Wikipedia:Peer review/List of College of William & Mary alumni/archive1

List of College of William & Mary alumni

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I think there has been a significant improvement to the article since it was rejected for FL status. I started working on this article earlier this month and have made some pretty good changes, I think.

First, I have removed some things that were flatly incorrect. For example, this article used to say that there were sixteen signers of the Declaration of Independence from the College; there were four. It used to say that George Washington was an alum; he only received a surveyors license from the College in its administrative capacity, but he never took courses at the College. Things like that.

Second, I have worked to make the list comprehensive within the existing categories. For example, when it was last submitted for FL status, it left off one of the College's four Supreme Court justices! I have also doubled the list of ambassadors, increased the number of U.S. Congressmen from 8 to 96, doubled the number of U.S. senators, increased the number of Speakers of the House, doubled the number of Major League baseball players, etc.

Third, the list had some real organization problems. Members of the list were included the wrong sections (U.S. Congressmen were listed in the section for state representatives) and U.S. senators were inserted in "Other" sub-lists with no mention of their real notability.

Fourth, I have tried to improve the cites used. The previous list appears to have been pretty much block and copied from the College's own alumni organization page. As a result, the majority of cites were back to that one page. I tried to improve cites, for example, by tying into the U.S. Congressional biographies. Doing so not only documents the W&M connection, but it also documents the entrant's notability.

Fifth, I reorganized the sub-lists and added, adding some categories and merging others. The overall structure of the list is much better now.

Sixth, I have tried to standardize all of the many entries. For example, I have edited the whole list to make notes about spans of years consistent as well as capitalization and ordering of details on entrants.

Now, with that long wind-up in place, here is my pitch. I'd appreciate any sort of feedback on anything. This is my first request for peer review on an article, so any feedback would be great. I envision making some changes based on that feedback and then submitting it once again for a better peer review before submitting it for Featured List status.

So, with that, I'll toughen up my skin and await the feedback!

Thanks, ProfReader (talk) 18:49, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Brianboulton comments: A most impressive list, clearly the product of a huge amount of diligent research. I feel awkward criticizing such a terrific effort, but if we can improve it even further, then we should try. I am not in a position to check over any of the details given for the various entries; my comments are general to the list as a whole.

• General points
  • A large number of dismbiguation links need fixing. Use the box on the top right corner of this page to click on to the list.
  • External links refs 151 and 191 are dead. For some reason, a large number of other links, between refs 309 and 342 are showing dead, but they work OK for me
  • All images currently lack alt text.
• Title: The title "List of College of William & Mary alumni" suggests that all alumni, tens of thousands of them, are going to be listed. This list is a selection, so the title needs to be qualified in some way, e.g. "List of notable College of William & Mary alumni" (see "Criteria", below).
• Criteria: There needs to be a clear statement with the list of the criteria that have been applied in each category to establish notability. There is no problem with the earlier catgories, but in some of the later ones I was a bit uncertain about the "notability" of some of the entries. Some of the names, e.g. "Tara Guelig", seem to be very tenuously notable. There seems an awful lot of footballers (many redlinked), compared with persons from other walks of life. I appreciate that you consider this an "open" list to which names can continue to be added, but these additions need to be within some well-understood, and consistently applied, criteria.
• Minor points
  • The notes which currently form part of the lead would be better as a separate "guidance" section, and the lead itself could be expanded. At present it gives the impression that the college's noted alumni all belong to the earliest years of the United States, and doesn't at all indicate the range of activities over which alumni have operated.
  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that members of the US House of Representatives, since their constituencies are not statewide, were not described thus: "U.S. representative for Tennessee", but rather as from their state.

I may add more comments if I have time to revisit over the next few days. In the meantime, I hope these comments are helpful. Please don't hesitate to contact my talkpage for further discussion. Brianboulton (talk) 19:01, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Added: I am not sure that having a "fictional" category is a good idea. It somewhat detracts from the list's status. Brianboulton (talk) 09:41, 30 November 2009 (UTC)