Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pennsylvania State University/archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

This archive page covers approximately the dates between February 17, 2005 and March 18, 2006.

Contents

To-do list not updating

"To Do" list doesn't seem to update unless the referring talk page is updated. Perhaps I'm not using it correctly, or is this the way it's supposed to work?--Jtalledo 03:13, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but I think the purge page cache link will solve the problem. Spangineer ∞ 04:57, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Alumni page/category ideas

Ok, let's start this discussion. We need to consider a number of different possibilities. The bottom line is that there are tons and tons of PSU grads and profs, and we probably don't want to put them all on the PSU page. Maybe a few of them, but probably not. I think we should make a list of all of them, like what the MIT page uses. We can also make a category like what Stanford uses (Category:Stanford University people), but as that's the only university that has one (I think), I'm not sure we should go for that. My opinion is to make the list, and then make sure that everyone on the list has a mention to PSU in their article. What do you think?Spangineer ∞ 05:39, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Are there any standards that are defined for this? Maybe we should ask some of the style experts on Wikipedia first... ;) --Jtalledo 00:27, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure that there are guidelines... I've just been looking at what other universities do and trying to go off of precedence. My experience has been that that is often the only way to do it. Take a look at Category:Lists of people by university affiliation - there are 22 articles included, all of which are lists of people from various univeristies. MIT was once a featured article candidate, as was University of Nottingham, and while neither was accepted, no negative comments were made about the fact that both of these articles utilize separate alumni/professor lists. It seems like the reason that only 22 university articles have such lists is that they are the only ones that people have put lots of time into. The more stub-like university articles don't need the separate page, but we're going to. As for the category, that's also a possibility, though there is less precedence - Stanford has one, as does Columbia, but other universities (like MIT) simply put the person within the regular university category (forget the people category). I'll tell you what. Let's create the separate "famous people" list, and then we can work out the details for the category. Sound good? --Spangineer ∞ 06:05, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)
Alright. A "Famous People" list sounds good to me... --Jtalledo 23:10, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Student Newspaper

I was wondering if it would be a good idea to contact the student newspaper at Penn State, The Collegian about this WikiProject. If so, when - soon or when the project has progressed to an appreciable level? I figure publicity would help people "in the know" at Penn State contribute to the project as well as increase awareness about it, but it may also increase the incidence of vandalism on the wiki pages. --Jtalledo 00:22, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea - I hadn't considered that option. I'm inclined to think that you're right - there's a decent chance that it would get more students interested, assuming a story was written about it. Let's get the project page in better shape and figure out the guidelines that we want to work with, and then we can see - I'd like to make sure that when people come, they can easily see what we are doing and how to get involved. --Spangineer ∞ 05:48, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Lists of additions to main article

Here's a list of a few areas that could use mentioning (if only briefly) or expansion upon in the main Penn State article. Entries with a question mark are questionable. Add anything I've missed.

Campus Buildings:

  • IST Building
  • Recreation Building
  • Bryce Jordan Center
  • Walker Building (and/or mention Meteorology program)
  • Creamery
  • East Halls(?)

Off Campus Areas

  • The Corner Room(?)
  • Penn's Cave
  • Golf Course(?)

Academic Life

  • Campus diversity/diversity efforts (mention the tension in the 2000-2001 academic year?)
    • Ethnicity, LGBTA issues
  • Academic programs
    • Engineering
    • Agricultural
    • IST
  • Smeal College of Business
  • The Collegian


I'm not going to make a bullet point for this one, but (as much as we love our fine institution) I would like to see some allusion on the front page to the more controversial aspects to life at Penn State. This could really be an article of it's own(?), but I think not mentioning things like the administration's fight against (and student body's problem with) underage and binge drinking, or the atmosphere of political correctness, etc., should be mentioned somewhere. Thoughts? --ndc 20:42, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You bet, that stuff should definitely be in there. If the PSU article is ever to become featured, there will have to be a section on problems. Sexual assault, binge drinking, all that. I agree with you on the political correctness issue, but it's less verifiable and thus probably shouldn't receive much coverage in the article. It might belong in a section on diversity -- how the university encourages all the LGBTA events, encouraged the College Republican fiasco, responds to racial slurs, and how the majority of the profs are registered democrats. There's alot of great material for the article; I just haven't gotten around to working on it. --Spangineer (háblame) 11:29, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Lion Ambassadors and images

I was wondering if anyone thought it would be a good idea to contact the Lion Ambassadors regarding reviewing the information we have right now in Penn State-related articles, for errors and omissions. We could also get a list of relevant areas of the Penn State community we should mention and articles we should create. In addition, we might be able to get some images for articles that need them.

Regarding images, I was thinking we could ask Intellectual Properties to find out if we could to acquire Penn State images and limited licensing to use those images as part of Penn State related articles. --Jtalledo 20:42, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Both of those ideas sound good. The problem is that Wikipedia is not for original research, and thus everything on it must have another source somewhere else, whether in print or online. Thus, if the Lion Ambassadors want to make any changes, they also need to tell us where that information can be verified. They might know where to get good PSU related sources too. --Spangineer ∞ 03:09, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)
Actually Wikipedia:Cite sources implies that you can write from your own knowledge, but you should have enough knowledge so as to list trusted sources of information on the article for the reader to use as well. :) --Jtalledo 23:24, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Main page layout

The main article layout looks kind of weird in the Window versions of both Firefox and Internet Explorer, maybe because of the table. The "History" section's edit button wraps around the table in Firefox, while in Internet Explorer, there's a huge gap between the Table of contents and the lead.

Fixed it by changing the position of the tag that inserts the lion shrine image. --Jtalledo 21:53, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

University Park article

Should University Park, Pennsylvania be a separate article or should it redirect to the main Penn State article? -- Jtalledo 22:01, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'd say separate article. Spangineer ∞ 00:40, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

Dead WikiProject

Hm... this project seems almost dead. Maybe we should tell the Daily Collegian about it? --Jtalledo (talk) 22:06, 29 August 2005 (UTC)