Tanyastojovic
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editHello, Tanyastojovic, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Ian and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.
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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 06:09, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
Article Critique- Eocene-Oligocene Extinction Event Article
editCRITIQUE: Eocene- Oligocene Extinction Event Article
By: Tanya and Mia
The current Eocene- Oligocene Extinction Event Wikipedia is an effective overview of the event itself. It has simple and easily understandable vocabulary thus giving a variety of people more clarification about the extinction. The data itself is not biased but it lacks clarity in specific facts that it touches upon. The article covers a broad scope of ideas that are relevant to the extinction, which can seem useful for those who are hoping to have a brief understanding of the event.
Although the broadness of the article is more reader-friendly, it does not fully expand on all of the concepts in order for one to completely understand the impacts of the extinction and how scientists discovered them. Along so, the information which is specific and seems to be from a valid article, tends to be improperly cited. This diminishes the reader’s ability to access further resources to learn more about specific topics, and does not ensure that the information is valid.
With regards to the clarity, it is unclear as to what exactly this extinction entails and why it is important to the history of our earth as a whole. This is due to the lack of detail, and expansion on extinction events in general. It would be helpful to have more background on the Eocene and Oligocene extinctions individually, to better understand why this in-between extinction event is relevant as its own separate period. Additionally it is important to justify why this extinction is considered a mass extinction, as well as an explanation or link to explain what a mass extinction is, and what qualifies as one.
The briefness of the article does not allow for much expansion on any of the important topics mentioned, most of which have an amplitude of detail that is relevant and useful to the reader to back it up. For example, the details of the impact theories, such as the meteorite impacts and extended volcanic activity, are briefly mentioned and not expanded on at all. In addition to these two impacts, there are many other plausible impacts scientists have discovered, however they are not mentioned. The article should expand on the impacts more and create a contrast between why they are relevant causes and why they are not. This would provide the reader with more insight as to their discovery and some of the problems scientists are facing with the dating of the extinction. All of the possible theories should be mentioned and explained in detail to eliminate any bias. The readers should have enough information to consider and decide which theory they believe is the most plausible for the extinction event.
This article also contains a limited amount of visual aids, which would contribute to creating a better understanding of the extinction and its aspects and impacts. The graph depicting the time scale of the Eocene-Oligocene extinction in relation to other extinction events is helpful, but not sufficient. More graphs would be beneficial, especially to demonstrate the changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide as mentioned in the article, as well as other measurements which are relevant to the data behind the impact theories, such as the abrupt cooling of the ocean. Graphs give readers a better understanding of the impacts, especially the degree of certain impacts, and makes it easy to compare data in relation to other time periods or factors. Some readers learn visually, and thus it would help them picture the information, and realize the effects of the changes which impacted and defined this extinction. Images of some of the species mentioned, or showing examples of signs of the meteorite or crater impacts would have an advantageous effect as well.
In order to clarify and organize the data in a logical way, subheadings are important to include. It provides organization of information, and clear and direct links to specific information on certain topics. This article is lacking various subtitles to go into specific detail about the general topics mentioned. It would be beneficial to include a Heading titles ‘Possible Impacts of the Eocene-Oligocene Extinction’, and within that section, have subtitles indicating the various theories such as ‘Meteorite Impacts’, ‘Chesapeake Bay impact crater’ and so on. Another distinction should be made about the effects of the extinction in various geographical regions as well, diving areas into different subheadings. Under these subheadings, specific information should be given about the impacts themselves, and the scientific evidence supporting them. It should be unbiased information that describes how the scientists came up with the theory and why it is valid and plausible. Links and references should be included for each one, in order to give readers the option to do further research on specific topics of interest.
The lack of references in the article overall, is partly due to the amount of information that exists, however references are very important in the validation of the article. It gives readers the opportunity to clarify aspects of the article, and give direction for further research. Direct sources of the data must be provided for all pieces of information. Hyperlinks to other articles should be maximized as well, to provide a direct path for readers to get the information they need.
Overall, the article is a good basic overview, but lacks many components, due to the lack of information presented. To ensure the usefulness and validity of the article, all information must be current, easily accessible, divided and organized into effective sections, and all the information must be unbiased and backed up by credible sources. It should be easily comprehensible by the average audience, yet still have a great deal of valid scientific evidence and links to back it up and allow for further research.
Much detail needs to be added on the current information that is presented in the article, but new information needs to be added as well. New technological advances, drilling projects, and new supportive data must all be included. It is important to cover a wide range of topics relevant to the extinction, as opposed to the narrow scope that is covered in the article.