yes, it includes information about the high athletic achievements (NCAA championships and Olympic championships) and their coaching eras which have undoubtable shaped the program and what it is today.
Is the content up-to-date? The page includes information from the 2016 olympics but stops discussing the schools NCAA achievements and coaching after 2008.
Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong? There is a lot of information about the coaches achievements themselves which I feel is a it unnecessary. These details could be left for the pages of the coaches themselves. I think the page should only include what the coaches have done while at Michigan.

Is the article neutral? Yes, A lot of the information is fact driven. For example, who won the Big Ten championship.
Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented? There is a lot of information about the First coach, Keene FItzpatrick, and the third coach, Stephen Farrel. Their sections are much larger than the rest of the other coaches. They have a lot of information about their personal achievements which, like I said before, could be cut down.
Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another? The article's purpose is more to inform readers about the team and talk about their accomplishments.

Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information? Even though the titles won by athletes are public record, they should all have a source attached. There should be at least one source attached for each fact and right now there are no sources included at all for the championships.
Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic? There is not a lot of literature about this topic but the sources that are used are genuine.
Are the sources current? The sources are included from the year the competition occurs, so they are as up to date as they can be.
Check a few links. Do they work? Yes.

Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read? The charts make the page a quick read and very accessible for readers of all levels. However, the section about the "coaching eras" is very wordy and has poorly constructed sentences
Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors? The coaching eras have paragraphs which are poorly constructed and the sentences are wordy and confusing.
Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic? Yes, the article is broken up into sections. However, the sections are of interesting content and I don't know if they fully support the purpose of the page.

Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic? The article includes pictures of the coaches which is interesting but doesn't add a lot of information. I think that it would have been more helpful if pictures of the athletes were included so there could have been an idea of what the team looked like.
Are images well-captioned? Yes, the captions are clear and concise. They describe what, who, and occasionally where the picture is taken.
Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations? To my knowledge, yes.
Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way? Yes, they are warped into the section of the article that the picture is relevant to.

What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic? They talk mostly about modifying links in the citations and adding the page to a wiki project.
How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects? It is a part of the university of Michigan wiki project, athletics project, and wiki-project running. The article is rated a C-class low importance in all three projects.
How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

What is the article's overall status? The page, overall, has a lot of information but some of it is not relevant to the big target of the article.
What are the article's strengths? The charts make the page easy to follow and read and the infographic at the beginning is helpful to navigate the page.
How can the article be improved? The article can be improved mainly by adding sources to the charts. They also could improve the article by cutting down what is included in the coaches section because there is a lot of information that does not relate to the team and the coaches impact to the team.
How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed? The article is on its way to being complete but right now is missing sections. The sections about the coaches is helpful but there are no sections about the different historic teams of athlete spotlights. These sections about important classes or athletes could help supplement and provide connection to the section about achievements.

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