User talk:Patrickneil/Georgetown

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Kevin Wm. Wildes

I nominated the article you created, Kevin Wm. Wildes for deletion. PIease share your opinions here Eclectek C T 16:40, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Please don't take personal offense. Everybody having their own opinions and going through civil discourse is what makes wikipedia great. I think that the article topic doesn't meet the standards of wikipedia. I have no problem with the article staying on wikipedia if the majority of users agree. I'm just working to make wikipedia great. Eclectek C T 20:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Georgetown fight song

I see you had the "fight song moved to separate page". Could you please add a link to that page to the main Georgetown Hoyas page? Thanks, --M@rēino 21:33, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Georgetown University

We got GA! :) --YbborTalk 02:49, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Georgetown help

Hey Patrick,

As the person most responsible for getting Duke to FA status, I'll try to give you some advice on the Georgetown article. First, to answer your questions:
How, at a smaller school, can I get more people involved? Who/where is good to ask for assistance?

Honestly, I pretty much wrote/edited the entire Duke article on my own and didn’t get help from anybody else, so I can't really help you on this one (although a few users definitely kept the article on their watch list and provided some small fixes). I spent way too many hours on it for my own good....Oh well. But I can give you advice on how to learn to write an FA quality article. Just look at examples and comments made from prior University FA candidates. You could also try asking the League of Copyeditors to take a look, which didn't exist at the time when I was going through writing the Duke article. They helped get Ohio Wesleyan University to FA status. You are already on the right track asking other editors for university FAs. Also, be careful to avoid academic boosterism and include (at least some) criticism on the university. I tried to achieve this by putting some negatives in the Greek and social life section. People during FA candidacy always complain that the article is biased if only the great things are talked about. And don’t be subjective when complimenting Georgetown’s strengths (e.g. don’t say "Georgetown’s library is known as one of the best in the nation," instead say "Georgetown’s library collection is the 15th largest in the nation" and then provide a source). On an quick glance, the article seems okay in that regard, actually. FA is honestly kinda a crapshoot - it just depends who happens to logon and look at your article. There's always somebody out there who wants to oppose; it's just a matter of if he or she logs in and take a look (but obviously you can do many things to reduce this likelihood).

What should I avoid doing when posting it as a featured article candidate?

Avoid being too defensive on the criticism. And make sure it meets all the standard procedural/format standards. That will be the majority of the complaints since that's objective.

Now, to give you a short (and incomplete) improvement list, which I will also copy to the Peer Review submission:

  • 1.) Image: Seal original 200.gif, image:Hoya.jpg, Image:Georgetown_University_nameplate_white_200.gif, and Image:Georgetown University nameplate white 200.gif need fair use rationales.
  • 2.) Image:Johncarroll.jpg’s copyright isn’t clear because the link provided is a dead link.
  • 3.) WAY too many external links. 8-10 total is the target. I’d get rid of student organization links as well as particular school links. Maybe a link to the student newspaper would be appropriate, though.
  • 4.) Don’t start a sentence with a number and be careful to follow all other standard (formal) writing practices (e.g. 84% in the Admissions section should be "Eighty-one percent").
  • 5.) I personally think the Student Life section contains too many short sub-sections. I’d seek to combine them, but I don’t think this would be a reason to oppose FA since it’s more personal preference so it’s not imperative.
  • 6.) In the Greek life section, it is stated that Georgetown does not allow fraternities and thus none exist except for service fraternities. This is not true according to my understanding and talking to people that go to Georgetown. While not officially recognized, it should be mentioned that there is an "underground" Greek system. Obviously, this needs to be sourced, but that shouldn’t be hard to find from the campus’ student newspaper. This paragraph just seems misleading to me from what I know (unless my friends have been lying to me!). You don't need to mention the fraternities by name, just mention their existence. I supposed it is possible that they compose such a small segment of the population that they don't merit mentioning.
  • 7.) Definitely get somebody with fresh eyes to do a thorough copyedit of the prose. Haven’t really looked at in detail, but I’m sure there are some errors.
  • 8.) I honestly think the article is a bit short for an article of this magnitude (although it still has the same or more sections). That's an easy problem to fix since I'm sure you have plenty to say about Georgetown. Looking at other university FAs, I think it's considerably shorter although I could be wrong. Looking at the sizes isn't representative because the majority of the size comes from citing sources. Specifically, I'd expand the Athletics and Alumni sections....Again, might just be personal preference.

Overall, I’d say the article is in really good shape. It is sourced copiously and correctly, and all the necessary components are there. Good luck! -Bluedog423Talk 01:55, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Greetings Patrick,
I'm trying not to get in your way re: the Georgetown article. I just started editing it because i personally dislike the copious amounts of "suggestions" people make that could be much more quickly and pragmatically implemented than expressed as discussion items. I personally would much rather have conscientious editing help than "suggestions," but, as i don't have the time to personally research this, I feel comfortable in saying that both the Georgetown history section and history article could be much more complete. Other than that, the main article seems fine to me, but if i were to review it for FA, that would be a deal-breaker. Anyway, best of luck and Godspeed in getting this through FAC. Regards, Ameriquedialectics 21:30, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I'll try to help out as i can addressing various minor criticisms on the FAC page. That might be the best way of approaching it for the time being. Ameriquedialectics 22:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I can't do much more work on the history section, as it is in more serious need of content rather than a copyedit, so I will let it go for now. Best, Ameriquedialectics 00:32, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Image:Seal original 200.svg

First, congrats on getting Georgetown University up to GA status. That's a tough process to go through, and you did a great job "shepherding" the article through it.

I noticed that you tagged the SVG version that I uploaded of the Georgetown seal. I had originally intended to upload that in place of the GIF image that's in the article now. Unfortunately, I never could figure out what the heck was wrong with it. If you click on the image placeholder on the image page, you can very clearly see the logo. However, on the image page it doesn't show, nor does it show up in the article. Very weird. If you've got any experience with that sort of thing, it'd be great if you could fix it. SVG images are generally preferable to GIF's or PNG's.

By the way, I changed the banner shell on the talk page. It's totally just a matter of aesthetics for me (I like being able to see the full list of projects and the assessment without having to click show), but if you don't like it feel free to change it back. Esrever 05:10, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I just noticed the banners, looks much better.--Patrick 05:13, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Publishers

Patrick do you want help on the Work/Publisher thingie? It would be easier/faster to keep it off the FAC and just do it. Let me know if I can help; I'll follow your talk page, so you can answer here. I suspect you're making it harder than it has to be; the publisher in many of those cases can just be Georgetown University. We just generally need to know who's webpage it is (as in, New York Times, BBC, Georgetown University, US News and World Report and so on.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:49, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I never turn help down. I think they all now have at least a work/publisher field filled in, the concern would be if it is proper. Should I change things that say "Office of Communications" to "Georgetown University" or add "Georgetown University" as a publisher to references that already have a work tag? I'll have to finish anything that comes up tomorrow, but I hope the FAC can still stay up.--Patrick 20:13, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
From looking over the refs, it seems like you've made it harder than it need be. There are a lot of them that really only need to say Georgetown University, and don't need to be linked anywhere. That might improve readability, as there are a lot of blue links. Also, a lot of the article titles aren't spot on; the goal is to help a reader find the content if that link ever changes or goes dead, so a fully descriptive page title is good. I'd change a few to show you how I'd do it, but I'd wipe out a lot of the links you currently have listed under Work/Publisher; I'd make it much simpler. Let me know, I'll help if you want, but I don't want to get in your way or make changes you don't approve of. Picking an example of your current ref 28, I would list publisher as Georgetown University (with no link) and title as Office of Mission and Ministry: The Spirit of Georgetown. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:55, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I made some more changes this afternoon. I went ahead and added "publisher= Georgetown University" to references that used the georgetown.edu site but didn't mention Georgetown in the work field. I changed some publishers and titles, but I don't see an advantage to removing links. These are helpful, especially when a url link goes dead. I know the blue makes the whole list harder to read, but few users will read the the references section like an regular section, and its usually used by the in-text link.--Patrick 22:25, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

You've got a typo Univeristy throughout; I fixed some, but there are more. (It's looking good!) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:15, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Woops. Will fix.--Patrick 22:25, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Georgetown FAC restart

Hey, I've been keeping an eye on the Georgetown U FAC, as I'm sure you expect. I don't quite understand why everything was restarted. can you explain? Thanks in advance? --YbborTalk 04:04, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Pardon my barging in, I still have Patrick's page watchlisted from the work yesterday on GU. Raul restarts FAC pages when the page has become too long, complicated, unclear or messy to sort out where the article stands in terms of Support, Oppose, and unresolved issues. Some of that lengthy discussion could better occur on talk pages. If you had a previous support, you just re-enter it; if you had unresolved Opposes or fixes needed, you also re-enter them. It gives messy FACs a fresh start. For instance, I didn't re-enter my Oppose because Patrick was actively working to resolve them. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:23, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I think its great. I figured Raul, beloved FA director, would take one look at the page and reject it, being clear that more work needed to be done, despite my profuse use of checkmarks.--Patrick 13:31, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Raul wouldn't do that...he might delete hours upon hours of our work...but he wouldn't reject an article due to length alone (or at least he shouldn't). — BQZip01 — talk 15:26, 4 September 2007 (UTC)