Wikipedia:Peer review/Pennsylvania State University/archive2

Pennsylvania State University[edit]

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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… It was last peer reviewed in 2007 and subsequent work is continually being performed on the page. It is a large page about a well known university in the United States. It could possible be rated as a Good Article, A-Class, or Featured Article. I am by no means an expert on how a page should be properly written or look, it would be very good for all of the people who work on this page to see what some other editors think.

Thanks, Flyguy33 (talk) 06:29, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This article contains interesting and useful material but has several big problems that should be addressed.

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." A good rule of thumb is to include at least a brief mention of each of the main text sections. The existing lead doesn't mention "History", "Organization", "Research", "Athletics", "Student life", and other topics covered by the main text.

All of the citation-needed and other tags should be considered and their concerns addressed.

Large sections of the article lack sources. A good rule of thumb is to provide a source for every statistic, every claim that might reasonably be challenged, every direct quotation, and every paragraph. For example, "Early years" is completely unsourced but must have come from a source or sources. Ditto for other subsections of the "History" section, the entire "Special mission campuses" subsection, and other sections and parts of sections.

On my computer screen, the map in the "Commonwealth campuses" section is garbled because place names overlap one another and are not readable.

References such as citation 98 are broken or incomplete and should be fixed. The reference styles are mixed and should be made consistent. The "cite family" of templates used for some of the citations is fine, and sticking with these throughout will bring consistency to the reference section. Please see WP:CIT for the complete set of templates. Don't mix the "cite family" with the "citation" family, which is also explained at WP:CIT.

MOS:IMAGES says in part, "Images should be inside the section they belong to (after the heading and after any links to other articles), and not above the heading." Some of the images, such as the one of Old Main in the existing article, overlap two sections and should be moved.

MOS:IMAGES also advises against bumping an image against a third-level head or placing it directly below a third-level head. The West Halls image violates this guideline. Moving the image down or to the right would solve the problem.

I hope these few suggestions will be enough to get you started. Finetooth (talk) 00:04, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Uncia preliminary comments: These are some general observations. I will post some more specific comments later. There are also a lot of little copyedit problems that I will attempt to fix myself.

The information is well-balanced and does not over- or underemphasize any areas

Many sections don't flow well and border on being miscellaneous lists of information. In these cases there is often not enough context given to tell us why the subject is being brought up. An example is the University Park Undergraduate Association, which tells us everything about the organization except what it does. I'll give a more detailed report on these fragmentary sections later. One that is especially bad is Diversity.

There are many startling but unsourced claims, to the effect that Penn State is the biggest or the best of something in the world. These claims may be true, but all such claims need to be sourced. I'll mark these as needing citations.

Often there are statements about "current" or "most recent" information. In general these should instead state the date they are valid as of. Many of these are for 2005 or 2006, hardly "current". I'll fix these.

Often the photos don't go with the section they are in. Photos should illustrate, not decorate, the article.

There's been some vandalism of the article, not surprising considering its fragmentary nature and lack of sources. I spotted a couple: Who's Mari?, Why you should go to Pitt instead, that I fixed. Much vandalism can be caught by careful and skeptical reading, but for others you either have to know the subject well or check the references; hence the importance of having sources for all important statements.

More details to follow. --Uncia (talk) 04:12, 2 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Uncia general comments: After reading this again, it doesn't seem as choppy as it did yesterday, so I think the most important area to improve is the sourcing. I get the impression that this article has been neglected, because there are lots of statements that say "recently ..." for something that happened 2 or 3 years ago. The "recently" bit is not a big problem in itself, but it indicates that no one is paying attention to this article and polishing it. I went through and fixed all the dead links, which turned out to be about 20% to 25% of all the links, which is another indication no one is watching the article. There also are not very many wikilinks, a third indication. --Uncia (talk) 04:46, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Uncia specific comments: In addition to the dead links, I went through and fixed some misspellings and awkward statements, and made a number of minor improvements.

Much of the data in the top infobox is not in the body of the article. This is not necessarily an error, but it is unusual. Also, there are several items of data that are in both places but don't agree, for example, the total number of students and the total area. The best thing is to put all the data in the body, give sources there, and repeat the most important parts in the infobox. I suggest that for campus/division info the infobox should only show the grand total and not the breakdown by areas, or possibly the grand total and the University Park figure.
infobox: "Making Life Better" is a marketing slogan, not the motto. I think Penn States doesn't even have a motto.
Atherton is honored "by the name of a major road", but the article doesn't tell us the name of the road or where it is. It wikilinks to an article for a state road, but that also doesn't tell us the name.
Commonwealth campuses: the discussion implies that these are strictly undergraduate campuses, which is not true. For example, York offers a Master of Education, see Graduate Students
Athletics: explain what "club sports" are - I'm not familiar with this term, and there's no Wikipedia article on it.
Diversity: the paragraph on "Respect Comes Full Circle" has the wrong emphasis; that is, it talks about a publicity campaign for a support network but doesn't talk about the support network itself.
Student organizations: UPUA is described as an "advocacy group"; what do they advocate?

--Uncia (talk) 04:52, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]