Evaluated Article: The Medium is the Message[edit]

I have chosen to evaluate this particular article to get more basic background information on this phrase as well as to ensure that this subject consists of reliable sources, summarizes key points, and that the article has an overall clear structure.

Lead[edit]

This article contains an introductory section that gives an overall description of Marshall McLuhan's phrase and what it means. It is also concise and summarizes the keypoints of the article apropriately. The lead defines the phrase as well as who Marshall McLuhan is. The lead also discusses where the phrase originated from which was from his book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. However, the section is not spearated by a table of contents in this article. The lead doesn't include any information that is not also present in the article.

Content[edit]

The article's content is relevant to the topic of new media. The article discusses Marshall McLuhan's theory and definition of media. The content of the article is up to date. There is no content within this article that is missing or doesn't belong

Tone and Balance[edit]

The article is neutral and does not include any claims that appear to be heavily biased nor does it contain any information that persuades the reader to be in favor of or against a particular position. Overall, the article is neutral and contains only factual information about Marshall McLuhan's theory and does not include information that could cause the readers to be persuaded in any way.

Sources and References[edit]

Most of the facts in the article have reliable sources. However, there is one instance in the article where a reliable source is needed. There is a sentence within the article that claims that the title of McLuhan's book was said to have been a printing error. However, there are no citations to support the claim. The links within the articles work properly. However, the article could use improving by adding seondary sources. The sources used within the article include a scholarly journal (MediaTropes eJournal) , a podcast (Guardian Big Ideas Podcast, and Mcluhan's book titled Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. These sources are thorough and contain information on the topic. The podcast specifically, includes multiple interviews from McLuhan himself in 1965, 1967 as he further discusses and breaks down the phrase "the medium is the message" and " the medium is the massage". These sources are current and were published in the years of 1994, 2018, and 2019.

Organization[edit]

Overall, the article is well written and simple to read. However, the article is not organized into sections until towards the end of the article where the "See also" and "References" headings appear. There are not any table of contents that reflect major points of this topic. The content of the article itself is not organized into sections. As a result of lack of organization, I organized the article to where a table of contents is present. The changes I made include adding the "McLuhan's Theory" section and making "See also" and "References" a page title. There was a minor gramatical error within the article that I corrected in the article. In the second paragraph of the article, there is an incomplete sentence. The sentence reads "And the character of the medium is another message which can be easily overlooked." I edited this and removed the period prior to the sentence starting so that it would no longer be an incomplete sentence.

Images and Media[edit]

This article includes an image of Marshal McLuhan. The image gives the audience an idea of what Marshal McLuhan looked liked. However, it does not add to the understanding of McLuhan's theory. The image is not well captioned. The caption of the photo reads " The phrase was coined by Marshall McLuhan." The content of the caption does not relate to the photo and vice versa. The image also lacks a copyright tag. The image is laid out in an appealing way. The image of Marshal McLuhan appears on the right side of the article.

Checking the Talk Page[edit]

The talk page consists of discussions about spelling, disagreements regarding the phrase "the medium is the message", and recent revisions. Other conversations include thoughts on McLuhan's theory. Someone even disagreed that the medium "clearly isn't the message if you interpret it literally." Some Wikipedians even noted that the article read like a term paper and mentioned some of the edits that were made to the article. Other Wikipedians mentioned that they rearranged several paragraphs in order to imporve the article. Other conversations also consisted of how details regarding the origin of McLuhan's phrase was incorrect. Based on the conversations from the talk page, the article seems to have improved tremendously throughout the years as Wikipedians have added and removed information when neccesary.

Overall Impressions[edit]

Overall, this article had very few errors. The contributors of this article did a good job of ensuring that the content relating to McLuhan was accurate. They also did a good job of ensuring that the article used proper grammer. I think that the article is well-developed. The article had reliable sources and they were easy to access through the available links within the articles. The article could use improving by adding secondary sources. The article could also be improved by adding a citation to the final sentence in the first paragraph in the "McLuhan's Theory" section.