Digital artifacts
The Wikipedia article for digital artifacts does not meet the required criteria to be graded as a high-quality article, because it lacks a lead section with an understandable overview, a clear structure, balanced coverage, and reliable sources. Furthermore, the official Wikipedia article quality grading scale deems the digital artifact article as a “Wikipedia article needing copy edit” as it did not pass the good article nomination process successfully.
The lead section of the digital artifact article is difficult to understand as it does not clearly summarize the article’s key points, thereby compromising the reader’s interest in reading more about digital artifacts. The opening sentence, “Digital artifact has several definitions,” immediately fails to captivate the reader’s attention nor introduce the topic. The lead section identifies what a digital artifact is, however fails to establish context nor the notability of digital artifacts. The digital artifact’s role in anthropology and archeology is briefly introduced and an example is provided, however the article fails to elaborate further. Although one contextual link is provided for “artifact,” no more are provided for further clarification of the information presented thus far. For example, “archeology” should be hyperlinked as the reader may be accustomed to being familiarized with tangible artifacts in archeology, not digital ones. If “archeology” was hyperlinked to the Wikipedia page about archeology, the reader could further explore his or her concerns. Furthermore, the lead section’s brevity of 60 words is only due to the lack of information provided, failing to introduce the article’s key points.
The structure of the digital artifact article is unclear and disorganized as it lacks a table of contents nor headings and subheadings within the article. The missing table of contents hinders the reader from navigating and easily accessing parts of the article. Although two images are presented, they are placed inappropriately. Both images of the complicated grid pattern and garbled processing are nowhere mentioned in the article, yet haphazardly situated beside the lead section and the body paragraphs, respectively. In addition, certain images and diagrams are lacking. Examples of correctly labeled digital artifacts would help the reader understand more about digital artifacts. Moreover, there lies a grammatical error in the second paragraph – a colon should replace the semicolon used to introduce the list of electric format.
The various aspects of the topic are not balanced well in the digital artifact article and the more significant sections are not given ample coverage. Majority of the article manifests in the descriptions of how a digital artifact is generated. Although this is important, little background information is provided to describe what digital artifacts are; more examples of digital artifacts should be sought. Other significant sections are missing about the phenomenon: its history, evolution, and impact on people, for example.
Lastly, the digital artifact article lacks reliable sources. The article is neutral without bias and contains neutral language and emphasizes facts, however no in-text citations nor footnotes are used. Although the article’s body contains contextual links and two external links are provided at the bottom, the lack of references forces the reader to view the information with skepticism. Furthermore, no appendix is also provided, thus the reader cannot navigate where certain material can be found in the article.
The Wikipedia article for digital artifacts is a poor-quality article, because it does not meet the required criteria to be graded as a high-quality article. A lead section with an understandable overview, a clear structure, balanced coverage, and reliable sources are missing in the article. Although, the article contains some elements of a high-quality article, such as contextual links, images, and external links, some are not used properly. These poorly-used elements coupled with the article’s missing criteria for a good-quality article deems this digital artifact article of dire improvement. This Wikipedia article about digital artifacts is substandard, however this can be resolved once all the elements of a good-quality article are met.