Article Evaluation
Chosen Article: Augustus
- Everything in the article is relevant to Augustus or Octavian. The article talks about everything from his early life to his projects and contributions to his decedents and legacy. Nothing distracting was present, the entire article was about Augustus, almost every sentence had the name Augustus or Octavian.
- The majority of the claims are neutral, although there is an obvious bias towards his greatness and the legacy he has left. Regardless, the bias towards greatness of a historical leader is fairly common.
- His legacy is definitely a dominating section in the article, His ancestry doesn't have any description just a list of names in a family tree style, this section could be considered unrepresented. Another section underrepresented is the Conflict with Anthony, It jumps from even to event to event with very little description of why Octavian did what he did.
- Checking citation 68, 97 and 126 shows that the content presented reflect the source article and claims.
- Not every fact is referenced, many of them are missing in-text citations. The ones that do have in-text citations show that the information comes from sources such as books and articles produced by universities. Yes the sources are neutral. I can't find any bias sources. I am skeptical about the last section in the Wiki article regarding his appearance. There doesn't seem to be any reference going back to where the information was pulled from which gives the impression that the writer gave a stereotypical/generic physical appearance of someone of the time.
- None of the information is out of date considering that most of the study of Rome is well understood. Other than the section regarding ancestry the article is very full.
- There is much less talk than I expected on this page. The editors are mainly talking about what should be added and what should be removed. Then someone comes along and clarify the comment. When something is done by request on the talk page a green check mark and 'Done' appears.
- The article has the highest rating, it is a featured article.
- The way wiki discusses this topic is more strait forward. The structure is concise and factual. The discussions in class are more open ended and less strait forward. Also the topic is mainly focused on Augustus and isn't as broadly studied as it is in class.