Talk:Union Literary Institute

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Union Literary Institute was a Social sciences and society good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
February 2, 2020	Good article nominee	Not listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on November 7, 2019.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that the Union Literary Institute was established after the Indiana General Assembly barred African Americans from attending public schools?

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Notable people

Wikipedia guidelines suggest not listing people as Notable if there is not an existing article about that person. You non-notable Notables may be deleted. David notMD (talk) 21:43, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just to add to what David notMD posted, "Notable (fill in the blank)" sections are really only intended to included entries which are Wikipedia notable, with the most basic criteria for inclusion per WP:CSC being that there already exists a Wikipedia article written about the subject. In some cases, the inclusion may extend to entries who/which don't have articles yet written about them, but who/which are almost certainly considered to be Wikipedia notable as explained in WP:REDYES; however, many editors prefer that even in such cases that an article about the subject be written first and only then add their name to the list. Embedded lists like "Notable (fill in the blank)" sections can have WP:Namechecking problems by people trying to add entries that they think are notable, but which don't really meet Wikipedia's various notability guidelines. Since this list seems fairly small that might not be much of a problem at the moment, but it would be a good idea to establish some basic inclusion criteria from the start to try and keep such a thing from ever becoming a problem. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:44, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Lead seems too long

Lead section seems a bit too long which is throwing the article out of balance. Per MOS:LEAD, the lead section should basically only be a summary of the main content in the article: it shouldn't really be the only place where such content is mentioned. It seems that quite a bit of the content in this article's lead might work better added to separate sections within the article body; for example, a "Background" section or a "Curriculum" section could be created and some of the content moved there. The two big block quotes in the lead seem also a bit too much per MOS:QUOTE. Short quotes can be used to further the reader's understanding, but as quotes start to get "too big", the question kind of becomes whether the same content can be expressed in simple text by the editor adding the content in their own words without actually using as much quoted text. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:33, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. deisenbe (talk) 14:27, 15 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

When closed?

The info box and the article disagree about when closed - 1880 or 1914. And a 1924 newspaper clipping https://www.newspapers.com/clip/5369260/union_literary_instituteits_demise/ documents the end of a legal proceeding that led to the ULI property being sold and the money to go to the state. David notMD (talk) 09:02, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. My revisions are:

deisenbe (talk) 11:08, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Union Literary Institute/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Hog Farm (talk · contribs) 05:12, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

1. Well-written

Prose clear/concise/understandable

Spelling/grammar

Mos lead

MOS layout

Buzzwords/fiction/lists

2. Verifiable

List of references properly formatted

Inline citations from reliable sources

No original research

No COPYVIO

None detected

3. Broad in coverage

Covers main aspects

The lead mentions background incidents leading to the foundation of the school, but this is not discussed in the main article body. It should be.

Stays focused on topic

4. Neutral Y

5. Stable Y

6. Illustrated (if possible)

Media tagged for copyright status - The licensing statement for the Students' Repository image states that you took the picture yourself, but the image is watermarked with the internet archive. This licensing statement does not seem to be accurate, then.

Media relevant

Comments

References Atlas Obscura is user-generated, so it cannot be used as a reference on Wikipedia. The Lives Not Forgotten references is to a blogspot page, also not a reliable source.

Lead The lead should be much longer than one sentence. A nice, but still concise description of some of the notable milestones in the school's history would be helpful.

Infobox The size and type (agricultural) parameters in the infobox are cited neither in the infobox or in the text. A citation needs to occur at one of the two places.

The school We need background information here. We start out with the first board meeting of the school, but the lead indicates that special circumstances led to the foundation of the school. We should get this, too.

You refer to the Friends (Quaker) meetinghouse. Isn't the full name the "Society of Friends"? Unless this specific meetinghouse was known only by Friends, you should use the full name of the organization.

"The term "literary" meant that it was a non-religious school, not that it focused on literature. "Union" has been explained as jointly educating white and black students (quote below); it also is said to refer to the three settlements of free blacks the school was primarily serving: Cabin Creek, Snow Creek, and Greenville, straddling the Ohio–Indiana state line." - Citation needed for this.

A lot of this section is sourced to Atlas Obscura, so new references will have to be found for that.

What's orthography? A wikilink or explanation would help.

Liber College is a redlink. If this subject is likely to pass WP:GNG, leave the link in place to encourage article creation. If not, remove the wikilinks.

"Although most students were black, whites also enrolled, making it an early example of racial integration in the Midwest" - Citation needed.

"That school closed in 1914, and the building was for many years used as a barn. " - Citation needed.

The Students' Repository "Beard's journals were not transcribed and published until 2017." - Citation needed

Why are those three contents singled out? The contents singled out should probably have some sort of illustrative importance, and that should be specified in the article.

Notable students Generally, in sections of notable students, alumni, and residents, only figures with article should be included, which would rule out Mitchell, Smothers, and Addington. Also, there needs to be a citation connecting each individual to the school.

Archival material Generally, sections should be longer than one sentence. Is there content you can add or somewhere you can combine this section into?

Okay, so this is going to be a lot of work to get it up to GA-status. I'll give you a chance to bring it up to the standards, but if it hasn't been substantially improved within seven days I'm going to have to fail it. Thanks for expressing an interest in improving Wikipedia's content! Hog Farm (talk) 05:47, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Fail it. Some of the items could be repaired, but others can not, or not easily. Thanks for your time. deisenbe (talk) 19:20, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Just so you know, I found this to be an interesting article, and I learned quite a bit from reading it. Don't get discouraged! I can see a good foundation in this article and there's a lot of potential here, it's just not up to GA-status at the moment. Thanks for creating this article, Wikipedia is better with it. Hog Farm (talk) 19:27, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Deisenbe: pinging nominator. Hog Farm (talk) 19:27, 2 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]