This week, the Introduction and History group was able to meet during class to discuss what our initial steps will be towards fleshing out how we will structure the sections we are responsible for.  For my own part, I decided to tackle the issue by comparing other “Good Article” entries for colleges.  I pulled the intro and history sections from three other colleges, Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Washington & Jefferson College.  The goal of this exercise was to determine a commonality between these entries that we could use to guide development of our own.

Interestingly, there is almost nothing in common between these entries beyond the main heading of “History.”  This was a rather unexpected turn as I honestly thought that there would be a commonality here.  Granted, I have merely skimmed the information provided about Good Articles as well as the Wikipedia Manual of Style, but I have used other encyclopedia’s in the past.  They were, of course, made of dead trees, glue, and a not insignificant amount of ink.  Within the pages of each encyclopedia, article layout and style was quite rigid.

With Wikipedia, each article is typically self-contained.  There are definitely links between articles, but there seems to be no rules that dictate that article layouts should be identical.  The Manual of Style seems to be more interested in clear and concise language usage rather than a rigid layout.  There is a Layout section, but the primary purpose of this guidance is to ensure that standardized sections of an article are included.  For instance, all articles should include an introduction and table of contents, but subsequent sections are arbitrary.  They should all have the same style, but the content of these sections is left up to the writer.  And finally, all articles end with a footer containing a pre-defined set of content, in a specific order, but none of this information should affect the overall entry.

After making this discovery, the group discussed how we should proceed with our particular entry.  We definitely need a history section, but what should be in there?  How do we decide what to add and what to leave out?  In the end, it seems we’ve decided to determine what we find interesting and important and add that.  We want to make sure that events we believe are important are in there as well as other events that may not be as important, at least to us, but are interesting.  The current list we have is as follows :

Founding of the college : Most of this information is in the introduction already, but for completeness, it should have a subheading under history.

The Lafayette Charter : The original charter has changed a bit over time.  We want to highlight the various paths the college has taken over the years.  Originally the college was intended to be a Military and Civil Engineering school, but that was quickly replaced by a manual labor school.  From there the college moved to raising silkworms, switched again to a model school, and finally settled on liberal arts.  Or, at least, that’s the information I have thus far.  More research is required here.

Church affiliation : I’m not sure if this matters or not.  The college is currently associated with the Presbyterian church, but how strong of a bond is that?  And with the recent announcement that this association will be abandoned, maybe this is something that isn’t necessary?  It is part of the history, however, and maybe deserves a mention, even if it’s merely a footnote.  Additionally, if the college is currently associated with the church, that association should be added to the infobox on the Wikipedia page.

Lafayette in wartime : From what we heard in the presentation we attended about the history of Lafayette, wartime had a significant impact on the college.  From low enrollment numbers, and Lafayette was likely not the only one to suffer from that, to drilling on the quad, this history seems interesting enough to be mentioned.

Civil Rights : As if having members of the Tuskegee airmen attending Lafayette was not enough, Lafayette seems to have been quite progressive when it comes to civil rights.  The story about the president of Lafayette opting out of a bowl game in support of civil rights is an amazing story.  I believe the inclusion of Nishiyama, the Japanese kamikaze pilot, is another example of where Lafayette has been a civil rights leader.

Recent history : This section was floated for inclusion, but, to be honest, I’m not sure what we would add here.  Per the others in my group, recent history would include anything that happened “during the lifetime of a current student,” which means that history from roughly the early 1990’s and current is included.  Perhaps this section includes information such as how we hosted Gorbachev and Biden?  The fate of this section remains to be seen.

It will be interesting how these sections develop over the next week.  There is more research and a lot of writing to be accomplished between now and then.

Wikipedia has become one of the most used resources on the Internet today.  It is often the first non-search website a person goes when researching a given topic.  While sometimes innacurate and often contested, Wikipedia is proof that crowd-sourced content is viable and accurate.

As part of my English 253 class, we have been tasked with re-writing the Wikipedia entry for Lafayette College.  I am part of the Introduction and History group.  We will be working to re-write the introduction and ensure that the history of the college contains relevant and neutral information as per the guidelines for a Good Article entry.  Of course, with an almost 200 year history, it seems unlikely that every event will be added.  Instead, we hope to add what can be considered relevant and important events.  This, however, lends its own problems as the very act of choosing those history entries can be considered a non-neutral view.

The current introduction to the entry seems to start off strong and neutral, but degenerates quickly into language appropriate for the front of a college brochure.  The first paragraph seems to be quire neutral and contains pertinent information.  I don’t see a reason to make any changes to the very beginning.  The next paragraph seems to be entirely problematic.  It starts out with a comment about the student body, very fact based.  From there it jumps into a variety of rankings from prominent publications.  While these may be facts, their presence in the introductory paragraph seems to color this as positive spin for the college rather than mere factual information.  It makes the entry appear to be non-neutral which is something we need to resolve.

I made a few changes to the introduction to clean it up a bit and split off the questionable content into its own paragraph.  I also moved the Alison Byerly announcement, which seems appropriate, into its own paragraph.  I also added a comment about who she is replacing.  I’m curious if these changes will persist or if a third party will revert them.  I also added myself as a watcher on the page.  This should alert me to any changes made from here on out.

Last Wednesday, 2/20/13, our class met with the college archivist, Diane Shaw.  She gave a presentation on the college’s history, during which I took a few pages of notes.  I summarized and added these notes to the Talk page for the Lafayette College Wikipedia entry.  My hope is that having that information there as a guide, we can refer back to them as we make our changes.  Additionally, I emailed my content addition to my group and then was able to meet with one of our group members on Friday during class.

I believe we’re going to meet a few more times in order to organize our thoughts and determine how we are going to proceed with the rewrite of the page.  From my perspective, if we keep to factual information only, it won’t be much of a problem.  Being a technical writer, I don’t find presenting factual information like this in a neutral tone to be very difficult.  Provided I don’t add any additional commentary, that is.