Wikipedia:Peer review/University of California, Berkeley/archive2

University of California, Berkeley[edit]

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it recently served as the Universities Collaboration of the Month for almost a year while the moderator took a WikiBreak. Now that we've moved on to a new collaboration, I'd like some closure for the old one. Most importantly, what would it take to get this up to Good Article status?

Thanks, Mabeenot (talk) 07:34, 29 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Technical comments by an odd name

First, deal with the tags. In addition to the clearly bad cleanup and undue-weight tags, address the merge tag to make sure that the article is stable (see criterion 5).
Check external links. I set the page to only show clearly dead links (ones colored red and orange) and there's a lot—it becomes hard to verify an article with so many. You might want to change the accreditation link to http://vpapf.chance.berkeley.edu/accreditation/index.html or one of its subpages; the rest are up to you. Try the Wayback Machine or WebCite to find archives of the dead web pages, and archive the working ones with WebCite to combat link rot. When you are done with those, check the boxes at the top of the page to verify the other links.
Watch for dab links and links that "loop back" to the article. Replace instances of these links with more specific ones. You don't want to confuse readers who follow the links!
Add alt text to the images—if your article's reviewer can't see them, you don't stand a chance.

Good luck. --an odd name 22:39, 11 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. Not all of these will need to be fixed for GA, but here are some thoughts:

I'd cut the lead by a paragraph; Wikipedia:LEAD#Length says four is as long as a lead should usually get, and I don't see any special reason this needs to be longer. I think the paragraph on rankings can be trimmed and combined with another para -- the school's reputation is certainly important, but the particular ranking institutions you cite are not all of equal notability or longevity. I'm not even sure the rankings are worth including in the article, except perhaps in a footnote to support statements about reputation or status, but that's more a matter of opinion, whereas lead length is a MoS issue.
History, first para: this makes it sounds as though no UCal classes were held till 1873, but that can't be right. Do you mean that 1873 was when classes were first held in Berkeley?
A couple of words about what the University Farm was would be good -- this was part of UC Berkeley, after all, until it split. It's not at all clear from the title what it is -- a farm run to provide food for the university, perhaps? (I read the U Cal Davis article to find out, but I shouldn't have had to.)
The "Radiation Laboratory" in the article isn't described when it is first mentioned; I presume this was a lab that was owned and operated by Berkeley prior to the Manhattan project. A parenthetical clause saying so would be helpful: e.g. "...following Glenn Seaborg's then-secret discovery of plutonium, Ernest Orlando Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory, which had been established in 1937 as part of the physics graduate program, began to contract with ..." or whatever -- I just made that factoid up as I don't know the date or circumstances.
You usually use "Berkeley" or "UC Berkeley" within the article, but I saw at least one "Cal"; I think you should be consistent throughout, and use one of the other two names.
I would suggest getting rid of the "citation needed" tags before going to GA.
The aerial view of the campus is a nice picture, but at thumbnail size it's of little use. I would suggest setting a pixel size; it would also be useful to find a way to label it -- those unfamiliar with the campus will not be able to make much of the buildings without a key. You could put some identifying description in the image caption, or add a diagrammatic version of the picture showing what is where.
The architecture paragraph is out of sequence chronologically; it jumps back to 1873 after the first paragraph, which is a bit dislocating.
The natural features section makes me wish for a map again.
"There is ongoing construction to retrofit the stadium" -- to make it earthquake-proof, I presume, but it should be clear to the reader.

That's all I've got time for tonight; I will look at this again if I have more time. Mike Christie (talk) 02:19, 20 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]