Talk:List of Dartmouth College alumni

Template for adding new entries
is right here. Use the template as indicated (click it for documentation). The second line is the person's graduation year, and the third line is the person's description or notability. For the final line, the citation, please use a tag (I've been using  and ; the former is indicated here, but use whatever).

Just thought I'd add it so that you don't have to copy it from another and delete out all the content in there. Kane5187 16:48, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
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Missing people
I was cross-checking Category:Dartmouth College alumni against this list, and the following people are in the category but not on the list. (This is mostly for my own reference -- I'll add them myself -- but I thought I'd put it here). Kane5187 (talk) 18:05, 20 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Robert (Tex) Allen
 * Harold J. Berman
 * Ric Bucher
 * Lanei Chapman
 * Groff Conklin
 * Charles Warren Greene
 * Skylor Haagensen
 * Richard Ames Hart
 * Kenneth Hecht
 * Alex Kapp Horner
 * Joel Hyatt
 * Robert A. Jarrow
 * Arthur Whipple Jenks
 * Roger Jones (physicist and entrepreneur)
 * Britton Keeshan
 * John S.C. Knowlton
 * Benjamin Labaree
 * Edward Lamb
 * Henry C. Lord
 * Edward Luck


 * Stephen Macht
 * Morton D. May
 * Sean McLaughlin (media activist & educator)
 * Mike Mearls
 * Jim Metzler
 * John C. Meyer
 * Cammy Myler
 * Kenneth N. Ogle
 * Daniel S. Papp
 * Russell Pinkston
 * Warren E. Preece
 * John L. Rand
 * Richard Longabaugh
 * Steven Rogel
 * Mateo Romero
 * Juliette Rossant
 * Howard Roughan
 * Arunas Rudvalis
 * Nathan Ruegger
 * Thomas V. Ryan


 * Robert Ryan
 * Chuck Seelbach
 * Martin J. Sherwin
 * Michael Shnayerson
 * Alexander O. Smith
 * Justin Harvey Smith
 * Andrew Sobel (author)
 * Samuel Somerville Stratton
 * Scott Straus
 * Stuart Struever
 * John Tallmadge
 * Harry Bates Thayer
 * Ed Victor
 * Norman Weissman
 * Rick White (politician)
 * Stephen Wizner
 * Kai Wong
 * Marcus Wright
 * Bill Yellowtail
 * Paul Zamecnik

Okay, I've added the people who are crossed out; they ones that are not crossed out appear to be alums, but I couldn't find reliable citations supporting them as such. Feel free to add them in if you have better luck than I. Kane5187 (talk) 22:17, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

People to be added
The following people do appear to be Dartmouth alums, but I can't find reliable citations for them. Add them if you can: Kane5187 (talk) 17:35, 22 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Lanei Chapman
 * Groff Conklin
 * Charles Warren Greene
 * Skylor Haagensen
 * John S.C. Knowlton
 * Nelson Lichtenstein
 * Richard Longabaugh


 * Henry C. Lord
 * Stephanie Losee
 * Robert L. May (Rudolph)
 * Mike Mearls
 * Jim Metzler
 * Henry C. Morrison
 * Edward Nathan Pearson


 * Rena J. Mosteirin
 * J. Burton Rix
 * Nathan Ruegger
 * Brian Sharp
 * H.J. Shen
 * Samuel Somerville Stratton
 * Stuart Struever


 * I've found a source for Kai Wong's Dartmouth connection: Dartmouth alumni in entertainment and media-- Palaeovia talk 23:40, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks! I added him. Kane5187 (talk) 23:46, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Robert Martensen can be added. Jesanj (talk) 19:27, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * De-linked and struck the entry for Rena J. Mosteirin. The article was deleted per discussion at Articles for deletion/Rena J. Mosteirin. NorthAmerica1000 09:32, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Splitting this list
This list is huge (167 KB) – the 55th-longest page on Wikipedia. For months now, it's strained in my browser to load (sometimes 20-30 seconds, and I've got a pretty fast computer), and while my edits go through successfully, it always displays the "Wikipedia has an error" page after I click "Save page." Now it won't even let me compare revisions, always timing out. And it's only going to get bigger. Is anyone else having these problems? And if so, does anyone have ideas regarding splitting it up into sub-articles?

I have two ideas regarding splitting it, but I don't completely like either one:


 * The first would be by subject (as it's divided now: put "Academia" through "Journalism" on one page, and "Journalism" through "Other" on another). This would be easy because it could be accomplished in about five minutes, and it allows for a consistent structure between the pages. However, it's much less intuitive, because these categories are not absolute, exclusive, or inherent to the subjects. You wouldn't automatically know where to find someone (for example, Sandy Alderson is a CEO [so under "Business and finance"] of a baseball team [so under "Sports" instead?]. Also, someone forced to look for the subject matter of person might assume a different term for the same subject -- i.e., we use "Sports" here, but someone might be looking for "Athletics.").
 * The other would be keeping the full sections intact but divvying it up by class year: 1771-1899 on one page, and 1900-present on another (or whatever time break makes the most sense). It's probably more intuitive for users, but it can be complicated for a number of reasons. First, a lot of people don't have confirmed class years, and while for most people we can probably infer from their date of birth about when they would have graduated (i.e. a guy born in 1954 would obviously go on the 1900-present page), I imagine some people missing a year might be right on the 1900 line. Second, it would require making duplicate sections (i.e. two "Business and finance" sections, two "Sports" sections, etc.); if separated on two pages, it may be difficult to prevent the sections from evolving in different directions and thereby giving non-parallel structure. Third, if divided in this way, some sections may not wind up having enough graduates in one or the other division to justify the section (e.g. "Arts" is all post-1900 graduates).

Obviously, there might be a great solution staring me in the face, and I'd love to hear it (or hear from the community that splitting isn't necessary after all, or whatever). I'm open to any solution, really, but I'm frankly at a loss for how to approach this effectively. Please help! Kane5187 (talk) 23:06, 23 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Tough call. Of your two suggestions, I prefer your first.  Here's my own thought:
 * - Main page is simple alphabetical list in three column format Name, Class, Categories.
 * - The Name column links to the alumnus' own page.
 * - The Categories column contains links to the categorized page(s) that a particular alumnus fits into.
 * - Text on the page notes that full references are contained on the categorized pages.
 * - Comment text on the pages makes it clear that entries are to be made in both places.
 * Sample entry:
 * Seth Swirsky 1982 List of Dartmouth College alumni - Entertainment List of Dartmouth College alumni - Bloggers —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rhsatrhs (talk • contribs) 01:07, 24 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The page loads for me as 100KB, so it may be that you have already successfully split this article (from 167KB). If you are still interested in suggestions though, it occurred to me that this could possibly be split into the living and the dead (not to be morbid!).  It would take a keen observer to ensure that the "dead" list is updated as the "living" people pass away, but as they all have articles anyway, this might not be that difficult to do.  The problem with this approach shares a little bit of the negatives of both of your suggestions.  Instead of not knowing which section the alumni may be sorted in, one may not know whether a certain individual is living or dead.  And as per your second suggestion, you would still have the issue of duplicated sections, and, as you say, they wouldn't always necessarily be aligned with each other.  However, I think that, overall, a list of alive and deceased Dartmouth alumni would be intuitive–at least more so than basing it on class year.  In any case, it seems most likely to me that people would be searching on the names of the people in whom they have an interest, which reduces the risk of confusion in having two lists.   Maedin \talk 06:57, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
 * In reviewing other splits, typical options are splitting of athletes or graudtes of medical or law schools. It seems like looking at divisions by units or degrees is the norm. Rublamb (talk) 08:10, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Graduation Year not sorting
Putting the year first then degree as it says in the column heading would work. However, most categories currently appear as degree/year which does not sort. Propose entering year then degrees. I have done this in the medicine section. Germsteel (talk) 09:06, 8 January 2021 (UTC)