Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pennsylvania State University/Archive 2

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Archive 5

Some ideas...

Now that Wikipedia:Good articles is up and running, perhaps we could make it a goal to make all PSU articles qualify as "good". It's a rather arbitrary standard, but that way we'll have a certain level of quality to shoot for (i.e., must have references, be well-written, organized, etc.). And of course, we should try to get the Penn State article featured at some point. It could take some time, but University of Michigan and Michigan State University are already featured, so it is possible.

Also, if we get this project going, we might let the Collegian know about it. I'd rather wait to do that until we have several active editors and we've been working consistently for a few weeks, at least, so that we can be sure to be ready to handle additional article suggestions and image requests. —Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 02:10, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Other campuses

• I just got up a number of photos of Berks campus. I don't have any particular urge at the moment to modify the existing page, so I'll just give a link to my gallery in case anyone has more enthusiasm than I have at the moment. Also, I added some bullets into this section because I felt it helped clean up a bit... just take em out if you folks disagree, or feel free to add them to the other sections if you like it. --Thisisbossi 20:38, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

• One of the things I noticed when I lived in State College was how few people who started out at University Park actually realize the expanse of Penn State's 20+ campus system. I started an article on Penn State Abington, but nobody has modified it since it was created. Might you want to look at some of the other campuses? -Quintin3265 02:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

• I go to Hazleton currently, and I think mainly the problem for me is I personally know nothing of the other branch campuses. As much as I would know about any other college campus I've never been to. So the problem I see is people not contributing from those other branch campuses. Also, isn't there no longer a Commonweath College, but a University College instead? - Suto 03:08, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I have the same problem; I know a lot about University Park and a little bit about the York and Harrisburg campuses but nothing about any of the others. Re Commonwealth College, are you referring to the article titled Penn State Commonwealth Campuses? I'm not sure if that's the real name or not; I noticed that the PSU website called them that somewhere and went with it. If there's an official name we should definitely change it. —Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 05:30, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Same here, I know my branch campus well, but I've only heard about the others. I think this will be a persistent problem until more people who go to or went to the branch campus in question come on board Wikipedia. Rob 03:09, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

• Well, I would like to refer to The Blue Book, where it lists Abington, Altoona, Berks, Capital, Univeristy College, and Erie(Brehend) above the usual suspects of Colleges. Now I think that the Satellite campuses are still referred to as 'commonwealth campuses', but I'm positive, by means of the link, that the Academic collection of some of them is called the University College. Wikiny Lion 06:49, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
  • You're right, there is a subset of the commonwealth campuses that are now colleges. In my day, only Behrend was a college, now others are colleges also. I think the official PSU line is that the terms "branch" and "satellite" are not used because they imply that education at a commonwealth campus is not as good as Main. IMO, for the purposes of Wikipedia, saying Penn State has 20+ campuses across the commonwealth on the CC page, and then saying X is college that can grant 4 year degrees on the specific campus page would be fine. And if it's not, somebody connected with that campus will change the article. Rob 03:09, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

PSU Abington

I updated the Penn State Abington article. Comments and other edits welcome. Rob 02:16, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Penn College

I noticed that Penn College redirects to William Penn University. I think a disambiguation page would be appropriate, as PCT is widely referred to here, even in college publications and documents (and I think even on the side of the police cars) as Penn College. Search4Lancer 05:38, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

An extremely good point. Disambig created. —Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 05:59, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Super, thanks Search4Lancer 23:32, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Otto's

I created an article for Otto's Pub & Brewery. Please feel free to expand upon it! Olessi 01:03, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

The oldest department?

You have an article stating that your Harold and Inge Marcus Ind + Man dept is the oldest on the world at 1908.

I find this a bit difficult to believe what proof do you have that it is the oldest? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.6.242.66 (talk • contribs)

I'm not sure how they determined it, but it's generally accepted (no one has disputed it to my knowledge). I believe that at that time, the US was the most industrially advanced country in the world, and thus it makes sense that the US was the first to begin analyzing and optimizing their factories. Frederick Taylor was really the pioneer industrial engineer, and as the article says, he took initiative and had one of his early followers start the department at Penn State. At the time, the discipline wasn't well-known or particularly respected, but it's exploded since then. —Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 02:08, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Take for example The University of Strathclyde. Originally this was set up to provide "a place of useful learning" Set up in 1796 but 1890 it was a main sorce of technical and engineering industrial and engineering design.

An cosidering that round the corner at Glasgow University they were inventing and perfecting through redesign the Steam engine in 1757 i think that Penns claim is nonsense.....and besides in the history of great inventions there is no country as small that has discovered or invented so much as the Scots....by the time the US bacame advanced in the 1900's the Scots had already invented most things worth discovering!!

My personal guess would be that though IE degrees may have been conferred elsewhere earlier than 1908, Penn State was the first place to have a seperate IE department. Penn State can be very tricky with their wording about that sort of thing. --Mithunc 14:11, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Nice work

Good job with the IE department article. I saw it on the Main Page. Now I feel like writing an article on the aero department. Rob 1823 UTC

Just make sure it's "notable"—that's a tough thing to measure, but in the case of the IE dept., it being ranked 3 in the country and being the first one in the world, it had something going for it. I don't know the history of the aero department (and we're not in the top 10 nationwide), but at least there aren't too many of them out there. Can you think of anything that our aero department offers that others don't? Any outstanding faculty or anything? All that said, there's still a pretty good chance that if the article itself is good, people won't mind. It's a real problem when the article is poor and non-notable. —Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 04:33, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I was half-joking, but let's see, we have a supersonic wind tunnel, three astronauts that are graduates of the program, and we're the only only aerospace program in PA, so yeah, it's notable. And as far as Wikipedia goes, if Yu Gi Oh is notable, Penn State Aero is notable as well.

So the the IE department was first in the world to offer a 4 year degree in IE? Got a reference for that? What about the School of Barcelona that offered a IE degree in 1851? Rob 07:30, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

All the Penn State literature and websites says that we were first. Frederick Taylor was the main industrial efficiency guy in the late 19th century, and he had one of his people come over and write a program for us. Not sure about Barcelona; maybe their program was significantly different from what is considered industrial engineering over here. Maybe I'll mention it to the IE department head and see what he says =). Anyway, one reference is:

"Diemer was eager to begin instruction in time and motion studies, plant layouts, advertising and salesmanship, engineering economics, and a whole range of topics not yet taught on a systematic basis at any other institution. In 1908 his ideas took the form of a two-year option in "industrial engineering" for junior and senior mechanical engineering students. These studies proved so popular that a year later they were expanded to a four-year program and formed the core of a new Department of Industrial Engineering-the first of its kind in the world." (Michael Bezilla. "Shaping a Modern College". Penn State: An Illustrated History. Retrieved 2006-04-02.).

As for Aero, go for it. Might as well create articles on the more notable departments at Penn State. —Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 12:53, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

The aero article will have to go in my pile. I've been mainly thinking about space and spacecraft articles, and I keep finding more and more gaps in Wikipedia the more I look. Besides, there are probably more general interest Penn State articles that should be written first, although it would be cool if at some point in the future every Penn State building and department had a Wikipedia article. Rob 14:39, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

After taking time out to read AfD, I've come to realize that my department would be NN. It seems the consensus there is that generally, individual departments within a college or university are NN. And besides, there are other more productive things I could contribute to the Penn State WikiProject, for example any of the open tasks on the project page. RockinRob^Talk 01:54, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Penn State userboxes

When I started on Wikipedia, I had some userboxes on my user page. Then I removed them. I might add them back. In case I do, I made up some Penn State user boxes because there weren't any. Sorry if you hate userboxes or if these already exist somewhere, but I thought I would share. Rob 07:34, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

This user is a Penn State student.

This user is a Penn State alumnus.

This user is a Penn State alumnus.

This user is a Penn State student.

This user wishes they went to Penn State.

This user is the Nittany Lion.

Personally I think userboxes aren't all they're cracked up to be (no sense in being needlessly divisive), but most of these look fine. The only problem is the Joe Paterno one; having a fair use image in the userspace is a pretty big no-no. Also, I think "alumnus" is the singluar of "alumni". —Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 12:35, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

The flip side to userboxes causing divisiveness is Userboxes help editors understand each others' points of view, helping to create a more neutral encyclopedia, but I understand what you are saying, that's why I removed mine in the first place.

Sorry, I figured that since the JoePa image was from Wikipedia already, it was fair to use, I'll remove it. Yes alumni is plural, but I am speaking in the vernacular. When I drink out of my Penn State Alumni coffee mug while wearing my Penn State Alumni T-shirt, I'm not really thinking about all the other alumni. Rob 14:30, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Color problems: Although it makes perfect sense to use a blue background for these boxes, it makes the linked text (Penn State)pretty hard to read. Any ideas how to get over this problem? deeptrivia (talk) 12:54, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I noticed the color problem also, which is why I made white versions as well. I guess the thing to do would have been to experiment more with the color codes, but my writer's block went away and I got back to an article. Rob 14:30, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

After reading more about userboxes and the userbox war, I'm not entirely certain it was appropriate for me to put them here on a Talk Page, and I would rather not possibly offend anyone with a userbox. Should they be removed? RockinRob^Talk 01:52, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

PSU

This user attends or attended
Penn State University

I created this userbox back in April (without knowledge of the debate on this page). Several others have improved it along the way. —xanderer 05:15, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Beaver Field

Where exactly is the Beaver Field, where baseball matches are held. Directions will be highly appreciated. Thanks! deeptrivia (talk) 02:08, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Athletics

Should I or anyone else start pages on the recent Penn Staters selected in the draft? Such as Tamba Hali and Michael Robinson? 須藤

Actually, Tamba Hali and Michael Robinson already have articles, though especially the latter could use some expansion. --Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 05:15, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, sorry about that. A Briton came up when I typed in Michael Robinson, and there was no redirect or any indication that there is another article, but there is now. 須藤

That was me fixing it :). --Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 17:17, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Pennsylvania

Some articles covered by this WikiProject lack photographs. As part of a subcategorization of the requested photos category, there is now a category for Pennsylvania articles needing photos - to use it, just add {{reqphotoin|Pennsylvania}} to the article's talk page. I have only added a few articles to the category so far, but it would be an easy way to make an extensive list Pennsylvania-related articles lacking photos. I hope you find it useful! TheGrappler 05:48, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Looks cool to me! I hope people start using this to take pictures of what we need. --Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 03:05, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I put a comment on the Penn State Articles needing pictures Talk Page, and maybe I should have put it here. I volunteer to take any University Park campus photos anybody would like. RockinRob^Talk 02:06, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

New Invites to the WikiProject

I've been attaching a link to this WikiProject to a bunch of welcome messages given to current Penn State students. I'm also interested in generating a list of Penn State Wikipedians. GChriss 21:45, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Improvements to the Athletics article

I started the athletics article, but it is lacking in details. I believe other information, such as coaches, players, football history, facilities, etc should be added, but I haven't had the time to do so. S. Ellis 20:47, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Nittwits

I noticed Spangineer labled the Nittwits article as part of the Penn State WikiProject. Is there any particular direction this article should go? Would this make it notable enough to include under the Student Life or Athletics sections of the main Penn State article? --BroadSt Bully 17:25, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it is worth a mention. I was completely unaware of the Nittwits, and I have been at Penn State for four years. Thanks, GChriss 18:04, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I was unaware of them as well, and I actually afd'd the article a while back (the result of was "no consensus", with some anonymous users taking part in the discussion). I still don't think it's notable enough for its own article and I don't think it's worth noting in the main article on the university. There's a myriad of organizations at Penn State, but that doesn't mean they're worth noting in the Penn State article. --Jtalledo (talk) 20:47, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Back when you AFD'ed the article only a couple days after it was created and I didn't have a fair shot to work on it, there was barely anything there. I think you should check it out... it's come a long way in the past few days and I think you'd be pleased at its progress... and I'm not done yet. --BroadSt Bully 14:39, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

How famous are they? Have they been mentioned in newspapers other than the Collegian? I, like GChriss, hadn't heard of them until recently, and I've been at PSU for 4 years. At this point I think a mention on the athletics page may be worthwhile, but not on the main PSU page. --Spangineer^[es] (háblame) 13:40, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

In addition to the Collegian[1], the Nittwits have been featured in newspapers from Florida[2] to Ohio[3] and beyond, plus plenty of blogs [4] and even a WWE mention[5] (as irrelevant as it may be). The club president won a nationwide ESPN contest.[6] Illinois and Michigan State feature their student sections in their Wikipedia templates... but I don't believe the Nittwits are at that point yet, although they should get some sort of mention under the Athletics section on the main page (speaking of which, it is sad that the men's basketball team barely gets a mention... I think I may expand that shortly). Among Big Ten schools, in addition to the Izzone and Orange Krush, Michigan's Maize Rage has a feature-length article. These kind of organizations are among the most visible at their schools due to their nature as large cheering sections prominently displayed on TV during games. Believe me, if you do not think they are notable now, you will this year when the basketball team makes a run at an NCAA Tournament bid, and they become the 2nd largest student organization at Penn State (behind only the Blue & White Society, who I think deserve a page along with the Lion Ambassadors). --BroadSt Bully 14:39, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree with Spagineer. They merit an addition to the athletics page, but no the main page. --Jtalledo (talk) 22:55, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

More Images Uploaded

I am in the process of uploading campus images: Gallery.
(And categorizing the images and including them in relevant articles.) Requests welcomed! GChriss 02:08, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

And link to the main image category: Category:Pennsylvania_State_University

Featured

Good news everyone—the article on the Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering (Penn State's industrial engineering department) is now featured. Let's hope it's the first of many! --Spangineer^es (háblame) 02:41, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Commonwealth campus template

I recently created a commonwealth campus template for use on the pages of the PSU commonwealth/branch campuses. Currently, all of these pages either include the university park buildings template or none at all, so I think this will be an improvement over the present situation. I attended Mont Alto campus and presently attend the University Park Campus and will try to add some info about both of these placesRavensfan5252 21:22, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Eric A. Walker

I started the page on Eric A. Walker (of Walker Building fame). I couldn't find a birth date or place, just a year. Most of the stuff I put in the article was from the library page. It could use more variety of sources and probably some general copy editing. Pepperjack 00:08, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

New template

• I would really like to see the Penn State article and other PSU-related articles reach the same level of quality of as the Michigan and Michigan State articles . . . towards that end I've created a rough draft of a template, similar to other schools, to go on PSU pages. I used the ones at Notre Dame, Michigan, Michigan State, and UC Berkeley as inspiration, in case anything seems weird. I also started with Template:Pennsylvania_State_University_campus.

Template:The Pennsylvania State University

I've formatted the links for different colleges a bit differently, as I've suggested they should be here . . . they can easily be changed back.

I would greatly appreciate some constructive criticism. I've already got a few questions of my own but I'll wait to see what other people think first. Keep in mind that this is a very rough draft! --Mithunc 14:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• Nice. I really like MSU's template (much more than the others); perhaps using a smaller font here would be appropriate. That would help reduce the size. Also, red links shouldn't appear—we can comment them out so that when they get created they're easy to add, but the point of these boxes is connect articles that already exist (like "See also"). --Spangineer^ws (háblame) 02:28, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• I think the template looks pretty good. Smeal College of Business has a page so we should add it to academics. It probably will require a name change to match other existing pages, so I didn't add it myself.Pepperjack 22:27, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• I would be in favor of adding a "More.." option after the short listing to link to additional content. (One example: Penn State has more than seven important people.) I also suggest making the template more commonwealth location friendly. But overall, very slick. GChriss <always listening><c> 08:31, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

• Yeah, there actually was an earlier version with exactly what you described, but I removed it shortly thereafter because I thought it looked a bit awkward. If you can do it in a way that looks nice, go ahead. As for the commonwealth campuses, my idea after doing this template was to do a second template featuring the campus locations of Penn State (see Template:University of Minnesota system, also see Template:University of California and Template:University of Wisconsin). I never started it though because there are hardly any articles existing yet for the other campuses, so I thought I'd wait. --Mithunc 19:06, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
• Ah, what a fool I am. I just didn't look hard enough (Pennsylvania State University Commonwealth Campus). There also is an existing template called Pennsylvania State University Commonwealth Campuses, but I envisioned something that would encompass the special mission campuses as well (meaning Great Valley, Penn Tech, Dickson, etc.). Perhaps the existing one can be modified. By the way, that article should be renamed to "Campuses" as the "Commonwealth Campus" is a deprecated term referring to an academic college that is now split up into a seperate one for each campus. --Mithunc 19:17, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 23:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)