Talk:UC Berkeley School of Law

Lede

I edited the lede of this article to be consistent with other law schools. This article is part of a broader clarification of Wikipedia articles regarding boosterism and self-promotion. If you would like to edit this article further, please reference the relevant RfCs. Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dosafrog (talk • contribs) 23:57, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

There is no RfC and no agreement that what is in the lede is boosterism. Until this issue is resolved, the original (and not your edits) will remain per Wikipedia guidelines. And these are not rules, I have gone through your edit history and this is what you deemed to be correct, per your rapid edits to the pages of many law schools. I have noticed you have not touched the long paragraphs in the ledes of pages for some law schools, but have cut down others. So there is no "consistency" to speak of here at all. I dislike the fact that you placed the page unprompted and without soliciting advice on changes here on the talk page under IP protection because you disliked an edit made by an anonymous user. That is unacceptable on Wikipedia per WP:OWN. Discuss before making changes that are controversial. Reach a consensus. That's how Wikipedia works. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 06:30, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Fully concur with User:EndlessCoffee54. Also, it is extremely rare to see brand new editors using specialized Wikipedia terms like RfC and lede within their first week. New Wikipedia users are usually more cautious and start out with small additions and copyedits here and there (or writing new articles on small topics from scratch) rather than attempting major surgery on large numbers of existing articles. Keep up the pattern and you will be inviting a CheckUser investigation in short order. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:52, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Hello EndlessCoffee54 and Coolcaesar, I would like to first apologize for my hasty edits of law school pages. From this point forward, I will discuss such edits on the Talk page prior to changing pages. However, the original intent of my edits still stands, to implement the conclusions of the RfC regarding boosterism in academic articles. This is why I spent so much time to edit the ledes of the Top Fourteen law schools: to address this discrepancy in the articles where such boosterism is most likely to be found. While I acknowledge that the RfC has been reopened and that these are not hard and fast rules, just because the conclusions are inconclusive does not mean it is inappropriate to address the flagrant boosterism present in the lede of this particular article about UCB. Furthermore, while the RfC was inconclusive about prestige statement in the lede, there was also a general consensus that mention of rankings in the lede was unnecessary, especially for lay reader comprehension. In addition, mentioning outdated statistics regarding bar passage rate and median salary is clearly inapposite for the lede. That being said, to address your concerns about consistency, I am happy to implement the findings of the RfC on more pages in the future.

Next, I would like to bring to light three concerns of my own.

First, I believe you are mistaken about the definition of edit warring. Per Wikipedia:Edit Warring, the established brighline is the three-revert rule. I'm sure both of you should know this given the age of your accounts. Also, as you may know, most other university pages are semi-protected to discourage vandalism from anonymous users.

Even from a more general perspective, including, for example, the statement "top 10 law schools in the United States and the world, the top three public law schools in the United States, and the top two law schools in California" is excessive at best. It does not seem necessary at all to mention three "top" phrases, and their inclusion makes little sense. That being said, while I thought it bizarre that you mistakenly accused me of page ownership, upon second thought, it becomes clear that this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Next, I would like to respond to Coolcaesar's allegations of my being a brand new editor, as you can tell from my edit history, my account is over 7 years old. Furthermore, even if I were a brand new editor, the overly negative attitude that you are displaying violates both WP:AGF and WP:DNB. I cannot help but be a bit taken aback by your assumption that newcomers cannot learn about the jargon of this community within a short period of time. Individuals attracted to Wikipedia are no doubt more intellectual in nature, and to believe otherwise is misguided.

Thank you both for correcting my behavior. I look forward to your responses to my concerns. Dosafrog (talk) 07:43, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

I agree that the California notation in the rankings seems unnecessary, and I'll go ahead and remove that. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 20:49, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

EndlessCoffee54 I encourage you to communicate. Else, I will proceed with the suggested changes. (WP:IMPLICITCONSENSUS) Dosafrog (talk) 04:58, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

There is no consensus on your changes at all. Two of us have already disagreed with the changes. There is no "implicit" consensus when a majority of editors disagree with not only the changes, but the way you have gone about making said changes. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 05:17, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Streamlined discussion

Here are my two cents: most of the content seen in the ledes of law school articles is accurate and informational. It is good to know what a school's ranking is, who its prominent alumni are, and its employment rates and student body makeup. I agree with Dosafrog that including fewer rankings makes sense, and thus have already removed the sentence on California rankings. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 06:01, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

I have said it once and I will say it again. Wikipedia is a project for the encyclopedic and objective gathering of information, not as a means for self-promotion, specifically WP:NPOV and WP:COI. These concerns have already been addressed in RfC's regarding this topic. While I acknowledge that the RfC has been reopened, there has been a broad consensus towards removal of obvious boosterism, including items that EndlessCoffee54 insists on maintaining.

Now let's discuss each of them individually.

1) The outdated 2018 statistic on employment rates and median salary are meaningless to lay readers and thus inapposite to the lede, as well as just highly unnecessary. They add nothing to the discussion of the school, and their inclusion would only suggest attempts to advertise the school.

2) Including a school's specific rankings (which are not objective in the slightest) in the lede is also unnecessary; in literally every other university page, references to rankings have already been removed. Removing the statement "top 2 law schools in California" is not even any sort of compromise, as it was even more irrelevant than the other phrases I have pushed for removing. There are literally only 20 law schools in California; mentioning being one of the top 2 in California is flagrantly just grabbing for recognition. In my edits, I changed it to mention that this school was part of the "T14", which neatly summarizes the status of the school without resorting to prestige-grabbing "top" statements.

3) Including an incredibly unwieldy list of prominent alumni and their respective titles in addition to multiple peacocky statements referencing "numerous influential" alumni is also inapposite for an objective gathering of knowledge. Furthermore, many of these mentioned alumni are not notable. This has been discussed as far back as 2006. Reducing this paragraph would greatly increase comprehension.

Being in support of such revisions means being on the right side of a broader clarification of such conflicts of interest in school articles. Dosafrog (talk) 06:35, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Employment rates, median salary and rankings are incredibly important for law schools and the legal world (for hiring, etc.). Personal opinions on USNWR rankings' objectivity does not matter, as they are the gold standard used by the entire legal profession to rank schools. People reading this page are often those in the legal profession, and even if they aren't, such information is important for any school's page to have. If the numbers are outdated, I think that means we should update them instead of removing them. The alumni listed are prominent and notable, especially in the legal profession. Listing alumni in a paragraph in the lede is not boosterism, it summarizes an important part of an article. I do agree that some of the language describing the alumni is overly colorful, and have tried to remedy that in the article just now. The vast majority of school pages list alumni and I personally see nothing wrong with it. And as for rankings: Berkeley has almost always ranked within the top 10, so it is much more accurate to give that statement instead of a broader "top fourteen". EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 07:23, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

1) Employment rates and median salary are useless figures, especially without a basis of comparison. They would be more fitting for a section further down in the article, perhaps with comparisons to other schools. Per MOS:LEAD, the lede "should be written in a clear, accessible style with a neutral point of view." You already agreed with this. Mentioning median salary and rankings in the lede, as you said, are only important to those in the legal profession and thus are not "accessible" to the general public when they read this article. Thus, they do not belong in the lede, as Wikipedia guidelines suggest.

2) USNWR rankings are useless and only useful for selling magazines. They are objective and only reveal confirmation bias from the editors and readership. This is not a personal opinion. One can just harken back to 2001, when there was a massive uproar when they changed their "algorithm" (which is worthless by the way) and Caltech came out first, and they immediately changed it back the next year because they faced a harsh backlash because they went against the general public's confirmation bias. USNWR rankings have no place in an encyclopedia since they are not a reliable indication of the quality of a school, making them irrelevant. As I have suggested "T14" is a more appropriate way to reference the quality of the school since it is widely used beyond just admissions.

3) The alumni list is inapposite with other school articles, in addition to being unnecessarily long and cumbersome. The majority of school pages to not list the specific alumni, but rather their titles. Here are some examples:

Harvard: "Harvard's alumni include 8 U.S. presidents, more than 30 foreign heads of state, 188 living billionaires, 369 Rhodes Scholars, and 252 Marshall Scholars. As of March 2020, 160 Nobel laureates, 18 Fields Medalists, and 14 Turing Award winners have been affiliated as students, faculty, or researchers. In addition, Harvard students and alumni have won 10 Academy Awards, 48 Pulitzer Prizes, and 108 Olympic medals (46 gold, 41 silver, and 21 bronze), and founded many notable companies worldwide."

Yale: "As of October 2019, 62 Nobel laureates, 5 Fields Medalists and 3 Turing award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. In addition, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U.S. Presidents, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 31 living billionaires and many heads of state. Hundreds of members of Congress and many U.S. diplomats, 78 MacArthur Fellows, 247 Rhodes Scholars and 119 Marshall Scholars have been affiliated with the university."

Princeton: "As of March 2020, 68 Nobel laureates, 15 Fields Medalists and 14 Turing Award laureates have been affiliated with Princeton University as alumni, faculty members or researchers. In addition, Princeton has been associated with 21 National Medal of Science winners, 5 Abel Prize winners, 5 National Humanities Medal recipients, 209 Rhodes Scholars, 139 Gates Cambridge Scholars and 126 Marshall Scholars. Two U.S. Presidents, twelve U.S. Supreme Court Justices (three of whom currently serve on the court) and numerous living billionaires and foreign heads of state are all counted among Princeton's alumni body. Princeton has also graduated many prominent members of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Cabinet, including eight Secretaries of State, three Secretaries of Defense and the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

Stanford: "As of March 2020, 83 Nobel laureates, 28 Turing Award laureates,[note 1] and 8 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with Stanford as students, alumni, faculty or staff. In addition, Stanford University is particularly noted for its entrepreneurship and is one of the most successful universities in attracting funding for start-ups. Stanford alumni have founded numerous companies, which combined produce more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue and have created 5.4 million jobs as of 2011, roughly equivalent to the 7th largest economy in the world (as of 2020). Stanford is the alma mater of one president of the United States (Herbert Hoover), 30 living billionaires, and 17 astronauts. It is also one of the leading producers of members of the United States Congress."

MIT: "As of October 2019, 96 Nobel laureates, 26 Turing Award winners, and 8 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with MIT as alumni, faculty members, or researchers. In addition, 58 National Medal of Science recipients, 29 National Medals of Technology and Innovation recipients, 50 MacArthur Fellows, 73 Marshall Scholars, 48 Rhodes Scholars, 41 astronauts, and 16 Chief Scientists of the U.S. Air Force have been affiliated with MIT. The school also has a strong entrepreneurial culture. MIT is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU)."

As you can see, none of these include long lists of specific alumni and their titles because it makes little sense to write it that way.

4) For rankings, there is practically no functional difference between T14 and top 10, and T14 clearly belongs in the lede. This is because rankings change every year while T14 has been constant for decades. T14 is more widely used, and justifying the inclusion of a top 10 statement then mentioning USNWR (which is worthless) does not help in the slightest. Per MOS:LEAD, "Editors should avoid...overly specific descriptions" and mentioning being rank 10 is, in fact, "overly specific," whereas T14 is not. Dosafrog (talk) 16:10, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

1. Because employment and salary figures are very important in the legal profession, they are also are important to the average reader. 2. You are referring to USNWR rankings for colleges, where rankings don't matter very much. USNWR rankings for law schools are incredibly different: where a school ranks can influence employment outcomes, etc.(https://www.forbes.com/sites/bentaylor/2014/08/14/why-law-school-rankings-matter-more-than-any-other-education-rankings/#6d96a1ca2ddd) 3. Lede Alumni sections for colleges are not comparable to lede alumni sections for law schools, but I will agree with you that the listing of more general positions and fewer specific names makes sense. 4. I think "10" is a perfectly rounded number and not overly specific at all. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 16:39, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

1) You are mistaken. No one really cares how much money you make if you go to some random school in the Bay Area, especially if it's that particular figure which isn't that high. I'm not even advocating for its removal, just to move it further down to where someone who actually cares would look, which is people in the legal profession. That makes a lot of sense. 2) There is no significant difference in methodology between the USNWR rankings for both, so they are equally irrelevant. If you are admitting one is unimportant, you are tacitly agreeing that they should be removed from this law page as well. Furthermore, your undergrad has a larger impact on how much money you earn long term as many studies suggest. I just looked at the article you linked. If you believe that some random op-ed from Forbes written by a random person with no credentials is a reliable, I frankly do not know what to tell you. Even if you apply your line of thinking, that understanding the specific dollar amount you earn is important, why hasn't the same particular sums appeared on the pages of the more reputable schools, specifically the top three: Yale, Stanford, and Harvard Law? Because it's irrelevant and inane to talk about, and even glaringly more so in the lede of the article, which should only include necessary and important information that any person could read. 3) Yes they are literally comparable. I don't understand why law schools are an exception to any rule. The only reason why you are against removal of the particular handful of people included is that there really aren't many significant alumni from this school. 4) This school is literally rank 10. Would every page for every school be like "top 325 school in Montana" or "top 25 school in the Appalachian mountains region"? Absolutely not. To suggest otherwise is myopic at best. Dosafrog (talk) 18:45, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Whether the amount is "high" or not doesn't matter, it's a standard for law school Wikipedia pages to list median salary because it is a metric that students and employers alike use in the legal profession. These metrics are found on the pages of most law schools. Whether the ranking methodology is similar is also not relevant, as the usage of rankings is much more prevalent in the legal profession than in others. This is summed up by multiple scholarly sources as well, if you do a proper search. The alumni listed are relevant, and yes, there is a big difference between "top 10 nationwide" and "top 25 regional". And for the record, I see no problem with the latter. And you'll find as you edit Wikipedia more, that you can't apply an overly broad set of standards to every article. Articles have standards that are set by specific categories, and often even more specific categories within them.

This is the last response I will make; I'm going to let other editors weigh in here. I suggest you do the same. I appreciate our conversation and I'm glad we are listening to each other more. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 20:12, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

1) If the "standard" is not present on the most prominent schools, then it is not a standard at all. 2) "Prevalence" does not equal relevance, especially on an encyclopedia 3) still irrelevant 4) no difference. still a slippery slope. 5) You started the personal attacks. Some quotes from you: "That's how Wikipedia works, which you may need to learn given that you began your account yesterday." "I have gone through your edit history and this is what YOU have deemed to be correct" 6) Refusing to discuss the issue and just deleting my responses is doing nothing towards reaching a consensus. Dosafrog (talk) 20:31, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

I apologize, the line about your account age was entirely unnecessary. I stand by my line on there not being consensus. I removed only your responses that contain personal attacks (as I have similarly removed my own line about the account age) because the attacks are of a charged nature and violate the rules of this talk page. They do not contribute to the discussion. I have left all actual points fully intact. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 21:49, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Just saw this. I fully concur with User:EndlessCoffee54's cogent and sound analysis. There are several critical flaws in User:Dosafrog's analysis that have already been pointed out above, but the one error that really reveals profound ignorance of the American legal industry is this one: "your undergrad has a larger impact on how much money you earn long term as many studies suggest." That's just laughably wrong. The 2019 college admissions bribery scandal has been blamed in part on the tendency of certain American professions, especially law and financial services, to be very selective in hiring based on where people went to school (go read the section in that article called "Responses," which I mostly wrote, and the articles cited therein, especially the HuffPost article on why Canadian universities don't have this problem). The point is that one has to get into the right college to get into the right law school to open doors. I have sat for dozens of job interviews over the years where I knew it was a long shot (because my prior job experience and coursework was not close to what the employer was looking for), and I was well aware that the most likely reason I was able to get my foot in the door at all (unlike many other candidates who heard nothing until they got rejection letters in the mail) was where I went to law school. (And to be clear, it wasn't Berkeley.)

Go look at the article on White-shoe firm. Access the official web sites for the oldest American law firms on the list in that article, look at their attorney directories, limit the search parameter to partners, start skimming partner profiles at random, and focus on academic credentials. You'll soon see the pattern: Nearly all of them graduated from the top 20 to 30 law schools. --Coolcaesar (talk) 07:50, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Hey Coolcaesar, I stopped caring about the edits a while ago, but I just wanted to respond to the point that you made criticizing my statement about undergrad being more important than grad school. My point was that people who go to law school tend to be those who cannot command a high salary right out of undergrad. You proved my point with your discussion about the white-shoe firms. If you can get a six-figure salary right out of undergrad, why go to law school? It's simply not worth the opportunity cost in time nor money. It's obvious that there is selection bias among people who go to law school, starting with pursuing easier undergrad degrees like political science and psychology to get better GPAs at the expense of not being hirable with just an undergrad degree, whereas a graduate in, say, computer science or economics from an elite institution would be immediately hirable and those earnings compound significantly. Why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on law school when the door to a lucrative career is already wide open? This proves my point, specifically that attending undergrad at an elite college, defined as HYPSM, means much more long term than a law degree. Here's a link for your perusal: https://hls.harvard.edu/dept/jdadmissions/apply-to-harvard-law-school/undergraduate-colleges/?redir=1, which details all the undergrad colleges that Harvard Law School students came from. There are 185 undergraduate colleges represented, on a wide range of prestige, from Ivies to provincial state schools. In addition, UCLA Law is not T14 and graduates command a (starting) salary that is far less than what T14 grads earn.

In response to your point about Canadian colleges, there really is no comparison to be made. Canadian colleges can't hold a candle to US elite colleges. Of the top 20 colleges in the ARWU world rankings, all but four are in the United States; the most prominent Canadian college barely cracks top 25. Also, I'm not sure that you understand that the selectivity and opaqueness of the admissions process is part of the "value" of a prestigious degree. Of course there's more qualified students than schools can take. You aren't paying for the education; you're paying for degree, merely a signal to employers that you since you were able to gain entrance to a good college, you must fulfill basic expectations. The reason why employers specifically hire from a small number of schools isn't because they are too dumb to understand that there are qualified candidates at lesser schools; it's because it requires significant more resources to sift through the haystack to find the one or two top students from state schools versus the higher concentration of competency at elite institutions. Rather than just snobby ignorant elitists, employers at those white-shoe firms are making a conscious, calculated choice that is logical and more efficient, preserving precious resources that can give them a competitive edge in the market.

Your point in the Response section about filling the class with valedictorians doesn't make much sense. Becoming valedictorian is quite easy. Furthermore, there is a profound difference between being valedictorian of Phillips Exeter versus random local public high school. Also, including that quote from the OU professor is obviously a conflict of interest. Of course he's gonna tell you that going to an elite college shouldn't matter.

I'm sure we agree on many of these things; I just find it difficult given your strawmanning.Dosafrog (talk) 03:05, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't have time right now to unpack all six or seven errors in your analysis of the situation and will have to come back to this later. The most obvious error is your characterization of humanities and social sciences majors as a selection bias issue, which is just wrong and implies you are unfamiliar with the vast literature on sociology of the professions. Yes, there are easy majors like mass communications in which people are there to do easy work and easily get a high GPA. But for most of the humanities and social sciences, the majority of undergraduates are majoring in those fields because they truly love the material and it's their natural calling (i.e., they have always done well in English or social studies at the K-12 level), and because people in their late teens and early twenties are often unable to think clearly in economic terms about what they're going to do with their degrees down the road. Then their hazy dreams collide with economic reality, and then they start looking for lucrative graduate school options, and a law degree in three years is more appetizing than a doctorate after ten years. Most books on "should I go to law school?" are specifically addressed to that audience. --Coolcaesar (talk) 22:38, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Coolcaesar An undergraduate degree in a subject in the humanities and social sciences is a joke. You know that, I know that, we ALL know that. There was literally an entire set of studies done by researchers who wrote joke papers in these areas, and a significant portion of the papers were not just peer-reviewed, but also published in academic journals. These wishy-washy degrees don't teach any concrete skills, just nebulous concepts like writing and communicating, which you can literally learn on your own better without the need to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. Humanities and social sciences are literally only for obscenely rich kids who don't need a job to support their livelihoods and just want to party and have an easy time in college, and the poor deluded students who were peer-pressured by their parents and by society into thinking that a bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma and bamboozled by the departments of humanities and social sciences into thinking their degree has any semblance of value in the job market beyond the prestige of their institution. There is no rigor, no objectivity, and no transferability of skills in these departments. Your defense of these areas is just laughable. You criticize mass communications for being easy; literally every major in the humanities and social sciences is perceived in the same way. The reason why the overwhelming majority of law students studied fuzzy subjects in undergrad was because they needed to study something easy to get a good GPA given the flagrant grade inflation in those areas. Your point about humanities and social sciences being students' "natural calling" is just hogwash. Some of us aren't Mr. Moneybags and can't afford to just major in whatever to pursue their nonsensical "passions" with no regard for economic reality. My only exception to my prior statements is economics, which, in elite institutions, is typically the de facto business major and usually has some degree of rigor.

This is literally why law school graduates like you are so obsessed with the prestige of your institution and its very specific ranking. It's all you have to offer. The quality of a law school grad is entirely subjective, and perception is entirely dependent on arbitrary markers like where you went to school.Dosafrog (talk) 17:42, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

New dispute over information in lede

EndlessCoffee54 has reverted multiple, well-explained edits to the lede with the edit summary "Reverting unexplained removals of popular culture section content and lede changes. This is important information, you are not the sole arbiter over it. Come to the talk page if you want to make controversial changes." These edits, and the edit summary that accompanied them, were:

1. Removal of the word "produce" from the lede: "produce" is clearly POV; undoubtedly many of these very smart, driven people would have been just as successful if they had attended another law school so we need strong evidence that this school can claim significant credit for their accomplishments

2. Editing the lede sentence to say that this is "the law school of the University of California, Berkeley, a public research university in Berkeley, California" instead of "one of 14 schools and colleges at the University of California, Berkeley:" we open articles by defining the subject with essential information, not extraneous details

3. Removal of ranking details and citation from the lede: we don't need this level of detail in the lede - it summarizes what's in the body of the article

4. Removal of multiple unsourced assertions that the school is briefly mentioned in movies, television shows, and cartoons: trivial

5. Removal of an external link in the body of the article: WP:EL

6. Removal of a pop culture mention that explicitly notes that the claim is original research: trivial and original research

7. Removal of unnecessary formatting of columns: minor edit with no edit summary

8. Removal of a specified size for a thumbnail image: WP:THUMBSIZE

9. Removal of more unnecessary formatting of columns: unnecessary

10. Removal of more specified sizes for thumbnail images: WP:THUMBSIZE

@EndlessCoffee54: Please explain why each of these edits was reverted. ElKevbo (talk) 00:04, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

I oppose these changes. Thanks for starting this discussion. "Produce" has no POV, the law school's opportunities (the centers, the pro bono opportunities, the classes, the professors) create unique outcomes for students. This is especially true with regards to jobs on the West Coast, where Berkeley has unique placement power on par with only a few other schools. 14 colleges and schools isn't extraneous, it's important to note that the law school isn't standalone and is part of a broader community of graduate programs on campus. Ranking is incredibly relevant in the legal world: a profession that is the most rankings-driven of any. Rankings, like them or not, determine job placement and prestige and it's necessary to include them.

Not trivial. The section is literally about pop culture mentions and your removal is subjective. There's no Wikipedia rule against trivia. It's a style that has been kept for decades and reflects the choice of editors on this page.

Column formatting is necessary because the images are incredibly large on mobile devices.

Also, when something is controversial and things are reverted, the presumption is on the editor making the changes to propose them for civil discussion here, not presumptuously demanding a list of reasons why they were reverted. I suggest a change in attitude, or this discussion won't go anywhere. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 00:51, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

You don't own this article and you do not get to unilaterally decide that we're going to flout project-wide consensus on things as straight-forward as WP:EL and WP:THUMBSIZE.

Respond to each of these edits. I was courteous enough to initially make them one-by-one and then to copy each of them into this discussion one-by-one - the least you can do is reciprocate. Simply lumping together multiple edits without clarity or transparency and then ignoring some of them won't cut it especially when several are uncontroversial applications of project-wide consensus. ElKevbo (talk) 01:59, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

There is no "project-wide" consensus, these edits have been on the page for over two years. Again, your tone here, dictating and telling me to "respond to edits" isn't making this conversation go anywhere. I've made my point, I'll wait for others to weigh in so we can have a proper discussion. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 02:22, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

WP:EL is a guideline and WP:THUMBSIZE is a policy. What in the world makes you think that you can decide that we can ignore them in this article without any discussion or explanation?

"Responding" is the basis of conversation and collaboration. That is how we "have a proper discussion." Declaring that this article does not have to comply with project guidelines and policies while refusing to even provide rationales is not likely to be a successful strategy. ElKevbo (talk) 03:11, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

It is not my or anyone's responsibility to respond to you in the format you desire or to even address every one of your points. None of the policies you cited, by the way, force us to format the article the way you've laid out. There's room in each for variations and nuances, which is true in general of most Wikipedia rules. Wikipedia rules are not rigid or a Bible, they're built by consensus and designed to be adaptable to the needs of each article. Blindly name-dropping them so that you appear like you have authority to bully people will go nowhere in a discussion. You're not the only one who's been here for a while, we all have. You've made your point, I've made mine. Time to let others weigh in on these nuances. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 04:48, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Responding to a neutral request for input on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher Education as a disinterested editor—

Considering @ElKevbo’s edits one by one:

1. Edit does create a somewhat more encyclopaedic tone. I don’t have a problem with “produced” but the “alumni” formulation gives the exact same information and can understand why someone might dispute “produced”.
2. I’m neutral on this. Some readers might find information about the school’s position within the university’s structure as useful at first glance as information about the university more generally, thinking about where they are likely to have been before arriving here. In any event, there’s a very trivial compromise to be found which explains both the schools structure and the university’s nature in the first one or two sentences.
3. Some slightly-more detailed ranking info than left by this edit could have a place in the lead, but only to the extent it’s summarising what’s in the body. Again, a compromise version would be trivial to create.
4. I’m (personally) inclined to keep the trivia if it is verifiable and feasibly of interest. But it’s not obviously wrong to remove it either, edit was defensible and explained.
5. I would have attempted to switch this from a link to a reference.
6. The original bullet was definitely a bit much. Could be worth keeping in a briefer form.
7. I would only use columns in lists that predominantly take up less than half a line to economise space, or with small text for legibility. In other casss right decision to remove.
8. Clear improvement in line with standards.
9. As for 7.
10. As for 8.

In summary, the edits range from “obvious improvement” to “defensible and explained” at minimum. None of them should really have been summarily reverted without a chat. Charlie A. (talk) 09:58, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Also responding to a request for input on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher Education as a disinterested editor. My itemized comments on the lead —

1. I agree the edit is an improvement for the reasons stated. On college articles, it is best to strive to avoid language that could be viewed as WP:BOOSTER.
2. The edit seems to be a slight improvement; both versions seem okay though. After looking at this again, I now prefer the original version, as the edit has a WP:REDUNDANCY problem.
3. I like the removal of the "top three public schools" language, which seems like an editor had tried to artificially WP:BOOST the school from a Top 14 to a Top 3 ranking.

On the popular culture material, I haven't looked closely at each edit, but am fine with them remaining as long as they each have independent reliable sources. I'll also add that both editors involved may want to think about how best to focus on improving the substance of the article, and not on the behavior of the other editor. CUA 27 (talk) 14:57, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks so much to both of you for weighing in! Agree on 1-6 @Charlie Awesome. I would say the double columns in 7 are necessary since the list will likely be increased over time to the point where it would become unwieldy to have it as a single column. I stand by keeping as-is for 8-10 but I would be open to something where we move the formatting of the pictures more in-line with standards but find a way to keep them reasonably sized so that they don't dominate a mobile view of the page. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 19:16, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Please help us understand why your personal preference for image sizes should continue to override not just project-wide consensus but also every editor's default settings. Like the issue with the columns, it's generally a bad idea for one editor to try to optimize the layout of an article for their specific device(s) or what they think are the devices used by other readers and editors. You have to trust that those who maintain the project-wide standards, including the guidelines, default settings, and the various skins, are much more knowledgeable in web design that we are. Web browsers are built to handle how text and images are shown on different devices and resolutions if we don't override them with things like specific image sizes or the precisely how text should be laid out. ElKevbo (talk) 22:31, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

CUA 27, there are no sources cited in the popular culture section whatsoever. I am very skeptical that you'll find sources for most of the items that make a substantive, meaningful connection back to this article and explain what readers are supposed to learn about this subject. It's nearly all trivial information that fails both WP:DUE and WP:NOT. ElKevbo (talk) 22:31, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Additionally, are you really advocating for a lede sentence that doesn't even define the subject? Or are you saying that this college being one of 14 schools and colleges at the university is the most critical definition for this subject?

I am utterly perplexed that there is any discussion whatsoever over the suggestion that this article about a law school should open by saying that the subject is a law school. We cannot rely on the title of the subject to tell readers what it is; there are universities with the title "college", colleges with the title "university", private institutions with the title "public", and nearly every other kind of confusing and unintuitive combination of name and contradictory mission that you can think of. ElKevbo (talk) 22:38, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

@ElKevbo @EndlessCoffee54 A few different points raised since I posted, I will try to respond to each:

• Image size: if EndlessCoffee feels strongly about the image being smaller than the default thumb, the accessible, standards-compliant way to do that would be to use |upright=0.8 or 0.7 etc. rather than specifying in pixels. This would scale with user preferences and allow for a smaller size in accordance with EndlessCoffee's argument. ElKevbo is right that specifying an absolute size is a bad idea, for all the reasons given.
• Columns: While I do agree with ElKevbo, I can't find any policy or guidance to back up my inclination to get rid of the columns. So I guess it comes down to preference more than anything, and I doubt there's much utility in having a long discussion about it. I'm using the Vector-2022 skin which sets a maximum line width for legibility (as the default skin ought to) and because of that I don't see any columns anyway.
• Pop culture: I'll take a quick look and see if I can find any reasonable references for any of this. On balance, I'd side with ElKevbo if nobody can find any third parties even mentioning these appearances of Berkeley law in various media, but I don't think there's harm in allowing some space to find some before deleting.
• First sentence: I think either formulation can be defended so the best solution is probably a compromise along the lines of "... is a law school in Berkeley, California. It is one of the 14 colleges and schools that make up the University of California, Berkeley, within the state-wide public University of California system." Basically, give all the information both editors think is important within the first sentence or two.
• Repetition: I note the point made by @CUA 27 on repetition. One thing that might help is that I suggest this page ought to be moved. Google hits and the school's own website suggest that Berkeley Law is the WP:COMMONNAME (in fact it uses that name exclusively on its own website and in its own branding). The internet has lots of variation of "UC Berkeley School of Law" / "University of California, Berkeley – School of Law" / "University of California, Berkeley, School of Law" but there doesn't actually seem to be a an obvious "full official name" so I don't think there's any point attempting to decide on one and including it in the first sentence – it just adds repetition to no benefit. If implemented, these changes afford something like "Berkeley Law is a law school in Berkeley, California. Formally the School of Law, it is one of 14 colleges and schools that ..." which has much less repetition. Charlie A. (talk) 23:15, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

FWIW, here are some references for the pop culture section: Doonesbury, Catch Me If You Can (though it mentions a different character's relationship to the school), The O.C., The West Wing. Can't find anything for the rest. Charlie A. (talk) 09:34, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

@Charlie Awesome: Unless I'm missing something, I don't see anything substantive enough in those sources to merit inclusion in an encyclopedia article. Being included in a reliable source is necessary but not sufficient for inclusion in an article. In this instance, we would need something in a source that says something substantive about the pop culture reference and what is says about or means for the subject of this article. Merely mentioning this subject is not sufficient. ElKevbo (talk) 19:56, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

I am removing this article from my watchlist. I don't care to spend my free time engaging with someone who is willing to blatantly lie to ensure that this article continues to violate multiple policies and practices in direct contradiction to what multiple editors have said.

CUA 27, Charlie Awesome, best of luck. EndlessCoffee54, do not contact me or ping me unless explicitly required to do so by Wikipedia policy. ElKevbo (talk) 23:26, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Let's be clear. You removed content from the trivia section that was in active discussion on this page and that other editors had found an appropriate compromise for. You removed disputed descriptors by invoking vague and open-ended Wikipedia policies. You opened a discussion hoping other editors would agree with you. Instead, they found a middle ground (that included significant changes to the lede and the trivia section) and you didn't like that. So, you made unilateral edits by yourself one month after the discussion had been started and other editors had attempted to implement a compromise. Then, when someone noticed what was wrong and reverted, you make this comment. You're welcome to continue discussing but we need to be clear about what happened. EndlessCoffee54 (talk) 21:18, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Real estate law

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