User:Baaschido/Czech Film Archive Evaluation

Article Evaluation - Czech Film Archive

Content

The article is basic in its description of the Czech Film Archives but nothing is out of place. It is mainly divided into three sections, a description (founding year, affiliation with international organizations), its standing within the Czech Republic and digitization projects, and a rough inventory of the holdings of the archive. The most recently cited source dates to 2014 while ongoing projects listed in the article have starting dates of around 2011.

The quality is not objectionable or distract (except the orphan section described below). The improvements to this article would be mainly in adding new information and introducing sub-sections, for example, "Digitization Projects", where warranted.

Certainly, the very brief outline of its history leaves much to be desired. For example, while the article is titled "Czech Film Archive", the name of the archive is given as "National Film Archive" in the Czech Republic and an untranslated timeline of its name changes is give parenthetically. Considering the national boundaries and politics of the Czech Republic have change dramatically since the Film Archives founding in 1943, it may be good to acknowledge this more clearly.

The listing of at least seven films that have been digitized is excessive. At the most, it would be fine to acknowledge one or two significant or high-profile digitization projects or separate it into its own section if this is a particularly unique or strong activity of the archive.

There is an "orphan" section at the bottom of the article which lists the "offerings" of the archives in a poorly presented list form (i.e. it uses manually formatted "-" lists instead of HTML/WikiCode markup for unordered lists). This section seems to be a copy/paste from the Archive itself as it reads like a promotional brochure highlighting the services offered rather than a neutral description. It should either be removed or rewritten.

Finally, the article is overall poorly supported. Only two citations are given although numerous statements that would need or benefit from verifiable sources are presented. Viewing the same article in Czech (using Google Chrome's auto-translate function) reveals more up-to-date information (e.g. dates of 2015 and 2016 are listed) along with names of individuals and details about administrative changes in the archive's history.

Tone

Although the information about dates, digitization projects, and holding size may be factually true, it, combined with the "orphan" section, biases the article towards promotion and advertising of the archives, rather than a description.

It is not clear whether there are underrepresented viewpoints except to comment that the contributors have mainly drawn from the Film Archive website. Again, at the very least knowing that the political situation has shifted around the Film Archive since its foundation there may be alternate views or positions on the archives and its roles and services.

Sources

As mentioned above, only two citations are given and a reference link to the archive's website (not available in English). The links are valid and corroborate what is stated in the article and are from reliable sources. However, one is a transcript of a radio interview with archivists at the Archive regarding funding for restoration projects making it potentially an effort to promote and raise the profile of the archives. The other citation is from an aggregate site for film archives across the EU and so has a natural bias in favor of film archives.

Talk Page Activity

The talk page for the Czech Film Archive is empty as the article is a stub-class in WikiProjects "Czech Republic" and "Film" and has no importance rating from the former.