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Wikipedia:Peer review/Union College/archive1

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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)[reply]


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.

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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]
  • 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".
  • 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)[reply]

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)[reply]