Wikipedia:Peer review/List of College of William and Mary people/archive1

List of College of William and Mary people

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for July 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I am trying to make this page into a Featured list and would like to have a peer review performed before submitting it as an FL Candidate. I've adhered to all FL criteria to the best of my knowledge but it can never hurt to get other opinions.

Thanks, Jrcla2 05:23, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Note: This article is evidently undergoing major changes at present. Until this process is complete it would be premature to review it. Will the nominating editor please leave a note here when the restructure is complete and the inuse banner removed? Brianboulton (talk) 23:30, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

• Major edits complete. The article is now fully revamped and ready to be peer–reviewed for possible FL status. Jrcla2 23:23, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: This is a most impressive list and must have taken a great deal of effort to assemble. Here are my suggestions for further improvement:

Lead

• Since the official college name is College of William & Mary, shouldn't the bolded name in the first line use an ampersand rather than the word and? Also, is the official name "College of William & Mary" or "The College of William & Mary"? You use both in the lead. It would be good to make certain of the official name and then use it consistently throughout.
  • Fixed. Made intro consistent.

• A slightly stronger way to begin the lead than "this is a list of" might be to say something like "This list of people associated with the College of William & Mary includes... "
  • Fixed.

• It's a little odd to read in the very first line that "this is an incomplete list". Perhaps this disclaimer could be moved to the end of the lead rather than the beginning. Just a suggestion. I don't know of any rule about this.
  • Fixed. I placed it at the end of the intro.

• MOS:INTRO says in part, "The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article." It's a bit harder, perhaps, to see how to summarize a list than it is to summarize a straight prose article. A good rule of thumb is to include in the lead at least a mention of each of the main text sections. You might do this by naming the categories (presidents, supreme court justices, cabinet members and diplomats, and so on) and giving a couple of famous examples from those categories; e.g., Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall. Another thing that the lead might do is to describe the college and its programs in a bit more detail. The existing lead does not have enough information to give a reader a clear picture of how this school differs from others. List of Dartmouth College alumni does this compactly. List of Brigham Young University alumni devotes six paragraphs to this kind of overview.
  • Fixed. I expanded the lead to easily 5 to 6 times longer than what it was.

• It's often helpful to look at related featured articles to see how other editors have solved similar problems. I mentioned two, Dartmouth and Brigham Young, above, but you can find many more featured lists related to education at WP:FL#Education.

• The images don't all have to be thumbnails. You might play around with layout a little to produce something that pleases you. List of Athabasca University people uses a couple of big mug shots in an interesting way, for example, and the others I've looked at use varied methods of presenting images.
  • Response: To be honest, the thumbnail way that I've laid the page out does please me. I know that others, such as Dartmouth's or Athabasca, don't use pictures or use them in a different way, but I feel that it's better for the reader to see the person to which the notable mention is referring right on the page rather than needing to click a name link (and even then, pictures are not guaranteed; at least my way will show you right off the bat if a picture is available or not to look at). It's just a personal preference really, but I don't think I'm going to change it, unless I get too much flack about it. I like the suggestion though.

• "This list uses the following notation (In the event that a combination of degrees is specified, that alumna/us attended William & Mary for both undergraduate and graduate degrees):" - I don't think the parenthetical is necessary. Suggestion: "This list uses the following notation:"
  • Fixed. Removed unnecessary paranthetical.

• Why does "Year #" link to the College of William & Mary article?
  • Fixed. I originally had it link to the College's article because the Dartmouth alumni page had something similar in nature.

• WP:MOS#Acronyms and abbreviations says in part, "Write out both the full version and the abbreviation at first occurrence". For each of the terms such as J.D. listed in your notation key, I would suggest adding the full version, thus: "Juris Doctor (J.D.).
  • Fixed. Abbreviations are now written out in full version first.

• The disambiguation tool that live here finds several links such as "Brookly Dodgers (football)" that go to disambiguation pages instead of their intended target. You can use the tool to find these or any that accidentally appear in revisions. They should all be fixed.
  • Fixed, although it still says somewhere that there is a link List of College of William and Mary people that redirects back to the page. I can't find it, but since it's a trivial, redundant redirect I hardly think it matters.

• Citations 48 and 153 contain dead links. I found these with the link checker that lives here. You can run the checker on any article at any time.
  • Fixed.

I hope these brief 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) 18:25, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

• Response: Thanks so much for the input. I'll address all of these concerns as I have the time to do so. I've fixed a few things for now, but will resume later. I'll report back to see if anything else needs fixing, and if I have any questions I'll be sure to ask you. Jrcla2 19:02, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Quick note: Wouldn't "alumni" be better in the title than "people"? Brianboulton (talk) 18:29, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

• Response: I did not originally create this page, but I can see what you are talking about. I had thought that too, but then I realized that the way it's titled is actually better suited for the content. The reason is this: the section "Commencement speakers" does pertain to "William & Mary people" per se, but since nearly all of them are not alumni of the university, it would be a misnomer to reference the article as alumni. I hope this clears up the confusion. Jrcla2 19:02, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Further Finetooth comments: This looks much improved. I'm in a rush this morning, but here are a few more quick thoughts.

• "This list of people associated with The College of William & Mary includes those who have either attended and/or graduated from the The College of William & Mary, which is located in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States, as well as every commencement speaker from 1930 to the present." - I see two nit-picky things here to comment on. The Manual of Style deprecates the "and/or" construction and suggests alternatives at WP:MOS#And/or. Also, "present" is ambiguous. It's often better to say "2009" or whatever specific date is meant. In 2010, the number will have to be updated, but that's the nature of an ever-expanding list like this one.
  • Fixed.
• "At the time, William & Mary was an all–male school... " - Quite a few words that should be hyphenated have been accidentally en-dashed. I fixed a few, but here is another, and there are more elsewhere in the lead.
  • Fixed. I went through the whole page and fixed all instances.
• "used to suit up for the Tribe but now plays professionally overseas" - "Now" carrries the same disadvantage as "current". It might be better to say "but in 2009 plays professionally overseas". Also, "suit up" is slangy, as is "grabbed" in the preceding sentence. I'd suggest replacing these with words that someone unfamiliar with these sports would be sure to understand.
  • Fixed.
• "Perhaps The College of William & Mary's most contemporarily popular alumnus is Jon Stewart." - That's a judgment that might be challenged. It should be supported by a reliable source or modified.
  • Fixed.
• It would be better to place the image of Thomas Jefferson on the right so that he looks into the page.
  • Fixed.

If I get a chance this evening, I'll take another look. Finetooth (talk) 16:33, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Even more Finetooth comments:

• WP:MOS#Titles of people says in part, "When used generically, words such as president, king, and emperor are in lower case: De Gaulle was a French president and Louis XVI was a French king. Similarly: Three prime ministers attended the conference." I see quite a few titles of people or entities that are used generically in the lead but that start with capital letters. The first of these appears in the phrase, "were fully educated at the College... ". This should be "college". I would say the same about "Arts and Letters", "Business", and so on, and about "presidents" in "Four of the country's initial ten Presidents... ". It would be best to track these down and fix them before nominating this for FL.
  • Fixed. Went through the whole page and changed any inappropriate capital letters. Also, a colloquialism of The College of William & Mary is "the College" with a capital C – since "College" is part of its official name, that needs to stay upper case. I put a brief mention in the lead about the colloquialism to avoid confusion.
• The Jefferson image looks fine in its new home, but the Perry Ellis photo creates a new layout problem. MOS:IMAGES says in part, "Avoid sandwiching text between two images that face each other." You might be able to squeeze this third image elsewhere into the lead, but I'm not sure.
  • Fixed. Although the BYU alumni page has that same problem.
• The bolded letters on the list at the bottom of the lead probably violate the MOS:BOLD guidelines. I would recommend a normal typeface rather than bold.
  • Fixed. I made only the actual linked initials bolded because those are what appear in the list.
• One more thing I meant to mention is that MOS:HEAD says in part, "Section names should preferably be unique within a page; this applies even for the names of subsections." For this reason, I would suggest shortening the set of heads that repeat "United States" so that they say simply "Presidents", "Supreme Court", and so on. You might think of better ways to solve this problem than shortening; this is just a suggestion. I would also suggest changing "Congressmen" to "Representatives" to avoid the built-in gender bias of "Congressmen". Finetooth
  • Fixed. I condensed the United States sections into subsections under "Federal government" and then changed "Government → State and local government". I also changed "Congressmen" to "Congresspeople" to make it gender neutral (even though, at present, no women are on the list in that section).(talk) 00:10, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Best of luck at FLC. Finetooth (talk) 00:00, 20 July 2009 (UTC)