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contradiction

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In the first paragraph of the article, the UNCF is described as supporting students at 39 HBCUs. In the next paragraph, it claims that UNCF supported students at 900 college and universities. This is directly contradictory. Can someone please fix this? 71.77.12.236 03:31, 4 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This might not be a contradiction at all. In the former paragraph, the UNCF is described as supporting students at 39 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HCBUs); the second does not make that distinction. According to their Website, the UNCF supports students of all ethnicities at HCBUs, and mostly African-American students (with some exceptions) at non-HBCU schools.Carlaclaws 05:59, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Controversy section

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The controversy section is completely unsourced and made up mostly of weasel terms. If sources can't be found for it, it should be deleted. I'm going to Google the issue and see what I can find. If anybody can find sources, please feel free to add citations. janejellyroll 04:47, 25 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Okay, one Google search later and all I could find was an almost four-year-old story about a guy in Texas who started a "United White Person College Fund" . . . and raised about $1,000 dollars. Everything else related to "United Negro College Fund" and "controversy" is mostly from sources like stormfront.org. If somebody wants to wade in there and find sources, they should go for it. But I don't know if websites like that represent enough of an objection to be given space in this article. I mean, they're angry just to have non-white people in the country. How do people feel about just removing the "Controversy" section until a substantial source can be found? janejellyroll 04:56, 25 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I've removed the entire controversy section. In previous incarnations it simply read like original research or personal feelings about the UNCF. Feel free to re-add if it can be sourced in any way. janejellyroll 07:25, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The fact there's no controversy section proves the USs racist views. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.23.10.204 (talk) 21:49, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

George Bush

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The statement made in the motto section is not a significant fact, at the very least it misplaced as it does not have anything to do with the motto. William conway bcc 02:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree 100%. It should be removed unless we want to start a section on all somewhat notable supporters of the organization. janejellyroll 03:57, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We should note how it's discriminatory, if we started up the United White College Fund it would be 'racist', that's fine, but this one is!

82.9.31.149 10:46, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you can cite reliable, third-party sources then you can go ahead and add that point to the article. Please avoid WP:OR or violating WP:NPOV. janejellyroll 00:48, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Scholarship amount???

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How much does each person get??? Or does it vairy???Smileyface 12 91 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 08:59, 21 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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I think we could add a section referring to this. One example is it being mentioned in Mr. Deeds as a popular charity for Adam Sandler to donate to. 161.185.151.150 (talk) 16:56, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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The logo depicted in the fact box is outdated. The UNCF modified its logo several years ago to the one on this page (number 6). I'm unable to update the logo on the Wikipedia page to reflect this change. Would someone please make this change?

- David —Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidarrichards (talk • contribs) 17:50, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Howard University

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I'm surprised there seems to be no partnership between Howard University and the UNCF, as Howard is an HBU just a few minutes north of the UNCF on 7th Street/Georgia Avenue. I wonder if we're missing anything on that front. --BDD (talk) 20:08, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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United Fund

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It should probably be noted somewhere that most of UNCF's regional affiliates have changed their name to simply the United Fund of [wherever], in recognition that negro has become a disfavored term.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  09:38, 23 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I noted the main web site has moved away to use UNCF. Do you have some sources we can cite for "united fund"? I found http://diverseeducation.com/article/10514/ from 2008 among others for using the initials. --Erp (talk) 02:16, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Just Google it.:-) Per WP:ABOUTSELF, any of their publications that use it are sufficient sources that it's among the organization's names. I do agree that a detailed perusal of the main website does in fact show consistent use of "UNCF", without ever expanding it. Thats probably the name this article should use.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:20, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 28 September 2017

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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved to UNCF. Quite an interesting and close debate, with various points of view on both sides. On the support side are SMcCandlish's stats showing that the common name is now UNCF rather than the spelled out title, although the long name is still found in plenty of sources. Against is the view that the spelled out title is more recognizable. Arguments in favour such as "it's 2017 not 1957", and against such as "I've never heard it called that" carry less weight, as it's the common name in sources that guides us, not political correctness or what individuals have heard of. Nobody directly cited WP:NCACRO, but since that effectively tells us to defer to common name (Acronyms should be used in a page name if the subject is known primarily by its abbreviation and that abbreviation is primarily associated with the subject), that does not really affect the case for or against the move. All in all, with the evidence of common name and the larger number of votes in favour, I see a consensus to move.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:59, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]


United Negro College Fund → UNCF or United Fund – Per WP:ABOUTSELF. Organization hasn't used "United Negro College Fund" in years, and consistently brands itself as UNCF, without an expansion. In general and sometimes official usage it is also referred to as the United Fund, but it's not is now certain that isn't the WP:COMMONNAME. There are multiple reliable sources that the old, long name has been actively abandoned/repudiated by the organization [1]. The short form is also that typically used in the press, who rarely expand it [2], and "United Fund" is also frequently used, without further elaboration [3]. I don't care which we use; it just shouldn't be the name that is not what the organization or sources use any longer.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:45, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Updated to strike alternative new name based on WP:COMMONNAME analyses below.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  03:13, 4 October 2017 (UTC) --Relisting. Steel1943 (talk) 17:00, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

closing Admin please strike, per Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Bobby Martnen once archived In ictu oculi (talk) 11:30, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not a sockpuppet. Academicoffee71 (talk) 04:04, 30 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:OFFICIALNAME. WP doesn't care what the legal name is, never has, never will.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:51, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I still don't see that disparity - certainly not 2:1. Here's Google Books searching for one term to the exclusion of the other, this decade:
Same with Google Scholar:
"UNCF" is favored in Google News over the same period:
Overall, that's just a ratio of 1.2:1 for "UNCF". In addition, both terms are often found together:
There is just not enough evidence that reliable sources have abandoned the full name and adopted the shortened name to a great enough extent to justify the page move. Dohn joe (talk) 15:56, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Invalid results for a case like this (and many of your URLs are broken, and you have "SafeSearch" turned on which applies a bunch of secret, subjective filters and mangles the data). The key factor is whether usage has changed (your searches do nothing to constrain dates). Google Ngram demonstrates that it has changed, dramatically [9]. The terms were used together, in a well-synchronized pattern, until push-back against the long name, followed by "UNCF" alone shooting to dominant usage like a rocket from 2005 onward (actually dominant by 2006), reflecting the change in positioning. So, that's over a decade since the usage shifted to UNCF being dominant, as reflected in the Google News hits ratio (G'News, unlike G'Books and G'Scholar, is constrained to recent results). You're also not accounting for the fact that any use of an acronym is almost always going to be accompanied by its expansion somewhere in the same work – unless there's some reason to exclude it – but the opposite isn't true; thus results for the acronym by itself will always be greatly suppressed, also without telling us which name is listed first when both appear (without looking one source at a time). The fact that "UNCF" became dominant despite that effect is utter proof it's the common name today, which the 2:1 result – maybe really more like 3:1 [10] [11] – in news sources verifies.

WP:COMMONNAME is based on what current sources are doing, not what sources since the beginning of time were doing. Google Books and Scholar results are largely going to precede the organization's own change in usage, and many will date to an era when "Negro" was actually among the preferred terms; if you look at the dates of the returned results, you'll see this is the case: about half the results for the long name alone are 1940s to early 1990s [12], versus mostly late-1990s onward for the acronym alone [13].

As I said above, these are all results from this decade - 2010 to today. Usage has changed - just not enough to justify the page move. Dohn joe (talk) 14:05, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The adulteration by SafeSearch filters in various of your searches makes these numbers meaningless. E.g., in a test of one of your URLs, using SafeSearch changes the results from >2000 to 800-something. I've started doing new searches below, also excluding a TV show (though it is UNFC's own).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  10:07, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Additional deets

As to your links not working right (e.g. your "1,530" search is producing 6 results, whether I click on it or copy-paste it); your non-working URLs have a lot of weird tokens in them. "SafeSearch", however, probably explains why you weren't getting results consistent with those I reported when you tried my searches.

Regardless, Google Books and Scholar results are largely going to precede the organization's own change in usage, and many will date to an era when "Negro" was actually among the preferred terms (this is within my own lifetime, as was "Colored" being acceptable, so I know it was true; the sea change against "Negro" started in the 1980s, with issues raised about it at least a generation earlier). A G'News search is much, much better for this, as it's constrained to recent stuff.

Results for the acronym alone [14] that are earlier than late 1990s are typically in African-American-oriented publications (audience already knew what the acronym means) or are "surprise!" hits that incidentally provide a fourth name the organization was using, which we'd not looked for yet: The College Fund.

Yes, the total count for "UNCF" without the long name is lower than the other way around, because (obviously) the organization was formerly using the long name and sources were using it a lot, and sources are also more apt to give a long name without an acronym than vice versa.

The fact that the "forever total" acronym-alone usage is about 50% of the long-version alone usage is remarkable, a strong showing of a usage shift.

As for "the College Fund", this seems to not be in use since the 1990s or so, and mostly earlier. Even if you go out of your way to eliminate false positive after false positive, most of the results are still false positives. [15]. So, back to "UNCF".

Thanks for diving into this. Weird that you can't get the links to work - I've successfully posted Google-suite links before, presumably with the same search settings on. I can try again without safe search. But again - the searches were from 2010-present. Dohn joe (talk) 14:05, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It was hard to tell when the pages wouldn't load. 2006 is a better date range to use, and what I'm starting with below. It both coincides with the proven sharp increase in the use of the acronym, and it's also as far back as G'News seems to go. However, G'Books itself is having server issues as of this writing; I just did one search and got "fat" results, then repeated it and got 4 hits, and it stuck on 4 hits for about 5 minutes, then full results, now back to 4 hits and stuck that way for almost 20 minutes.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  10:07, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  03:13, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Might I suggest renaming to UNCF if we do go with a name change. It seems to be what the organization prefers, it shows up early in searches and all caps has been a method used by other organizations to change a no longer appropriate or wanted expanded name (e.g., SRI International which use to be "Stanford Research Institute" but is no longer affiliated with Stanford University).--Erp (talk) 03:05, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Works for me.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  04:59, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose to United Fund. The organization's own website uses UNCF and United Negro College Fund, and not United Fund. Google search results show the organization for UNCF and United Negro College Fund, and not for United Fund. Historically this group was well-known as the United Negro College Fund. There is no reason at all to rename to United Fund, it is clearly not the common name. No opinion on a move to UNCF. power~enwiki (π, ν) 18:21, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Zarcadia, AusLondonder, Randy Kryn, and Power~enwiki: Suggestion of "United Fund" has been struck because: a) too many false positives; b) Google Ngrams [16] shows the acronym became the dominant name (like a rocket) by 2006, and Google News confirms that it still is [17] [18] by a wide margin; and c) it's the organization's own preference.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  03:13, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support UNCF, SMcCandlish, taking your word that this is landing on the right spot. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:17, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. Reading through the search results for UNCF, every resulting article uses the full name initially, and uses the abbreviation only parenthetically or in later mentions, for example "and founder of the United Negro College Fund (1944, UNCF).". I find only a couple articles that use *only* "UNCF" absent the full name in the first couple pages of results (usually when it is used alone its part of a television show title). -- Netoholic @ 19:04, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @Netoholic: Except every article doesn't do that; it takes some comparative keyword exclusion to work it out (Google News stats from 2006, which is a far back as it goes, to present; also excluded the TV show, though it actually counts since it's their show): UNCF alone: 3290 [19]; long name alone: 1650 [20]; both in same article: just 916 [21]. This result is confirmed by n-grams, showing that the acronym became dominant very suddenly, 2005–2006, and continued to increase [22] (though may have decreased again in book publishing only; re-analyzing this below). This shift was organic, and preceded the organization officially ditching the "Negro" name in 2008.

    Ultimately this comes down to raw numbers, in the aggregate, in modern sources, not what's going on the first few pages of search results (what appears on those pages is a matter of marketing not reliability).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  10:07, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    I don't think you addressed my analysis, but rather used this as an opportunity to repeat the same points you've made elsewhere. Search results for abbreviations vs long names are always skewed exactly because abbreviations are used to ... be brief. The same holds for many topics (FBI, TSA, NFL - all redirects from abbreviations that you would find are also used far more often than the long names). Regardless, the reality is that if you were to ask the average person in America "What minority charity has the slogan 'A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste'?" that they will answer almost universally with the long name rather than the abbreviation. This is what WP:COMMONNAME means in practice. -- Netoholic @ 19:39, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support The shift to using the abbreviation over the full name appears to have been an explicit change back in 2008, as seen here and here. --tronvillain (talk) 17:39, 5 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I literally never heard of "UNCF" or "United Fund", but I have heard of the United Negro College Fund. It's simply not the WP:COMMONNAME and seems like a misguided attempt of censorship despite WP:NOTCENSORED.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 19:47, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A more controlled search analysis

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Here's a re-analysis of Google source search stats, from 2010, 2006, and (when available) 1995, to show the shift. For an "American society" topic like this, news sources tell us what our readers actually expect as the common name. This RM might end up being a no-consensus, but this data will be usable for a later one.

details stats
Overall
  • Google Ngrams: acronym usage shot up rapidly, overtaking the long name by 2006 [23]

N-gram data stops at 2008, but the trend began in early 2005 and has been sharp; however, there's some evidence (below) the acronym usage decreased in books but not other publishing from 2010.

Modern (ca. 2010 onward)

News, current (default Google News search from "News" tab after doing a general Google search). Acronym usage level has massively increased and stayed that way:

Books, 2010 onward: This is the only statistical blip in the whole batch; usage of the long name went back up a bit in book publishing. Unclear why.

Journals, 2010 onward: almost tied – probably to be expected, because journals are near-obsessive about organizational attribution). Acronym usage ratio has increased slowly.

2006 (when the acronym usage really started to take off, two years before the organization officially switched; also, as far back as Google News goes)

News, 2006 onward:

Books, 2006 onward:

Journals, 2006 onward:

1995 (perhaps as far back as we want to go for "modern" sources, and maybe even that's pushing it for something like this)

Books, 1995 onward:

Journals, 1995 onward:

News: the G'News archive doesn't go back beyond 2006 or so.

Search notes
Numbers vary a bit from day to day (by +/- 10% or more), and searches at G'Books seem to throttle (if you try to do all of these back-to-back, you may temporarily get results of only, say, 4 or 16 search hits and even an anti-bot captcha, but it will return to normal if you wait a few minutes – or just use a web proxy). Care has been taken to ensure SafeSearch is off, URLs are constructed the same between searches, extraneous parameters removed, and server returning normal results. Your exact numbers returned may also vary depending on location, whether you are logged into a Google account, and what your preferences are if so (e.g. the "Private Results" feature). Searches exclude keywords wikipedia and wiki to weed out regurgitation of our own stuff. For news, also excludes "Evening of Stars" to weed out UNFC's own TV show (this had little effect, and those cases actually count anyway). The "2006 onward" type of search is more useful for these purposes than trying something like "2006–2010", because our readers are still alive, and thus affected over time by their own earlier usage and that of what they were reading as well as what they see and hear today, plus it also smoothes over any weird blips in short time spans due to particular news events/controversies. Finally, the "UNCF" search term does not appear to produce many false positives; the string seems rarely used for anything else.
Conclusion

The acronym usage is stably dominant in news, rose sharply in book publishing then slacked off; and has been steadily but slowly increasing in journals.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  10:07, 7 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
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