Talk:McMaster University/GA1

GA Review
The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.''

Reviewer: Racepacket (talk) 09:58, 21 January 2011 (UTC) This is an impressive article and obviously represents a lot of hard work.

Please fix disamb links: McMaster Integrated Science, McMaster Marauders, and McMaster School of Geography and Earth Sciences. All three pages point back to this article. Fn 87, 102, 105, and 120 are bad links.
 * GA review (see here for criteria)


 * 1) It is reasonably well written.
 * a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
 * In lead, change "comprising of" to "comprising"
 * Done
 * "whose substantial bequeathed funds helped form the beginning of the university."->"whose bequest helped establish the university." - how much was it?
 * Hyphenate "publicly-funded"
 * "However, this also changed in 1957 with the creation of a Faculty of Graduate Studies, which was gradually expanded over the coming decades."->"Also in 1957, Ph.D. programs were consolidated in a new Faculty of Graduate Studies."
 * "In 1968, the University was organized"->"In 1968, the University was reorganized' ???
 * "The buildings and facilities represent the ongoing development that has been happening on McMaster grounds since it purchased the property from the city of Hamilton in 1928."->"The campus has been continously developed since 1928." ??
 * "The MNR provides a wide range" - first define the abbrevation. Next, are you referring to the building or to an academic department? A nuclear reactor is completely different than a cyclotron, although they could be located by coincidence in the same building. State how the reactor is used - is it a teaching facility to train reactor operators and engineers or is it used for research such as dating antiquities?
 * Most modern physics must be performed at such high energies that a cyclotron would no longer be of research use. Has it been decommissioned?
 * "Prince was a" - first name or antecedent missing? Man or building? Do you mean "It was named for a long-time hall master..."
 * "as well as their business management"->"as well as its business management"
 * I suggest you start the discussion of the Medical campuses with "The Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine is located on the main campus as well as in St. Catharines and Kitchener." Do the students apply for admission to a particular campus, or are they randomly assigned after being admitted to the school?
 * Does "a policy which has been adopted around the world.[5]" mean that others have done the same thing independently, or that others have based this on the The McMaster Model?
 * Is the absence of a summer break an integral part of the The McMaster Model, or is this an unrelated sentence in the section entited "The McMaster Model"? Perhaps move the academic calendar discussion to a different section if not related to the McMaster Model.
 * "first write": you are using the word "write" in a manner that may not be widely accepted in the English language. Perhaps change it to "first examination"
 * "former alumni Roberta Bondar," - how could someone be a former alumna? (It is alumna if she is a woman.) Was her degree revoked or did she have gender reassignment surgery?
 * 1) It is factually accurate and verifiable.
 * a (references): b (citations to reliable sources):  c (OR):
 * Fn 1, is 2006-2007 endowment data. Is there anything more up-to-date available?
 * Fn 2, there is more up-to-date enrollment data at: here
 * Need accessdates on the web references.
 * It is a bit troubling that so many sources are primary sources from McMaster's website. I assumed that you searched for alternative sources.
 * 1) It is broad in its coverage.
 * a (major aspects): b (focused):
 * I suggest reorganizing the table of faculties. I would place each faculty on a separate row, with the first column being the faculty name and the second column being the number of students enrolled.
 * I take it that the School of Graduate Studies does not have a separate faculty. Perhaps you should state this explicitly.
 * WP:UNI guidelines discourage including tuition levels in the articles. They become quickly out of date, and are not meaningful given the amount of financial aid available.
 * Do you know what percentage of students receive financial aid?
 * How about expanding the see also section with related McMaster articles - Medical Center, Security Services, etc.
 * Infobox takes the total number of employees which is 7,800 according to this.
 * Section 8(1)(f) and (g) of the 1976 Act provides for four members of the Board of Governors elected by the teaching staff and one member elected by the students. - This should be included in the description of the Board of Governors. Similarly, Section 12(1)(d) and (e) provides for six undegraduate and six graduate student members of the Senate. Section 14 provides that Board and Senate meetings are open to the public.
 * The article should explain how the college is financed. According to this: "The University is financed by means of endowment income, gifts, fees, and annual grants from the City of Hamilton, the Hamilton-Wentworth Region, The Province of Ontario, and the Government of Canada."
 * 1) It follows the neutral point of view policy.
 * Fair representation without bias:
 * 1) It is stable.
 * No edit wars, etc.:
 * 1) It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
 * a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:
 * I am placing the article on hold.
 * 1) Overall:
 * Pass/Fail:
 * I am placing the article on hold.

21 January 2010
 * Added information on how much money was bequeathed to the university. Corrected article to the standards on the MoS. Corrected sentences based on the suggested corrections made out by Racepacket. In regards to the statement made in the McMaster Model however, where it states that the McMaster Model had been adopted by other universities, it was taken from the McMaster Fast Fact section of their website so it doesn't go much in depth. If needed I will take out that statement in compliance with Wiki:NPOV as I can't seem to find another source which explains in more in depth.


 * I updated the enrolment data with the most up to date statistic (2009/2010), however I used the numbers from the Common University Data Ontario (CUDO) document. The source you provided seems to be a rounded up figure of full time students only from the CUDO. I'm not sure if there is a more up to date figure for the endowment figures but I'll look into it. I'll also get around placing the access dates on the web references after the weekend. As for the majority of the sources being from McMaster, most of the information (from what I could find anyways) seems to be only available primarily on the McMaster website. I do however have a book which goes further in depth with the insignias and logos of the university so I'll see to replacing the references with the one from the book in order to further diversify the references.

Leventio (talk) 00:56, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * As for the broadening of content, there currently are no statistics for the total student sizes of each faculty (to my knowledge at least). While CUDO does provide the size of each program, it unfortunately categorizes some programs together which would normally be in the Humanities or Sciences so it would not be possible to add up the programs in that fashion. I also don't believe that the university nor the Ministry of Universities, Colleges and Training releases the percentage of the student population that is on student aid. I updated the infobox's academic staff number, however not with the 7,800 staff as stated on the site. I do believe that the academic staff only implies those who are employed as instructional faculty however I will change it to 7,800 if I am mistaken on that part. Everything else stated in this section I do believe I had changed in line with your suggestions with the exception of the Board of Governors. I will get working on that after the weekend.
 * Thank you for your work. The infobox takes the following parameters:

You may use either or both. If you only know the total staff (suppose its 7,800) use: |free_label=Total employees |free=7,800 Racepacket (talk) 03:59, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * academic_staff = Number of faculty / academic staff members.
 * administrative_staff = Number of administrative / support staff.

January 22

 * You discuss the MNR, which is an academic unit related to the physics department. Isn't the Brockhouse Institute for Material Research also worthy of mention?
 * Please don't over-look the disamb. link requiring attention that I listed at the top of the review.
 * If you can't implement my suggestion of a faculty table with the second column being enrollment, how about making the second column the founding year of each faculty? The current horizontal table without any faculty-specific data looks somehow contrived.
 * The following sentence from the engineering faculty article is probably worth inclusion in the main article, "The Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy at McMaster is home to the world's most advanced microscope. The titan 80-300 cubed microscope has a magnification of 14 million and is used for material, medical and nano-research.[5][6]"
 * Even after reading more materials, I am still very puzzled as to why the infobox says it is a "public university." I understand how it disconnected from the Baptist Church and does receive annual appropriations from the government. However, its Board of Trustees is not appointed by the government. Is it any more dependent on government funds than are other private Canadian Universities? (I gather the only private Universities in Ontario are religious.) Are the employees of McMaster considered government employees or employees of a non-profit corporation? The official budget indicates that McMaster employees are covered by a University pension plan (which is not the government employee pension plan.) Who actually owns the land, buildings and the facilities?  All of these factors combined determine whether McMaster is "public" or "private". Is McMaster "more private" than any of the other "public universities?" (For example, in New York State, the state gives money to all of the Universities, but more the the "public" ones.  Also in the US, Federal student aid and faculty research grants are available to both "public" and "private" universities.)
 * website says, "With a total sponsored research income of $345 million, McMaster University ranks first in the country in research intensity--a measure of research income per full-time faculty member--averaging $308,000 per faculty member. ( Research Infosource Inc., 2006)" At the least, I think you can include the $345 million figure in the Research section.
 * The footer template for Post-Secondary Institutions in Ontario Ont post-secondary, has two footnotes that are dead links - #1 and #2.
 * I suggest that the Ontario Sports template probably should be dropped from this page, because this is more than a sports-specific article.
 * Should we mention the Arts & Science Program in the Organization section as well as in the Admissions section?

January 25
 * Added info on Board of Governors and Senate
 * Added new numbers for both administrative and academic staff
 * I mentioned the Arts and Science program in organizations as it seems to warrant one (its a taught by multiple faculties)
 * Removed Ontario sports and fixed dead links for Ont post-secondary template.
 * Added info on research, date of establishment for faculties, the microscope and BIMR.
 * I actually don't know how to fix the disamb links (or rather I don't know what process I need to undertake). So I need assistance here
 * Good question. Find the sentence that has the click and click on it. You will be taken to a page that lists multiple meanings for that word or phrase.  Pick out the one that fits the meaning of the sentence in this article, then go back and pipe to the particular meaning.  For example, McMaster Integrated Science links back to the main article, so I would remove the link around that phrase.
 * Alright then. I managed to change the redirect to the administration portion of the article for McMaster School of Geography and Earth Sciences and McMaster Integrated Science, while changing the redirect for McMaster Marauders to the athletics subsection of the article.


 * Well, the university is listed as a public university by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (Ontario), as the majority of the school's funding comes from federal and provincial operation and research grants (municipal funding may come in the form of grants as well). I think all of the private universities in Ontario are seminaries and only have the legislated approval to hand out certain degrees, although we see a break in that trend with some private universities popping up in the western provinces (ie. British Columbia). There really isn't much else in difference, except for the fact that no private university in Canada was created under Royal Charter. Both universities (private and public) also maintain institutional autonomy (although private universities may have more leeway, don't quote me on this...) and students attending either are able to get student aid (although it is only a select number of private universities that are eligible). Leventio (talk) 22:36 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Many thanks for the explanation.

We are very close to finishing this. Racepacket (talk) 22:44, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Good work. I have made the last few changes myself. Congratulations. Racepacket (talk) 22:55, 26 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm curious why it is listed under Social Sciences and Society good article? Shouldn't it fall under Educational institutions? 112.118.146.28 (talk) 01:34, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, that is the sub heading. 119.237.117.65 (talk) 07:48, 27 January 2011 (UTC)