Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/University of California, Los Angeles/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 18:03, 4 June 2007.

University of California, Los Angeles[edit]

As the recent primary contributor to this page, I nominate UCLA for Featured Article status. The previous GA nom failed a year ago, and in that time the article has been expanded, revised, referenced, and checked thoroughly. This article satisfies the criteria, however I must note that I am a student there, so some subtle bias may be present (please, be especially critical about this point). Additionally, I know at this point the constituent pages are weak and barely fit Start-class, but let's start from the core article and go from there, right? ALTON .ıl 03:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose - Not bad, but here are some issues:
  • 1.) "On average, UCLA's enrollment is about 35,000 students." Uh, what? On average? There should be an exact figure presented here that is from the official source (UCLA), not an average of unofficial sources to give an approximate figure. This leads me to the fact that you should probably run the semi-automatic javascript program.
  • 2.) "seven Professional schools, and five Professional Health Science schools." Is this weird capitalization for a reason that I'm missing? There are some other odd capitalization throughout the article (e.g. "the Master's degree", etc.)
  • 3.) "Academically, the university was ranked 14th in the world, and 12th in the nation." By whom and when? You need to state the source and the year. (i.e. "Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranked the university 14th in the world and 12th in the nation in 2006.") Please do this throughout the article. You need to imagine this article being read 10 years from now. Would it still make sense with its current wording?
  • Better, but still awkward and year not stated. I could obviously just fix this myself, but I will let you know the error so you will look for similar instances throughout since you are more well-versed with the article. "The academic college ranking list Top 500 World Universities." Is the list titled "Top 500 World Universities"? Need comma before "Top" then and title should probably be italicized.
  • 4.) You need to be careful to avoid academic boosterism as you stated in the nomination. For example, "The university constantly has one of the most competitive admissions pools among American institutions of higher education" is unacceptable. An acceptable alternative would be: "UCLA's 23.38% admittance rate was the 25th lowest in the nation" (I made the position up). Or, "The Princeton Review ranked UCLA as the 12th hardest school to get into the nation" (again, I made up the figure). Mostly withdrawn, but still some minor issues.
  • 5.) "For the past several years, no American university has had more applicants than UCLA." Ok, state the number of years then. Don't just give us a vague word like "several".
  • 6.) "though the majority of undergraduates are from California." Ok, what percentage is from California? I'm sure this number can be found and it would be more informative than "the majority." Fixed, but your solution was long-winded. Be as concise as possible! Instead of two long sentences now, you could write "Students come to UCLA from all 50 states and more than 100 countries, though approximately 92.6% are from California." Every word is valuable. Don't use 20 words when 10 will convey the same message.
Those six points are just from reading the lead. This indicates to me that there are other similar issues throughout the article. Please try to go through and fix them. From a quick glance at the rest of the article (I didn't check for prose issues), here are some more issues:
  • 7.) Image:Uclapowellsnow1932.JPG needs a fair use rationale and a new tag.
  • 8.) Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), "Capitalize the first letter of the first word and any proper nouns in headings, but leave the rest lower case." 10.1 and 10.3 need fixing.
  • 9.) Integers under 10 should be written out, in my opinion (e.g. five instead of 5). Although I'm not sure if this is official wikipedia policy, but it is good writing protocol.
  • 10.) The rankings section is selective in its inclusion, indicating some bias. While I think rankings are generally pretty stupid, people still care about them somewhat, so they should be included. The most notable ranking that generates the most press is the U.S. News & World Report Ranking (I'm talking undergrad, here). If you mention The Kaplan Guide to College, Washington Monthly, and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings, surely the USN&WR ranking should be mentioned (and perhaps the Times Higher one; I have no idea if these are favorable or not to UCLA, btw). The USN&WR grad rankings are already mentioned since they are favorable.
  • Better, but I'm still not completely satisfied. I realize it's impossible to have a perfect Rankings section, and people have differing opinions on what should be included. Personally, I think mentioning UCLA as a "New Ivy" is worthless because we have no idea what that means and defining "new ivy" takes far too long. Are these schools that don't have a long tradition of excellence and also are not in the Ivy League? Is that why schools like Stanford and MIT aren't listed? The rest of the section looks pretty good. I'd replace the New Ivy mentioning with USN&WR undergrad ranking - like it or hate it, it's the most read college ranking publication.
  • 11.) "Newsweek also ranked UCLA 12th in its annual ranking of the Top 100 Global universities, ahead of private schools such as Princeton(15th) and Cornell(19th) and USC(54th)." Don't arbitrarily choose schools they are ahead of...serves no purpose. I could say UCLA was ranked behind Georgetown, Harvard, and MIT (I have no idea if it is, I was just making up schools to prove a point). This gives us no additional information. The only time I would say it might be significant to mention another school if it was stated something like "UCLA ranked third (behind Harvard and Stanford)..." That makes sense to me, but arbitrarily picking schools behind UCLA in a particular ranking, does not.
  • 12.) "11,860 applicants were admitted, 23.38% of the total." Don't start a sentence with a number, unless it's written out.
  • 13) Image:UCLA Bruins Logo.png needs a fair use rationale.
  • 14.) Great photos! Really colorful and nice. I personally would like to see some of them on the left. I believe the wiki manual suggests rotating them right and left. Mostly personal taste, though, but I think it makes the article look better. Consult the manual, though, as I could be wrong.

Anyways, didn't get a chance to read the entire thing thoroughly. It seems like a great article, but definitely needs some fixin' before reaching FA status. Good luck! -Bluedog423Talk 07:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Great, thanks! Honestly, this is the kind of feedback I need from Peer Review, but nothing except the automated hints ever comes up there. Your points are totally valid, and I realize the faults. I have to say that some of your points I'd like to discuss first. To me, if one adds the clarification "Shanghai U ranked UCLA..." then it would be equally just to demand that I also list Shanghai's qualification to rank UCLA. "Shanghai U, the leading ranker-of-colleges, ranked UCLA..." and then I have to state who decided Shanghai was the best for that job. About point 10, I especially need help here. I'd include them all, favorable or not, but like you I did not want to include a vastly overwhelming section on rankings, as if to imply that was all that makes up the college. About point 8, someone brought up a good point when these were minisculed previously. The headings there are the actual names for those enterprises, meaning "Trademarks and Licensing" is the department at UCLA (also the reason why there is a seemingly superfluous "UCLA" in "UCLA Healthcare").
I need to be sure these (many) formatting errors are the source of your oppose. I suspect the greatest difference between GA and FA is that the writing is more professional and encyclopedic. (not to dodge the fire but those sentences you cited were not authored by me!) Additionally, would these attempted corrections change your view, or is that a concrete opinion? This is amazing, I never expected such a great response. Your examples and justifications are awesome. Thanks for giving such a comprehensive review, most of all. ALTON .ıl 21:44, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • No problem! Thanks for the appreciation and clarification of a few points. I have crossed out the items you have fixed to my satisfaction. I really don't think you should spend precious words qualifying if Shanghai U is qualified to make rankings - people can click then wikilink and decide for themselves or do a quick google search. Words are valuable and should be spent describing UCLA, not some ranking service. Good luck! -Bluedog423Talk 19:33, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
PS A couple hours later I went through most of your points and applied them to the article. I haven't gotten through revising the whole article, but just to let you know. ALTON .ıl 23:56, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Oppose Bluedog423 makes very good arguements as to why the artiicle might not be considered for FA. I have personally worked extensively on the Lehigh University article and know the trouble of attempting to write an article on a school. Good job separating the housing into another article to clean it up. The rankings section is not truly NPOV due to the lack of information on HOW the rankings work for each publication. Try to limit that section and also clean up the grammar a little. Good luck with the nomination and if you clean up those parts, you should succeed. Plm209 (talk • contribs • count) 19:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • That article looks excellent! Would you advise turning the ranking section into a bulletted list, like that Lehigh's? I'm really lost on the ranking section, and I know that is what will cause this article to fail, simply because I do not know what to do with it. ALTON .ıl 21:44, 30 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, lists are BAD as I understand it. Prose is considered the much better practice. See What is a featured article. The ranking section will never appease everybody's tates and it cannot be perfect. Just do the best you can. -Bluedog423Talk 19:33, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose There are several whole sections of the article that have no or few citations, including several instances where quotes are not cited. I think the article could also be reorganized to flow better, and the lead needs work.
    • Lead issues
      • wikilink Shanghai Jiao Tong University
      • The paragraph on applicants sounds very choppy.
      • if the 100 NCAA team championships are more than any other university then you don't need to mention that UCLA was the first to reach 100 NCAA team wins.
      • prose issue: "comprises of" -> "consists of" or "comprises"
      • The lead needs to be rewritten to include things like ARPANet and the AIDS discovery
      • Lead mentions Campaign UCLA, but that's not mentioned in the body of the article (unless I missed it)
    • History section
      • 1st three paragraphs begin with "In <year>"
      • 2nd paragraph, first two sentences both start with "In <year>"
      • 2nd paragraph in general has several sentences that are very long and complicated. Can it be edited a bit to simplify?
      • Third paragraph doesn't flow -- how do we get from number of graduates to a discussion of the school athletic name? The athletic name information might be better placed in the athletics section
      • acre needs to have corresponding metric measurement
      • Why does the history end with 1934? Has nothing else happened in the last 70 years that would be notable?
    • Campus Section
      • Westwood has previously been wikilinked and doesn't need to be linked here.
      • need a citation for North campus building being "old-fashioned in appearance and clad in imported Italian brick"
      • need a citation for information about Ralph Bunche
      • paragraph on parking does not flow well
      • UCLA instated a policy on filming and professional photography at the campus -> what is the policy?
      • need a citation for the last quote in this section
    • Rankings
      • Newsweek needs to be italicized the second time you reference it.
      • Can you rewrite this section so that not all sentences begin with UCLA. You can also use "According to ...", "The magazine .... "
    • Libraries section has weird capitalization.
    • Library section also needs to be expanded a bit. Right now it reads mostly as a list of librarians, and I think it should focus more on what is special about the libraries (although Page Ackerman is important for being the first female librarian of a large system)
    • Academics
      • need a citation for "This year, 11,860 applicants were admitted, 23.38% of the total."
      • who is debating "the major current debate"
      • can you describe a little more the "holistic" admissions process
      • need citation for information about the Dental School
      • I would put admissions under Academics
    • Notable People
      • The faculty section talks about Nobel Prize winners twice.
      • Can you expand the alumni section? Have a small description of who the people you list are and why they are famous (comedian Carol Burnett, film director Gore Verbinski, etc). Can you list people who aren't necessarily in popular culture -- government officials, etc?
      • Since you talk about faculty above the notable people section, move the distinguished faculty list to that section instead of in notable people.
    • Athletics
      • The athletics section needs more citations. First three paragraphs are citation-free right now.
      • What are the "major Division 1-A sports?" Be more specific or list the number of sports that they participate in.
      • In this section you again list the 100 NCAA championships info twice.
      • How many Olympic Games has UCLA sent athletes to? If it's only 1 Olympics, that's different than if it were 20. Please also cite this paragraph.
      • no citation for Earl Watson quote.
      • The section seems to jump back and forth between talking about basketball and talking about other sports.
      • Contradictory information: "The Lexus Gauntlet is the name given to the official competition between the two school." and "Games between the two schools have no official name"
      • I question whether you need to mention the number of victories/titles for UCLA vs USC. I would instead talk more about Beat 'SC Week or anything else that makes the rivalry special.
    • Student Life section
      • Please cite this section!!
      • The Housing section is very short. Can this be expanded?
    • Activism
      • I suspect that this entire section could be moved to the history section
      • Needs citations
      • prose issue: ""for openly identifying as a member" --> this could be misconstrued by a non-native speaker. Openly identifying who?
      • Did anything happen when Davis was dismissed the second time, or did she leave without protest?
      • How long were the universities shut down in 1970?
      • Daily Bruin needs italics
    • Major Incidents
      • I don't believe this section is necessary. Is the data breach notable enough to be included since it isn't known that there are any consequences?
      • The Taser incident should go in History, as should ARPAnet
    • Peripheral Enterprises
      • I would include UCLA Healthcare under Academics as it is a teaching area
      • I would put Hospitality under Campus
      • I would put Trademarks and Licensing under Athletics
    • Your external links section can probably be pared down.
    • References
      • Citations 61 and 62 don't have Daily Bruin italicized properly and 59-60 don't have propery italics either (See the {{citation}} and use newspaper= instead of publisher=
      • Several of your citations have the publisher listed as Official Site. Please be more spcific (UCLA COnference Center, etc)
  • As for the rankings section, if you can work on the prose a bit and include any missing publications as was suggested above, I think the section is fine.

Karanacs 15:28, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WOW, even more than the first editors! Thank you so much, honestly. The reason I am so frustrated with this article is because neither Peer Review nor Good Article nomination garnered any contructive comments. It seems that only when going for the final gauntlet articles are paid attention to. ALTON .ıl 00:31, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I hope you don't think I'm being picky. I've been working on Texas A&M University and we've had it submitted for FA review for the last few weeks. A lot of the things I've pointed out to you were things that were pointed out to us before. Good luck!! Karanacs 02:12, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.
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