Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher education/Archive 1

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Active discussion

Conferences

Many universities hold annual conferences. I was wondering whether or not specific conferences would be a good addition. --Morningstar2651 23:54, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

This project appears to have stalled

One of the problems may be that the suggested table template does not include many of the items included on various "national" templates for universities (see e.g. University of Cambridge and University of Leiden). If no-one complains on this talk page, I will add these items to the template in a week or two. I also noted that the heading "Campus" is very specific (many Universities do not have campus) and something more general like "layout" or "location" might be better for a universal template. Rnt20 12:38, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

A true universal template is impossible, as so many things are different in different systems. The original (American) template had stuff like "teams" and "mascot". In my view, it is better to accept that national, and sometimes even more specialized, templates are needed. up◦land 13:31, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Template:Infobox_University has benefited from the recent activities that have been marshalled by Netoholic. This project at least lives on vibrantly through Template:Infobox_University and its ever-more-frequent successful usage in college and university articles. Specifically in regard to national infobox templates, recent evolution of Template:Infobox_University has eliminated any need for the 42+ variants of Template:Infobox_*University* Optikos 17:23, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Where is this project going?

I have been working on a few university articles in the category Universities and colleges in Indiana for the past couple of weeks. Today, I discovered this WikiProject and began reading through the material that has come together so far. I seems like some good groundwork has been done, but the project seems very disorganized and hasn't really accomplished its goals. I would really like to do some meaningful work on these articles, and I think the best way to do that is to get this project on track. It seems to me that we need to establish a clear set of goals, finalize the standard template, get organized, and start bringing existing articles into compliance, etc. Anyone have any thoughts? ALSO: I think a good place to start would be to organize and condense this talk page (its 45 KB). Acaides 05:51, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • I have been working on some university articles, mostly Uppsala University, but also occasionally on other Swedish or Nordic universities (and occasionally even on others). I haven't signed in to the project as it seemed to be going nowhere. In my opinion, many of the general articles are now very U.S.- or anglocentric. An article like graduation shouldn't mention the USA on the second line, but should begin with medieval Europe. There are other examples. Most European universities are underdeveloped. The oldest universities in Europe, that in Paris and that in Bologna, which served as models for other universities throughout the middle ages, hardly have more than stubs (and this appears to be true on the French and Italian Wikipedias as well, so there is nothing to be fetched from there), and there are a number of German universities which are certainly among the most important in the world (the University of Marburg, the Humboldt University and several others) which are just stubs at the moment, and also lack illustrations (here some stuff can be taken from the German versions). Actually, some of the older American universities are also underdeveloped in their history section. That is certainly the case with the University of Pennsylvania, which doesn't even mention the earlier name of the university (the College of Philadelphia; I haven't added it as I didn't have years for the change of name). /up◦land 12:41, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    • I totally agree with you, there are too many University stubs (worldwide), and I believe that expanding all of these articles in a uniform way should be a goal of this project. I also agree that there is probably a good deal of bias toward the US perspective, at least in the English edition. I don't think these facts are all that surprising given the nature of Wikipedia, people right about what they know, and here in the English addition, many people writing University articles are American, and many are writing about an institution with which they are connected. Helping to reduce this bias should also be a goal of this project. Part of this project's response to these issues should be to develop a single standard for all university articles on Wikipedia (English anyway), but this standard needs to be flexible enough to work for any institution, regardless of location. Acaides 18:29, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Reviving the project

I'm going to start by cleaning up and organizing this discussion page. Acaides 01:55, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Standard template development

I have moved the example of the standard template to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Universities/example. I think this should be a center of activity for the project at this point. My idea is for the /example page to be home to an example article based on our template, and its talk page will serve as a sort of sand box for the development of the standard. Instead of wasting a bunch of words, time, and effort on this talk page deciding every little detail, we would all make our changes to the sand box (the universities/example talk page) until we get to a point where we're all happy with the sandbox template. Of course, some discussion should still take place here. I think this method would be more in keeping with the wiki philosophy. Acaides 04:57, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Proposals

A university standard should include:

  • Name and city, state/province/etc, country of the university
  • When it was founded, and also by whom if a famous person
  • type:
  • Number of students
  • Top-tier organization: colleges, schools, divisions (not a multitude of departments)
  • History section, including:
    • "established" date: Because the definition of "established" varies widely, use the one that the institution officially uses.
    • opened date, if different than established date
    • closed/reopened dates, if non-continuous operation
    • prior institutions, if institution was "established" upon the remnants of previously-established institution(s), where these two "establishments" differ in definition
    • type-change date, such as converting from all-male to coeducational
    • renamings/recharterings, especially if a modern university evolved from some former non-university kind of institution (e.g., normal school, secondary education, religious seminary)
  • Famous alumni section
  • Miscellaneous stuff, e.g. important historical events
  • External links to:
    • Official website: the webpage of the university
    • Official athletics website (only if the institution engages in intercollegiate athletics)
    • Campus map
    • Student newspaper (only if such newspaper exists)
  • Popular name, sports teams
  • Affiliations:
    • religious
    • public university system
  • Endowment
  • Title and name of head executive officer (e.g., President, Chancellor)

Perhaps adding the following:

  • Section for famous faculty, past or present
  • Section describing faculty, student composition (racial etc.), especially if notable (e.g., previously/historically all-black or all-white or all-male or all-female)
  • Physical description of the campus(es) and a list of campuses when there is more than one (see University_of_South_Australia and Avondale_College)
Each fully-functioning campus should have its own article unless that "campus" is merely an observatory or argicultural field or the like.
  • Sports/athletics

Should the following be considered for standardization:

  • (mailing) address of institution
  • (central switchboard) telephone number of institution

Important considerations

Universal applicability

Not all of the sections will be relevant for all universities, e.g. sports or team nicknames isn't a great issue with German universities. But it's okay to include them in the example, so that they can be deleted if existing universities don't fit in. -- till we *) 16:32, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)
Exactly my thought. Not all universities have famous alumni or faculty either :) (or campuses, come to think of it). But it would look very, very strange not to have a section for athletics for an American university, especially the large ones, because it's such a part of the U.S. collegiate experience.
Are we going to have to have standards for different countries? I can already see some things that aren't necessarily applicable to UWO in particular, and probably a lot of Canadian universities in general (e.g. such a huge focus on sports, racial composition). Adam Bishop 17:03, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)
How about one standard, but a disclaimer on the example page that parts can be of different necessity for different countries, and should be deleted when necessary. BTW: Is there a List of universities?-- till we *) 17:07, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)
It'll have to be a "fluid" standard, just as the consensus seems to be. One wonders what Tokyo University's "famous alumni" page will be like (or Oxford or Cambridge)...very, very long, almost certainly. --Paul Musgrave 17:14, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Faculty and alumni issues

What about cases where famous faculty are also famous alumni? --Jiang
Author's discretion. --Paul Musgrave 17:36, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)
...we should find a standard for years after alumnis and faculty. In the muster example, I put born/death as years, but Jiang seems to put graduating years behind the alumnis, aren't you? That's a good idea, but what about famous faculty? -- till we *) 18:07, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)
It's common practice to put graduating years for alumni, differentiating it by degree if necessary (i.e., next year in an Indiana U. context I'll be Paul Musgrave '04; if I get my law degree there, I'll be Paul Musgrave '04, J.D. '07). For famous faculty, it's probably a better idea to simply have a link to their individual bio pages--if they're famous enough to list, they're famous enough to write up--which will have basic bio data. There's no convenient date to use for faculty as there is for students. --Paul Musgrave 18:12, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)
At Cambridge University, it's usual to refer to the matriculation year (ie when they started university), rather than the graduation year. Personally, I would recommend going for birth-death years...

Order of Sections

...order of sections; history will sometimes be quite long, so it makes sense to put it at the bottom. -- Paul Musgrave 18:41, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I disagree, since the history section illustrates what the u. is famous for. --Jiang
Some histories could be very long. If having a separate History of Munster University article is okay, then it doesn't matter where the section is placed. However, I prefer that it be placed near the bottom so that we could avoid too many History of XXX articles. --seav 08:23, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)
Let's keep it up there until it gets too long. If it's so long it becomes obstructive, then surely a new article is needed. Many times, the history reveals what the university is famous for. It's always been the format with countries, states, and provinces to list the history first. --Jiang 08:28, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I actually disagree with the convention that history comes first (but I could hardly change that since it's so entrenched). Usually, you look for current information about topics, not the history. Encarta places the history at the end. World Book Encyclopedia places it at the end. Encyclopaedia Britannica places it at the end. Encyclopedia.com places it at the end. Columbia Encyclopedia places it at the end. So why, oh why do we place it at the start?! (That's how I reacted when I saw the country template.) --seav 08:50, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)
The difference is that the other encyclopedias have lengthy intros, and pursuant to the wishes of our dictators, we don't. Maybe we should not make it a standard and leave it to personal discretion. --Jiang 08:49, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

University systems

What about university systems versus individual universities? Like University of California versus, say, UCLA and UC Berkeley? What about high schools that are under universities? --seav 00:15, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)
My belief on this is that you should have a master page for the university system (i.e. Indiana University System) and separate pages for each major campus/division of the school (i.e. Indiana University at Bloomington). The system is distinct from the individual campuses, and we don't want to privilege "main" campuses (UCLA/UC-B) over "other" campuses (UCSD).--Paul Musgrave 00:19, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I'd say: One entry for each university, i.e. one for UCLA and one for UCB, if they are known as such. If there is something like a university system, mention it in the table (type of school?), make it a list of it's affiliated universities. Re highschools -- how important are they? -- till we *) 00:21, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)
I think the template should apply for both, in adapted form. Subjects such as enrollment in the UC article would list total enrollment of all campuses. Campus size/mascot would be left out. The individual campus articles would list campus founding date (e.g. 1919 for UCLA) and chancellors (as opposed to the president of the university wide system) --Jiang 00:24, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I ran up against this distinction the other day with the University of Maryland. Most often links meant to refer to University of Maryland, College Park, but others were talking about the system. I ended up doing: University System of Maryland (which is the official name of the system). I'm not sure there's sufficient commonality between such systems and actual universities to support a common format. -- Bill 20:02, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The UC system is not the "University System of California" or "University of California system". Most of the time, "University of California" is used to refer to the entire system, there a good number of links refer to the Berkeley campus, which was the sole/main campus when the subject was there. I think in those cases "University of California" should just be changed to "university of california, berkeley". After all, Berkeley is the only campus claiming these people as its alumni. --Jiang 20:10, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Likewise, Indiana University is the system, whereas Indiana University Bloomington is the main campus, as this is how the institution refers to itself with respect to its system. Conversely, Purdue University System is the system and Purdue University is the main campus in West Lafayette, Indiana, because this is how the institution refers to itself with respect to its system, except that "Purudue University systemwide" is the term used by the institution far more often than referring to a "System" as a proper noun. I do not think that Wikipedia should dictate a single solution on system versus main campus, but instead should strictly defer to the institution's established conventions. Optikos 17:48, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Student groups

Should student groups be put under "Students" or "Sports and Traditions"? --Jiang
Sports and Traditions, so that Students is more for "official" info (enrollment, maybe courses, maybe racial mixup), and the SaT (maybe we need another name, maybe Sports, Traditions and Activities) is more for recreative things/inofficial things. -- till we *) 11:09, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)
How's "Sports, Clubs, and Traditions"? --Jiang 06:31, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Student union and media

...what about some space for student unions ... and also for student media - newspaper, radio station, etc.? And is anyone actually implementing this yet? Warofdreams 18:54, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I think that goes under "Sports, Clubs, and Traditions" --Jiang
I agree, even if this sounds a bit strange to me (as a former active Student Union member). Re the implementing question: good question, maybe we should give some people some tasks to do (e.g. all some hundred German universities) as soon as the layout questions (see above) are settled. -- till we *) 12:57, Oct 17, 2003 (UTC)
Fine, but in that case can we have a slightly different title for the section?  :::::Maybe "Student Union, Sports and Traditions" (the union presumably covering clubs) Warofdreams 16:57, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Not every school has a student union or calls it that. "Student groups"? --Jiang
How about the title is made appropriate for the university? Not all universities consider their sports imporant. For some clubs is not as important as traditions. Others might like to emphasize student unions/media groups/activism etc. --seav 14:14, Oct 18, 2003 (UTC)
Sounds like a plan. --Jiang

List of articles with template applied

Here's a list of articles where the standard is applied so that we can see what needs to be done. When you apply the standard, please add your article to this list. Also you may briefly state a problem that the template helped solve.

Tables and logos

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities/tables

Lists (and categories) of people associated with universities

The following discussion is copied here from Wikipedia:Categories for deletion.

For comments and further discussion, please see below the frame.

Category:People associated with Columbia University

There is nothing wrong with list of Columbia University people, but this category is very much a terrible idea. It will grow to be huge, and clutter up the category bar on everyone it affects. This category would set an unfortunate precedent for categories, because it can be extended to every other school. List articles are okay because they don't disrupt other articles, but categories like this are not because they will touch upon and affect so many biographies. And if you want to see what a monster this kind of category could become, just take a look at list of Harvard University people (which is, I think, currently the longest such list) and think about how bad it would be after being turned into a category. Just think about what will happen once every university gets a category like this: every biography article for someone who's been through college and grad school will probably have multiple such university categories. —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 22:42, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

¬My suggestion: Lets make a project to fix these lists, I am sorry I made the category, and I agree, delete the Stanford and Columbia people categories and fix these lists:

¬College pages get clogged with the allumni lists, but the allumni lists are disorganized hulks. Wikipedia really needs bulk cleanup on this. Anyone agree? --[[User:Ctrl build|Ctrl_buildtalk 15px|]] 16:51, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC) ps: Anyone have any experience making a project like this, I am not a newbie, but I would like guidance from a Learned Elder

I would vote to delete Category:Stanford_University_people and Category:People associated with Columbia University, but keep Category:Lists_of_people_by_university_affiliation (which I created, but more on that below). I completely agree with Lowellian that using categories for people associated with universities is problematic. A lot of people would fit into three or four categories, and with guest professorships and suchlike, it would be easy to reach anything up to a dozen university categories or more.
I created the Category:Lists_of_people_by_university_affiliation, as there were several of these lists which had been separated from their respective university pages, and which should also be categorized somewhere in a hierarchy under the Category:Lists_of_people. But it was meant as a category of lists, not as a category of (categories of) people.
The alumni lists take far too much space on many university pages (look at Yale, for instance). They ought to be moved to pages of their own, except perhaps for small or young schools with only a few names. I have been working on the Uppsala University article, among other things adding names to the people list, but in the end (realizing there were still hundreds of names which could conceivably be added), I decided it was better to erase the whole list and just write a few narrative paragraphs mentioning a few key figures, then reposting the whole list as a separate page (I thought that a better solution than not mentioning anybody and just referring to the list, as the Harvard page does). I am at a loss, however, at how to organize the list (which I haven't posted yet). The Harvard list with its table looks the best, but I am not sure I like the alphabetic organization. It would be nice with a common standard for how to organize these lists, if one could be agreed upon. Perhaps a common naming standard, as well?
The best place to continue the discussion is perhaps Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities. What about removing ourselves there for further discussion? / up◦land 19:17, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Agreed. Write on my talk page when the posts go up on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities.--[[User:Ctrl build|Ctrl_buildtalk ]] 00:12, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree that Category:Lists of people by university affiliation should be kept. I just think that Category:People associated with Columbia University or other such categories associated with individual schools should be deleted. —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 21:33, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

That is the point I wished to make, thank you. --[[User:Ctrl build|Ctrl_buildtalk ]] 00:12, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Keep. Discussion as WikiProject is a good idea, but only when the fundamental, and much more general issue is clear: It was argued that

There is nothing wrong with list of Columbia University people, but [Category:People associated with Columbia University] is very much a terrible idea.

and

...delete Category:Stanford_University_people and Category:People associated with Columbia University, but keep Category:Lists_of_people_by_university_affiliation.

These stand on its head exactly what i thought was uncontested (even tho i've not tried to keep thoroughly up to date with discussion of the theory of our Cats). Namely that

In fact, there are all sorts of arguments being made here as if the current capabilities of the Cat system were laws of the universe. Yes, there are categories with names too long to display on a line together with other Cats. But in a future WikiMedia release, they can be displayed as a couple of words followed by ellipsis, with the full title (or the full titles of all the article's Cat tags that share those two words) being displayed when the user "hovers" the mouse over them. Yes, there are articles with too many Cat tags for users to find at a glance the one that they're interested in. But they can be prioritized, with the lesser ones represented by an asterisk and linked to in a section on the same page, or on a special page associated with the Cat-tagged page. None of the arguments made abpve are cogent in terms of the concept of Cats, but only in terms of the clunky, nearly useless current implementation of that concept. Trying to make decisions based on the current limitations is the best way to ensure that we never see what Cats can do if enough effort is put into tagging, and that the project gets eventually loses steam and gets abandoned.

Also, the point was made that that not all universities are alike in their needs in this regard, without drawing the proper conclusion that not all deserve the same solution. There is no problem with including Carleton College's luminaries (Veblen, Laird, Wellstone, and a handful more) in a section of the article, so that Category:Carleton College people is obviated; maybe there should be a note associated with Category:People_by_university_affiliation listing the higher-ed institutions whose articles serve the same purpose. But for the examples listed, a Cat is called for.
--Jerzy(t) 02:25, 2004 Nov 27 (UTC)

Ctrl_build wrote above: "College pages get clogged with the allumni lists, but the allumni lists are disorganized hulks. Wikipedia really needs bulk cleanup on this. Anyone agree?"

The question is: what to do with the lists? When to separate the lists from the main page?

I agreed above that these categories are bad and lists are better, but I suppose Jerzy has a point in that it may be difficult making complete lists and thus it may fit better into the kind of things that are usually categorized. However, I still think, at the moment at least, that lists are the way to go, as they have the advantage in sorting and commenting the items. In addition, some groups of people may well be placed in chronological order according to succession.

Anyway, I would like to have opinions on on what to do with these lists:

  1. How to sort people? Alphabetic sorting allows one to list a person only once, even if he or she has contributed to different fields, but generally, when looking at a particular university, I would be more interested in seeing people in particular fields listed together. That says more about the history and characteristics of a university. (Which philosophers have been studying or teaching in Heidelberg? Which American politicians graduated from Harvard?)
  2. Listing faculty and alumni separate or together? I think the former practice is based on modern America, with its enormous number of institutions, but for many older universities and universities in smaller countries these groups overlap to a very large degree and its seems pointless to list so many people twice.
  3. Common naming standard? "People associated with..."? "...affiliated with..."? Something else?

/ up◦land 15:57, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This is mainly a response to User:Jerzy's comments above, to which in answer I must say an emphatic No, because an additional problem with a category in this case is that when we have list of alumni/faculty, we are also looking for additional information: what that person is known for, and that person's relationship to the institution (was the person an alumni, a faculty member, a donor, and so forth; what year did that person graduate; etc.). That is why, for example, list of Harvard University people (go take a look at it right now) is more useful than Category:Harvard University people. Perhaps—and this is a very conditional perhaps—in the future the category system is improved, we might consider then creating such categories, but right now, the net effect of these university categories on Wikipedia would be huge and disruptive to Wikipedia's biography articles. Consider, for example, someone who has only the slightest association with a university (for example, the person lectured at the university for a single year). It would be acceptable to list that person on the list version, because it would not disrupt the biography article of that person. But if we had a category, then we would have to add the category to the biography article. Now what if this person had lectured at or been a visiting professor at many universities, as indeed many distinguished academic scholars have? We could end up with something like eight or more university-related categories on a single biography page (one university-related category for the person's undergraduate study, one for the person's graduate study, two for the person's past teaching appointments, one for the person's current teaching appointment, one for where the person received an honorary degree, one for where the person made a significant donation, etc.). —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 10:54, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

Another category of this type was just created by User:Icairns: Category:University of Exeter alumni. Perhaps there should be some attempt to find a consensus on whether such categories should exist and, if that would be agreed upon, on what they should encompass. Personally, I still prefer lists. / up◦land 17:05, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I created category:University of Exeter alumni today to follow category:University of Birmingham alumni, which was created last 18 June and has no discussion page. Ian Cairns 17:38, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have listed this as unresolved at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. It can, of course, be brought up again. (Perhaps it would be wise to start a listing that specifically addressed only whether such a category is ever appropriate?) -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 20:43, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Avoid academic boosterism" guideline

After ongoing frustration with the boosterism that repeatedly crops up in Wikipedia's university articles (see Talk:Ivy League, Talk:List of famous universities and colleges in the United States, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/HYP, among others), I have created a draft of a guideline similar to "avoid weasel terms" but specific to the academic articles. It's now at User:Rbellin/Avoid academic boosterism. I'd be happy to see edits improving it and/or comments on its potential usefulness/uselessness. -- Rbellin 19:51, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Parent categories for universities and colleges

There's some discussion going on at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion concerning what we should call the parent categories that contain universities, colleges, and other similar institutions. (It looks like there's a trend toward looking at alternatives that do not explicitly mention either colleges or universities, since those terms are so ambiguous and depend so strongly on context.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 16:55, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Proposed Poll on University Naming

As a result of the recent identity crisis of the University System of Maryland's College Park campus (currently University of Maryland, College Park), a survey has been proposed regarding naming conventions for colleges and universities: University of Maryland, College Park/Vote

The proposed survey consists of two parts. The first aims to resolve the specific name for this campus and the usage of the term "University of Maryland".

The second, and potentially more important, asks whether a policy should be added to Wikipedia:Naming Conventions stating a preference for using either short or long names for colleges & universities that can be idenitified in multiple ways (i.e. "University of Texas" vs. "University of Texas at Austin").

Since this proposed poll could potentially have wide ranging impact, I am posting this notice here to get additional feedback on the proposed language. Also, feedback would be appreciated on whether or not the broader issue of naming conventions should or should not be addressed concurrently with the issue of Maryland's identity crisis. Please post comments at the talk page associated with the poll itself.

Those interested in the history leading up to this proposal should refer to Talk:University of Maryland, College Park

Dragons flight 09:08, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Poll on University Naming Conventions is Open

Having gone several days without significant additional comments. The above mentioned poll on university naming conventions has now been opened for voting. Dragons flight 17:28, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

When to breakout alumni/faculty/etc. lists?

AFAIK, breakout articles usually wait until the size of the main article makes the breakout necessary. However, a bunch of alumni/faculty/etc. lists have been broken out of the parent article even when the parent is nowhere near 30k, and the list is short enuf to not be unwieldy yet. Has this been proposed/discussed/decided somewhere other than here? Anyone else agree it's unnecessary, probably a waste of time/effort, and actually more cumbersome than leaving it all in one article so readers don't have to use a second click to see the list, when there are only a couple dozen names (EG List of University of California, Santa Barbara people), and the main article is small (EG University of California, Santa Barbara--12k). Especially since, also contrary to Wikipedia:Summary style, the entire lists are being removed, with no 'summary' of the most notable ones left in the section. Niteowlneils 22:36, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree on both points, and there is no general agreement on this as far as I know, but I don't think there is any point in having a discussion about the issue, as people will do as they like anyway. up◦land 13:18, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Portal:Education needs attention

Perhaps someone who participates in this WikiProject might care to lead an effort to clean up Portal:Education? 66.167.136.148 02:42, 11 October 2005 (UTC).

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-Class and good B-Class articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable University articles? Please post your suggestions here. Cheers!--Shanel 04:31, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

xml directory?

Hi. I'm not sure if I'm asking this in the wrong place. I was looking for a list of all the computer science departments, in the UK. Is there scope for, for example, having a xml database of all the universites, all their departments, and the webpages relating? Is this out of scope for wikipedia? I'm not sure how this would work, but it seems like an interesting idea? If this is just cluttering up the discussion, I don't want it to, please feel free to remove it! Richard —preceding unsigned comment by 84.9.72.135 (talk • contribs) 22:56, October 22, 2005 (UTC)

Residential Halls and Colleges

Articles for Deletion seems to have a few people who want to delete articles about residential Halls or to merge tham into the main University article. For example there was recently a call to delete Holland Hall at the University of Exeter. After calls to merge it into University of Exeter, the closing admin more sensibly merged it into University of Exeter Halls of Residence and also merged several other articles on other Halls into the same place. Then there was debate about a Hall at McMaster University but these was kept after no consensus. It then was merged in. See Talk:Whidden Hall for some interesting ideas. Smuts Hall is up for deletion now - see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Smuts Hall. Here I am not going to offer opinions on whether these types of articles should be merged, except to say that if these articles were as good as those on Oxbridge Colleges, they would not have been merged. In fact they were bad. The main point is that I think this project should try to formulate some guidelines about articles on residencial halls and colleges and also on how to keep them NPOV and stop nonsense being added. As an example of such nonsense see the call for deletion on a "part" of a College at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oswald, Grey College, Durham. Look at the article itself. --Bduke 03:03, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

A question I would ask is whether the residence halls have specific significance on their own or not. If they are not significant on their own then they will most likely not be written to a high standard anyway and will be subject to deletion more often than not. I dont know what guidelines to follow to determine significance though. It seems like a vague area to me. Ansell 03:26, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Athletics

In the United States, the men's basketball and football programs at Division I schools have an importance and significant approximately equivalent to that of professional sports teams - the University of Miami's football program, or Duke's basketball program, is at least as significant as any given NFL or NBA team, and even the programs of smaller places (say, Winthrop University's men's basketball team) seem to be more important than many minor league baseball teams that have their own articles (minor league baseball, for instance, is never shown on TV, while mid-major or minor conference college basketball can be found fairly frequently). Discussing these teams in the context of a small athletics section in the article about the school is bound to seriously limit the amount of quality contributions we will get on the subject. Some schools have separate articles on their athletics program, generally (Virginia Cavaliers, Florida Gators, and so forth). But even these are going to give short shrift to the basketball and football teams, which ought to have articles at least as extensive as the articles on NBA and NFL teams, imo. I'd like to suggest a) that articles on University athletics programs be made a general policy for Division I schools; and b) that the most notable programs, especially men's basketball and football, ought to have their own articles, so that we can go into full detail about these notable subjects. Note that, say, the Washington Redskins, article, gives details of the team's performance in every year since its foundation. Why shouldn't there be an article on Florida Gators football which does the same thing? Is anyone interested in working on improving this area of wikipedia's coverage? john k 01:09, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Indian Institutes of Technology

Hi everybody,

I needed help with the page on Indian Institutes of Technology. The problem I am facing is that since it is about a group of universities under a common title, I can't really concentrate on any single one when discussing the usual sections like endowments, campus, etc. as it would appear odd. Can you suggest me in what way should I structure this article so that it conforms to the highest standards of Wikipedia. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 18:11, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

There are examples of groupings of universities that may be more appropriate such as Ivy League and Group of Eight (Australian Universities). Endowment is not a universal concept. Also campus does not have to relate to groups of universities. I don't know whether there is a specific structure mandated for this type of article. Conforming to the highest standards of wikipedia may seem to be a virtuous act but in reality things are always being formed and reformed. Leave feedback about what works and people will be able to critique it. Ansell 03:13, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
Initially I planned it on lines of Ivy League, but some people objected to the format so I had to reformat it. Furthermore, they both are very short and wouldn't help in the long run. A lot of changes have been made over the past few days. Please comment on how the article appears now. In my personal opinion, it is FA material barring the fact that the Table of Contents is a bit too long. Other suggestions are welcome, here as well as on Peer Review. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 16:26, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Australian Catholic University- peer review

I was wondering if anyone had the time or inclination that they might do a peer review on the abovementioned article I've been working on? Soundabuser 10:29, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Eckerd College POV

I put a POV tag on Eckerd College, which an anonymous someone removed while claiming the article was fine. Since my concerns weren't addressed, I put the tag back. Only a handful of people edit the article, and I suspect many/most of them are connected to Eckerd in some way (including myself). Some external feedback would be nice. Anyone feel like reading it over? I indicated my concerns on its talk page. – Zawersh 01:22, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

University College of the Fraser Valley

I took the liberty of updating the University College of the Fraser Valley with a lot of information, and removing it's stub status. I notice there are several sections this project would like. Should I go back and fill in the missing desired information, or is the article good the way it is? - Superwad 08:46, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Mount Holyoke College

I was wondering if a few of you could come on over to the Mount Holyoke College article and check it out. I suggested some much-needed merges, and as I'm unfamiliar with any conventions with separate articles, especially ones that have been established by this wikiproject, I'd appreciate the help. Many thanks! -Rkitko 03:26, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Looks like the main contributor over at that page has gone ahead and taken my suggestion on the merges. The page could use some help, though, if a few of you want to help out! Thanks, all. -Rkitko 05:54, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Notable Faculty Members?

I am alumnus of Austin College, which has a Wiki page. I have noticed that other college and university pages list "Notable Faculty" members. It would be my intention to start such a listing on the Austin College page since, in my opinion, there are faculty members there whose records of publication, leadership in professional associations, public service, and other accomplishments make them notable under the guidelines of WP:N and as I have also seen on other university pages. Any suggestions or comments from the WikiProject Universities?[email protected] 03:04, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Key articles for Wikipedia 1.0

Hello! We at the Work via WikiProjects team for Wikipedia 1.0 would like you to identify the "key articles" from your project that should be included in a small CD release due to their importance, regardless of quality. We will use that information to assess which articles should be nominated for Version 1.0 and later versions. Hopefully it will help you identify which articles are the most important for the project to work on. As well, please add to the Zoroastrianism WikiProject article table any articles of high quality. If you are interested in developing a worklist such as this one (new) for your WikiProject, or having a bot generate a worklist like this one automatically for you, please contact us. Please feel free to post your suggestions right here. Thanks! Badbilltucker2 23:30, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Structure in relation to history

I really believe that a university's history should be the first complete section after the introduction. This has taken a standard among university articles I have seen. I think we should move history as such in the main article. --Noetic Sage 21:42, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I just did a quick search on four universities: Yale University, Witwatersrand University, University College London and Humboldt University. They all put history (or in the case of Humboldt, an equivalent) in the first section after the introduction. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis 23:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I would also agree. Prior to coming across this WikiProject, I was cleaning up college and university articles related to Kentucky, and I put History first intuitively. Acdixon 14:10, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Format for categories

Having discovered the broader naming conventions for categories pages, I've relocated this discussion to: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)#University categories Timrollpickering 15:48, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Hood College

I am trying to work to improve my own college's article (basically I've built it from a stub [1] up to what it currently stands at. However, being a relatively small school, I'm not too sure what to include in here. DOes anyone have some suggestions on what I should write about? Metros232 15:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Metros. Thanks for stepping up to the WikiPlate to expand the entry on Hood College. I would suggest starting with the history, which you can find at http://www.hood.edu/welcome/glance.cfm?pid=glance_history.html . Be sure to paraphrase and cite your sources. You certainly have a find school there, and I look forward to seeing your contribution. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis 19:17, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I've already used a bit of that history (take a look at the references). I could maybe get another paragraph out of that by adding more of the details of the early beginnings, but where do I go from there? What else should be addressed aside from history? Metros232 22:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Just click on project page on the page you are now on, then scroll down to Structure. GeorgeLouis 01:45, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:27, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Infobox Professor

  • I have created a preliminary infobox for professors. The bare template with usage instructions can be found for now at User:Chabuk/Sandbox, and a filled out example can be seen at User:Chabuk/Sandbox2. Please let me know what you think, what improvements can be made, if there are any fields that I've left out, etc, etc. Thanks! -- Chabuk 18:29, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
Where would you put this infobox? Sincerely, GeorgeLouis 02:36, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Since no one elseseems to have any comments, I'll assume we're okay with it and I'll add it to the main project page tomorrow. -- Chabuk 04:30, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for taking so much time to do this. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis 05:27, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
To be blunt, I find it completely useless. Nothing personal; I think most biographical infoboxes are useless, and we have far too much of this kind of garbage in articles already (not just infoboxes, but navigation boxes, succession boxes etc. etc.). You should not be surprised if you will be reverted when you start adding it to articles. up◦land 05:45, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Well that was constructive. That being said, this is exactly why I asked for input before putting them on the articles. Personally, I find infoboxes and other boxtypes very useful, I'm sure others do as well, otherwise we wouldn't have so many around. I would very much like to get more feedback, so its not just me in favour, and you opposed. And I'm not sure if that last part of your comment was a threat or simply a guess, but I must say, if people were to start blanking the infobox after not taking the opportunity to give feedback during its creation, I would be a little taken aback. -- Chabuk [ T • C ] 05:50, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
There is nothing to be constructive about. The box is redundant. Everything in the box will be in the first couple of paragraphs of any good biographical article. And along with every other box of some sort that other people are going around adding to articles, it will completely overwhelm the actual text of the article. We are already seeing this happen all over Wikipedia. up◦land 07:22, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Another point: People are not giving feedback because they have not noticed. Not everybody who will eventually find this box added to an article on their watchlist are also watching this particular low-traffic talkpage. up◦land 07:56, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
And a further point - the box looks a bit US centric. "Professor" in other countries means only the senior ranking lecturers in a university - "academic" would be a better term for the box rather than one that will just encourage loads of edit summaries like "Remove Infobox Professor - he/she is a Reader". And "State" should not be a required value - it's very confusing trying to use that term in countries that don't have federal structures (for instance in the UK does it mean the county, which is sometimes the same as the city, the region, which isn't terribly meaningful for many and/or an anachronism, or the constituent nation?). Timrollpickering 12:06, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Now that actually was constructive. Thanks Tim, though I'm Canadian, not American, I totally get what you're saying, and I'll certainly change that. And contrary to Uppland's negative attitude towards infoboxes, I find them very useful summaries of information. -- Chabuk [ T • C ] 16:15, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Despite the comment above: "Personally, I find infoboxes and other boxtypes very useful, I'm sure others do as well, otherwise we wouldn't have so many around." - I think you will find that many people don't like infoboxes. Maybe not as many as like them, but a significant number most certainly do not like them. I personally think they should only present information from the lead section, and only in tabular form, and only obvious, relevant, important points. They should not be constrained into a straitjacket to be the same across thousands of articles, they need to be flexible to work on 1000s of articles. Different countries, different subject areas, and so on. Of course, biographical infoboxes are different from science ones, but have a look at the infobox on Earth. Is that really useful? I spend ages trying to find the data I want, and usually end up looking it up somewhere where it is presented in a more accessible format. Also, please don't use flags on this infobox. See Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Template:Infobox Scientist. Carcharoth 08:47, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

  1. I have written quite a bit on boxes and their addition to articles, and a classic mistake of logic is demonstrated, above: Silence is not consent. Additionally, the emergence of WikiProject X has encouraged fragmentation and allowed the participants of such projects to think that they have some validity above the individual editor's. That, too, is erroneous. If there is a Project for humans, that project would not get precedence on the look and content of all articles on all humans. To actually gain something like consensus for a box that is going to be applied, there would need to be an RFC or a long, long running discussion at the Village Pump.
  2. Secondly, the very premise is slippery. To suggest "Professor" is a useful distinction is to mistake the world. "Professor" was the vocation of W. H. Auden and C. S. Lewis, most of the successful fine artists of the 20th century, most of the physicists who have made breakthroughs, etc. So, can the ProfessorBox replace the ScienceBox? Can it replace the Authorbox? They both have "Projects" with small participation talk pages (and silence as consent for their boxes).
  3. Finally (here, anyway), the premise that a box makes an article "easier to read" simply doesn't bear up. A box makes an article easier to not read. It makes it easy to excerpt and avoid an article's prose. However, supposing that there are persons whose readings are enhanced by a box jutting into the screen, how many persons like that are there? How many persons find the boxes tedious, repetitive, and insultingly reductive? How many find them redundant? Who decides that one segment's improved reading is more important than another's visceral distaste? Since what's at stake is improved reading versus strong disaffection, I would argue that the calculus would be against the box. Geogre 12:38, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 03:02, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

Fair use rationale for Image:Columbia SEAS.GIF

Image:Columbia SEAS.GIF is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page. If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. BetacommandBot 02:29, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

University ratings

Looking through a good number of UK university articles it sometimes seems as though the ratings cited are far more those that show the institution at its best rather than a common standard for comparison with similar universities locally and nationally. Plus the ratings aren't even year consistent, with many seemingly only citing the highest place in a particular listing in the last few years, making comparisons harder. (Also some of the information about ratings is appearing not in a dedicated section but elsewhere, sometimes even in the introduction to the article, as though making a pre-emptive defence.)

Is there any way that a standard set can be worked out as to which listings should and shouldn't be included? Obviously most of this would need to be country specific (although are there many international ratings?) and even then there are always going to be institutions that don't appear or aren't really relevant to them (for instance a lot of UK newspapers rankings are based on full-time undergraduates so Birkbeck, University of London is often left out) but something firm would make the information far more balanced and easier to compare within countries at least. Timrollpickering 03:15, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

That is a good point. My experience is UK-only, but it would seem sensible to include the Times GUG and Guardian listings for these where they exist, and they are currently the principal ones mentioned at League tables of British universities, and, from experience, the ones the universities pay most attention to. I suppose the question is whether to include the whole variety of other ones too, and the "regional" (Scotland, England, etc) ones. Is it also worth including RAE/QAA specifications? Then there's the issue of the various rankings for the specific departments within the University - I think this might be going to far, unless the department has its own specific wikipedia article, but within a university which comes fairly low in many rankings, it can still have world-class departments.
From the point of view of what these rankings actually say, they do notoriously add weight to particular features of a university, which may or may not be relevant in each case. However, in terms of NPOV, it would seem best to present the information as is and let the reader decide. Completeness is most likely the best policy. In the cases like Birkbeck, the explanation on the page why it doesn't often appear I think is perfectly sufficient. But if we do that for some universities, the thought then arises that perhaps we should "explain" the rankings of other universities - why they're 2nd in this one, but only 27th in that one, etc, which begins to sound like a fairly major task.
On the international scale, I think there are fewer of these: in the UK, the THES listing is the one I know most about, but then there's the Shanghai Jia Tong listing too. Lies, damn lies... Rlfb 15:55, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm almost wondering if a specific infobox for UK university ratings would be useful. It could include fields for THES, Sunday Times, Guardian, Shanghai Jia Tong, RAE and so forth. The main advantage would be to focus the statistics to make for clear comparisons between institutions. (For those that don't appear we can include explanations like "not included", "not placed", "declined to participate" as appropriate with a note in the article as to why - e.g. Birkbeck.) Thoughts? Timrollpickering 21:29, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Why not expand League tables of British universities with a section discussing each of the major league tables, creating a central place where the merits of and problems with each are dealt with. Then articles which make a claim based on whatever league table makes them look best can be linked to the relevent section on that page, which discusses the relative merits of the methodology used by the Times, THES, Guardian or whatever. If you can find a consensus for which league tables are 'good'/'recognised', then articles with information from 'bad' league tables can be edited and the bad information replaced with good. Adding an infobox to every single article seems like an awful lot more work than just creating a big table from the List with a column for each league table ranking. — mholland 23:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
My immediate thought on the matter was also an infobox. That would allow the reader to be presented with the facts and allow them to draw their own conclusions, rather than any attempt to interpret them which might be original research. Would there be a copyvio risk in effectively republishing the entire lists on Wikipedia (albeit with only one record per article), given that some are published commercially, eg. the annual Times GUG book? DWaterson 23:22, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
There is already a defunct infobox available (seems to be part of an aborted project to standardise this sort of information). {{Infobox World university rankings}} is pretty much what's being suggested here. There's also a sort of guideline (WP:PRESTIGE) from User:Rbellin which, if applied, would weed out the weasel words in articles which do not include ranking stats in a transparent fashion. — mholland 23:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Centralised statistics on a page like League tables of British universities is all fine and well and is definitely worth doing, but I suspect people are still going to try and add snippets of such information to pages about specific universities. When people want to do this, an infobox would seem to be the best approach, linked suitably to the central league table page - can we resurrect the aborted project? I am slightly concerned about copyright - would need to check this, as some information is only available by subscription (eg THES). Rlfb 00:01, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Most league tables are compiled from publicly available statistics (in the UK, mostly from HESA) - the dead tree editions of university guides are only copyrighted and paid-for because of the accompanying analysis. — mholland 00:22, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
There's a table at Imperial College London#Academic reputation that might be a starting model. For the UK I think it may useful to include the National Student Survey as an alternative take on how universities are measured. I agree that all league tables should be treated with some scepticism (you're asking some of the cleverist people in the country who've spent years if not decades training people to pass tests to erm pass a test...) but it seems virtually impossible to keep them off the articles (especially as they are the nearest to a formal source for many places' reputation) and a structured format would make it much easier for people reading different articles to be able to compare. Timrollpickering 15:20, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
The table at Imperial is a case in point. Consistently ranked in the top three universities is weasel, and the tables chosen are selected to endorse that opinion. The Guardian currently ranks Imperial fifth; in 2003 it ranked Imperial seventh; but the chosen statistic is 2005, when they were placed third by the Guardian. — mholland 16:15, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I am following the link from Talk:University of Manchester about the wider debate. I don't think we are seriously going to list every ranking for every university and update them every year. Indeed that would be pointless as one could look up the league tables. So at present the articles tend to mention them if they are interesting, like they rose or fell dramatically, or very good in one and bad in another, or was somebody's "university of the year" and why that year. I must also add that like most academics I regard league tables as generally bollocks. Taking arbitrary weighted sums of including things like TQA and A level scores is pretty much irrelevant. It may be notable if it has some effect, such as student applications going up or departments being closed.Billlion 09:27, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
We, as academics, have a habit of regarding league tables generally as bollocks unless it happens to look upon our own department/university favourably, at which point the result gets posted on the front page of our website and in our articles here at wikipedia, which is really stretching NPOV beyond its limits. I don't see a problem with putting the information in every year - there are many wikipedians giving many hours' work to wikipedia, and this, by comparison, is a fairly straightforward task. Either that or we ban all league table quotes on uni web pages as contravening NPOV. Rlfb 17:46, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
  • How about simply mentioning the most recent UK rankings? So obviously all university articles will carry their ranking for 2007. Next year the articles are updated with the relevant 2008 ranking and so on. this prevents selectivity. Magic Pickle 15:35, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Should there really be a common list used? Different lists favour different Universities. Speak to staff at Universities and ask them about league tables and they'll say they're a joke. The league tables are there for a general impression but nothing more. Each page should list the best position it is at in guides and maybe any other pertinent information such as rating in the research world by industries. A standardised method of ranking Universities here on Wikipedia would add fuel to the fire. Spanky Deluxe 12:15, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't put it as strongly as "Different lists favour different Universities". Different methodologies produce different rankings, but no ranking that is calculated to favour a particular institution should be in use on Wikipedia. Such rankings do exist, and are usually limited to prospectuses (next to claims such as "Did you know that Poppleton University is ranked number one for a low drop-out rate among institutions with a department of Classics and an olympic-sized swinning pool on campus?").
You suggest including the best stat. I don't particularly object to this, but others might, on the basis that there's no good reason to pluck a favourable statistic with no objective reason. Indeed, why not let's include the worst statistic – that would be just as fair. What I do think, though, is that we would still need a consensus on which league tables have sufficient integrity to be included. I could find best statistics from some pretty disreputable sources, if I wanted. — mholland 15:44, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree with you that there need to be limitations in regards to 'best' statistics, I didn't take that into account in my message above. League tables that could be chosen from are, in my opinion, the league tables of leading newspapers, Times, Guardian, Telegraph etc and reputable rankings such as Newseek 'Top 100' or that world rankings list by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Added information such as being ranked by big businesses or research organisations could be added sometimes but would have to be evaluated on a case to case basis. I think some leeway should be given as to which year's league tables are used. One University might be ranked say 20th in 2005 and then 40th in 2006. Since league tables should only be a rough indication, I'd say that league tables referenced in the last 5 years is acceptable. I do think that less importance should be played on league tables as opposed to things like international recognition of specific departments, which would be more suited for sections on those departments in articles. Some Universities do not do so well in league tables, however, they sometimes have one area of research in which they are world reknown.

In a nutshell, 'best' should be the highest rating a University has had in the past 5 years out of the most reknown league tables published. This should always be followed by more specific ratings and details on reputation in notables areas of study and research. Thoughts? Spanky Deluxe 16:06, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I may have come to this discussion late, but my immediate reaction would be to include the Times and Guardian listings, and only the most recent of each. These are the tables almost exclusively referenced in the media, and generally the ones used by universities themselves (except for RAE etc, which is obviously a different matter) Modest Genius talk 21:35, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

American institutions

Rankings inevitably crop up in these pages, I was wondering if anyone had previously made an effort to standardize these between pages. For example, I just cleaned out a bunch of booster-cruft from the Northwestern University page and replaced it with:

Northwestern University is ranked 14th among national universities by U.S. News and World Report (USNWR),[1] 33rd among world universities and 26th among universities in the Americas by Shanghai Jiao Tong University,[2] 42nd among world universities and 20th in North America by The Times Higher Education Supplement,[3] 42nd among national universities by Washington Monthly,[4] 35th among world universities and 23rd among American universities by Newsweek,[5] and in the 6th tier among national universities by The Center for Measuring University Performance.[6]

These sources are commonly cited and are ostensibly objective and neutral and I imagine this section could be easily replicated for other articles. I have also been debating whether or not to include rankings department-, major-, or program-level entities/specialties (ie art history, physical therapy, mechanical engineering) -- while allowing School/College level entities (Law, Medicine, Business, Engineering, etc) -- as these inevitably attract booster-cruft as editors add programs that are ranked highly but omit including other programs that are ranked less highly. The counterargument, of course, is that schools do excel in certain areas and to omit these in the rankings does do a disservice to the readers. I look forward to your comments. Madcoverboy 17:48, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I've cleaned up several articles and had similar thoughts. On the one hand, as a higher ed researcher I hate to give these stupid rankings the weight of authority and objectivity since we know there are so many problems with them. On the other hand, I recognize that it's a futile struggle and these rankings will be inserted into university articles anyway so we might as well do what we can to keep them accurate, NPOV, well-cited, etc.
I've two concrete thoughts:
1. Limit this conversation to American colleges and universities for now. Adding in the various complexities and differences between different countries will make this conversation much more unwieldy than desirable at this time. Additionally, many (most?) rankings focus on only one country so that helps make this decision a bit easier.
2. How about a US College and University Rankings template (similar to Template:Infobox World university rankings)? The idea would not to be to limit articles to only using particular rankings but to more easily allow for a standardized presentation of the most commonly cited rankings. It would also allow us to have consistent links to the source material and relevant Wikipedia links (including criticism and limitations of rankings).
Thoughts? Given some initial support, I'd be happy to dive in and do some preliminary work on creating such a template. --ElKevbo 18:24, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
I have made such a template at Template:Infobox US university ranking. It is a rip off of the Template:Infobox Scientist and Template:Infobox University which I thought were both appropriate and well-implemented precursors. One noticeable change is that a citation will automatically accompany any filled in field, which should prevent much hand-wringing as it is implemented across articles. Please go vet it and give it a test spin. Issues that need to be resolved include: appropriate scope or exclusion of other rankings, size, usability, policies/rules governing where to put such an infobox and how much of the info to include, aesthetics on articles once implemented. Madcoverboy 21:14, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Lists of universities - to use rankings or not?

There's currently a rather small participation debate on Talk:List of universities in London#Why use Guardian rankings here? over whether or not the information should be a straightforward list of universities in London (give or take sections to distinguish foreign universities and the colleges of the federal University of London) or whether it should be listed according to the institution's placing in a couple of newspaper league tables. Since this could lead to other lists of universities being rearranged wider input is highly desirable. Timrollpickering 22:44, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

problematic, due to the proliferation of widely different ranking scales, besides basic problems how much the rankings actually mean, obviously the difference between say, Oxford and Bolton are clear but why 'rank' Wolverhampton over Bolton? (or vice versa?)--Isolani 21:29, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 23:02, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

College of the Holy Cross

Hi everyone, I'm pretty new to Wikipedia. Some of my friends have been working on the entry for College of the Holy Cross and would like to find out to request feedback/peer review on the entry so far. It's definitely needs to major work on photos, history, and campus but we just needed feedback on the structure and what to do to get to GA status. If you could let me know or send me a message that would be great. Thanks! Destinvil 00:18, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi there. Good work on College of the Holy Cross. This WikiProject is comparatively small, and does not operate an article assessment table. You may find that, having posted here, a few active members will make some adjustments to your article anyway.
  • If you would like to have the article peer reviewed by a general group of editors, go to Wikipedia:Peer review and follow the instructions there.
  • If you would like to put the article forward for GA status, go to Wikipedia:Good articles/Candidates and list it in the Education section.
Hope that helps; College of the Holy Cross looks pretty good already. — mholland 05:19, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Infobox University and images

The Infobox template has recently been adjusted. Would anyone like comment on the discussion over on its talk page about the use of images in the box? - mholland 01:16, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject template

Is there a template to go on relevant article talk pages? At the moment it seems a lot of editors don't know about the existance of this project and this often leads to changes on individual articles. Timrollpickering 12:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I've created one at Template:WikiProject Universities which I'll add to articles as I come across them. Help in getting the template everywhere would be much appreciated. Timrollpickering 15:14, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Noted alumni, faculty: Recommend that sources be cited; note definition of "alumnus"

Under "structure," I'd like to see a specific note an "alumnus" means anyone who has attended a school, whether or not they completed a degree. (It is a frequent misconception that alumnus means "graduate").

I'd like to see a specific recommendation that sources be cited inline, directly in the list.

There seems to be a feeling around WIkipedia that the verifiability policy goes out the window for lists, or that a lists of names need not have citations "because the information [in theory in an ideal world would always be] found in the linked article." Experience has shown that it is quite often the case that linked articles for an alumnus/a do not' mention the school he or she attended, and even when it does it is much more frequently the case that the linked article cites no source. But in any case a Wikipedia article is not considered a reliable source for another Wikipedia article. If the linked article does cite a source, it should be copied into the list.

Given that most notable people associated with universities have bios quickly available online... if not through standard reference sources... I'd really like to ask people to spend the five minutes up front to source these as they go in, rather than leaving them as a blob of unsourced material. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:32, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

This brings up two issues. Not the citation part, the alumnus defintion. First, the defintion you are using is not the only defintion, someplaces list it as only graduates. On wikipedia it uses the definition you are using, but you need to include the entire definition that includes the part about poeple working somewhere being an alumnus. There is where the problem lies. According to this expanded definition any faculty would also qualify as alumni and go into the alumni list/category as well. The second issue then comes with categorization, where there are often categories for both ABC U alumni and ABC U people/faculty. I think either we need to define alumni as graduates only, or simply remove the distinction and have lists/categories of ABC U people as there would likely be few if any people that fit people but not alumni. Basically, there is no difference between alumni and people if we use the newer definition of alumni. Aboutmovies 19:27, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
(Comments also made at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions#University categories
It's very difficult to use "graduate" as a definition without full access to records of graduation - most of the information available is about whether someone attended an institution and there are many reasons they may not have graduated - not finished their course, declined to actually take the formal final award (two common anecdotal cases involve research students not actually writing up the thesis but instead going into employment with their sponsor and students with debts to the university not repaying them and so not getting the degree), taken a course that doesn't end with graduation (this happens a lot with short and technical courses), been to university in an earlier era when graduation didn't mean much and so forth. I'm not sure where this "working somewhere" stuff comes through for staff - from what I can see the only cases where staff are being listed as alumni are where they were also students (a number who haven't yet got their PhDs do take them internally) or the handful of universities that confer honourary degrees upon staff who aren't alumni. Using "former students" is the only workable definition. Also adding in staff and others with university connections would massively increase many categories to the point that they'd need to be sub-divided again. Timrollpickering 20:10, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Making better use of this WikiProject

Looking at some of the other WikiProjects, especially Military history, I feel that more could be made of this project with a clearer structure, more detailed guidelines on issues (ranging from "what is an alumnus" above to naming conventions) and targetted articles.

I'm going to ask about for ideas. One early priority is to get this project more widely known - a starting point is getting this template {{WikiProject Universities}} onto all university articles which is not the easiest of tasks but one that will in turn make it easy to reach the relevant articles. Timrollpickering 21:36, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

From early suggestions and looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide the single biggest thing this project is missing is an internal review process to assess articles, nominate individual ones for improvements, hold up good practice and so forth. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to implement this? Timrollpickering 11:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

New article creation - language

This is one that's been kicking about a while on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Colleges and Universities:

'how aggressive should we be about names being in English? I rather believe that everything should be titled in English... however, some institutions are insisting that their "English" names are the same as their native names, and others without English websites are hard to determine, and Google searches often find a variety of English translations without a dominating version. I think that the style guidelines suggest that if an official English translation isn't available, a reasonable one should be given. How do we feel about it? Cpastern 20:27, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone have a suggestion? Timrollpickering 11:04, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I assume you mean for cases more difficult than [Native place-name] + [Native word for 'University']? Those are straightforward to translate, and I think general naming conventions cover whether or not they should be translated. If an institution is known more by its native name than by its English name, then that should be the article title. There's always the infobox, where the English name always goes at the top, and the native name inside the box, so there's no case for always translating.
The trouble is that if a University does not itself provide an English translation of its name, it's likely to be because it doesn't teach any courses or publish any research in English — so it's less likely to pop up on our radar, however notable it may be. — mholland 18:19, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Whatever guideline/policy we come up with, we'll have to allow for exceptions because some are heavily politicised. See University of Prishtina (and its talk page archive) for a nightmare example. This one flipped between Prishtina (Albanian) and Priština (Serbian) frequently for a while, and like the rest of the Kosova-related articles, it's likely to flare up again from time to time. It's debatable whether they were the same institution, but two separate articles is as unpopular with some people as is one article with both names. – Kieran T (talk) 18:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
If an institution teaches no classes in English and does not even translate its name then does it even belong in en.wikipedia? --ElKevbo 18:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Sure it does. They do notable things in non-English speaking places all the time. — mholland 18:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Can you please clarify who "they" are and about what "things" you are speaking? --ElKevbo 18:49, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
I'll be honest and say I've no clue, because I don't speak any non-European languages. But if I were to ask you to prove that nothing notable ever happened in, say, Tianjin Medical University, you'd be just as stumped. I don't believe that notable information should be excluded from Wikipedia just because it was discovered in another language — it would be arrogant of me to assume that all worthwhile research is done in, or even translated into , English. — mholland 19:20, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
I think you may have misunderstood my question and my intent in asking it. Specifically, I was asking you to clarify the indefinite nouns used in your statement as I was honestly confused by the jump from singular to plural and subsequent lack of specificity.
I certainly agree with your assertion that non-English contributions to history, knowledge, human development, etc. have and continue to take place (and given the rise of China and India, among others, I expect this trend to increase). I think there are two questions hidden here:
1. How extensive should coverage of explicitly non-English institutions should be present in the English version of Wikipedia? Although this question touches issues of bias I ask in the spirit of Wikipedia's current policies and culture.
2. Ignoring the massive decentralization inherent in Wikipedia, how should we prioritize creation, maintenance, and improvement of articles describing explicitly non-English articles in the English Wikipedia?
--ElKevbo 19:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Apologies for poor articulation :) In response:
1. Coverage should be every bit as extensive as that of Anglophone institutions. I realise, though, that the bottleneck in achieving that sort of coverage is probably the language barrier and not notability criteria. If a University's website is exclusively in a foreign tongue, then extracting information for the English Wikipedia is going to be a problem.
2. I think, as editors, we have to prioritise articles that we can best contribute. Perhaps the best way of getting good coverage of Foreign University X is for us to request an article/expansion of an article from the WikiProject covering the country where University X is located.
— mholland 19:49, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

(resetting indentation for those on small screens)
I'd agree about covering all institutions of note — there are plenty of reasons why somebody who is primarily comfortable with English (and therefore using the English Wikipedia) might want to read about a foreign-language institution. Also, incidentally, well done Tim for speedily adding the project tag to Prishtina Uni! ;) – Kieran T (talk) 19:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Cheers. Getting back to the naming, I'll start with some examples. Let's take an existing transnational list - the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities. One particular problem here is that whilst within the country names like "Open University" and "Distance University" are unambiguous, internationally they are more of a problem and the institutions might either stick to the native language form, use an acronym or even add the country name for international purposes. We have:
Native language is English:
Open University UK - Easy. (Although as an aside the OU does do some stuff in the Welsh language, run out of the regional centre for Wales. I've no idea about what, if any, language provisions there are for Scots, Scots Gallic, Orkadian and Shetlandic, though UHI Millenium Institute in Scotland has published materials in all four Scottish languages.)
Article using native language name:
Centre national d'enseignement à distance France. (It doesn't actually have a translation yet.)
FernUniversität Hagen Germany. (From what I can see this is the preferred name to use in English rather than "Distance University Hagen" which appears to be just a literal translation.)
Universidade Aberta Portugal. (No infobox yet, but the name is translated in the article as "Open University".
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya Spain, specifically Catalonia, using the Catalan name form. It means "Open University of Catalonia". The website uses Catalan, Spanish and English.
Article using native language acronym:
Uned Spain. "Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia". The info box gives as the first title "National University for Distance Education".
Article using English translation:
Open University (Netherlands) rather than "Open Universiteit Nederland", despite "Open Universiteit" being used throughout the article text (and is used in the memberlist for the EADTU).
Anadolu University. Turkey - the Turkish is "Anadolu Üniveristesi". Anadolu itself redirects to Anatolia - the pennisula which most of Asian Turkey occupies.
And that's just a handful of institutions in Europe! There are more complicated cases where it's very hard to determine whether the native language form or an English translation is commonly used in English. The best example I can think of is actually the student representative bodies - see Eurodoc#Members and Observers (postgraduates/doctoral researchers) where most organisations are in the native language form and National Unions of Students in Europe#Full members which is predominantly translated. And both lists contain a lot of red links. Timrollpickering 20:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

School colors

I've noticed that many universities, like the University of Chicago and Penn State, use markup to show samples of the school colors within the infobox for that article. I'm relatively new to this project - has there been any talk about creating a template to standardize this usage? -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 23:43, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that that's a template (or parameter) too far. I think that if users need a little square of maroon and another little square of white in order to visualise the colors of the University of Chicago, then they need to put the mouse down and step away from the keyboard. There's a standard on pages using {{Oxbridge College Infobox}} for putting a strip of the college scarf on (e.g. Clare Hall, Cambridge) which I'm more in favour of - at least it's an arrangement of colours. Other UK universities which have adopted a scarf have put that in {{Infobox University}} (e.g. Durham University). In general, though, I think that just mentioning the colours in words suffices for most colleges. — mholland 21:51, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I would agree. It used to be that school colors were just stated as a wikilink to the color itself. That, IMHO, is wholly sufficient. The boxes—way too much. —ExplorerCDT 21:57, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
  • P.S. Thanks for mentioning the Academic scarf article. I learned something new, found something I like enough to recommend via e-mail that Rutgers adopt one. —ExplorerCDT 21:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Understandable. After I made the suggestion, I did a little research of my own and found out that a template similar to the one I described already exists - {{Colorbox}}. Not to be difficult or argumentative, but I don't think it's a matter of "needing to visualise" the colors, but it's a matter of making as user-friendly an encyclopedia as we can, providing the kind of attention to detail that users might expect. I'm certainly not saying that this needs to become a requirement or make it a part of the infobox, just that since these aren't the only two articles I've seen use such a template (I've seen similar uses of boxed color swatches as part of legends, keys, or other descriptors elsewhere), it might be worth thinking about making it easier to provide this functionality. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 21:59, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
That's fine. The boxes certainly aren't harming the Chicago article. — mholland 22:05, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Big Ten

Hi. I'm starting a WikiProject that is somewhat of a spinoff of this one, WikiProject Big Ten. Anyone in this project who is especially familiar with the Big Ten would be an asset, and we could certainly combine on the main college articles. If there's no interest here my apologies, but hopefully there is. --Wizardman 03:15, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

University Yearbooks

I would like to propose an addition to the Infobox_University template: Yearbook / Yearbook name

Every school has (or had) a yearbook in it's history. The yearbooks represent the institutional memory of the university and are an important resource that should be added to the template. For example, did you know that the University of Mississippi got it's nickname "Ole Miss" from the yearbook? These yearbooks contain relevant and original content such as:

  • Pictures of hundreds of thousands of alumni
  • Photos from all the sporting activies (trips to the Rose Bowl, basketball national championships as well as all the sports teams)
  • Photos of all the greek organizations and activities
  • Pictures of faculty, staff, Board of Regents, Deans of Schools
  • A broad photo portfolio of student organizations and activities
  • Original photography by students of important events on campus

Does anyone disagree with this proposal? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.198.39.140 (talk) 04:38, 9 January 2007 (UTC).

Disagree- I can't see how yearbook name can be useful. In fact, I would guess most colleges yearbooks don't have special names, and some colleges/universities don't have yearbooks at all. I think there is already a section for "nickname". Also, any more suggestions should go on the template talk page. Danski14 05:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Not of sufficiently general application for a field on the infobox, I think. Add a note to Template talk:Infobox University if you really want to push the case. But I wholeheartedly encourage you (User:71.198.39.140) to create an account and add relevant, sourced information to the articles under this project. — mholland 17:59, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Loyola Marymount University as part of your project?

Hello, while on vandal patrol, I noticed this article taking some hits. Loyola Marymount University seems like it should be part of your project. I noticed it did not have a tag on its talkpage like Stanford University does. Cheers. Ronbo76 06:24, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Then feel free to add the tag in. I'll go do it now.--Wizardman 06:29, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
I was also out on vandal patrol and spotted a university that needed adding. I've added it but I think someone from your project should have a look at it because to me it reads like an advert from their prospectus. Thanks. - X201 09:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Forgot to add the link. Sorry. The university is this one, University of Wollongong - X201 09:35, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Rutgers

FYI: I've started a WikiProject, hopefully to be under the auspices of the New Jersey and Universities WikiProjects to direct efforts to articles related to Rutgers University, at Wikipedia:WikiProject Rutgers. —ExplorerCDT 16:40, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Possible conflict of interest

Just wanted to note that an editor has been adding references to a book presumably written by that same editor or someone associated with him (the Wikipedia username matches the author's name). I've posted a brief message on the editor's Talk page. I just wanted a few more eyeballs on this to ensure (a) I've acted appropriately and (b) there are others aware of this editor and other editors who may behave similarly. --ElKevbo 17:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Ostensibly, it's a scholarly work, published reputably - although I agree it's a COI if the editor is also the author, and I note that the citation is just dumped in the refs, and no information in the articles actually comes from the book. I'd suggest that the user is just an enterprising newbie, and he's already had policy brought to his attention.
Given the articles on which they appear, I'd recommend leaving them, but changing to a neutral citation (i.e. not SUP with its 'BUY IT NOW' link). — mholland 00:18, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Request Peer Review

I'm requesting a peer review for the University of Oklahoma article. One other editor gave me some great feedback and I've made most of the changes he recommended but I'm still working on others. I'd like to nominate this article for FA sometime soon. Please let me know of your opinions: Wikipedia:Peer review/University of Oklahoma/archive4.--NMajdan•talk 14:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Rutgers University Peer Review

I put a request in for Rutgers University to be peer reviewed at WP:PR two weeks ago, and got a disappointingly minimal response. The only people who reviewed were users I asked to chime in with their examination and scrutiny. Peer Review right now is badly inactive. If anyone from this wikiproject has a few minutes to read through the article and give a few pointers or suggestions, I'd be much obliged if you'd stop by and leave some comments at the Rutgers University article's discussion page. —ExplorerCDT 22:38, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll try to take a look at this tomorrow. But, would you mind doing the same for University of Oklahoma? I also tried the PR process and only got the response of one person who is on the college football WikiProject with me. He left some detailed notes on the OU peer review page. I'll try to review Rutgers tomorrow at the earliest or mid next week at the latest.--NMajdan•talk 22:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Coincidentally, I just started reading the Oklahoma article a few moments ago, right after I initially posted this request. (I intend to read it twice...first for style and technical issues, second for content) I should be able to provide my input at OU's peer review shortly after dinner this evening. Thank you. —ExplorerCDT 22:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

University of Wisconsin

I'd appreciate some wider input at Talk:University of Wisconsin (disambiguation)#Requested move. The issue is that the disambiguation page has been moved from the unqualified name at University of Wisconsin to University of Wisconsin (disambiguation), and the resulting redirect then pointed to University of Wisconsin-Madison. There's also a suggestion that University of Wisconsin-Madison be moved to University of Wisconsin.

I'm a bit far from the action, but I gather there's been a lot of debate about this outside of Wikipedia, including a referendum last year that failed to rename the Milwaukee campus. Currently the position seems to be that University of Wisconsin is an unofficial and previous name of the Madison campus, and also of the larger University of Wisconsin System.

What I fear is that Wikipedia may become involved in these political name games. Is there perhaps a push to see University of Wisconsin reinstated as the official name of the Madison campus? That would explain a lot.

As part of this discussion, there's been mention of the need for a standard for all US State University systems, so some wider input would be timely for this reason too. Andrewa 08:10, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi there. From what I can see, the debate is a bit of a lame war over whether one particular institution gets the 'prize' designation of the redirect "University of Wisconsin". Of course there must be one article each about every notable institution in the UW System, and of course there must be a dab page to sort them out.
The relevant policy in determining whether to use parenthetical disambiguation or not is WP:DAB#Primary topic. I can only suggest that it be impartially applied here. — mholland 02:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
You've hit it right on the head.
In terms of WP:DAB, the problem is that there are (at least) two competing views as to what is the primary topic. It seems to depend on context... see this previous version of the disambig for what we ended up with after a lot of previous discussion.
I'm trying to be impartial, but I do have an agenda... that of the non-US readers of Wikipedia! What seems very obvious to Wisconsin residents (one of whom gave an edit summary the name says it all at one stage) can be very confusing to others of us. Andrewa 04:22, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/University of Wisconsin (disambiguation). Andrewa 10:51, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Straw Poll regarding renaming Rutgers University

Proliferation of Campus Building Articles

What is you opinion of the proliferation of articles on buildings at universities? I am of the opinion that many of them are not sufficiently notable for inclusion in Wikipedia. Besselfunctions 16:18, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Could you provide some examples? A lot of buildings which aren't sufficiently notable get a few lines merged into the Campus section of the parent article, or deleted outright. Is that not happening efficiently at the moment? — mholland 18:00, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Perfect example, at Rutgers: Demarest Hall. It doesn't connect to the Rutgers University article as when i wrote it I didn't find it relevant, likewise, I didn't include it on the {{Rutgers}} template. It's only accessible through the Rutgers University category (that's how I found it). Some Demarest resident thought it notable beacuse that's where Rutgers threw a couple special interest groups, but mostly on campus it's thought poorly of for being filled with wannabe hippies and homosexuals (which the article, glaringly, does not mention). It is the only article about a dormitory or individual building at Rutgers. I wisely think any discussion about buildlings should be limited, individually, to those that are historically significant....Nassau Hall at Princeton (which was the nation's capital in 1783), the tower where the sniper shot at a few peole from UTexas-Austin for example, the Bodleian Library or Radcliffe Camera at Oxford, or the Great Tower of Magdalen College, Oxford. But generally, absent that significance historically, I don't think articles about individual buildings should be made. If the building is not notable in itself, but might be part of a historically notable quad or area, like Harvard Yard, or Old Queens (Rutgers oldest historical building, and the surrounding "campus" with 5 (formerly 6) other buildings that takes its name) or the Voorhees Mall (historical-academic core at Rutgers, it should be included on such an article, but not to stand alone. —ExplorerCDT 18:44, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Merging into lists is sometimes good. These have short paragraphs of buildings and/or discussion of the campus and links to major buildings with their own pages. For another approach, take a look at Buildings at the University of Kentucky or Buildings at Marshall University. These are fairly big schools, and most of the buildings listed are notable, but they shouldn't think they need an article on every building. I think a good thing to do when non-notable buildings are found is merge them into a article on the campus or a "Buildings at _____" article or something related. An example of this was Aquinas College (actually a secondary school, in western Australia (!?!) ). Editors found a huge collection of misc. articles (at least 15-20 I'd say). A few were listed here : Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old Aquinians Hockey Club. The result was to downgrade them all and merge into the main article. Danski14 04:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I haven't read this whole discussion yet but the topic made me think of something I saw awhile ago. List of Male Dorms at Notre Dame & List of Female Dorms at Notre Dame. About 25-30 dorm buildings each with its own article. See also Category:University_of_Notre_Dame_residence_halls↔NMajdan•talk 04:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Most of those links in the list articles are redirects back to the list. There are only 10 entries in the Category. --Bduke 06:00, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

notability of colleges/universities

I remember reading somewhere (probably from the schools notability debate) that tertiary education institutions, no matter their nature (private/public, non-profit/for-profit, liberal arts/engineering/community college/technical) are automatically notable and not subject to CSD 7. Am I just dreaming or can someone point me to the policy, guideline, or consensus about this? Twice this month I've had to defend college articles I created from deletion on notability grounds. Thanks. Wl219 06:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi there. There's no inherent notability for universities or colleges that I'm aware of. There is, however, a proposed guideline at Wikipedia:Schools, which adopts the US definition of 'school', including tertiary/higher education institutions. That proposed guideline is the third major redraft of the proposal, and there's a big talk archive full of not much consensus. One of the current proposals is that private, for-profit Universities should be assessed for notability under WP:CORP. Apart from that, the criteria seem a lot easier for a university or higher college to pass than for a school.
While it seems to me that most universities are clearly notable, you only have to go through the yellow pages to find some (usually foreign) unaccredited doctorate-farms whose 'campus' is an office above a kebab shop in London or Berlin. These obviously aren't inherently notable, and while the debate at WP:SCHOOLS3 shows no sign of consensus approval yet, I doubt 'inherent notability' will be in there. — mholland 12:28, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Bicol University

Hi! Please take a look at this article especially the part where it says "Contributed by" (last lines). I don't know what to do with it. Thanks! Fddfred 07:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Presidents at multiple universities

What infobox templates, if any, should be used to adequately describe presidents who have served at multiple universities? The one I've been using, {{Infobox University Chancellor}}, doesn't allow for multiple tenures to be listed. — PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 03:47, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

That's kind of an ugly template. Perhaps we need to create a replacement. —Disavian (talk/contribs) 07:15, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Try
{{s-start}}
{{s-aca}}
{{s-bef | before=[[Richard Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane|The Viscount Haldane of Cloan]]}}
{{s-ttl | title=[[Chancellor (education)|Chancellor]] of the [[University of Bristol]]}}
{{s-aft | after=[[Henry Somerset, 10th Duke of Beaufort|The Duke of Beaufort]]}}
{{end}}
Academic offices
Preceded by Chancellor of the University of Bristol Succeeded by
Preceded by Chancellor of the University of Bristol Succeeded by
(The non-duplicate example here is one from an old revision of Winston Churchill). You can add as many s-bef, s-ttl, s-aft as you need. Splash - tk 17:11, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Notable Alumni

I regret if this has been covered previously, I did not find a specific answer in my brief review to this point. I am writing to inquire on whether this group has developed, at a very general level, a baseline on what defines a "notable alumnus" of an institution. I am beginning to see, and I sure it has always been prevelant, the inclusion of individuals, perhaps by their own addition, whose achievements or other determining qualitative factors do not merit inclusion. How have others handled this issue? Internazionale 18:41, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

In the past I have seen a number of lists of alumni which are essentially limited to those who have a wikipedia article. I don't know if this is necessarily an official policy, but it acts as a reasonable guide. Obviously some exceptions will occur - not everyone notable necessarily has a wikipedia article (though most do), and some people with articles in wikipedia are not particularly notable (though in this case the page about the person probably shouldn't exist). Rlfb 20:33, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

That is an interesting approach. I don't know if I would venture to that extreme, I just don't think that notable alumni lists should become near advertisements for individuals who show a bit of initiative by adding their information. I suppose it becomes difficult to distinguish, a scientist who might be strong in his/her profession does not get the same level of "notability" as any level of a major league sports athlete. It is of course subjective. Thanks though. Internazionale 21:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

AS I say, just a guideline really. Certainly with academics it is harder to quantify their "notability". If, however, there are people adding themselves as advertisement, then I'd have though this contradicts the conflict of interest guideline. Rlfb 21:24, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Userbox

Is anyone up for creating a userbox for this project?--Imaginationac 03:15, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Ask and ye shall receive:
This user is a participant in WikiProject Higher education.
Use {{User:UBX/WPUNI}}. You may want to go and adjust the colours: I've defaulted to very very boring. — mholland 04:26, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

University template not working

The infobox puts a lot of extra spaces all of a sudden. See George Washington University or University of Tennessee. What's the deal? --AW 17:35, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Someone fixed it. thanks --AW 17:38, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Problem of continually changing statistics

This issue may have already been raised in the "Rankings" discussions, but I've noticed university articles making claims such as "The largest school in the state,county,etc." While these statements may have been true at the time they were written, student enrollment continues to fluctuate and articles should be contiually updated accordingly. Comparisons should use the most currently available data. I suggest that sections with these statements be should contain some sort or temporal tag. Perhaps a new type of tag needs to be created for this very purpose. Hanjabba 05:23, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Can you give any examples? Claims of that sort should cite a good source, or be deleted as puff - if there's no current statistic quoted, you'd be right just to delete the claim. Have you encountered WP:AO, which deals with quickly-dating statistics? It may be what you're looking for. — mholland 12:28, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, if the authors had just stated "as of xxxx" then this would clarify matters alot. Thanks for the advice. I should be able to remedy the articles now.Hanjabba 22:27, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Oriel College

I am surprised to see that Oriel College, a featured article belonging to WikiProject Universities, lacks any mention of academics. There are many other problems with the article as well, and I have noted them on the talk page of the article. I would request experienced editors of this WikiProject to share their comments over the issues raised. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 11:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Community College / Junior College Infobox?

Just passing through, I was editing a Community College page today and was looking for an infobox. University infobox doesn't seem appropriate. Any thoughts on creating an infobox for 2 year US junior colleges? There are hundreds of them already Category:Two-year colleges in the United States. MDSNYDER 22:43, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Can you please specify what about the University infobox doesn't work for community colleges? --ElKevbo 23:15, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
I've only done a few edits on one Community College, so this is just a guess of what might make a separate infobox useful:
  • Districts: in California and many other states, community colleges are governed more like K-12 public schools, with a locally-elected board of education; in other places they might be part of a city or county government;
  • Students: College of Marin shows 7000 or 8000 students (take your pick), while the most reliable looking page at the school's website shows that only 1400 of the 6700 enrolled students are full-time; junior colleges tend to run high on part-time students, so the raw number makes them look bigger than they actually are; the infobox or article template should ask for FT and PT enrollment; OTOH, many community colleges have large numbers of classes which are open to residents who have not been "admitted" and don't get included in the student count--they should be quantified separately;
  • Complexity: the template has many lines that are not applicable to any community college--perhaps some; [more later]--Hjal 15:55, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
I feel the University infobox is more than adequate for JCs. Its biggest strength is its flexibility, and, indeed, you can use as many or as few of the optional categories as you want. There are a lot of headngs in there (if you're looking at the full version: Template:Infobox University, and you should probably be able to either find what you need or retrofit the "Free Label" to suit your purposes. If not, leave a message for the template-coding gurus on the template's talk page so they can add a line. A lot of what you say is needed for JC's might be useful for some four-year schools as well. --Dynaflow 18:33, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Indian Institutes of Management

this and it's branching articles need clean-up so they read less like adverts. I've done a bit but assistance would be nice --Fredrick day 11:46, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Internal politics missing

Wesleyan was in the news a lot for its ban on chalking. This seems worth mentioning since it is probably one of only a handful (the only one I'm aware of) that has banned chalking. This relates both to student activism and to university policy that would be of interest to many students. 71.144.50.17 23:18, 10 April 2007 (UTC)col 4/10/07

I notice you've already added a section to the relevant article. Keep up the good work – you may like to cite a source for the paragraph you added. You might also get a better response if you try the article's talk page: this page is a general forum for issues relevant to Wikipedia's coverage of all universities. Thank you. — mholland (talk) 00:42, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Color boxes

I've noticed a lot of pages use hardcoding to create small color boxes like so:      .. or what have you. Anyway, I created a template for use here.. {{color box|navy}} for HTML color names and {{color box|#36789B}} for hex triplets. -- drumguy8800 C T 20:41, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks; that was a pain in the ass, putting together all that code every time one wanted to do a color box. This is much more elegant. I just tested the template on my home campus, and I anticipate going on a binge through the rest of the UCs and CSUs later, using your template. I propose using a standard color line that has the official colors written out using initial capitals on significant words, followed by this new template without spacing between the individual template instances (to avoid colors ending up on different lines).
In general reference to school colors, Wikipedians should note that what their schools usually say are their "official colors" are often no more than approximations ("Yale Blue" and "California Gold" at Cal Berkeley, for instance). The actual, official colors can usually be found through schools' PR, press-relations, or marketing departments in what are usually called "identity standards" documents. They will not always be defined using hex, but will almost always have precise, numerical definitions in Pantone (also called PMS for "Pantone Matching System"). There are a lot of sites online with PMS-to-hex charts (this is the first one that popped up in Google), so no one should have too much trouble finding the right hex codes to plug into the new template.
Again, thanks for your creation. --Dynaflow 20:32, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I noticed that {{Infobox college athletics}} used on many College/University athletic articles already has the hex in the info box. Could those values be added to {{Infobox University}}? --Jerm 20:55, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
There is a colors line in the infobox already, if that's what you mean; it's just been removed from a lot of the transcluded templates in use. It's simple to restore, though. The line doesn't have a straight input for hex, but it might be good to keep it that way for schools with non-standard color schemes (one or three or four colors and other assorted formatting weirdnesses).
One more thing about the school colors: Almost all long-established schools, and even most newer ones, will be following the heraldic rule of tincture. For example, most of the shades of blue used by schools are actually variations on a theme of the heraldic azure. Similarly, the "gold" used in a lot of schools' official colors is actually the heraldic Or. I have been linking the names of official colors (except specific shades that have their own articles, like Stanford's cardinal) with the appropriate heraldic-color articles. This article will help you figure out which "colour" to link the colors to. Here is an example of the color line I put together for the University of California, Santa Cruz:
|colors =[[Azure (heraldry)|UCSC Blue]] & [[Or (heraldry)|UCSC Gold]] {{color box|#36789B}}{{color box|#FFDF82}}
--Dynaflow 21:36, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
The correct place to propose this would be Template talk:Infobox University. I don't expect it would receive much opposition, but I would oppose making any particular way of filling in the colors/colours field mandatory: the infobox is crafted for maximum flexibility, and it's very beneficial that way. This seems like a good idea, though. Good work! — mholland (talk) 02:13, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I'll copy-and-paste this thread there. I also dislike the thought of making things mandatory, but I'd like there to be a common standard to use as a starting point for new infoboxes and revampings.--Dynaflow 06:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Assessment Page

I have added an assessment page, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities/Assessment. I elected NOT to add an importance section as I thought this would lead to a lot of trouble. I can just see trying to explain what the University of Michigan is more important that Butler County Community College. Please update your articles with a rating at your pleasure. PadreNuestro 23:57, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Tepper school

I have requested that Tepper School of Business receive both a peer review and be considered as a good article. Any assistance in either of these matters would be appreciated. PadreNuestro 00:00, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Can someone better than me make this into a ready-use template?

UCSC Chancellors
George BlumenthalDenice DentonDean McHenry
†Died in office

I ran across a cool feature while I was helping rein in the orgy of vandalism today at the Virginia Tech page. Someone had hard-coded a chart listing their presidents' tenures, with a bar showing length of tenure. I ripped it off and reverse-engineered it (not being by any means proficient in Wiki- or any other kind of coding, it took me quite a bit of experimentation before the sucker finally worked), and now I have a UCSC-specific version hard-coded onto UCSC's page. I am wondering if anyone here knows how to make things like this into workable templates that everyone can use. Here is the finished product; you can see the code from edit mode.

Is there a Wikimagician out there who can help me out? --Dynaflow 07:47, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that there's much that templating could do to make the EasyTimeline extension simpler to use. Have a look at the documentation on meta. — mholland (talk) 13:10, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Wow, I'd hate to see DifficultTimeline. I guess I'll start wading through the documentation. Thanks for the heads-up. --Dynaflow 13:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Appearance and content of Seoul National University

The long lists, large empty spaces, and underdeveloped sections detract from what should be a showcase article.

  • Do the order of sections as they stand serve the article well? I suggest that the order of main sections be reviewed and possibly changed in order to present basic information about this university.
  • The university infobox is quite large. Is there any way to shrink the size of the university crest a little? Furthermore, the other graphic in the bottom part of the same infobox needs to be resized. I am not sure how to do this and so I would ask someone to consider doing this. The infobox is really long and is in part the cause of a large empty space that detracts from the article.
  • I agree that the Organisation section, a list of faculties, is critical. However, does the section itself need to be so high up in the article? How would it be if we placed the History section above the Organisation section?
  • The Organisation section, a list of faculties, is presented in list form, which makes it long. How would it be if we created a separate list that is not located in the main article and summarise the list in the main article? Or keep it in the main article and present the lists in TWO columns (sorry but I'm not sure how to do this!). There could be other solutions as well. Anyone?
  • The history section remains underdeveloped. As per the previous message I left on the talk page I urge editors who are more knowledgeable than I in this matter to add sourced text ^^. --Mumun 無文 12:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
  1. You might like to change the order of sections per this project's guideline. There's nothing really wrong with the order at Seoul National University, but conventionally, history comes first.
  2. The infobox and crest look fine to me. If you're experiencing a lot of white space, it may be because your screen is high-resolution. It may also be because of the long table of contents. The primary problem though, I think, is that the article is composed almost entirely of lists. It's those that are causing the whitespace I can see.
  3. I wouldn't fork the organisation list: it's too short to make an article on its own.
  4. I don't speak for everyone, but I'm not sure any of us have particular expertise in this field. Have you tried WikiProject Korea?
— mholland (talk) 13:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for commenting -- I'll have to post something at WT:KOREA as well. Mumun 無文 20:30, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

University of Wisconsin RFC

This just popped up on my radar screen. It's a dispute about whether the University of Wisconsin article should redirect or be about the Madison campus or the University of Wisconsin system. It's not too different from discussions some of us have held about other universities and university articles so maybe we could offer these editors some assistance and sage advice (or at least some more input as the discussion seems to be occurring between a handful of editors). --ElKevbo 18:40, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Student Affairs

I'm looking for people that are interested in working on Student Affairs related articles on Wikipedia. There is a very low amount of information on Wikipedia about this topic I started a WikiProject related to this. Please visit the previous link and add your name if you are interested! Thanks -- Noetic Sage 04:51, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

  1. ^ "America's Best Colleges 2007". U.S. News & World Report. 2007. Retrieved 2007-04-15.
  2. ^ "Academic Ranking of World Universities 2006". Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. 2006. Retrieved 2007-04-15.
  3. ^ "World University Rankings". The Times Higher Educational Supplement. 2006. Retrieved 2007-04-15.
  4. ^ "The Washington Monthly College Rankings". The Washington Monthly. 2006. Retrieved 2007-04-15.
  5. ^ "The World's 100 Most Global Universities". Newsweek. Retrieved 2007-04-15.
  6. ^ "The Top American Research Universities: 2006 Annual Report" (PDF). 2006. Retrieved 2007-04-15.
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