Wikipedia:Peer review/Michigan State University/archive1

Michigan State University

I have put a lot of effort into this page and its "daughter articles", and many other Wikipedians have worked on it as well. Therefore, I submit the Michigan State University main article for peer review to get it into shape to be a featured article. — Lovelac7 05:32, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• Known for - MSU has one of the top packing programmes
• Campus section
  • The size of the campus (>5000 acres, >2000 acres developed) is highly notable
  • Not sure why the mention of Lake Lansing is mentioned in this section
  • The distinction between north campus and south campus is worth making
• Athletics - no mention of records, basketball success in the last few years, lack of football success
• Student life - no mention of the Peanut Barrel? the Dairy Store?
• Other - the article should include mention of KBS, of the Kresge Art Museum, of the Beal experiment, of the history - figures like Beal and Hannah, also mention of Liberty Hyde Bailey. Guettarda 05:46, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• The sentence:

Michigan State University was founded as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan in 1855 as an act of the Michigan Legislature; the school was the first agricultural college in the United States and served as a prototype for future agricultural institutions as would be defined by the Morrill Act.

is very long and would do well to be reworded. It is a little hard to follow. MyNameIsNotBob 05:48, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

All it needs is an extra period instead of a semicolon. alteripse 06:44, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• This is from a Michigan Wolverine who worked on getting the University of Michigan (Go blue!) article featured, but I am willing to help (this is Wikipedia after all, where collaboration is important :-). Anyways, there are several immediate problems:

1. There are too many lists. For an FA, this is highly discouraged. Prose should be used throughout.
2. The "rankings and notes" is a mess. Are you trying to create a list of footnotes, and if so why are they in the middle of the article?
3. If you make a claim (e.g. this program is one of the best in the nation), you must have a solid source to back it up (otherwise, your claims are nothing but hot air). Use of footnotes is highly recommended.
4. I didn't check the images, but if they were of the modern campus, I suggest you go about and take some pictures (which qualify for GFDL-compatible licenses). Copyrighted images are frowned upon for FA unless there are no free alternatives.

I would suggest you refer to the University of Michigan article to see what type of format works for FA. Pentawing 06:00, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

What's distinctive or worth mentioning about Moo U? I think it was once the largest single campus university in the US. The sheer size dominates its character for both good and bad; you could spend a few years there like a few years in a big city, with lots of choices but leaving no connections or trace whatsoever. The course catalog used to be nearly an inch thick. Some of the residential college programs contained in a single residence hall used to be unique. Do they still have one of the best African languages programs in the country? The police administration ("pig ad" in 1970) program was also touted as the top in the world. They used to heavily recruit out-of-state Merit Finalists to populate the Honors College; is that still true?

The state legislature, dominated by lawyers from Michigan, regularly screwed them around. A medical school was blocked for years in the 1960s until the osteopathic lobby pushed the legislature for a state DO school, so MSU got a combined MD and DO school-- one school, one set of preclinical classes, no onsite hospital but two administrative superstructures and two types of degrees-- like one bottling plant putting the same thing in Coke and Pepsi bottles. When the medical school was founded around 1972 it was designed and claimed to be uniquely "humanistic" in its training-- I don't know how distinct it tries to be anymore.

MSU was nationally domininant in football in the 1960s coached by Duffy Dougherty (sp?), and in the late 60s student seats for basketball games in Jenison (?) fieldhouse went unfilled for 25 cents. Basketball took off after Magic Johnson led them to their NCAA title in 1979.

So what's happened in the last couple of decades that's distinct? alteripse 06:44, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• Good point - largest non-military cafeteria, largest on-campus resident population, largest single-campus population. And Magic Johnson. Guettarda 06:47, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• I'd pretty much echo Pentawing's suggestions, with a few more specifics. 1) The three remaining lists (programs board members, and lingo) probably need to go. A FA shouldn't have a list in it unless the list is really, truly needed in order for the article to be comprehensible. Instead they should be linked to where appropriate, or not if they really aren't truly important. 2) A FA should properly prioritize what it covers. The most important topics should get the most coverage, and less important topics should get covered less, not at all, and/or in subarticles depending on the topic. 3) There's no info on the town v students or town v campus tension. Maybe not a lot needs to be covered here, since that's more important to EL than it is to MSU, but consider it. 4) Too many fragmented paragraphs. One or two sentence paragraphs usually highlight things that should either be combined with related material, expanded into a full idea worthy of a full paragraph of it's own, or simply removed, as per suggestion #2. A FA usually doesn't need any orphan paragraphs, much less the large number that a typical unpolished Wikipedia article has. 5) More high quality sources always helps. A trudge to the library or bookstore to find a good overview book on the uni would go a long way. A well done work will give you an idea of what to prioritize and of course good material to cite.
• If you were thinking of listing the article for FAC soon, I would warn you it has a pretty long way to go, no offense. I have quite a bit of experience on what will pass FA and when an article meets the FA criteria, so nudge me after you feel you've implimented the suggestions in this peer review and I'll review it again, for what that's worth. - Taxman ^Talk 16:56, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • No offense taken, Taxman. I figure this article has a way to go, but now I have a lot of good suggestions on how to clean it up. — Lovelac7 18:26, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• Excellent improvements indeed. The biggest problem left is the referencing. People are really going to look for facts to be cited inline to a specific authoritative source. Especially specific stats or important points or potentially contentious ones. I'd recommend shooting for the top 20 facts based on importance and disputability to be cited either Harvard style or with footnotes. After this Siegenthaler incident, I think people are going to clammor for better referencing, and I'd have to agree that's a good thing. - Taxman ^Talk 15:02, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• Regarding town-student issues as Taxman mentioned, how about
  • mention that EL's primaries are held when students are out of town (unless this has now changed)
  • mention of the three riots in 1997-1999 (Gunson Street riot, the Munn Field riot and the basketball one) Guettarda 18:23, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
  • and the "Riot!" card game that a local wag created. William Allen Simpson 21:26, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• You might mention we won the first ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest back in 1977. We had a pretty decent (one of the earliest) Computer Science program. I supposed the current claim of reflected fame would be that Ralph Page was a prof, and his son co-founded Google -- but studied EECS at Umich.edu. William Allen Simpson 21:26, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• Good job with the improvements. Could also add mention the Kellogg Center in there somewhere. Student life could mention the dorms, Spartan Village, University Village, Cherry Lane. The history section could say something beyond the sequence of names - originally a farm school where they had to work in the fields, the first female students, etc. Guettarda 15:25, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • On a related note to the article, that template down the bottom about notabel locations needs a cleanup. The red means redlinks look like blank spots in the writing, it's near impossible to focus on all the colors to read, and the comments in brackets don't really belong in a template. A bit of a tangent there, but worth commenting on in this forum. Harro5 06:43, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
    • I wasn't aware that the template showed up as red. It's supposed to have a light gray background. I'll see what I can do. Lovelac7 16:00, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

• Some comments:
  • Is that painted rock really the first image of the university the reader should see?
  • The "Master Plan for the year 2020" should be referenced.
  • "The campus defines and dominates life at the university." and "Michigan State University is well-known as a research university." are odd statements that just don't seem to read well (conclusions used as introductions)
  • Reference all quotations, including "make men farmers, but farmers men", "train both the hand and the head.", "educating boys away from the farm", "comparable to those of the University of Michigan", "Our graduates show that a love...",
  • Also please reference:
    • "Often called the "Father of American Horticulture",..."
    • "...MSU and U-M has been referred to as "the fiercest rivalry on ice,"
    • "Free copies of the paper are online..." (send the reader there)
  • The sub-section "Fight Song" should be merged with the intro to the sports section because it is not very elaborate and it is not parallel with the other sub-sections (football, hockey, basketball). --maclean25 06:08, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

If you are interested in Michigan State Sports you should check out http://www.detroitsportsonline.com This site has a lot of coverage about State.