User:Lucas Hulsey/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?

Interregnum (Holy Roman Empire)

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?

(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article because I have a deep interest in Germany and German history and especially so for Medieval German history, which I believe is not as popular or widely covered as Western European Medieval history is. This article matters because history doesn't happen in a vacuum and Germany is a part of one of the largest polities of the time, so events that happen within Germany should and do affect other polities around them, so it's beneficial to have knowledge on events in one place can help one better understand the context of the period and how it might have affected others within that context. That being said, my initial impression was that the article was quite short despite how it mentions at least three important instances of that event occurring and that the information and organization of the article seemed scattered.

Evaluate the article

(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

For the lead section, the article's introduction was serviceable, if a bit disorganized. It establishes what exactly an interregnum is and clarifies that there are two types of interregnum for the HRE due to its political system, but this comes after an initial sentence which states that there were many in its history. I would've swapped the two sentences' order so that the definition of it came immediately, and then after that would come the clarification that there were more than one in the HRE's history, so that if someone visited the article with no background knowledge, they would have an understanding of what an interregnum is, and then secondarily they would know that it occurred several times.

The presentation of the information in the article is neutral, there's no argumentation that one candidate or figure was 'better' or more appealing to modern readers than any other, and instead they were presented more matter-of-factly, as in this figure supported this candidate, and the opposing candidate was supported by so-and-so. I would argue that more background should be given to give a better context to readers, such as a history of the Hohenstaufen and Welf parties which are brought up in the article but not explained, which would be confusing to readers who don't already have some knowledge on the period or region. Additionally, the article mentions three periods of significance to the topic, but only one period has a detailed section dedicated to only itself, with one period having a much smaller and less detailed section and one period of time not even being mentioned at all, which begs the question of why even mention it in the introduction if it's not going to be covered?

And for sources, there is quite an issue. There are only four listed references within the article, but these four references come from two sources, one from 2000 and one from 1851. Despite that half of the referenced sources is 150 years old, a list of literature on the topic underneath the reference sections lists a multitude of books that come from the last twenty years, meaning that despite have a list of perfectly acceptable and valid sources that are relatively current, more information comes from a source from 1851 that, upon some quick searching, was made by a British Judge that was a general history of the empire over the course of 1000 years. So there's a serious source issue with the article, either that the source pool is very limited and almost certainly dated, or that if information from the listed literature is being used, than it is not being noted. Other than that, the article has a fine list of literature on the subject, almost all of which comes from the last 20 years, and of which many were printed in the German language and come from the Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, a voluntary book club that promotes scientific papers and scholarly articles. So there's a multitude of sources about the period written by professional historians and reviewed by other professionals, made in the country which the HRE was situated in and are most likely scholarly, but aren't being used.

The organization of the article could be much better and much more detailed. There is one section of the article mentioned in the introduction, that being the earliest interregnum during the 10th century, that isn't even mentioned or gone over in the article proper, and the late medieval interregnum of the 14th and 15th centuries is glossed over in comparison to the Great Interregnum of the 13th century. While the Great Interregnum has a solid section devoted to it, the article would be much more improved if included all periods in their own sections so they can each be gone over in more detail. The final section is about the consequences of the Interregnum and it could do with more detail being put into it, such as specific events that occurred because of the lack of a clear emperor or king, but on its own it gives an ok general idea of the larger consequences of the period. There are two images in the article, one of the electors and one of the despair felt about the lack of a ruler, but they are small and out of the way. It would help the article to have the be more forefront or to perhaps give an image of an emperor or figure that was important in one of these figures, such as a Habsburg or a Luxembourg, both families having been mentioned as being important figures in the period and after the period.

Overall I was disappointed with the lack of detail and the overall organization of the article. This article could be a decent background source for someone trying gain context for the Great Interregnum, as that period is covered the best out of the three mentioned, but even then it could be improved. I would start by making it clear in the introduction what an interregnum is, how many significant events of it took place if there was more than one and whether there was a distinction between interregnum for emperors and for kings, as that was a quirk of the HRE's political system. I would then make three sections, one for each period of interregnum and start with the earliest and end with the last. In each one there would be a brief explanation of the background behind each one, such as important figures, factions or events that led up to or influenced the event, and then from go into specific details about the period, such as who was trying to become the ruler, who supported them, what was the reaction like within Germany itself and in surrounding kingdoms and so on. After doing that for each period, there would be a section on how these events impacted the future development of the region and surrounding regions, such as how did it impact the politics of the HRE or its neighbors, knowing that there could be intense periods of civil war or a lack of leadership? Was foreign intervention common and was it done out of a sense of duty, greed or something else? How was the region affected economically, militarily, culturally from these periods and especially from the length of these periods? Is this something that those at the time acknowledged or is this something that's more of a modern invention, i.e., are modern historians looking too much into this and giving importance to it that it doesn't deserve. And then I would have a list of references with the sources being included in each reference instead of only the Author's name and page number of that source.