Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Education in Canada/U&C Structure Proposal

Start of proposal

I've made a few tweeks here and there. Most of our articles don't even follow the structure at the other WikiProject. This may require a revamp of either the articles, or structure. Help is certainly needed here. Ardenn 19:52, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Can you please be more specific about what you see as the problems with the suggestions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities? (I'll concede on the fact that it's not very actively maintained.) In my opinion, their suggestions for article sections are useful for covering most situations. I see them really as just suggestions for helping build a well-rounded article, so I don't think it's especially problematic to deviate from them where appropriate. In a lot of cases, the main reason the Canadian colleges and universities don't match up with them is just that the articles are too short- not enough content for all the sections yet. On the other hand, articles like Athabasca University, for example, could probably benefit from a little reorganization as is suggested at the wikiproject.

BTW, what I think is wrong with the infobox that's at Athabasca University and why I favor Template:Infobox University is that it's much easier for everyone to understand and edit a template infobox than it is raw wikicode, and the article in general and box section in particular is much shorter. I think consistancy in appearance across university articles is a good thing. I also think Infobox University is more tastefully colored, though perhaps we shouldn't argue about that one. ; ) Cpastern 01:31, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

For the most part, I have no problem with the stuff at the Uni Project, except for the fact it's extremely inactive. It's so good that I want to use parts of it here. I agree many Canadian Uni articles are too short, and do need to be expanded.

Personally, I don't care for Template:Infobox University. It makes assumptions, and we have a mismash of templates. Some Canadian Universities, such as University of Ottawa have a Chancellor, OTOH, Athabasca University does not. So a template doesn't take that into account where you might have to change info. Also they lack character. It's a white box. Why not have a box that shows off the school's colours?

So why the structre proposal? I think we should be taking care of our own Uni and College articles. Ardenn 01:45, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

There has been discussion fairly recently at Infobox University (see Template talk:Infobox University#Polish University and the proposed Template talk:Infobox University#wiki-only table and cleanup) about allowing customized colors. I still personally disagree with it, since I think that while wikipedia's business may include saying what the school colors are, we don't have any need to show school spirit in our page design. . . regardless, I know there are others who agree with you and perhaps your opinion would be useful there. I also don't understand your specific problem with the infobox fields, since in the example you gave, Athabasca University would simply not use the chancellor field if it's not appropriate, while the president field that is needed is also available. Nearly all the fields in that infobox are optional. Are there maybe other fields that you're concerned would be missing in that infobox?

I'm still not sure I understand where you're planning to go with this particular project, but I'm interested to see your ideas as they develop. Cpastern 22:04, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

---

Several comments (from Stephane):

• Note that Athabasca U's infobox are the school colour -- this ties in with Cpastern's comment about how infoboxes should be standardized, and Ardenn's comment about how the infobox could show off the school colours. This could work: have a standardized infobox, but a certain section near the bottom, middle, top, wherever that discusses perhaps school spirit, teams, social activities, etc..., could be done in (optional) school colours. See the {{Infobox Education in Canada}} which actually can be completely colour customized, as in St. George's School (Vancouver). (Thank Usgnus for that handywork.)
• The start of the structure section (part of the cut-and-paste) applies to any good education article, not just universities. Quote:
  1. The article should start with a good introduction
  2. giving the full complete official name
  3. detail about location (in suburb, downtown, where?)
  4. affilation with any [other schools]
  5. Give other names for which the [school] may be known (e.g. UO, and bold them, too).
  6. Also, add a few facts about the [school] that make it unique.
• ...this could just as well describe an elementary school. Thus, I think we should abstract this out so it applies to school boards, schools, colleges, and universities, or we continue to link to it the way we do now as a "here is where you start reading to see how things are done, then read the rest of our project page to see how Canadian C&U supplement these general directions". Personally, I'd rather we link to it than include it ourselves. I'll describe my reason in the last paragraph at the bottom of my comment block.
• For those same reasons, since the entire structure section is more-or-less as described in the Universities project, I say in our U structure section we link to it with a note to readers describing what we're proposing.
• Note that the existing C&U project has a "National differences" section. I haven't spent any time browsing through it, but someone should to see if we can extract any other good ideas from people who have done this before us. (Then when we're ready we should also add a line in there to link back to our project in case Canadian editors end up there instead of here.)
• At least one of the Canadian universities has a subcategory of its own with the University actually broken down into multiple articles, one article per...don't know the word. If I remember correctly, there were separate articles for the engineers, for the business school, for the science school, etc. Is this something we want to do? Something to avoid? We should describe this in the structure section. (Hmmm...maybe that was a U.S. university I was looking through -- this was about 1 year ago, so I don't recall where I saw that.)
• Personally, I think there would be advantages to us having our own infobox based off the common university one. The infobox could be tailored for things specific to Canada -- for example, to handle CEGEPs as well as the normal English-language colleges and universities. This could be briefly discussed in the structure section, with further implementation and usage details in the "Template" section of the project.

<soapbox> When I re-wrote WP:EiC recently, I wanted specifically to ensure that the project could be used as a guide to someone who wants to write their first Wikipedia article. Therefore, I specifically cut out large "soft" sections that described things to do yet failed to give specific guidelines. Instead, I opted to focus on the facts that are needed to produce a relative stub article. Example: insert this template here, place logo here, name things like this. Don't mistake my intentions -- my goal was not to get every article looking the same. By providing specific guidelines as to what a basic article looks like, it then is very easy for people to come along and extend things however they want. This way we don't end up with 5-line stubbies with no references that are prone to misinformation and gradual article rot due to targeted vandalism. I don't know if you recall, but the previous WP:EiC was a huge long block of text with conflicting information about categories, templates, and glaring holes. I would like to ensure that the project continue to describe how to best start, structure, categorize, etc..., an article, whether it be an elementary school or a university.</soapbox>

As I told Ardenn earlier yesterday (on his talk page), in the process of trying to guide the project, there is a fine line between providing my opinion and suffering from WP:OWN. If I'm crosing the line, let me know and I'll back off!  :) --Stephane Charette 10:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

---

I checked that "National differences" section on Wikiproject Universities and was disappointed to find that there wasn't much there. It looks like we'd be pioneers in the field. As far as I know, the question of whether individual faculties or schools of universities need their own pages is also unaddressed in the broader university article scene. A lot of examples can be found on the list Ardenn pointed out earlier: List of law schools in Canada, which are all constituent parts of universities. I know I've also seen plenty of examples in American schools, and University of Szeged in Hungary also has separate articles for different faculties. As for infoboxes, I think we need to consider carefully whether we really need a new infobox. A lot of folks have been working hard on Infobox University to make it work for universities around the world, and a lot of national-customized infoboxes (Denmark, Peru, Hong Kong, Ireland, et al.) have been depopulated, deprecated, and deleted in favor of that infobox. If we find, for example, in the case of CEGEPs, that we really need something which is not already available, I think it likely that it could be incorporated into the existing box. Cpastern 22:04, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Infobox

Athabasca University

[[]]
Motto	Learning for Life
Type	Public
Established	1970
President	Dr Frits Pannekoek
Students	42,000
Location	Athabasca , Alberta , Canada
Campuses	Athabasca, Edmonton and Calgary
Colours	Blue and Green
Affiliations	ACU, AUCC
Website	http://www.athabascau.ca/

Athabasca University

[[]]
Motto	Learning for Life
Type	Public
Established	1970
President	Dr Frits Pannekoek
Students	42,000
Location	Athabasca , Alberta , Canada
Campuses	Athabasca, Edmonton and Calgary
Colours	Blue and Green
Affiliations	ACU, AUCC
Website	http://www.athabascau.ca/

Here is an example what is currently possible with custom colours, box width and font size. --Usgnus 15:19, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

See Athabasca University for reference.

1. I understand Cpastern's comment about other countries getting rid of their local infoboxes and converting to this one. In light of this, I retract my comment on having our own infobox.
2. I also understand how excessive or improper use of colour can detract from infoboxes, but I really like the example above that Usgnus put together. I'd definitely be in support of using the school colours in the infobox. --Stephane Charette 16:59, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I like the second box with the colours best, and I could support that one. Ardenn 16:44, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the text colors are confusing- hard to tell which are links, and four different shades of blue! But, I can support the second version too and I think it's a good compromise. Cpastern 21:15, 27 June 2006 (UTC)