User:Power2 H2O/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: (link) Biofuel: Biofuel
• Briefly describe why you have chosen this article to evaluate - I chose this article because it relates to environmental topics of renewable energy, yet it is a controversial form of energy and I wanted to see if an article on wikipedia can be in favor of or against certain controversial topics.

Lead

Guiding questions

• Does the Lead include an introductory sentence that concisely and clearly describes the article's topic?
  • Yes it does. The lead sentence explains what a biofuel is directly.
• Does the Lead include a brief description of the article's major sections?
  • The lead includes a list of the article's sections with links to the paragraph
• Does the Lead include information that is not present in the article?
  • No, the article contains everything in the lead.
• Is the Lead concise or is it overly detailed?
  • I think it is a bit overly detailed because it has a lot of values with several different units, percentages of biofuel usage, and projections of the growth of biofuel use in the future all in the lead section.

Content

Guiding questions

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

Content evaluation

The articles content is relevant to biofuels because it includes how it's made, where its used by region, its generations, the types of biofuels, its contribution to air pollution, and the current social and political debates about it. Content is recent and provides the latest data on biofuels from 2018. I feel they could have used more content for fourth generation biofuels and could have included a brief description of what kind of crops and biomass is used specifically to make biofuels.

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

The article doesn't take sides or make claims against or in support of biofuels. The article does include viewpoints of both sides of the topic, view points from scientists and studies, and even includes the social and political challenges of biofuel development without persuading the reader to favor any position.

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 sources used in this article are environmental research sites from governmental and nongovernmental agencies and institutes. The article also pulls data from panels, international forums, and published reports. The 130+ sources in this article are mainly scientific journals on biofuel development and but there is the occasional online dictionary source. The sources dates range from the late 1990's to about 2015. The links throughout the article to other wikipedia articles all work and are extensive and well edited with plenty quality content.

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 lacks some organization in the lead section. But for the most part easy to read and some of the dense information it contains includes scientific jargon, the author does their best job in breaking it down to simpler and broad terms for the reader to understand. The authors do a good job of synthesizing and summarizing the large and extensive scientific papers on biofuels. This has allowed the article to be broken down into reasonably sized sections that contain enough quality information that aren't extremely long and repetitive.

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

The article only contains 2 graphs. I don't really think the images used throughout the article enhance its content because they are images of gas station pumps, trucks, and trains transporting biofuels. The images are well captioned and do include links within the caption but they don't really add to the information on the article. Each image has a link to its own file page where its licensing and source is recorded, so they do adhere to copyright regulations.

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

The article is part of 5 Wikiprojects, mostly environmental, climate change, education, and energy related. This article is a level 4 vital article and is rated as a B-Class article. Conversations in the talk page are mainly positive reviews people have made and organizational edits in some sections.

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 ends with a paragraph about how biofuels are proven to be sustainable but also includes a section about how biofuels increase greenhouse gas emissions. This tells me that the article has a good balance of supporting and opposing viewpoints and doesn't try to persuade or be biased and lets the reader decide on their own what their position is on the issue. I think this has a good foundation on the types of biofuels and how they are produces. The article overall highlights the major and various social, economic, political, and environmental aspects of biofuels and uses links and data that is up to date. Their data also comes from scientific journal, reviewed studies, and secondary sites that are reliable and either governmental agencies or dedicated to research. I would've liked to see an explanation on how biofuel production affects landmasses and the consequences on land, water, and soil. There is also some lack of organization in the lead section, the lead provides information about projections and values that could be made into its own paragraph in the content section. There is room for improvement in the images used, it would be helpful to include images of actual biofuel, types of biomasses used, and graphs of yields of different biofuels. But overall the article is well- developed.

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: