User:Runfellow/sandbox/UNT

Things to remember

Wikipedia has plenty of guidelines for university articles, and the University of North Texas page basically follows none of them. Particularly, a number of basic tenets are being ignored:

• Self-published sources are allowed, but only in certain cases. The UNT page is littered with academic boosterism, which will either have to be properly sourced from a third party or removed.
• The article structure needs to be fixed to at least come close to the suggestions.
• The alumni section needs to be summarized into paragraph form, and needs to be relevant to the university (not just a list of famous people who went to UNT). For example, since UNT has a great music program, it would make sense to summarize the qualities of the many musicians who went to the school.
• Many, many other changes I'll enumerate later.

There are plenty of pages we can use as a guide, particularly anything related to Texas A&M University or even the article Texas Tech University.

Using short citations

I will probably be switching the University of North Texas article to use shortened footnotes that link to full references instead of full references inline with the text. This makes it easier to reference different pages of the same text. If you have a source you'd like to add, follow these steps:

1. Use Template:Sfn immediately after your statement. Use the author's (or authors') last name and year. Whenever possible, include the page number. It will look like this: {{sfn|Rogers|2002|p=31}}
2. This creates a short footnote in the "Notes" section.
3. That note will link to a full reference, which you need to write out in the References section using a citation template. Check Template:Citation to see descriptions of some of the fields. Be sure to include the ref=harv parameter. If your reference does not have a specific author, contact me or look at the reference list for a few examples of how to get around this problem. The entries are alphabetized by last name. That will look something like this:

* {{cite book |title=The Story of North Texas: From Texas Normal College, 1890, to the University of North Texas System, 2001 |last=Rogers |first=James Lloyd |publisher=[[University of North Texas Press]] |date=2002-04-15 |isbn=9781574411287 |oclc=49935959 |location=[[Denton, Texas]] |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=uEqJXwQHe6kC |accessdate=2012-07-07 |ref=harv}}

1. After you have added the reference, preview your changes to make sure the numbered reference goes to a footnote and that the footnote goes to the correct reference. Not all kinds of source templates will work with the short footnote template, so if it doesn't, use a more generic citation template from CAT:CITE.
2. Here's an example of a citation that goes to a note using the SFN template:

Changes made on 6/11/12

At the very least, I have rearranged the article, combined the two separate (?) academic sections, removed the (most likely trademarked, and thus inappropriate for Wikipedia) alma mater and fight songs, and removed this entire section:

North Texas firsts

Since its founding the university has introduced several different programs and models into the American and Texan postsecondary system:

• First in the U.S. to offer programs in aging studies, jazz studies, emergency administration and planning, oil and petroleum accounting, and business computer information systems
• First in Texas to offer a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Studies program.
• First bachelor's degree in electronic merchandising in the U.S.
• First accredited counseling program in the U.S., which still ranks among the nation's best.
• First school in the country to offer a degree in Mechanical and Energy Engineering.
• First fully online master's program in applied anthropology.
• First environmental ethics program in the country to offer the Ph.D., which is considered the best in the nation
• First PhD program in art education in the U.S.
• First patent for silicon-based ultra-sensitive chemical sensor for use in integrated circuit fabrication.
• First online school library preparation program in the U.S.
• First college in the South to integrate African Americans (1952)
• First LEED Platinum football stadium (Apogee Stadium) (2011)

It would be one thing if this wasn't obvious fluff, but the refimprove tag has been there since May 2011 because it's all straight from UNT and not a single secondary source. In fact, the article in general uses very few secondary sources.

Also, I removed a gigantic section that an IP editor had hastily copied and pasted over from the Intensive English Language Institute page, which is being deleted for lack of notability. Why anyone would think it would be appropriate to just cram it into here (reflist and all) is beyond me, but it's gone, as is quite a bit of cruft about various schools and colleges, in addition to lists of residence halls (take a look at a good article for a university; do you see a bunch of bullet points?) and quite a bit more. It's still awful, but now there's at least somewhat less awful to deal with.

References

• Rogers, James Lloyd (2002-04-15). The Story of North Texas: From Texas Normal College, 1890, to the University of North Texas System, 2001. Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press. ISBN 9781574411287. OCLC 49935959. Retrieved 2012-07-07.