Wikipedia:Featured article review/Cornell University/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed by User:Joelr31 14:40, 5 December 2008.

Review commentary

 * Notifications at Mercuryboard, Xtreambar, WP Cornell, WP Universities 

I noticed the talk page of this article over two weeks ago that it needed extensive cleanup: per the number of cleanup and citations needed tags, it appears to be Wiki's most problematic FA at the moment. I'll detail additional issues if anyone begins to work on the article; the notice on the talk page over two weeks ago generated no response. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 21:59, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

There's a serious amount of work to be done here. Madcoverboy (talk) 15:30, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The entire Greek life section has no citations. The Historic sites section is a bulleted list. The Alumni section is a vast rambling wikilink farm with almost no citations. From a MOS standpoint, there are several places where text is sandwiched between images. Confusingly, there is one section titled 'Press' and another titled 'Press and media'. The number of images should probably be reduced, and the image captions could definitely use improvement; many do not make the connection between the article subject and what is depicted. Definitely in need of some work. Maralia (talk) 22:38, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I have a slight visual issue with the infobox regarding its usage of three logos. If I remember correctly, the infobox should only contain the university seal and either a doing-business-as logo or an athletic mascot logo.   - Jameson L. Tai   talk  ♦  guestbook  ♦  contribs  08:02, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The article needs to address several major issues:
 * The history section is woefully inadequate and misses the boat entirely on important historical issues common to almost all universities like WW2 impact, post-war growth, Vietnam protests & social unrest, retooling mission after cuts in gov't funding in 80s, impact of growth in 90s & 2000. What little content is in the history section is either platitudinal or unverifiable (Along with its population growth, Cornell increased its breadth of course offerings; Cornell expanded significantly in the 20th century; Today, the university has wide-ranging program; etc.) I would venture that this is case of summary style gone awry by boosters who would rather keep the grittier parts of history off of the glossy, admissions-friendly main article.
 * Instances of unencyclopedic style are rampant: "The Ithaca Campus is among the rolling valleys of the Finger Lakes region and, atop the Hill, commands a panoramic view of the surrounding area.", "Cornell has partnered with Queen's University in Canada to offer a joint Executive MBA. The innovative program includes both on-campus and videoconferencing-based, interactive virtual classroom sessions.", "because engineers knew more than literature professors did about running steam-powered printing presses."
 * Academic profile and faculty sections are out of date. Instances of facts overwriting other facts without corresponding citations being updates (class of 2012 stats reference a citation dated 2007), non-authoritative sources used, the previous president resigned 3 years ago.
 * Campus section attempts to detail the location and mission of every program not in Ithica. Cut down and summarize.
 * External links in the ranking section.
 * Citation style is spotty with regard to including publisher, title, etc.
 * The article is missing basic descriptive information about its academic profile that could be readily gleaned from the Carnegie Classifications for Higher Education.
 * Financial aid does not deserve a top-level heading. Merge with admissions or student body information.
 * Red links in Housing section.
 * Embedded lists for Press and radio and historic sites need to be "prose-ified" and integrated into appropriate sections. Far too much emphasis on Greek life or controversies therein.
 * The research section should be made more adjacent to or integrated with the faculty or academics sections rather than floating near the bottom of the article between student life and alumni
 * Alumni sections are always tricky with regard to balancing verifiability with overlinking, but it appears there has been no attempt to cite these passages. Nor has there been any attempt to summarize this information (as was done to excess for the history section).
 * Self-referential links indicative of deleted articles redirected back here but never updated: Undergraduate Business Program at Cornell University

A number of the images should have more solid information. As there are a number of images, questionable ones should be removed or replaced.
 * Image:Cornell Arts Quad 1919.jpg: no source; no evidence published before 1923
 * Image:CornellAgQuad.jpg: permission is weak
 * Image:Cornell War Memorial.jpg, Image:Boldt Hall.jpg & Image:HouseofAndrewDickinsonWhite.jpg: ideally, an OTRS ticket should confirm that Sergeev has released these pictures (e.g. http://www.asergeev.com/pictures/archives/compress/2005/475/11.htm). Other pictures of his are released under CC rather than PD licences.
 * Image:PictureofMyronTaylorHall.jpg & Image:Sagehallfromchristian.jpg: "my friend sent it me" is too weak
 * Image:Cornell Balch Halls Exterior.jpg: source unclear
 * Image:Schoellkopf Field2.jpg the OTRS ticket is the same number as Sergeev's other images which have difference licences attached. Why would Sergeev release some as public domain, some as GFDL and some as CC? I find that suspicious.
 * Image:Cornell'sawesomehockeyteam.jpg: The history of this file is confused. It probably should not be labelled GFDL-self as the creator ("Mercuryboard's friend" later identified as Dan Furie) did not upload it.
 * Image:Dragon Day 1901.JPG: no evidence of publication prior to 1923
 * Image:Decentrhodeshall.jpg: source is a dead link; I couldn't find the copyright release on the page given
 * Image:Cornellclubnyc.jpg: source? author? DrKiernan (talk) 15:51, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry that I have not had time to respond to any of these issues; I've been working my tail off for the Obama campaign for the past month and a half, so Wikipedia has not been a high priority as of late. That being said, I absolutely agree that the Cornell University article has become somewhat bloated and filled with fluff. Thus, I would not be offended if its FA status were revoked pending a much needed cleaned up. --Xtreambar (talk) 20:45, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * Suggested FA criteria concerns are MoS and formatting (2) and images (3). Marskell (talk) 14:50, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: concerns with references and their formatting (1c and 2c) were also expressed above. Maralia (talk) 16:35, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Remove. Per above issues raised by, , , and . Cirt (talk) 18:02, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Remove I think we're all agreed that the article needs a clean-up. Unfortunately, with the main author otherwise busy, work on the article is not going to proceed within the FAR process. The comments above can be worked on by any interested editors that come along after demotion. DrKiernan (talk) 16:00, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Remove A month having passed since my first comment above, with no significant changes to the article, it appears unlikely that this is going to be brought to standards in the near future. Of course, there is no deadline, and if a commitment is made to working on the article, I would be happy to revisit. Maralia (talk) 16:35, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Remove I note that exactly 12 relatively trivial edits have been made since I made my comments three weeks ago. I see neither progress nor commitment towards resolving these issues. I would be happy to revisit the article in the future, but this is not Wikipedia's best work anymore. Madcoverboy (talk) 09:29, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.