Wikipedia:Peer review/Union College/archive1

Union College

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because editors UpstateNYer and Eliphaletnott have been busy substantially updating the article over the past few months. They requested an informal peer review on WP:Universities#Peer_review in September and WT:UNI in October, but further comments from a wider audience would be appreciated.

Thanks, Mabeenot (talk) 19:45, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Quick comments: These aren't thorough suggestions, so I'm not taking it off the unreviewed notice at the top (where it might attract someone else's attention), but I might come back later.

• First off, nice work in just a few months!
• Images need alt text per WP:ALT
  • Save for later; we'll get more important things done now so we can pass a GAN. upstateNYer 05:20, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
• Check the disambig & external links. Several disambig pages are linked, and, when I checked, there was one dead link and (I believe) one ref that needed an access date.
  •  Done Not sure why it's claiming that link dead; it brought me there from the check page... upstateNYer 05:17, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
• Can something like what the Family Guy article has done with its voice cast (scroll down a bit) be done with the Minerva system pics?
  • Changed the whole section so it's a non-issue. upstateNYer 05:20, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
• The all caps sayings in Seal and motto should be lowercase, per WP:ALLCAPS, and italicized per Foreign terms
  •  Done upstateNYer 05:14, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Nice work! Liquidluck (talk) 07:45, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: The article has quite nice images; the prose is generally flowing, and the article seems broad in coverage. Liquidluck's suggestions should be addressed, and here are some more things to consider.

Overlinking

• Only terms that are likely to be unfamiliar to many speakers of English need to be linked, and most terms should be linked only on first use. What needs to be linked is a matter of judgment, but I would say that history, biology, psychology, and engineering don't need to be linked. United States does not need to be linked at all and certainly not multiple times. Centuries are not normally linked. In "Presidents of Union College", Eliphalet Nott should be linked on first use but not on second use or in the caption. Ditto for other links in the lower sections. Too many links are distracting rather than helpful.
  • I'll go thru and take a look; hopefully my counterpart will also. I always link the United States when listing a location (i.e. city, state, US) because it follows the other two locations consistenly. I also always link anything in an image caption that may be linked in the article. This is good for browsers who are skimming the article but reading the captions. This gives readers a quick opportunity to click a link, rather than search long and hard for its use in the article. And for the list with Nott in it, isn't it better practice (by formatting and consistency, if nothing else) to link him there as well, since you're linking everyone else that has an article? But for the other ones, I'll heed your advice. upstateNYer 01:23, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Capital letters

• Many common nouns in the article are being treated as proper nouns. Example: "The Board consists of four Life Trustees, 21 Term Trustees, four Alumni Trustees, two Faculty Trustees, two Student Trustees, and the President of the College. The Governor of the State of New York is an ex officio member. The Board meets three times annually, in February, May, and October. The Board appoints the President of the College upon vacancy of the position; it may also appoint an interim president should the need arise." Shouldn't this be "The board consists of four life trustees, 21 term trustees, four alumni trustees, two faculty trustees, two student trustees, and the president of the college. New York's governor is an ex officio member. The board meets three times annually, in February, May, and October. The board appoints the president upon vacancy of the position; it may also appoint an interim president should the need arise"? Ditto for lots of other common nouns in the article.
• Done, I think.Eliphaletnott (talk) 18:31, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Lists

• When feasible, render lists as straight prose per WP:MOS#Bulleted and numbered lists. The list in "Undergraduate research" and the list of Minerva houses would be easy to convert to prose. The Theme Houses list would be easy to convert if you omitted the street addresses, which will be of little interest to most readers. I think the lists of rankings would also be easy to convert. The student statistics and data might be compressed and summarized in prose. I would also suggest eliminating the list in the "Landmark" section by deleting all the subheads.

En dashes

• Date ranges and page ranges take en dashes rather than hyphens. The en dashes should be unspaced.
  • Isn't there a script for that? Could I get the link if you have it? upstateNYer 18:45, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
• Done, I think.Eliphaletnott (talk) 18:31, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Links to external sites

• Direct links to external sites are OK in the "External links" section but not in the main text. All of the Minerva Houses have external links, and I see a few others elsewhere. Use an inline citation rather than an external link.

References

• Make sure that the citation numbers snug up against the end punctuation in the main text. I see that some have spaces between the punctuation and the number.
• Done, so far as I can tell.Eliphaletnott (talk) 15:25, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
• The reference section would be much easier to read if you created a Notes or Bibliography section below it into which you put the complete data for each long work that is cited multiple times. Then long, repetitious entries like "Somers, ed., Wayne (2003). Encyclopedia of Union College History. Schenectady: Union College Press. p. 599" would become "Somers, p. 599".
  • Amen to that; I just got chewed out by someone at my most recent FAC by someone who didn't like that style. upstateNYer 01:26, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
  •  Doing... but it will be a process... upstateNYer 05:38, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
    • Looks like it's  Done upstateNYer 18:45, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
• Some of the citations are incomplete. For example, citation 151 lacks a publisher, date and place of publication, and ISBN. Which edition are you citing?
• The DNB and the ANB are standard citations forms for these two works; I have added publication information, however.Eliphaletnott (talk) 15:25, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 07:08, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

• All of your suggestions were very helpful. Keep them coming, please.Eliphaletnott (talk) 15:25, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
• Should the "bibliography" be in effect only the works cited in the article, and the "further reading" other works, but not cited in the article? Eliphaletnott (talk) 13:31, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes. Even though Wikipedia is not made of paper, the repetition would be redundant if works under Bib were also under FR. upstateNYer 18:45, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
• Editing changes so far look great. Eliphaletnott (talk) 13:31, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
• I am currently seeking updated numbers for various statistics, as well as rankings numbers.Eliphaletnott (talk) 14:57, 14 December 2009 (UTC)