Talk:Vanderbilt University/GA1

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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GA Reassessment

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As part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles' Project quality task force ("GA Sweeps"), all old good articles are being re-reviewed to ensure that they meet current good article criteria (as detailed at WP:WIAGA.) I have determined that this article needs some work to meet current criteria, outlined below:

• Lead: The lead needs some tweaks to properly cover the entire article. The second paragraph dwells too heavily on rankings. There is very little touching on student life and athletics.
• Body: There are many unsourced paragraphs throughout the article, some examples listed below:
  • "In the years prior to the American Civil War, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South was considering creating a regional university for the training of ministers located centrally for the congregations of the church. After lobbying by Nashville bishop Holland McTyeire, church leaders voted to create "Central University" in Nashville in 1872. However, lack of funds and the war-ravaged state of the South delayed the opening of the college."
  • "The endowment was increased to $1 million, and would be Vanderbilt's only philanthropy. The Commodore never expressed any desire that the university be named after himself, but McTyeire and his fellow trustees rechristened the school as "Vanderbilt University." Vanderbilt died in 1877 without seeing the school named after him."
  • "However, most of this crop of star faculty left after disputes with Bishop McTyeire."
  • "Vanderbilt enjoyed early intellectual influence during the 1920s and 1930s when it hosted two partly overlapping groups of scholars who had a large impact on American thought and letters: the Fugitives and the Agrarians. During the same period, Ernest William Goodpasture and his colleagues in the School of Medicine invented methods for cultivating viruses and rickettsiae in fertilized chicken eggs. This work made possible the production of vaccines against chicken pox, smallpox, yellow fever, typhus, Rocky mountain spotted fever and other diseases caused by agents that only propagate in living cells.", et al.
  • Remember that at the bare minimum, if several paragraphs use the same source, there should be at least one citation at the end of the paragraph. The vast majority of the content in this article is not common knowledge and could be challenged, so it should be cited!
• Sources: What makes The Vanderbilt Hustler, Vanderbilt View, The Vanderbilt Register reliable sources?
• Prose: The prose needs serious polishing. Among the systemic issues I see are changing and conflicting tense changes (history is referred to as past, then in some cases present, and things that sound like they ought to be in the past are written in the present, i.e., "Vanderbilt's research record is blemished". Another example from an unsourced chunk of text above:
  • "In the years prior to the American Civil War, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (makes no sense? The Methodist Episocal Church? What does the South mean? Bad comma usage) was considering creating a regional university for the training of ministers located centrally for the congregations of the church. After lobbying by Nashville bishop Holland McTyeire (unnecessary passive voice), church leaders voted to create "Central University" in Nashville in 1872. However, lack of funds and the war-ravaged state of the South delayed the opening of the college."
• Verifiability: Peacock and flowery terms and language mask original research. For example, "Vanderbilt's research record is blemished, however, by a study university researchers, in conjunction with the Tennessee Department of Health, conducted on iron metabolism during pregnancy in the 1940s" is sourced to NYT[1] which uses the words "iron deficiency", not "iron metabolism", and mentions no such blemish on the school's record. "Most notably, in the same publication's 2010 graduate program rankings, the Peabody College of Education was ranked first in the nation among schools of education. In addition, the Vanderbilt Law School was listed at 17th, the School of Medicine was listed at 15th among research-oriented medical schools, the School of Nursing was listed at 19th, the School of Engineering was listed at 39th, and the Owen Graduate School of Management was listed at 33rd among business schools" should be cited to each individual page the information appears at, not [2] (and "most notably" never appears, nor is one ranking singled out over another.)
• Images: The caption for File:MemorialVanderbilt.JPG, "West House, part of The Commons at Vanderbilt, home to 112 freshmen", appears to be original research or at the very least is uncited; similar problems are prevalent with many of the other images too.

The problems I have found indicate that the entire article will have to be swept, sourced, and existing sources checked. Given the enormity of those issues, I am boldly delisting the article now. The article can be taken back to WP:GAN whenever, but I would encourage nominators to address the issues above and what they entail. If you have questions or comments, please use my talk page; I don't watchlist old reviews or talk pages. Thanks, --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 15:49, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.