Talk:List of Punahou School alumni

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Ntakamat.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:41, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Image locations
Any objection to moving the images near the individuals they depict? -- Terry Carroll 20:32, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

See the Michelle Wie example at Punahou School Alumni for an example of what I propose. In retrospect, this was probably not the best candidate to use, because the "Golf" category has only four entries. I also added one for Barack Obama at Punahou School Alumni, which is a little more aesthetically pleasing.-- Terry Carroll 21:45, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Response
As I mentioned on your talk page, I agree this looks much better, and thank you again for the section re-division with contents. I want to keep the band of images on the main page as it gives a fair and a quick impression of the diversity of the Punahou population. I do promise to come back and prune the scholars pages based on citation data (but ISI is more authoritative than scholar.google, and ISI takes more time to do).

Thinking about why the list is long... well, of course I am being ridiculously thorough, and the standards are rising as I find more people (I am near the end of the L's in the 1991 alumni directory). But really, the school is old, large, and encourages many paths (you can see clear military, athlete, politics, performer, and scholar tracks... there are others, and this is part of what distinguishes the school from eastern elite prep schools, which prefer very high level bankers, ambassadors, etc., but some do not have room for many artists and others do not produce a lot of athletes, etc.) Furthermore, as I discovered on a Stanford page praising an early woman lawyer, Punahou has always expected as much from its women and minority populations as from its men and its majority populations. Or that is what was claimed by Rhoda Lewis. Since we can't list four Nobel prizewinners, three presidents, two billionaires, and a Hall of Famer, we end up with a long and diverse list if we want to paint an accurate picture.

RP Loui 10/16/07 -- how do I timestamp this? User:Ronaldloui (at 16:14, October 16, 2007)


 * Just be careful that you're not copying all of the directory that is your source document; you don't want to risk copyright infringement. As long as you're using it as a source of information, and not copying its selection, coordination or arrangement, you should be okay.


 * On the timestamp: it looks like you're signing with only three tildas, which just adds your name. To timestamp, sign with four tildas ( ~ ), which adds your name and a timestamp. If I misunderstand and you're actually typing in " User:Ronaldloui ", you don't need to do that.  Just put in the four consecutive tildas and it will generate the username and timestamp for you. See WP:SIG for more info.  -- Terry Carroll 23:27, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Red-letter names
I see that an editor has come through and put many names in wikipedia-reference-brackets with full knowledge that there is no target page. What is the policy or best practice on such names? I've removed them in the past -- should all such names be in red? This seems to draw undue attention to people who are sometimes, but not always, less interesting than those who have their own wikipedia pages. 04:31, 31 October 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ronaldloui (talk • contribs)
 * The listing of people on wikipedia falls under the purview of Notability, wherein we list people who are verifiable in their noteworthiness. Verifiability can be learned about by reading Verifiability. -- K u k i ni  hablame aqui 13:47, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * An example of doing this well is what you did in finding a newspaper article verifying Duncan Macdonald. Perhaps you might slow down on listing large numbers of people and begin working on listing people with verification.-- K u k i ni  hablame aqui 13:53, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Citations needed
I am really happy to provide citations, especially for obscure facts. But surely this page should not have 500-1000 references when it is ideally completed. A gold medal is quite easy to verify by any competent internet user. Meanwhile, a VP of a brokerage firm is inferred from SEC documents online. If we list three affiliations, we have three citations, plus the citation that the person attended (which thankfully is mostly under the umbrella of the alumni directory I am using). So what should be the guideline for what needs citation? It almost makes more sense to build a page for each person and put the required fact supporting citations on each such page. I am willing to do that, but it would clearly take some time.

Why were some Olympians challenged for references and others not? I don't understand the criterion -- I can see asking for all medalists or all non-medalists, but there seems to be a mix of some but not all, of each kind.

As it stands, it almost seems like the request for citations is a kind of harassment or vandalism by someone who doesn't want the information to be made public!

Ronaldloui 04:31, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I just have not gotten back to it, but this extensive cataloging of everyone "notable" who has ever graduated from Punahou needs to be verified with citations, or at the least, with wikipedia articles. This is pretty standard fare throughout wikipedia. -- K u k i ni  hablame aqui 06:19, 31 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I would actually agree that all items in an online encyclopedia need sources, within reason (you can't reference in advance of all potential challenges, because not all challenges can be forseen). I see that referencing reputable online sources is acceptable practice, e.g. a US Swimming Hall of Fame site, so these claims are not going to be a problem to back up... My problem is simply with the number of citations (should I cite the claim that someone went to a certain college and graduated in a certain year?  Most of those are covered by a single source, but there was additional research involved in many of them, to verify, e.g., that a corporate bio corresponded to the same person in the alumni directory).  Meanwhile, colleges such as Wash U and Georgetown, which I have recently paid some attention to, DO NOT GIVE ANY CITATIONS for their many many dubious claims.  I am actually a Harvard graduate who has been a Professor at Wash U for twenty years working on legal databases and citation indexing (just using Georgetown for comparison) -- I have some idea about standards for factual research, professional publication and proper referencing, as well as an idea of what are typical standards of achievement.  My article is well researched and it will just take time to recover the citations I found online, which I did not include because I thought I was following the extant wikipedia practices.  Other similar articles (other private elite high schools and colleges) are often outrageously unsourced and misleading.  OK, that's their problem and we can set a model of a well researched and documented article here.  But it does feel as if my work is being unfairly targeted by someone who has an agenda.  Admittedly, the agenda might be just to make the article better, which is a good thing.  But really, has this editor had a look at other alumni pages?  How do I request a third-party arbiter, or better, request that this editor go after some of these more offensive articles?  For example, I have started adding an undergraduates-only alumni page whenever I see a college trying to obscure the nature of their graduates by mixing in degree-recipients from professional schools.  They know how people judge an educational institution by its past people, and their PR people deliberately make this hard to see.  To me, that's an unacceptable practice -- even before we talk about their missing citations!  Ronaldloui 19:06, 31 October 2007 (UTC)


 * A bit more... My whole idea for a long alumni page like this is to keep the main article's list of major alumni cleaner and more stable. People can plop names in and out of the alumni page while recognizing that they don't rise to the top-50 or so that go on the school page.  On the other hand, it depends on perspective.  For example, when I first encountered the wikipedia Punahou article, all I found was an extensive list of Olympians (which I left intact) and a list of actors and football players.  That's one perspective.  Some people don't care about authors, some don't care about doctors, some don't care about generals.  I felt it was ok to take Farrington off the Punahou page, even though one wouldn't normally drop off an alum who served in the US Congress for a decade, because his name would appear on the longer list.  Frankly, I didn't think he helped paint the picture of the school, but surely he belongs on some kind of encyclopedic alumni list.  I defend the idea of two lists precisely because one is exclusive and the other inclusive, and the quality of the exclusive list is much improved by having access to the inclusive list.  By their nature, it is the exclusive list that should have the higher standard of documentation exercised.  So perhaps we should be looking at citations needed for the Punahou School page before contesting everything on the Punahou School alumni page.  Ronaldloui 19:45, 31 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Here is the Wash U almni page, for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Washington_University_alumni

and here is what Taft School lists on their main page, for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Taft_School#Notable_alumni
 * Thanks for pointing these out. I see this as a rampant problem throughout much of wikipedia. Uncited claims are particularly problematic at High School articles, where students add "made up" names to "notable" lists regularly. An example of an exemplary alumni page is the List of Texas Tech University people. Thanks for your efforts, diligence and patience.  K u k i ni  hablame aqui 20:24, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, that makes me feel better. I resolve to add articles and citations, and to raise standards. If I had not inherited such a long Olympian list, I would never have started listing so many people in other categories. But obviously I have enjoyed doing the research. Ronaldloui 20:33, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Citations for Attendance
All attendance claims are substantiated by the Alumni directory, except Coffey, as noted, and Watada, Camara, which come from wiki, and Linebarger, which comes from an online biographer. So, for example, the "citation needed" for Sandy Plueger is for what? the 1984 Olumpic dressage participation? That's on her wikipedia page. So it must be for her Punahou School attendance, which is in the alumni directory. Unless you want me to cite this volume for each entry, we should remove some of these "citation needed" requests that simply contest whether the person went to Punahou. If you want, I can include attendance dates for EVERYONE, not just for non-graduates. That would seem to be overkill. Ronaldloui 10:50, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Why is any citation needed for Francis Wai beyond what is on his own wikipedia page? Ronaldloui 10:57, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

H. Wells Lawrence
I can't seem to find anything on this person. Help! -- K u k i ni  hablame aqui 19:06, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I know where these are. There are actually quite a few... I'll get them. BTW, I agree completely about McCullough and Ramler. I inherited both from the former list-maker, which is what got me started. You know, you see something and say, surely a better list could be made. In the military, political, and art sections, I have allowed a lower standard for a son who has FOLLOWED in the footsteps of the father and has the same name, where the combined achievement is notable. This is useful not only because it disambiguates (e.g., it is simply truthful to note that our Gene Smedley is not the Medal of Honor winner with the "same name"), but also because it paints the picture. Punahou isn't the place that crows about legacy Presidents' sons or daughters of Carnegies, but it does have a lot of people, esp. military, who achieve high rank after their parent is notable. This is itself interesting, I believe. I waffle over Jennifer Nicholson, who is mainly there just for gossip. On the other hand, she could not have been named Jack Nicholson, Jr. Ramler is a favorite of the people on campus, but his work at Nuremburg is eclipsed by many other graduates, as you have seen. We do have to be aware that as time has passed, many people's work becomes harder to find. If you blew a bubble in year 2005, it's on the net, but if you won a Silver Star in 1914, you're basically relying on an obituary to tell you that. This is quite obvious with doctors and professors, but that's sort of good, as those sections are there for balance, not so much for individual name recognition. Ronaldloui 18:19, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Warch
Yeah, the new stub looks great. Ideally, these references for the better candidates get moved to their own wikipedia pages. Some really need their own page (I couldn't believe Teri Ann Linn does not yet have her own page!). Ronaldloui 19:43, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Links to non-wikipedia authoritative pages
I see someone added a link to Reticker's obituary. That's nice, but it could be done for a lot of people who have a single authoritative biographical source. What should be the policy on using non-wikipedia URL's as linked text? It's very nice, since you can just click. On the other hand, it is a bit misleading. I've been to pages where all the alumni are linked, giving the impression that all have wikipedia pages. But that was just how they did their references/citations... Ronaldloui 20:14, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Shane62.jpg
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The wrong man
I removed the following: Based on the cited sources & this obituary:, the person described above has no connection with Hawaii, let alone Punahou. Peaceray (talk) 00:16, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * '29* Edwin D. Kilbourne, Jr. (UH) — founding chair of Microbiology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, influenza pandemic expert at New York Medical College, Washington Post's "We don't have enough if a pandemic happened tomorrow." (attended 1921-28) (scholar.google best ~ 497)  This is not the Edwin D. Kilbourne who attended Punahou.  The one who did practiced general medicine in Saratoga and Los Gatos, CA

S. Pfleuger
Citation is not completely correct, not sure why extra 1 is showing and don't want to fix it until I break it. Back tomorrow — Preceding unsigned comment added by BobDog54 (talk • contribs) 23:29, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Groupings within the List
I think the content is great, but I have a few questions for the organization for the page. Under the "Other leading educators and researchers" section what exactly is the "Science" sub-section supposed to encompass? It sounds a bit vague considering there's a sub-section right below it for "Logic, philosophy, mathematics, computing and engineering" and I assume all of which are fields in STEM. On a side note, is there any particular order the sections are meant to be presented in? It begins with Olympic athletes and follows up with Professional athletes and then into doctors and so forth. At first I would guess a list like this would be ordered alphabetically, and if not, then notability. But even the latter is not found in this case, or at least from my perspective. While Olympic athletes are definitely notable, wouldn't the alumni found in leadership positions be more well known to the general public? (Specifically, the "Civil rights leaders" and "Other elected representatives, government appointees, judges" sections.) Ntakamat (talk) 01:20, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Non-notable people
Really this listing is a clear case of WP:BOOSTERism. Every person that has the least bit of news about them is included in the listing. But are they WP:NOTABLE? A culling of this list is in order. (And to encourage editors to seriously look at this article I've revised the project assessments.) – S. Rich (talk) 06:56, 23 November 2020 (UTC)