User:Lauren.lmb242/Evaluate an Article

Evaluate an article[edit]

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

Name of article: Growth medium
I chose this article to evaluate because growth mediums are important for growing any microbe in microbiology and I thought it would be interesting to see what has been written on wikipedia about growth medium.

Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?

The lead does include an introductory sentence and it very clearly and concisely describes what growth medias are and what they are used for.
The lead does include a brief description of the articles major sections but could do a better job at introducing some of the types of media such as enriched media or minimal media. The lead does not run through the types of medias included in the article.
The lead includes only information that is found in the article.
The lead introduces fastidious organisms which should have been introduced in the enriched media section. Besides that, it is very concise.

The article's content is extremely relevant to the topic. The article goes through the types of growth media used for bacterial colonies and also gives some examples of which bacteria would be grown on the different media.
The newest source for the content is from 2005. The content appears to be mostly up to date but some of the media have more research on them now.
The content for enriched media is lacking but the other forms of media in the article have a sufficient amount of up to date information on their uses and composition.

Is the article neutral?
Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
Does the article attempt to persuade the reader in favor of one position or away from another?

The article is neutral and does not have any leading statements towards a certain media or company.
I did not find any claims that appeared biased towards a particular position in this article
There does not seem to be any over represented or under represented viewpoints in this article.
The article does not try to persuade the reader in any way.

Are all facts in the article backed up by a reliable secondary source of information?
Are the sources thorough - i.e. Do they reflect the available literature on the topic?
Are the sources current?
Check a few links. Do they work?

The sections on culture media and minimal media do not have any sources backing them. The whole section on the composition of culture media has no sources at all.
There are many sources available on growth medium and this article uses only 9 sources for the whole article.
The latest source is from 2005. More research on enriched media as well as some more specialized medias have come out and could have been included.
Some of the links work while others are from books so just bring you to the ISBN lookup.

Is the article well-written - i.e. Is it concise, clear, and easy to read?
Does the article have any grammatical or spelling errors?
Is the article well-organized - i.e. broken down into sections that reflect the major points of the topic?

The article is easy to read and concise. It appears very well written.
I did not find any spelling or grammatical errors.
The organization is good. There are sections going through the different growth media.

There are many pictures of different growth media. This helps connect what the media look like.
The images all have captions that describe what you are looking at
The images appear to all adhere to wikipedia's copyright regulations
The images are laid out in a well organized and appealing way.

What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

People are talking about the incorrect usage of mediums rather than media as media is the plural of medium which was fixed. The people are also talkig about some media that are missing and that LB is Luria Bertani. One person also mentions missing sources
The article is rated as a start-class and is of mid-importance. It is part of 2 wiki projects, microbiology and molecular and cell biology.
Wikipedia is discussing this topic very much like we have in class. People are discussing sources of information on media, and what information can be merged. The content is generally good so people are discussing specifics such as grammar and what to combine. The comment on sources was the newest comment which shows people are noticing some of the sources could be updated.

What is the article's overall status?
What are the article's strengths?
How can the article be improved?
How would you assess the article's completeness - i.e. Is the article well-developed? Is it underdeveloped or poorly developed?

The overall status of the article is satisfactory.
The articles strength is the organization of the types of cultures. The write ups on the types of cultures are also good.
The article could be improved with more up to date references, more information on enriched media, information on different types of enriched media., and citations to sources used for sections which are missing a source.
The article is slightly under developed. The enriched media section looks incomplete and does not have a source. Some sections do not have a source but the writing looks complete.

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