Talk:DeWitt H. Fessenden

Attention needed

This article needs serious attention. It is very obviously written not for the general reader but for alumni of a particular university (Cornell) and members of a particular fraternity there (Phi Kappa Psi). Frat-speak needs to be removed, i.e. referring to people as "Brother Jones" or "Sister Smith", using "brother" rather than "member", etc. The subject should never be referred to by their first name only. Terms used in a way that applies specifically to fraternity life, "tap", "pledge", etc. or aspects of life at Cornell should also be avoided, or at the very least explained in a footnote or linked to an explanatory article elsewhere in WP. Remember also that you are writing for a encyclopedia article for a general and international audience, not an alumni magazine article. The style needs to reflect this.

I am also concerned that parts of this article may be lifted verbatim from previously published alumni or fraternity magazines. All material, even that in the public domain, must be attributed to avoid plagiarism. If the material was published after 1923, it is almost certainly in copyright (even if you are the author) and cannot be extensively quoted. Any brief quotes must be clearly marked as such and clearly attributed to their source. Voceditenore (talk) 06:40, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I performed a general copy edit on the article. A lot of it consisted of taking a weed-whacker to the stuff that didn't belong there, like family stories and unrelated Cornell fraternity stuff. Some of it got moved to quotations in the references. I added some additional references that I found, and I liked to this page from Claude Deruet's page so it isn't a total orphan anymore. (It still needs more incoming links, though.) // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 19:23, 6 September 2010 (UTC)