Missi Jarrar

10/24/2018 Lyon, France Article Evaluation by Missi Jarrar

Content

The Wikipedia page for Lyon, France is extensive. There are many categories with excellent subcategories which all seem relevant to general knowledge about the city. What may be lacking The “history” section is surprisingly short for a city of this age and only divided into two categories of Ancient Lyon and Modern Lyon which I would argue are vague categories. The section contains good information, but spans a lot of time very quickly. There is plenty of room here for expansion here. On this site they are handled as external links so if you want to know more about that you can follow the link away from the main site, which is okay, but I’d like to see a little expansion on this site. In the “Political” section a political history section could be added. Of course there’s always room for details in the way of movements and influences. The “Administration” section lists only mayors and scant information about organization and geographical administration throughout the districts. This could be expanded. Too, there is nothing about the median income or the major employers of the area in the “Demographics” section. That information would be a relevant and interesting addition. I plan on working on some of this in particular because it is relatively undeveloped and there seems scant outward links to that information. Under “Sites” there is an “Antiquity” subsection that mentions nothing of the archeological sites in and near Lyon which are important to its history. Adding those would round out that section which now consists of a few short lines. The “Transport” section is in great shape, but the “International Relations” section is very lacking. Certainly Lyon plays a role in that yet to be discovered on this page. There is a street art subsection under culture which is pretty interesting and I would like to know more about that. And, of course, there is always room for more expansion in the culture section because the topic covers basically the whole of human activity. I feel I can contribute to this section as well. I mean, who are these Lyon-ese-ians anyway? I think I want to see more information about the people in general in most sections. In the “Political” and “Demographics” section I want to see who exactly lives in Lyon? Do they have healthcare? What welfare structures are in place for citizens? What are the problems of Lyon? These are all question that prompt places for expansion.

Tone

I feel the list of mayors, while interesting, is an imbalanced bit of information in the “Political” section. There is a huge list listing every mayor of Lyon and it dominates the section. I don’t feel it should come out so much as balanced by other information. It seems too dominant in that section. The “Cuture” section is dominated by tourist sites and, in my opinion, lacks information about the language, customs, and ideologies of the local folks. “Demographics,” perhaps the most interesting topic about a city, is prominently missing and it is a topic that overlaps, perhaps, history and political sections. This demographic section only deals with population in a single line—great potential for improvement. The “Climate” section is good. I like the graphic. There is a healthy amount of pictures and graphics on this site which I feel makes it interesting and colorful. They have made good progress on this site in that regard. The written tone is professional, at points a bit too much. For instance, the use of “confluence” instead of junction I feel overreaches. I think the more sophisticated tone sounds elegant, but I feel words used on Wikipedia should be professional without being overly verbose or complex. Some people use Latin-based words trying to sound sophisticated when an Anglo-Saxon word will not only suffice and flow belter but be better understood by the general public. My problem with it this: Wikipedia is for everyone—that means people whose language is not English and young people, in particular, so it is my opinion and commitment to retain clear.

Sources

They’ve done a good job on this page with the external links and making certain to link foreign names and words to definition, something I feel crucial when reading information that contains a great deal of French jargon or info-specific terminology. Where there is no link I’ve noted explanatory information in parenthesis, a good sign the information is prepared with a reader in mind. Excellent. Some of the sources are in French which in and of itself isn’t a problem, but one must be careful with Google translate because it will translate a word pretty well, but its grammar translate can create disaster. I’ve made these mistakes myself. There are 49 sources listed which seems scant for such a large article. I had a problem with a couple of the French links. The references seem reliable and prominently seem to come from French municipal sites which translate better than some more obscure sources. I do think some are dated. The population data is form 2013. I don’t know how often Frances does a census, but it seems more currently information could be had.

Talk Page

The talk page for Lyon, France seem to be preoccupied prominently with problems of external links. There is some talk about population information that questions statistical authenticity because there is some controversy over how Lyon is actually divided therefore defined. There are people doing promising work on dialects and other cultural/demographic information so it’s clear that there is no objection to expansion in that area—which is good because that’s part of what I want to do. There is some controversy about whether the name of the city is Lyon or Lyons that seems to be resolved as a language reference. It seems they want to add to the general timeline of Lyon which seems and ongoing project. Seems like a friendly place for what that’s worth. It differs from class discussions because we are dealing with pure data. This talk page is not interested in Lyon’s urbanization so much as any and all facts about Lyon. They are not preoccupied with the bigger picture as we are in class. The article has a C-class rating with top or high importance. There are two Wikiprojects working on this page: WikiFrance and WikiCities.

Activity

See talk page for Lyon, France.

Hi. I'm a student editor and I hope (in the next weeks) to contribute to the culture and demographics sections of this article. I will be researching average income, tax rates and organization, and income dispersion among predominate professions and industries. I would like also to contribute to the street art and other sections of the culture area of the article. Thank you, Missi Jarrar (talk) 00:35, 25 October 2018 (UTC)