Talk:List of Washington University alumni

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Here are some tasks you can do:
  • Requests: For WU alumni with access to the WU Electronic Alumni Directory (see tab on right here), please look up names of alumni on this list for whom the date of graduation or degree is missing. If the alumni are still living and have not opted to remain unlisted, their degree/date should be listed. Use this info to fill in the many blanks for degree/date.
  • Copyedit:
    -Check for consistency of formatting (esp. punctuation) in listing the Alumnus/ae, degree and date, and blurb.
  • Cleanup:
    -Check alphabetization by last name under each category of alumni names.
  • Expand: Nineteenth and early-twentieth century listings are rather thin and could be expanded by referring to print sources, especially the two books on WU history listed under "Further Reading" on the main WUSTL article, or by other means if possible. Suggestions on the easiest way to accomplish this are welcome below.
  • Update: :-Check wikipedia articles for each name on this list, to ensure that each notable alumnus/ae has Category: Washington University in St. Louis alumni at the bottom.
  • Other:
    -Several names that do not seem notable have crept onto this list. Perhaps contributors could engage in discussion on the Talk Page to decide where to draw the line for inclusion. For instance, perhaps state legislators who never achieve a higher office should be excluded, unless they had a particularly notable career? Founders of minor, relatively unknown businesses? A consensus should be reached and the article culled of substantially non-notable names.
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    -Considerable editing is still needed, including filling in some important gaps or correcting significant policy errors. Articles for which cleanup is needed will typically have this designation to start with.

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[edit] Notice to article contributors

Notice: When adding people to this list of alumni, please also go to the wikipedia article for the person you're including, and add the category Washington University in St. Louis alumni to that person's article. Thanks you. Ropcat 02:22, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed renaming of article from "...people" to "...alumni"

This article used to be called "List of Washington University alumni" or something similar, using the word alumni instead of people. Somewhere along the line, it got renamed to "List of Washington University people." I propose that it be returned to a title using "alumni" rather than "people." (The "people" university articles usually list faculty, alumni, and so on for smaller schools. But this is clearly a list of alumni.) Most other schools have such a page (i.e. List of University of Michigan alumni). Please weigh in with any thoughts or objections below. Ropcat 23:35, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Ropcat's proposal to change the name of the article to List of Washington University alumni. This list is composed entirely of alumni, and a separate list of notable faculty and others would be more fitting, elsewhere, perhaps as a separate page.--Astuishin 01:05, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Page moved to new title. Ropcat 04:31, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Just a thought: Many prestigious universities (large and small) have notable faculty who are not alumni but who enhance the prestige of the university. Perhaps titling the page "people" would accommodate both alumni and faculty-- a practice not limited only to small schools. --Lmbstl 04:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

As you can see the article was once named Washington University in St. Louis people however their was not enough articles on faculty, and the article was mostly filled with names of alumni. as soon as is a substantial number of articles written on faculty then the article name can be changed. Astuishin 04:25, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Also I reformatted the pictures on the alumni page and removed the picture of Sen. Eagleton, since he is longer affiliated with the university I throughout it would be more appropriate if we find a another faculty members. As for the pictures I thought that were to clunky and distracting for a reader is browsing the names, also pictures should be reserved for very well know alumni so I removed a few of them. Astuishin 04:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Your edits look fine to me. Clunky was not my intent! (btw, I won't hold my breath on the "substantial number of articles written on faculty ;) --Lmbstl 06:00, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I would vote for a separate article, a list of faculty. The alumni list is quite long, and I think it's easier to grasp people's relationships with the University if the faculty are listed separately from the alumni. They already have separate categories under the WU main category. But I'm willing to go along if people want to have them be in the same article list, although I would in that case suggest that faculty be under a separate sub-heading from the alumni. Ropcat 19:35, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
You might want to look here: "Category:Washington_University_faculty" It appears that WUSTL Faculty is a Wikpedia Category. Are you suggesting that the faculty pages be aggregated in a an article? Or, I could inculde a link to the category in the WUSTL navigation template. Any thoughts? --Lmbstl 07:21, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I set up that "WUSTL faculty" category a while back, and tried to fill it out with existing articles. What I was suggesting is that names of faculty NOT be merged into this alumni list, thus making it a "List of WUSTL People" article. If anyone desired having a "List of WUSLT faculty" article, I think that should be done as a separate article, instead of transforming the alumni article in order to accommodate faculty. While some universities do combine alumni and faculty into a single "people" list, I think it's better in this case to keep them separate: as does, for example, the University of Michigan, which has separate articles called List of University of Michigan faculty and staff and List of University of Michigan alumni. But, as I said, if people strongly disagree I'm happy to go along with the proposed change. Ropcat 17:01, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Neither list is so massive that they couldn't be tastefully combined into a "People" article with an "alumni" and a "faculty" section; however, it is not my preference either. I agree that a "List of WUSTL faculty" article is appropriate. Not sure I am up to the task, though. Lmbstl 06:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I examined some other college articles for inspiration and it seems that the faculty and alumni pages can be packaged in to one Washington university people page, however still think there is not a really need to do so, like Ropcat said U of Michigan does a good job with there alumni and faculty pages seprate and Washington U does not have nearly the amount of faculty listed.Astuishin 00:33, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for comment on Michael K. Maeroff

Several times (most recently over the past few days), we have had an anonymous user who continues to add Michael K. Maeroff to this list of notable Washington University alumni. I've continued to revert because this person alumnus apparently an executive at a small sportswear company, whose name produces no Google hits, and who thus seems not to have achieved any national or regional recognition -- which seem to be the criteria for inclusion in this article. (I suspect self-adding.) On the anonymous user 70.156.191.47 Talk Page, I've encouraged this user to comment on this article's Talk Page to justify the choice or present some rationale for inclusion. In the meantime, if other editors want to weigh in, please do so. Ropcat (talk) 17:21, 25 April 2008 (UTC)