User:Parouz/Evaluate an Article

Article Evaluation

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

• Name of article: Catchiness
• Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate
  • I chose this article as I am personally very interested in the intersection of music and social media. I find music to be a truly boundless language that connects individuals of different backgrounds, cultures, and tongues, regardless of the listeners' depth of music knowledge. On this topic, I have always wondered what exactly causes an "earworm", what factors lead to a "catchy song", and how does social media perceive this phenomenon. By reading this article, I hope to have these questions answered.

Lead

Guiding questions

• 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?

Lead evaluation

The lead successfully defines "catchiness" in a single concise and easy to digest sentence. However, albeit the lead's concise nature, I would actually argue that it is missing a few important details that are integral to capturing a general understanding of the article topic, including but not limited to the four main factors that lead to a song being catchy. It is important for the listener to gain a general understanding of catchiness by just reading the lead. The lead also contains information from a variety of sources including a quote from Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music describing the underlying reasons behind catchiness, and one from Todd Tremlin which lists physical symptoms of listening to a catchy song.

Content

Guiding questions

• Is the article's content relevant to the topic?
• Is the content up-to-date?
• Is there content that is missing or content that does not belong?

Content evaluation

The article's content is very relevant to the topic. The author stays in line throughout the article by skillfully provide supporting evidence of how the phenomenon of 'earworms' came to be. Although the content is on topic, the author could have possibly provided more content and supporting evidence. The article only contains one 'analysis' section and is rather short. As an example of an improvement, I'm sure the article would benefit from adding a section that explores the biological reasonings behind 'earworms'. Lastly, despite the article containing content from sources as recent as two years ago (2017), I suspect that there has been more information published regarding the topic since then. To add on to this, not a lot revisions have been made since the original publishing of the article in 2012.

Tone and Balance

Guiding questions

• 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?

Tone and balance evaluation

Even though the article is neutral, and does not use any personal language throughout, there are certain claims that seem over exaggerated, even with some supporting evidence present. An example of this is "often, a song with few qualities can still become immensely popular due to its catchiness." The choice of words in the phrase immensely popular is overly strong in my opinion.

Sources and References

Guiding questions

• 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?

Sources and references evaluation

The author uses appropriate sources to support the claims provided in the article. The sources include a variety of academic journals, published articles and papers, and news sources. Aside from being slightly out of date as mentioned before, the sources echo the most prevalent information on this topic. I have also checked each citation's respective hyperlink, and it seems as if every source is active as of this moment.

Organization

Guiding questions

• 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?

Organization evaluation

The article is concise, clear, and easy to digest. However, it is quite short and includes only one section that explores several possible explanations for catchiness. This section is well-organized and draws from a variety of scholarly and reputable sources to form an understanding of the psychology of 'earworms'. That being said, including other sections that provide more information on catchiness from different angles can improve this article by a large margin. Possible sections include: a section that focuses on the biological processes that make an 'earworm' possible, a section that details any cures for 'catchiness', or a section detailing the effect of this phenomenon in popular culture and mainstream media.

To my knowledge, the article also lacks any grammatical and spelling errors.

Images and Media

Guiding questions

• Does the article include images that enhance understanding of the topic?
• Are images well-captioned?
• Do all images adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations?
• Are the images laid out in a visually appealing way?

Images and media evaluation

There is no media included in the article. I believe that including appropriate visuals and/or figures can significantly enhance a readers' learning experience as some readers are visual learners.

Checking the talk page

Guiding questions

• 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?

Talk page evaluation

There is one comment in the talk page from 2014. User 'geordie' explains that the article lacks any scientific sources as it views catchiness from a psychological perspective. Therefore, he/she/they have taken the liberty to remove some of the content on the 'Catchiness' article merge anything helpful to the 'Earworm' article.

The article is also part of a WikiProject, yet it has been rated as low-importance on the project's importance scale, and as start-class on the project's quality scale. Therefore, there is a great deal of room for improvement in the article.

Overall impressions

Guiding questions

• 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?

Overall evaluation

The article seems to remain inactive for the most part. Although the material included is well-written, lacks any spelling and grammatical mistakes, and has an organized structure, the article is severely underdeveloped. The article successfully uses a variety of credible different sources to explain 'catchiness' from a psychological/behavioral perspective, but there is minimal information on the biological science that underlies this phenomenon. There is also a lack of information on the societal implications of 'earworms', and the role it plays in popular culture and social media. Including more research on these topics can help the article improve significantly.

Optional activity

• Choose at least 1 question relevant to the article you're evaluating and leave your evaluation on the article's Talk page. Be sure to sign your feedback with four tildes — ~~~~

• Link to feedback: Talk:Catchiness#Article Evaluation