Talk:University of Scranton buildings and landmarks

List?

This is a fantastic article. Encyclopedic, complete, rock-solid citations. Only question is whether it's a list-class article. Any thoughts? -Fluous (talk) 21:57, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

ccvgggh KARAN KATH (talk) 08:35, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Article needs to be trimmed down - too long, and has unencyclopedic prose

Taking a look at the first paragraph, just about all of it is unencyclopedic in tone and content, or has excessive detail on things that a layperson does not need to know, that needs to be removed from this article. This article is far too long given the only modest importance of the topic at hand. I can condense the first paragraph as follows:

"Completed in 1992, the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Memorial Library was designed to house the vast library collections, replacing the Alumni Memorial Library, which proved unable to serve adequately the growing student population. More than double the size of the Alumni Memorial Library, the Weinberg Memorial Library has five floors, and houses hundreds of thousands of library materials. The building is also home to the University Archives and Special Collection, various administrative offices, the Scranton Heritage Room, and thirty-nine panel paintings by Trevor Southey which depict art, religion, and science in the Lackawanna Valley and in the world.[7]"

Just about everything else in that paragraph was excessive detail relevant not to the Memorial Library but to a subcomponent, and also read like a guidebook or a travel guide, which wikipedia is not. Hopefully somebody can help me condense this article.

QueensanditsCrazy (talk) 22:26, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia article sizes are evaluated by characters of article-space text. References are not included. I found about 141,000 characters, which is about 141kb. In particular, Wikipedia:Article_size#Content_removal asserts that that even if the article ought to be made smaller, content removal should not be the immediate option. It appears that QueensanditsCrazy has found a list somewhere of the largest articles by total article size and desires to remove content to make them fit a preferred size (other articles criticized on size being HBO, Characters of Casualty and Door County, Wisconsin). This is less-than-ideal because the size guidelines on WP articles do not apply to references. Any approach using a list of articles by total size looking to remove information will necessarily target better-referenced articles the most, since references contain words too. There are many articles on Wikipedia with 141k characters or more of articlespace; there is no need for haste with this or any others. Additionally, the accusation (also made concerning other articles) that the article is somehow "unencyclopedic" or that the information is irrelevant is incorrect; given that the information is properly sourced and written according to the MOS, Wikipedia policy encourages editors to develop their own encyclopedic style. In particular, it has been advised on Wikipedia that criticism of tone are a less helpful means of resolving disagreements. For reference see the pyramid diagram here: simple:Wikipedia:Solving_disputes--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 17:25, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm just dropping in a few years later to concur with @QueensanditsCrazy that this page is far too long. Since almost all of its content was added by one user who no longer appears to be editing, its size makes it likely too unwieldy to be properly maintained and kept up to date.

To respond to the user above, I'm not so sure this very long article is properly sourced—almost half of its citations are the University itself, and another quarter are from the university newspaper. That doesn't leave many citations that confer real notability. Also its length stems from some pretty grave issues (go ahead and CTRL+F "In 1945, with the end of World War II and the creation of the G.I. Bill enrollment exploded" and see how many times that whole paragraph is repeated). The comments about non-encyclopedic tone are quite right; many sections sound promotional and list restaurants and printers as though they are hotel amenities.

While there may be no need for haste, that doesn't mean that this page isn't in need of a lot of work to be brought into line with Wikipedia standards. Leaving up such a behemoth that no one's endeavoured to substantially edit is not a great look. Wow Mollu (talk) 22:48, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Beginning

The beginning of the article, “The University of Scranton's 58-acre hillside campus is located in the heart of Scranton. It is a community of 75,000 within the greater metropolitan area.” It sounds too much like an advertisement as stated in the improvement banner. Plus people don’t need to know that in the very beginning paragraph. Any suggestions? UniversalAlien (talk) 02:21, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I also think that maybe the opening sentences I copied don’t need to be changed completely just made more interesting. UniversalAlien (talk) 02:25, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi @UniversalAlien, I’m in agreement. I made some edits to those opening sentences to remove some of the flowery language. Feel free to make further edits or let me know what you think.The lead was also too focused on the history of the university, rather than the subject of the article, the buildings.

I think the article lacks generalized information—how many buildings are there total, what was the first, do the buildings represent any particular architectural trends? Those are some other improvements I think such an information-rich article would benefit from.

Thanks for opening the discussion, UA! Wow Mollu (talk) 02:15, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I love your edits, @Wow Mollu! There is definitely improvement in the tone of that beginning paragraph. I like the word choice, it makes it more interesting to read about. I didn’t make any edits to it except for minor grammar checks. It starts off the article in a better way than before.

I agree with the info that could be added. Perhaps it should be included in the opening? Looking at the almost 400 references (quite a lot of info to choose from!), it seems that their campus map is a great place to start in regards to more building info. There is already a Wikipedia article on the history of the university, but there is some good building information on that note here.

Thank you for your help! Definitely make some more edits here if you would like, I will as well soon. UniversalAlien (talk) 03:01, 28 October 2023 (UTC)