Talk:King's College London/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Sj (talk · contribs) 18:28, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Initial thoughts: At first blush, this article could be ready for FA review. It has 45 sections, 66 images, and 450 references. It is one of the better educational-institution articles I've seen: detailed, in a way that traces the history of a long-standing institution; monitored closely by editors; no ongoing edit wars. @Chanpeter:, I welcome your and others' responses to this review while it is open.

Writing

Good. Solid in places, a bit wordy & redundant in others. Fine style on average, with a consistent tone over much of the article. Full of solid & sourced information.

• Some hanging one-sentence paragraphs, usually trivia that could be removed or summarized.
• Lede is too long and breathless, in general the article suffers from 'verifiability over informativeness'.

Accuracy

Spot check is good. The article is very long, with hundreds of cites; and the Todo list on the talk page includes improving variety of sources.

• There is was one , about a minor, time-dependent, self-referential statement ("fourth-highest number of alumni entries on Wikipedia amongst UK universities") – that should simply be removed. Y resolved.
• References could use some cleanup: a number of refs could be combined into multiple uses of a single one, in a few places; one source is very heavily used.

Thoroughness

Comprehensive in areas (history of buildings and alumni), less so in others (development of the relationship b/t King's and UL, current state of affairs, relationship with its neighborhood).

• Possibly too thorough in places: there's an overfocus on "achievements of alumni", taken to an extreme here compared to other top-tier institutions. That content could be reduced by 60-90% (listing the same people, but much more concisely).
• 220K is probably too long; a more detailed article on one or more subtopics makes sense.

NPOV

A long history; distinctly biased towards the positive. No controversies listed, lots of random accolades and awards, as many institutional pages have; while that matches the bias in available sources (many publications give positive awards; few give negative ones).

• the article would be better if it lost some of the trivial accolades and included some less-positive reviews. Y reduced now in a few places. more work needed, but fine for now.

Stability

Stable over the past months.

Images

60+, high quality, of both campus and related people.

Overall

Clearly a Good Article. Could use some touchups, and I'd like to hear thoughts from current editors of the article. That said, if some of the detail were split off or summarized, and the references cleared up, it would be nearly ready for a full FA review.

– SJ + 18:28, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Sj: Thank you for reviewing the article. Hopefully it can be a good article soon. I've been trying to tidy up the article today, working on your suggestions. I think I agree that some of the article needs to be split off to reduce its length. Also, I removed a reference in the lead to being the "third oldest university in England", the citation provided did not support this (it was actually a King's source which said fourth). However, I know from the past this might be contentious due to the semantics over university founding dates. If you have any clear changes that are needed then 'll try to help when I'm on wp. Aloneinthewild (talk) 17:01, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Aloneinthewild:, it's looking definitively better. Some specific suggestions:

• Reducing size and repetition: move bits to the many detail pages that exist.
  • Condense & move some of "19th century" history to the detailed history page
  • Condense some of the "Campus" details where the buildings have detail pages
  • Summarize & slim "Rankings and reputation" to 2-3 paras + a more compact infobox
  • Reduce "Notable people" to a few paras: alumni, academics and staff, and laureates. Galleries of 10-12 photos are fine, but walls of names are not helpful to readers. The two! detail pages, for alumni and for laureates, do a much better job of presenting an overall view - the tables there are more readable and more comprehensive.
• Expanding in places
  • "Faculties & departments" could use a bit more detail. These are current, and have no detail pages.

Marked as a GA; keep up the fine work! – SJ + 00:24, 11 July 2016 (UTC)