Wikipedia:Peer review/University of West Alabama/archive1

University of West Alabama

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like to get feedback on the article as a whole. I would also like to determine if the newspaper citations that have been referenced are sufficient. I am also hoping to hear if the overall article has a good pattern throughout. Any suggestions, comments, or contributions would be greatly appreciated. If one has any ideas for any future images that could be added, I will be glad to determine how those can be achieved.

Thanks, UWAFanatic05 (talk) 02:18, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Ruhrfisch comments: Interesting article, and clearly a lot of work has gone into it. Here are some suggestions for improvement.

• A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow - there are several FAs about universities that would be good models: see Wikipedia:Featured_articles#Education
• The disambiguation tool in the toobox at upper right finds several dab links that need to be fixed
• The external link checker finds one dead link - it is a newspaper article, so it is OK as just a ref to the newspaper (does not need to also be an internet link)
• There is no alt text for the images - this is needed for readers who cannot see the article. See WP:ALT please
• Now for some specifics on the article itself. The lead does not really follow WP:LEAD. The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article - as such, nothing important should be in the lead only - since it is a summary, it should all be repeated in the body of the article itself. But the nicknames (U-dub) seem to only be in the lead.
• My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way, but I am not sure that the University beginnings and State university sections are in the lead.
• Another big potential problem is lack of references in places - U-WAH and U-DUB are unreferenced, as are the Media and Entertainment section, most of Facilities, the first paragraph of Athletics and traditions, and all of the Notable people. My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref.
• Since you asked about refs, the newspaper refs seem fine to me - it is good to have independent third-party sources as much as possible (avoid refs from the university itself if possible)
• Per WP:MOS#Images, images should not sandwich text between them, but this is done in a couple of places (Athletics and traditions, Present day)
• Avoid words like "today" in The main administration building that sits in the middle of campus today is named in his honor. "As of 2010" or since YEAR" would work instead.
• Extraordinary claims need solid references to back them up. For example this In 1882-1883, state lawmakers provided $2,500 for tuition and supplies, making Alabama the first southern state to fund the education of women, an appropriation which Tutwiler and state legislator Addison Gillespie Smith helped secure.[11] has the original bill for funding as a ref (which is fine) but I do not see how that backs up the claim "making Alabama the first southern state to fund the education of women" (apologies if I missed it)
• Awkward sentence New leadership and another new name to the school came during the early stages of the 20th century. plus it is not clear what the new name was (assume it is the name mentioned in the next section - if it is, I would try to keep the new name and this sentence in the same section)
• Read WP:RECENTISM and WP:WEIGHT - as you get closer to the present, there will be more and better sources available, but that does not mean that every detail needs to be included here. Does the reader really need to know all four candidates for interim president in 2002? And...
• When starting a new section, make sure to provide context to the reader - see WP:PCR The "present day" section starts Richard Holland, an alumnus of the institution and former dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, was selected by trustees to take over the position. If someone has skipped and is just reading this section, they have no idea when this is, what position he istaking over, etc. As noted above, I also think splitting stories like this between two sections is confusing.
• I also am not sure that the two recent faculty deaths (car accident and cancer) really merit inclusion in this article. I am by no means saying that their deaths were not tragic or that that they were not wonderful people, but what makes them notable in the 175 year history of the university? Over the past 175 years, I would imagine most of the faculty who have taught there have died already - why single out these two? See WP:NN too
• Many readers also look at the images first, before reading the article. So instead of just "Julia Tutwiler" why not mention one or two things she is know for? Or instead of two captions that read "X Hall on the campus of the University of West Alabama", why not say something like "X Hall, home to the departments of Y and Z, built YEAR"

Ok that's a start. Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 02:20, 7 April 2010 (UTC)