Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Oregon State University alumni/archive1

List of Oregon State University alumni[edit]

I believe this list satisfies all the criteria specified in WP:WIAFL, namely:

Criteria 1(a): The list brings together a group of existing articles related by well-defined entry criteria.
Criteria 1(b): No major components of the list have been omitted.
Criteria 1(c): Claims are supported with specific evidence and external citations - the lengthy References section satisfies this criteria easily.
Criteria 1(d), 1(e): The contents of the list are not disputed and there are no edit wars.
Criteria 1(f): The list is well-constructed.
Criteria 2(a): Lead provides a good summary of the entire list.
Criteria 2(b): There is a proper system of headings.
Criteria 2(c): ToC is substantial, but not too long.
Criteria 3: Appropriate images are included.

This was previously a Good Article, but delisted solely because GA doesn't deal with lists anymore. Resurgent insurgent 10:22, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support as creator: - For the images, I haven't been able to get many from the sportspeople at the top so the images are mostly concentrated at the bottom of the page. There are several ways we can deal with this - 1) Leave as is, and add more in as they become available 2) Disperse images around the page regardless of what section they are listed in, or 3) Remove all images except add one at the top right of the page. That aside, at the risk of seeming like a hypocrite for not supporting a nom below for too many redlinks (since changed to support, however), it looks like that one will pass nonetheless, and I feel this is the most comprehensive list of notable OSU Alumni gathered anywhere by far. The Official OSU notable alumni page pales in comparison to this, and I feel this is a valuable resource. I'm going to go work on some redlinks/improving the list right now. VegaDark 20:18, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Get rid of the sort columns. I'm not a big fan of those since I think the wiki implementation isn't anywhere close to useful. The initial order is grouped by notable profession then ordered by surname. None of the alternative orders are useful (even date attended appears useful but only changes the order within the group, which limits its usefulness, and fails when the start-date is a ?). Ordering by forename, notability or ref is a nonsense. The way the photos bunch together isn't very tidy and causes the bottom of Politics / top of Science to have about 5 [edit] links overlapping the table. Perhaps scatter the photos and include their profession after the name. Don't include the "language" parameter to the cite templates if English. The format = PDF is also a bit pointless now that there is an icon in the hyperlink. Nearly there ... Colin°^Talk 22:53, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- The "edit" link doesn't overlap the table on my browser, it is just pushed over above the table. Or is that what you meant? As for getting rid of the sort feature I find the sort by year helpful, and List of Dartmouth College alumni has the feature, which is a featured list, so I am hesitant to remove it unless there is a consensus to do so. VegaDark 00:33, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - way too much attention for sport. Plus lead could be longer. Renata 00:01, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- A school can't help it if most of its notable alumni are sportspeople. Are you suggesting the non-sports section isn't comprehensive? If so do you have any sources that list additional non-sportspeople as alumni that should be added? I'd be happy to see such a source as to add more. I'll see about expanding the lead. VegaDark 00:33, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - I did a quick calculation: 272 people are on the list, 56 (20%) of them are not from sport. That seems aweful low when there is no specific reason for it (i.e. that's what you would expect from a sport school; likewise you would expect alumni of an engineering school be enginners, but as far as I see it's not a specialized school). So you probably had access to sources that deal with sportspeople, or inclusion criteria for sports people was much lower than for all the other. Renata 15:26, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - I completely disagree with the presumption of a bias towards sportspeople. It is not uncommon for a relatively high number of sportspeople who attend a major U.S. state university to attain notability. According to the guidelines at Wikipedia:Notability (people)#Special cases, it could be argued that literally hundreds of sportspeople at a school like Oregon State become notable every year. Contrast that with the "barrier to notability" for other people that might be associated with Oregon State: environmental scientists, engineers, professors, etc. - it's much, much higher. The fact is that the media covers sports far more closely than it does something like soil science; there are simply many notable sportspeople out there, and the list does a good job providing reliable sources for all of the individuals listed. I believe that throwing a percentage out there that "seems low" is not a valid reason to oppose promotion. -Big Smooth 19:21, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      - How about moving all the redlink American football folk to the talk page and merge coaches. There are more red than blue links for football, which dominates the list and goes against criterion 1a. Colin°^Talk 08:01, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        I have to agree with Big Smooth. At most US state universities, at least a plurality, and often a majority, of "notable" people by Wikipedia standards are athletes. —Lowellian (reply) 05:18, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Appears to meet all featured list criteria. -Big Smooth 19:21, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. List looks good, however, I don't believe it's necessary to have a separate column for references in the table, mainly due to the fact that it serves no purpose sorted. The references can be moved to the person's name or notability column. Will give support once these issues are addressed. RyguyMN 04:04, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- The inability to specify which columns should be sortable is IMO a major defect in the sorting feature, not this article. The Notability column doesn't make sense sorted either. The refs could be moved to the end of the notability column, though they would then be much harder to spot. For a long dynamic list such as this, having a refs column makes it easier to maintain (i.e. detect which names are unsourced) and is similar to lots of other featured people-lists. It would be interesting to know what others think, but I don't see why this one aspect should prevent support Colin°^Talk 07:51, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Colin, I understand your point and withdraw my comment about the tables since this is a Wikipedia limitation. On an unrelated note, I noticeed that there are too many red links for this list to be WP:FL. This list still needs a little bit of work to gain additional support. RyguyMN 02:34, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - I was hoping to have some time this past weekend to make improvements but I didn't get a chance. If this needs to be renominated in the future to pass, so be it, I'll renominate if so when I get a chance to make additional changes. VegaDark 02:45, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - excessive redlinks. If someone isn't notable enough to have an article, they shouldn't be considered not able to be on this list. This is especially the case for the American Football players. Also, the lists states that "the people listed may have only attended the university at some point and have not necessarily graduated"... in which case, they are not alumni, and shouldn't be included on the list. Tompw (talk) 21:17, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just because someone doesn't have an article yet doesn't mean they aren't notable enough to have a page. Every person on that list is notable enough for a page, they just don't have them yet. Also, "alumni" consists of anyone who attended a university, not just graduated. See Alumni. A graduate or former student of a school, college, or university. VegaDark 21:12, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Apolgoies on the Alumni issue - I think this is a UK/US English thing. However, to become a FL, this list must be a "group of exsisting articles" (WP:WIAFL 1a) - which means that the vast majority of links should be bluelinks rather than redlinks. Currently there ~95 redlinks, which I'm afraid is just too many. You could either remove all the redlinks (possibly to the talk page), or create 95 articles. Tompw (talk) 12:27, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]