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Wikipedia:WikiProject Engineering/Peer review/2008

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Engineering and technology peer reviews from VeblenBot

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I've been working on this article for some time, but it needs some NPOV work and it still has a long way to go. Specific suggestions are most appreciated. --L33tminion | (talk) 15:26, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

Some comments from someone who had never heard of this college before reading the article. I've tried to be as specific as possible but really, you are right in saying it has a long way to go. It seems as if large portions of the text are written by the institution itself or some very happy students that try to uphold a view of very hardworking, responsible and generally almost perfect students. I'd say: surreal.

  • The lead deals too much with the accreditation issue. This could be summarized to make room for a summary of the overall article.
  • From the history section: "The class of 2006 also included". It seems incorrect to speak about 2006 in the past tense.
  • The section "The Olin Experiment" reads like advertising. I agree with the suggestion on the talk page: get rid of the mishmash of bullets. The college has some noteable unique policies but it shouldn't be hard to rip out about half of the points that are not really that unique. I'll detail for a bit here.
  • "Excellent opportunities for undergraduate research." What are the opportunities?
  • "An active relationship with the corporate engineering world." Advertising. How is this unique?
  • "Emphasis on business and entrepreneurship". idem
  • "42 clubs (not including..." idem
  • "Approximately equal enrollment of men and women" Is this an enforced policy?
Yes, the admissions office specifically tries to maintain an equal ratio. (They can't make it perfectly equal because you can't predict exactly who will choose to go to the college once accepted.) --L33tminion | (talk) 20:39, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)
  • "An honor code" At this point in the article it is not clear what this means.
  • The honor code itself reads as a summary of common sense to me. I suggest to delete it since it is not interesting.
It's rather essential to the college itself, though. The code is signed by every student. But I can tone down that section a bit... --L33tminion | (talk) 20:39, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)
  • "Admission policy and ..." This section is advertising. "Olin College's believes..." is not a factual sentence. "In addition, Olin admissions..." Try to reverse its meaning and find one college that would state as a policy: "we try to limit admissions to a few select groups"
  • Just delete the quote from the website in the section "Academics". I was unable to read more than two lines of it since it made my stomach turn. The fourth paragraph of this section is highly problematic. Tone down "Even the upper administration is very...". "This is viewed as especially important..." viewed by who? The sentence seems redundant.
  • The section "Residential life" again reads as an advertisement. "The dorms at Olin have a strong sense of community." is redundant, should follow from the facts. "Many Olin students prefer a busy schedule." Many? "In addition to their hectic academic schedules," tone it down.
  • The section "Culture" contains some interesting facts. However "Although Olin students care about academics, they try to keep a sense of perspective..." too obvious, we all try that: delete. "Because of this hectic pace, the stress level at Olin is occasionally very high." does not read as factual.
  • The "Architecture" section contains the following problems: " with the impressive steel, ..." "a more natural seeming place ..." " giving the space an ordered but informal feel."
I have to tone down my brilliant overenthusiastic prose? Awww...  :-P --L33tminion | (talk) 21:50, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

Good luck! Jan van Male 18:59, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I made some major edits to the article. Not sure it's there yet, but it's much improved, IMO. I appreciate any further suggestions or edits you can make. Thanks for all your help. --L33tminion | (talk) 21:50, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartly, the article is much improved. I tried some edits myself, please do check the accuracy. I've sometimes guessed, assumed and probably also misunderstood in the process of rephrasing.

  • From the lead "Olin College is a selective, private college", what does selective mean in this context?
We're the 17th most selective college in the US according to the Princeton Review. (Actually, I thought that was no longer in the article. It might need to be removed due to POV problems.) [1] --L33tminion | (talk) 01:30, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)
Olin is now the 5th Toughest School to get in to according to the Princeton Review.
  • Does the project-based learning indeed start immediately? Is the entire curriculum designed around this or are there also traditional classes? First I got the impression of the former (and edited accordingly), now I'm not too sure.
The project based and interdisciplinary learning starts immediately, with the "Integrated Course Blocks" Freshman year (three interconnected classes each semester; calculus, physics, and engineering). It's one of the major focuses of the college's approach, although there are some more traditional classes. --L33tminion | (talk) 01:30, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)
  • How did the Olin foundation acquire the money to found the college?
I've been meaning to write the article on the foundation, but I've been having a hard time finding information. The foundation was founded by Franklin W. Olin, an entrepreneur and "self-made man". He was a farmer, got into Cornell, studied chemical engineering, and started a munitions business just in time for WWI. The guy also played baseball in college, and was a professional baseball player (major league, I think) before he founded his business. At any rate, he made a fortune and left his money to found the foundation, which supports business and engineering education (of course, the foundation has also gotten donations since then). The foundation has created colleges at a lot of universities (I need to track down the full list, but I believe there are over 40 buildings named after Olin that the foundation has funded, including Olin College of Business at Babson College and Olin School of Buisness at Washington University in St. Louis.) The foundation no longer exists. It has poured all its resources into the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, the first independent college funded by the foundation. --L33tminion | (talk) 01:30, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)
  • In the section on the honor code what is meant by "governing policies set up by the Office of Student Life"?
Disciplinary policies for the school. One oddity of our honor code is that each vote to ammend leads to a vote to abolish. Under the honor code, the honor board (part of the student government), handles discipline (the dean of student life can veto decisions, but, as far as I know that's an emergency power that's never been used). If the honor code was abolished, that job would fall back to the Office of Student Life, and they already have policies written that would deal with that. (I hope that's an adequate explanation.) --L33tminion | (talk) 01:30, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)
  • This probably marks me as a non-US citizen but I didn't immediately understand the term "Greek life" in the culture section. Searching on WP did turn up some usefull clues but no satisfying definition to link to.
Means fraternities and sororities. I thought that was generally known, but feel free to change it to something more clear. --L33tminion | (talk) 01:30, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

Jan van Male 17:58, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC) What is this page actually intended to be about? Engineers, engineering, education of engineers, history of elcrtricity etc?. Until someone agrees on this it will remain a complete oversize mess mish mash as it is now--Light current 02:19, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

One key thing is this article is missing references. Other than references, I'm looking to see what else can be done with this article. Cburnett 07:57, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

It could be deleted! and redirected to a better one--Light current 02:16, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Certainly also needs a history and development (Tesla, Maxwell, Farady, Gauss; Benjamin Franklin's kite experiments) as well as a brief overview of various notable contributions (ties into history & development). Cburnett 08:35, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)
I have to disagree somewhat. I don't think this page needs a history on the discovery of the properties of electricity. That's already covered on the electricity page. — RJH 18:50, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Good point, but surely there's room for a history of the profession or, in other words, the history of the engineering of electricity. A lot of the people in the Electricity#History section were, for the lack of a better word, tinkerers of electricity: experimenting with electricity for its own sake instead of harnessing it for practical usage (aka engineering). I guess maybe a survey is a more apt name instead. Stuff like Wardenclyffe Tower. I guess I don't know enough about my own profession to write this section though. :) Cburnett 20:16, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)
I have a few relevant books that discuss the history of electrical engineering as a discipline, as opposed to the inventors and discoverers. Now I have another thing to do on my list...here's hoping its a rainy weekend. --Wtshymanski 22:33, 16 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
You say in the lead that the field "encompasses many subfields" – some of those ought to be mentioned in the lead. I agree that a history of the profession is essential. Electronics engineering redirects to Electrical engineering, so perhaps better explanation of those terms would be necessary. Similarly, instead of/in addition to talking about which universities combine the discipline with other related disciplines, perhaps more information could be given regarding the traditional distinctions between the fields, and why those universities chose to combine them. More info is needed on broadcast engineering, and short paragraphs throughout the article should probably be further developed (see paragraphs in the sections "Instrumentation engineering", "Digital signal processing", and "Control systems" especially). --Spangineer 18:45, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

Call me crazy, but I think it's almost time for FAC with this little article. I think I've pretty much exhausted all of the available sources, so I don't think there's much I can do to make it longer, unless people want me to add insignificant details about professors or individual labs. What do you think? --Spangineer[es] (háblame) 22:08, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • You're completely crazy ;). Well, as the article is a bit on the short side, I only have a couple of minor comments to make (which should take less than a minute to fix):
  • After a year, for consistency, a comma should either be used throughout the entire article or not used at all. (I believe the only example would be who in 2005 served)
  • Per WP:MOSNUM, please spell out source units of measurements in text; for example, "the Moon is 380,000 kilometres (240,000 mi) from Earth.
  • If possible though, please see if it can be expanded any more.
  • Thanks, AndyZ t 23:07, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I guess it could be rephrased to be "In 2005, the 25 faculty members of the department served a total of 127 graduate and 345 undergraduate students", but really I don't think it is too big of a deal. I also just noted that WP:WIAFA 3(c) calls for a "a substantial" ToC - I don't know if there is a strict definition for how long a ToC should be, but this one is a bit on the short side. AndyZ t 00:06, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think there's a "strict" definition, but I expect that people will understand that short articles require short TOCs. That said, this will certainly be one of the shortest articles put up as an FAC in recent times. Things might get dicey, if history is any guide. However, I did some poking around on the website, and found some more stuff that might be worth including about the students—the department's study abroad programs, and the student organizations that exist. Hopefully I'll be able to get a two paragraph section out of that... --Spangineer[es] (háblame) 12:22, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article is now B class. Please help improve its level --deltaG 20:13, 08 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've listed this article for peer review because it has been modified to come up to the standards of the WikiProjects for Universities.


Thanks,

LopezKahn (talk) 16:56, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have nominated this article for a peer review,to find improvement areas before it undergoes quality assessment. - Amog |Talk 14:18, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To be perfectly honest, the article reads like an official document (excluding, of course, the controversies section). Typically, you want a well-written piece that minimizes information that most readers will not be interested in. For example, consider the 'History' section which can be compressed into a couple of sentences. Someone needs to go through the article and add whitespaces after commas.

Lead
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Looks ok. Perhaps you can add a line relating to the controversies here to make it interesting. Perhaps not.

History
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Too much detail. And, what is a grihapravesam? I assume that not much has happened in the way of exciting stuff (good news for a college!) so there is not much to say here but surely the college must have grown in number of students, degrees granted, areas of instruction, etc. Perhaps that should be featured in the history section.

Milestones
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These aren't really milestones. The first para (SIPC stuff) should go into a section on 'Management and administration' since apparently SIPC owns the college. In that section, you should include any information about a board of directors, how they are selected, etc. You also need to include information about finances (is the college self-sufficient, does tuition cover all expenses, if not, where does the rest of the money come from? Is there an endowment?)

The second part of the milestones section should go into a section on alumni.

The BT in info tech should go into 'History'.

Library
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Probably should go into a section labeled Facilities.

The Forum
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Should probably go into a section on Academics. That's where you want to put areas of instruction (departments), special academic programs, etc.

Other stuff
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You need to talk about admissions in a way that makes the controversy described in the article clear. It is not clear to someone like me (who knows nothing about admission to Chennai colleges) what the implications of the controversy are and how the controversy links to the way in which students are admitted.

Hostel
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I suggest rewriting this under the title 'Student life' and including information about clubs, activities (festivals?) etc. Think about what someone from a rival college would like to know about student life at SVC.

Scholarships and Honors
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Should go in academics as a sub-section. Honors, as a section, typically relates to honors that the college and its members receive from outside. --RegentsPark (talk) 18:58, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]