This user is a student editor in Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/Everett_Community_College/English_Composition_(Spring).
Student assignments should always be carried out using a course page set up by the instructor. It is usually best to develop assignments in your sandbox. After evaluation, the additions may go on to become a Wikipedia article or be published in an existing article.

Article Critique[edit]

I visited the Springfield Armory M1A page on Wikipedia, and found three aspects of it worth commenting on: it's lack of citations, it's not up-to-date, and it's incompleteness.

Citations[edit]

Only one citation throughout the whole article is made, therefore, some attention is definitely needed in this area. Plus, that one citation is not very specific; the name of the book (or written piece) and author/writer are the only two things given. However, for the size of the article and amount of information there seems to be an adequate number of references.

Age[edit]

Being that I am quite fond of this particular rifle, I'm pretty up-to-date with the current variants and more recent updates. It seems to me that this page has not been thoroughly updated by a knowledgeable editor for at least a few years. For example, there are a couple variants that I have never even heard of, which supposedly Springfield Armory used to produce, and I have been pretty well informed on this rifle for about 5 years now. Thus, that part may need to be deleted or corrected by stating that those variants have been discontinued (which I have done).

Completeness[edit]

Since this article is in need of a significant update, it is quite lacking in the Variants section. Springfield Armory currently offers about twice the number of the variants listed in the article. I'm surprised to see that no one has made any changes in this area, especially with all the edits that took place within the past few years. The article also fails to state the specifications of the firearm in the introduction such as the rate of fire, action, and caliber which I think is necessary when introducing any gun.

Summary[edit]

The page seems to do a decent job on explaining the origin of the M1A, but falls short in quite a bit of areas. First, citations to reliable sources are desperately required in order to strengthen the verifiability of this article. Furthermore, some correction and addition of current productions need to be made. And finally, even though many of the specifications and dates are listed on the specs table, I believe some of that information should also be stated throughout the article to help substantiate it.