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Texas A&M University

Any suggestions as to how to improve this article to the FA standards are welcome. BlueAg09 ( Talk) 07:02, 14 April 2007 (UTC) reply

Comments from WindsorFan

A really interesting read! Just a couple of things:

  • The first paragraph of 2000-present is unreferenced and 'not satisfied with' seems accusational and flippant in tone.
  • The Campus lead has only two references. Is there a source for 'The area east of the railroad tracks is known as "Main Campus"' and the other 'known as' parts?
  • Can you prose-ify Student media?
  • Check full dates are wikilinked and single years, months and days aren't. WindsorFan 15:39, 16 April 2007 (UTC) reply
Thanks for your comments! I've referenced the first paragraph of 2000-Present and reworded its opening sentence. I also added references to the campus lead and turned the student media bullets into prose. Karanacs 17:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC) reply

Comments from user:Gopher backer

Generally this seems pretty good. I like the structure and there are some good images. I'm not the prose authority so I'll just look at other things...

  • I might be wrong but I believe that if a Ref is in English, you don't need to specify that (since this is English Wikipedia). I could be wrong on that though, it's something to check into.
  • By my count only 86 of the 98 references are of the Cite variety. For consistencies sake you'll want to get the remaining ones to match that.
  • Ref # 40 (Texas A&M Leads World in Cloning Animals". ABC News.) is a dead link
  • Ref # 66 (^ http://library.tamu.edu/portal/site/Library/menuitem.4671eb1f54acfda343aecb5419008a0c/ ) is also dead
  • Ref # 85 looks like it's messed up ( [NCAA_Men%27s_Division_I_Basketball_Championship#Tournament_format Texas A&M Basketball's Championship History]. Texas A&M Athletics. Retrieved on 2007-04-04)
  • I don't quite understand this, but I've seen a lot of FA reviewers not really be too impressed with Youtube or Myspace as references, so if you could find something else for #'s 95 & 96 that would probably be best (maybe since they're in the popular culture section they'd cut you some slack though)
  • Ref # 97 (RamonesRussa1 (JPEG). MyPunkCollection.co.uk.) leads to a forbidden link for me.
  • if possible, maybe try to add another image each to the History and Academics section
  • I'd suggest putting a   in between a numerical amount an its measurement, i.e. 100 miles and $1 billon.
  • Also, be sure to add metric measurements in parenthesis after the original value, i.e. 138 ft (42.1 m) tall.
  • I still at least one date that isn't wikified (September 16, 1999)
  • Consistency: 1) in one spot I see "by 1918 forty-nine percent of all graduates" and in another spot I see "The middle 50% of the freshmen" and 2) in one spot I see: " 5,200 acres (21 km²)" and in another spot I see "with 2.5 million square feet of". I'm not sure if one way or the other is preferred, but I'd find out which on you prefer and go with that. 3) I see one that is listed as "On 9 April 2007, Mark Turgeon accepted". Not that it's wrong, but I think that it should probably match the format of the rest of the dates in the article.
  • I might think of getting rid of the bullets in the Notable Buildings section. At least on my browser, most of them are cut off anyway because of the images on the left. I'm not sure that needs them, I think just the heading of the building name would suffice.

Gopher backer 01:45, 3 May 2007 (UTC) reply

Follow-Up

Thanks for your comments!

  • I've revamped the citations to follow your suggestions:
    • No need for (English) in the citation template (you are right)
    • All citations should follow same format
    • Fixed dead citations
    • Fixed Ref 85
  • I've also worked on the measurements in the article. I used the conversion templates to list both standard and metric units, which should also standardize the way the units are formed
  • Fixed the 9 April 2007 date to follow the format of the other dates in the article
  • Removed the bullets from the notable buildings.

We're discussing whether to take out the popular culture section or not. If it stays in the article, we'll see what we can do to clean up those citations too. Again, thanks for your time! Karanacs 14:50, 3 May 2007 (UTC) reply

Automated Peer Review

I am posting the automated suggestions here, with my comments. Karanacs 15:51, 4 May 2007 (UTC) reply

The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

  • Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates), months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article. [?]
    • Found a few I missed before. Fixed. Karanacs 15:51, 4 May 2007 (UTC) reply
  • See if possible if there is a free use image that can go on the top right corner of this article. [?]
    • The university seal is the most appropriate image. Other FA university articles have also included their respective seals in the infobox. Karanacs 15:51, 4 May 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Per Wikipedia:What is a featured article?, Images should have concise captions. [?]
    • They are pretty concise already. Karanacs 15:51, 4 May 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), there should be a non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 21 km, use 21 km, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 21 km. [?]
    • Found one instance where proper convert template not used for a measurement. This has been fixed. Karanacs 15:51, 4 May 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Build the web, years with full dates should be linked; for example, link January 15, 2006. [?]
    • All full years now linked. Karanacs 15:51, 4 May 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), avoid using special characters (ex: &+{}[]) in headings.
  • Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) may be too long- consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per Wikipedia:Summary style. [?]
  • There are a few occurrences of weasel words in this article- please observe WP:AWT. Certain phrases should specify exactly who supports, considers, believes, etc., such a view.
    • arguably
    • might be weasel words, and should be provided with proper citations (if they already do, or are not weasel terms, please strike this comment). [?]
    • Fixed. Karanacs 15:51, 4 May 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
    • Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.”
    • Fixed, I think. Karanacs 15:51, 4 May 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a. [?]

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Ruhrfisch 03:50, 4 May 2007 (UTC) reply