Talk:Albert State School

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Albert State School/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: 2024 is Underway (talk · contribs) 02:43, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Steelkamp (talk · contribs) 05:48, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

I'll review this article within seven days.

Comments

Lead:

• "within the Fraser Coast Region, in Queensland, Australia." -> "within the Fraser Coast Region of the Australian state of Queensland." (I think this flows better)

Y Done

• "It is administered by the Department of Education" -> "It is administered by the Queensland Department of Education". (to make it clear that its not a national or local department)

Y Done

• "The school features a war memorial, to commemorate past pupils killed during World War I." -> "The school features a war memorial to commemorate past pupils killed during World War I." (remove comma)

Y Done

• "teaching staff of 8" -> "teaching staff of eight" as per MOS:NUMERAL.

Y Done

History:

• "Albert State School in Maryborough opened in 1883 in a substantial new building designed by architect, Robert Ferguson, in a period when the town was undergoing major expansion and during the establishment of important institutions." -> "Albert State School in Maryborough opened in 1883 in a substantial new building designed by architect Robert Ferguson in a period when the town was undergoing major expansion and during the establishment of important institutions." I don't think these commas are necessary.

Y Done

• "beginning with choosing a 2 acres (0.81 ha) in January". This sentence doesn't make sense. I think its missing a word.

Y Done

I'm going to quick fail this article. After getting through the first few paragraphs, I see the main problem is that the content is mostly copied and pasted from the heritage register. While that's not a copyright problem due to the CC-BY licence, it does not make for a good Wikipedia article. Wikipedia articles are written in a different style to heritage register entries. Heritage entries often include a lot of extra context, unlike what is done on Wikipedia. This means the article requires a major rewrite to meet GA standards. The following paragraph illustrates this:

Many significant buildings were constructed in Maryborough in the late 1870s and 1880s, reflecting the prosperity of the times, including Maryborough Court House (1877), the Bank of New South Wales (1877), St Paul's Church of England (1879), Maryborough railway station (1880), Maryborough Grammar School buildings (boys' in 1881 and girls' in 1883), the Criterion Hotel (1883), Maryborough Mortuary Chapel (1884), Maryborough Hospital (1888), and the Maryborough School of Arts (1888) – as well as fine, architect-designed suburban villas for wealthy residents. The substantial building for Albert State School was constructed in the midst of this boom.

Most of that paragraph is not related to the school itself. There are many such places in the article where too much context is given. In addition to that, the reliance on the heritage listing for such a large portion of the article is troublesome. I recommend looking for more sources on Trove and for local history books.

Steelkamp (talk) 06:30, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi, Steelkamp, thank you for reviewing this article your feedback was much appreciated!

I have started to apply your feedback and as for your main concern, I have to agree with you that this article has a lot of excessive detail and needs to be rewritten. I will try to shorten such excessive detail, like your example.

As for the reliance on the heritage listing, I did notice this when I started to edit the article and I tried to mitigate the usage by adding some more sources using trove, which my efforts are best evident in the Founding and early development section. I believe once the excessive detail within the article is removed, this won't be as much of an issue, but I will do some more research.

Thanks again for taking time out of your day to review this, it is much appreciated! 2024 is Underway (talk) 08:30, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Heritage building vs school institution

@2024 is Underway: Some of the issues raised above arise because of a confusion as to the purpose of the article. This article was created by me about a heritage-listed building; it was not intended as an article about the primary school. The heritage listing is called "Albert State School" and that carried over to be the article title. When there has been a desire to create an article for an institution or organisation which has a heritage-listed building, the solution we have used in the past to rename the heritage article something like Albert State School heritage building and use the article Albert State School to describe the school as an educational institution. Obviously the two articles provide some link to one another, usually in the lede para, e.g. in the school article, it might say "The school's earliest building is listed on the Queensland Heritage Register" with appropriate cite. In heritage article in the lede para, it can say "This was the first building constructed at Albert State School" or whatever. Or just a hatnote "

This article is about the heritage-listed building. For the school itself, see Albert State School.

. I am not sure how much editing you have done to the article to turn it into a school article rather than a heritage-building article, but I suggest going back to the most-recent version that focussed on being a heritage-article and shift that content over to the new Albert State School heritage building, then you can do whatever you want with it as a school article. I am happy to help do this. Kerry (talk) 23:16, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Actually, checking the history, to be strictly accurate, there was an earlier article for the school, but it had been deleted in 2010 and redirected to the Maryborough article. At that time, primary schools were generally assumed not to have sufficient notability for an article. So I was resurrecting the title as a heritage-building article (which did meet the notability). Kerry (talk) 23:31, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

The issue of "excessive detail" depends on whether you are describing a school or a heritage-building. What is excessive in one is not excessive in the other. Kerry (talk) 23:32, 22 September 2025 (UTC)