First, I really enjoyed reading these wiki pages.
For the New Paltz Village page, while reading the history I wanted to physically walk down the streets while learning about the history. I could almost envision it all in my head.The only thing is the history is so short! I want to know more about the Lenape tribe called Esopus! And I wished they just went more in depth with details of the history of New Paltz and how it came to be. Instead there was a lot of other details on the Newspaper and Transportation. However, when I think about it, New Paltz is a very small town and you could easily walk the length of it. Therefore I guess it does make sense that the history is dwarfed by the sections on New Paltz culture and transportation.
I found the history of Suny New Paltz much more interesting! It was crazy reading about the protests during the Vietnam war that took place in front of the Student Union! And also learning about how the school started off as a education school and then the art programs were added on. Education and Arts is still what SUNY New Paltz seems to be known for . One of my favorite parts of reading this wiki page is when it talks about all the classes that people could take like video art, dance therapy, clowning, camping, and ecodesign. And these classes were offered by students who were hired and compensated through the student activity fees. I know as students we definitely pay a lot of fees for student activities but cool classes like these are never offered. This was really cool too “A four-acre environmental studies site operated by students and community members under the aegis of the program at the southern periphery of the campus included geodesic domes, windmills,kilns, a solar-powered house funded by the Department of Energy, and more inchoate variants of sustainable architecture.” Unfortunately these interesting projects were taken down in the 1980s when the school took a turn for a more scienc-y turn with professional degree programs in nursing, engineering, journalism, and accounting. For the page of Suny New Paltz itself, I think the page could have gone into other majors that the school offers as everything was really based on the arts and theatre. I feel like even now there’s strange tug-a-war where New Paltz is trying to become more science and medical based, but it has so much art and educational history behind it that these changes would take time.
The Materials of History, Thought, and Art 
I agree and I enjoyed reading your more optimistic post regarding New Paltz’s wikipedia pages! I’m sure it would have been a lot more entertaining and helpful to walk down the streets of New Paltz so we could have visuals of what the author was writing about regarding each street and building. Personally, I got bored reading about the history and it was hard for me to paint a picture in my head because everything would just end up looking the same. And New Paltz is so small; remember how the page said it was 1.8 miles long?! Initially reading that was so weird to me but when I actually thought about it it makes sense and I think my city back home is also that size. I see you enjoyed the school page more than I did and I did get the sense that the college has moved more towards the sciences and away from the liberal arts/fine arts foundation that gave the college it’s accredible reputation. However I think in terms of the tug of war, the liberal arts/fine arts side wins easily!
I also felt that the transportation and newspaper sections of the Wikipedia page were a bit extensive, I was like, “Come on, where’s the hippie culture…oh.” I think your post is really similar to mine in that we both noticed the recent inclination of the college towards a more sciency realm.
I really enjoyed reading your post an agree that New Paltz has had a lot of surprises in its history that I would have really loved to see for myself! It is quite interesting, I suppose I had little to no knowledge on New Paltz colorful history previously.