Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Columbia University/archive1

Columbia University

 * Nominator(s): alphalfalfa(talk) 16:45, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

This article is about Columbia University, the fifth oldest institute for higher education in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1754, by Wikipedia's reckoning 96 Nobel laureates are associated with the university. It's been a while since a university has been elevated to featured article status so the criteria are a little unclear, but I've been cleaning up this article over the past few weeks and I think it could be FA quality. alphalfalfa(talk) 16:45, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Image review
 * Some parts of the article are overloaded with images, not all of which are providing encyclopedic value. Try to avoid just using images for decoration. Make sure that they're relatively close to where they are relevant (ideally explicitly mentioned in text) and avoid sandwiching them.
 * File:Columbia law madison.gif dubious licensing
 * File:Almamater.jpg When was the statue erected? US freedom of panorama doesn't include statues so you have to have a tag showing the statue is out of copyright
 * File:ColumbiaMedicalCenter.jpeg Uncertain that this is uploader's own work as claimed (getting an aerial view of NYC is non-trivial and there's no EXIF)
 * File:GehrigCU.jpg What's the original publication date of this image?
 * This isn't part of the FA criteria but a lot of the images aren't great quality (low resolution, tilted, etc.) and you could probably find better ones on Commons (t &#183; c)  buidhe  17:13, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I have gone through the article and rearranged/replaced the images to better suit the article. As for your licensing concerns, File: Columbia law madison.gif was pubished in 1904., p.335. The Alma Mater statue was published in 1903, and so should be public domain. As for the Lou Gehrig photo, I can't find when it was originally published, but it was taken in 1922 and seems to be widely used on the internet (I've found multiple sites selling prints of it?). If I can't figure out whether it's public domain it can be removed.alphalfalfa(talk) 18:00, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Even if you know it's free, it has to be documented in the image description. I've now added the book to the Columbia law image. Many copyrighted images are "widely used on the internet"; you need documented evidence that it's freely licensed. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  18:42, 15 May 2021 (UTC)


 * References
 * Not a full source review, but the refs are not consistently formatted and there's a heavy reliance on official university sources. Using templates such as cite news can help achieve consistency.
 * These refs are underutilized and may help discuss university's influence from an independent perspective. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  17:13, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Regarding your or tag for the Columbia University Press logo, this logo appears to be the original logo of it. But my evidence is that they used it on their publications in 1895 (example: ), which is the first year they were in business. Is that sufficient, or is that still WP:SYNTH? DMacks (talk) 17:46, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Stating something like, "This is the logo used in 1895, the first year of operation" is probably preferable. Make sure that it's supported either in the image description or citation (t &#183; c)  buidhe  17:49, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Turns out the image is mis-placed topically: that publisher is not a student organization. As a notable academic-related unit, I think this publisher should be mentioned somewhere in the article but I don't know where. DMacks (talk) 18:06, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Oppose by Z1720
I'm sorry, but I am going to oppose at this time. I commented at the PR, and although most of my concerns were addressed, the nominator did not respond at the PR so I did not know that they were ready for more comments. Some concerns I raised at the PR were image sandwiching and the fact that every paragraph needs to have a citation at the end of it, and these concerns have not been fully resolved. I am happy some splitting of the article has happened. Other sections can be completely removed from the article as being promotional or unencyclopedic, such as "Debate and Model UN" or "World Leaders Forum". Some sections are too long and need to be summarized or split into smaller headings. Since a lot of work needs to be done on the formatting and structure of the article, I think it would be unfair to have someone review the prose at this point.

I suggest that the nominator find a mentor to help give comments on the article and bring this back to FAC when the above concerns have been addressed. Z1720 (talk) 18:01, 15 May 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree with Z1720, and the sourcing issues raised by Buidhe. At the moment I would suggest withdrawal, as the issues are more extensive than are likely to be resolvable within the timeframe of an FAC. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:03, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Ian Rose (talk) 00:02, 16 May 2021 (UTC)