Talk:Louisiana State University/GA1

GA Review

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Hey all, I'll be reviewing this article for possible GA status. Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 21:05, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the article does not merit GA status at this time. Please consider the below suggestions and feel free to renominate once these concerns have been addressed. Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 23:05, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Writing and formatting

• The lead should serve as a summary of the entire article. The last paragraph of the lead should be expanded to include some of the information in "Student Life" and possibly other sections.
• Only the first letter in headings and subheadings should be capitalized (unless proper nouns). Also, special characters like "&" should not be included in headings
• The table of contents is very long - consider combining shorter sections to reduce its size
• Footnotes should be immediately punctuation with no space in between
• Links to disambiguation pages to be resolved: Quadrangle, Golden Boot, Tiger Stadium
• Should include more internal links (wikilinks), but should not link the same term more than once
• Needs general copy-edit for grammar, clarity + flow
• The list under "Rankings" should probably be converted to prose
• What's the difference between the Student Government and the Student Union? Not clear from the text

Accuracy and verifiability

• Need at minimum one citation per paragraph, usually more. All quotes, opinions and statistics must be cited.
• When a paragraph contains a lot on information, that means it needs more citations. A single citation at the end of a paragraph is not enough in such cases, in particular where that citation does not support all of the information in the paragraph
• Note which links require log-in or subscription to access
• Refs 4, 23 are broken
• Wikipedia is not a crystal ball (or a time machine) - try to avoid having sources that are accessed in 2010 (ref 4), or 2090 (ref 7). Also check for spelling and other errors in referencing. Make formatting as consistent as possible (probably easiest to use cite templates)
• Avoid tertiary sources like Britannica wherever possible
• All web references must have access dates
• Refs 28 and 34 lead to the same URL, but are formatted differently - should use the multiple ref format (refname); likewise for the other refs from that source
• Potentially contentious information should use reliable secondary sources, not sources from the school itself
• Refs 55-57 link to the same URL, as do 72 and 74

Broad

• The Sports section is too large and too detailed compared to the rest of the article
• Student population is mentioned only in the lead
• Funding information?
• Should explain what it means to be part of a state university system

Neutrality

• Lack of encyclopedic tone in places

       Can someone remove bias from this sentence?  In History section, under 20th century:  "By 1936, LSU had the finest facilities in the South, a top-notch faculty of 394 professors, a new medical school, more than 6,000 students, and a winning football team."   -- PVSpud  —Preceding unsigned comment added by PVSpud (talk • contribs) 21:19, 30 March 2010 (UTC) 

• Look at WP:WTA and WP:WEASEL - certain words introduce an editorial bias and should be avoided

Stability

No issues noted

Images

• Some problems with formatting - breaking up the text, extending off the screen, etc. Also, some of the images are quite large
• The "other versions" link on the panorama is broken
• Some of the pictures should be rearranged to better align with the text. For example, the "live oak" picture should be next to the text about the live oaks
• Were the Indian Mounds built over 5000 years ago, or around 5000 years ago? Caption's information should match with that in the text
• Images aren't meant to be pure decorations - unless there's a good reason to have two pictures of Foster Hall, only one is needed
• Captions are not exempt from the normal rules for article writing: they must be relatively grammatically correct ("Cheerleader" is not a proper noun), and they must be verifiable (what reliable source says that The Sims is the best-selling PC game of all time?)
• People that are not discussed in the "Notable alumni" section shouldn't have their picture in that section

Maps

http://www.lsu.edu/campus/maps/ is a campus map WhisperToMe (talk) 18:31, 31 August 2011 (UTC)