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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (schools) reformed

I've reformed Wikipedia:Naming conventions (schools). It's a slightly different proposal based on more recent discussions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools. Miss Mondegreen talk  14:52, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Seals, shields, emblems

The common practice of using seals as the primary identity mark in university articles bothers me. Seals are frequently reserved for special uses like officially stamping transcripts and diplomas, not for mass consumption. Most universities have developed separate logos for identity purposes. Logos are usually simple, memorable, and incorporate the school's colors; seals often do not and thus lack power as an identity mark. There are exceptions, but for the most part I think we should start replacing seals with school logos at the top of articles. In many cases it may be difficult to justify including the seal at all due to copyright, trademark, or policy issues. Punctured Bicycle 07:09, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The logos will also have the exact same copyright problems attached to them. Additionally, many of the logos will often be more symbolic of the school's sports teams than of the school as a whole. Exceptions, such as the semi-official Fiat Slug logo used at the head of the UC Santa Cruz infobox, do exist, but none are really as powerful a symbol of the school as a whole as its seal, the de facto coat of arms. You'll note that the UC seal does appear in UCSC's infobox as well, but as part of the footer image. UC Berkeley and UCLA's do somewhat the same thing, but in the opposite order, with the seal at the top and the semi-official logo at the bottom.
A lot of the articles I've looked at lately incorporate both the seals and the less-formal logos into the infobox in some way. It's great to have both, but I think a serious encyclopedia article, if it is to include any symbols of the school at all, should make sure to at least include the "serious" symbol. --Dynaflow babble 07:43, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Separate "College" and "University" categories?

Should I create separate "College" and "University" categories or should I just group colleges in with the universities? Also, is there a formal way of determining if a specific place is a college or a university? --Abnn 12:42, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Current consensus is for universities and colleges to be grouped together for categorisation purposes (see, e.g., this discussion). There isn't a universal test to determine whether an institution is a college or a university. For the general pattern, see Category:Universities and colleges by country. — mholland (talk) 13:12, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick answer, it helps me figure out the best way to go about things. --Abnn 17:55, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
I do think it might be useful to have some way of distinguishing between universities and their constituent schools, e.g., between the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School. Perhaps someone with more skill than I could create a navbox or something for that? Esrever 02:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Are you talking about something like {{University of California, Santa Cruz}}, with the "mother article" as the headline and then the constituent colleges under a subheading, or have I totally misread what you're looking to do? If that's what you're looking for, I can whip you up a navbox in either that style or in the style of {{California State University}} in about ten or fifteen minutes ... less if you already have the would-be constituent articles already lined up someplace. --Dynaflow babble 02:19, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
On second look, there are enough articles that the navbox would end up looking more like either {{University of California, Berkeley}} or {{San Diego State University}} in terms of dimensions and the number of subheadings. --Dynaflow babble 02:31, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
D'oh, that should've said infobox. I was thinking of something to use for the individual schools of a university, like the UPenn and Wharton example, or Vanderbilt University and its College of Arts and Science. I don't know what fields one might add to distinguish the two; perhaps {{Infobox University}} is already sufficient in the way that I've sort of bastardized it at the CAS page. Esrever 02:46, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Heh, I've already started on a navbox for Penn because it seems to need one. I think what you're doing with that infobox is sufficient, except that you may want to ask at Template talk:Infobox University if the template's maintainers can program in a line for "Sponsoring institution" or something like that, or you can program it in yourself if you think you can do it without making the template explode or melt. Come to think of it, Carnegie Mellon West seems to be in need of something like that too. Hmm... --Dynaflow babble 03:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

College of...

Here is an articles about colleges of education that needs to find an appropriate category. Is there anything to the effect of "colleges within the university"? Thanks in advance for assistance. - Freechild 17:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

The article is already in Category:School types. You could move it to Category:Types of universities and colleges if you feel it would sit better there. If you're looking for something like Category:Academic divisions of a university, you won't find it. To be honest, I'm not sure that School of Education has much potential outside of "A School of Education is a division of a university that teaches Education." It' a bit like "A School of Physics is a division of a university that teaches physics". We're better off having an article on the discipline, Education, and separate articles/sections on individual schools of education etc. — mholland (talk) 17:51, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Polytechnic, Vocational education, Institute of technology

These currently commonly under Schools or Universities and the template does not fit either exactly. On the other hand there are some that have the Polytechnic in the name but that fit the University category eg Rensselaer_Polytechnic_Institute . A modified Infobox for these or perhaps more than one that would cover colleges of education too? Should this be a child project of WikiProject_Universities? Some examples for a small country are here:

Polytechnic#New Zealand, Vocational education#New Zealand, Institute of technology#New Zealand

TransControl 11:57, 20 May 2007

Hi there. Could you point out ways in which {{Infobox University}} is deficient in catering for the above types of institution? Are there specific fields you would like included in a possible new template, which are missing from the current box? — mholland (talk) 02:53, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

IIT GA/R

I have nominated Illinois Institute of Technology for WP:GA/R due to inadequate referencing. I hope the article gets the attention it deserves during this process to retain its quality rating. Please see discussions at Wikipedia:Good_article_review#Illinois Institute of Technology. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 17:11, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Should the Esalen Institute be considered a college?...

...And how would we define accreditation of an institution that doesn't grant degrees? This conversation needs new blood badly: Talk:List of unaccredited institutions of higher learning#Esalen Institute. The article in question falls under the purview of this project, and a third opinion will be more than welcome. --Dynaflow babble 20:35, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Campus buildings again

Has a guideline been developed for determining the notability of campus buildings, in particular residence halls and dormitories? I fail to see how most dorms would meet notability standards. While some buildings may be of architectural interest, most of the articles within Category:University_and_college_dormitories_in_the_United_States seem to me to be unworthy of standalone articles. At best, some of the information might be merged with the appropriate university article. However, I recognize that this is just my opinion, so I thought that I should bring it to the attention of the relevant WikiProject. Cheers, GentlemanGhost 18:07, 30 May 2007 (UTC)\

Greek Organizations

I notice some universities articles list which the Greek organizations are available on campus. Does listing them alone meet WP:N or is there some other guideline to go by? From the Project page it says

Sports, clubs, and traditions -- Mention the sports team(s) of the college/university and what is notable about them. Here is also a good place to mention specific traditions of the college/university, like students' union activities, a student newspaper, fraternities, regular activities, etc.

is just having fraternities make them notable? --Jerm (Talk/ Contrib) 18:46, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Bowling Green State University

If anyone has the time and interest, Bowling Green State University is in desperate need of significant editing, reorganization, cleanup, sourcing, and...well, nearly everything. It's in bad shape. --ElKevbo 08:33, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Patrick Henry College

I have just completed a review of this article, and am letting you know that I've listed it as being of GA standard. --Fritzpoll 07:41, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

What is the dang philosophy and or goal here?

I am troubled by the proposed rigidity of the standardization for entries on universities and colleges. One of the most useful and appealing things about the wiki is the the colorful and authentic descriptions that the authors of these entries often capture, not to mention the fun debates, and even the playful momenst of vandalism (just make vandals haev to use their real names) that ensue. Hamstringing these qualities seems to defeat the purpose and it does make the wiki less interesting, these entries more mindnumbingly boring and much less useful. The way the wiki is going in this area to judge from some of the entries that are most mighly rated is to crush out any sense of life or fun to be had in reading these entries--and people really do read them, and often to get a flavor of a place before deciding to invest in a closer look or egads the 150K or so it will cost for the next four years. What users can do BEST is capture that personality in an authentic way.

So I beg of you to loosen up here and make room for life, for fun, for personality--these are the qualities that make the wikpedia more interesting than any other "authortity" on any subject. It's not as if these places don't HAVE personalities, eh? Because if they all end up in the same dull numbling barren authoratativish hoohah, lordy lord please help us. (Wingnut99 15:39, 14 June 2007 (UTC)).

Well, I'll take a moment and respond. The dang philosophy or goal here is pretty similar to most other Wikiprojects: improving articles. I doubt anyone here would be restrictive if people have better ideas suited to particular institutions; I've yet to see a Wikiproject that's stubbornly restrictive and I don't think any of the articles have had the life crushed out of them. Color and personality of a campus will always shine through if it really exists. Even so, this is an online encyclopedia and not an admissions pamphlet, so keep that in mind. Thanks for your thoughts! =) --Midnightdreary 16:48, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Green rankings

The first ranking of UK universities on environmental criteria has been published: http://peopleandplanet.org/gogreen/greenleague2007. Might be worth a mention somewhere. Cordless Larry 10:50, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

University of Pittsburgh

Ummm... The top part of the article looks absolutely horrendous, in regards to the Infobox placement and the outrageously large picture there. I tried to fix it, but the same IP keeps formatting it that way. I don't want an edit war, but it looks terrible. Regards, Cool Bluetalk to me 12:40, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree. First, there are far too many images of the Cathedral of Learning - it's a gorgeous building but, really, it looks pretty much the same from all sides. I'd recommend a gallery because there are just so many images. I'm leaving a similar comment on that article's discussion page. --Midnightdreary 13:03, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

List of unaccredited institutions of higher learning

Please watch List of unaccredited institutions of higher learning and other related articles. This particular article has grown out of hand in the recent past and drastic action by a handful of editors has been necessary to begin pulling the article into shape. In particular, the list grew enormous with only a handful of citations making it not only an embarrassment but a potential liability as several inappropriate redirects point to this article. Those redirects are being discussed for deletion but that they were allowed to occur without a peep is shameful.

This particular article seems to be destined for another AFD in the near future but we must be much more careful when labeling institutions unaccredited or, even worse, diploma mills. Those are not synonymous and we must be lulled into thinking so or allowing our articles to reflect that kind of lazy and incorrect information. --ElKevbo 03:06, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

The article is now up for AfD. It is, indeed, stunning how out of control that list got. The only reason I can think of for preserving it would be as a case study in the perils of article ownership. --Dynaflow babble 04:35, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

List Question

I'm fairly new to this, so anyone with more Wikipedia experience feel free to speak up. If the point of Wikipedia is to be encyclopedic on some way, why are there list of alumni separate from the college/university articles? I suppose part of the question is: what is the purpose of these lists? Isn't that the point of our standardised Notable persons section? Do people really just say "hey I want to know every single person with or without a wikipedia article who went to such and such a university"? I feel that having a category of alumni makes sense, but not a list page. Thus, if you want to see a list, just go to the category. And those who truly are notable will be in the notables section of the university page. Furthermore, if someone wants to know if so and so went to said college/university, they should likely see that person on that university's page, or that university on that person's page, or some connexion via a category. It seems useless and superfluous (to me) to have these list articles. If it is determined to be a problem as I see it, it seems to be a rather large one, and would really be a big part of the project to clean up pages. Aepoutre 18:28, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that when you look at pages of universities that have a long history (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc) and/or major athletics or arts programs in addition to academic research (University of Michigan, Stanford, Duke University, etc.) it is difficult to strike a balance. Do you list all the MVPs of baseball, basketball, and football but not Olympians? Senators and Presidents but not Governors and Congressmen? Nobel Laureates but not Fields Medalists? Pulitzer Prizes but not Tony Awards? What about trade-offs between these groups? There is no standard for these sections. The point is that it is difficult enough to come up with a definitive line of notability for inclusion in the lists themselves, to say nothing of writing a concise section about the "notables" of an article as some lists would easily extend into the dozens. Every university has a different history, strengths, etc and it is far better to keep a separate list of these alumni than subjecting the main article to edit wars over who is or is not notable enough to 1. warrant inclusion on Wikipedia and 2. warrant inclusion on the main college/university page. Madcoverboy 18:58, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. You make a very good point (I went to a very small school). I would say that this problem of very long lists could solved by, say, an alumni category, which would automatically list all the wiki articles about those who are alumni of the school. Yet not everyone will have a wiki article, and it would be far too complex to distinguish just those without as featured on the main page while just adding the category to those with. I suppose that could be done, but that'd be even more complex than the implications of my first question. Agreed? Thanks again! Aepoutre 19:07, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

SUNY Purchase College

Speaking as a former student, the State University of New York at Purchase article is in pretty bad shape. It's full of unsourced statements, probably added by students and faculty for whom these are common knowledge, and even with my edits deleting some of the more blatantly biased statements, it reads a lot like a pamphlet from the school itself. I was hoping someone here who knows more about these things could look over the article and lend a hand. Several professors there reccomend the use of Wikipedia, I'd like to see that they aren't doing so in vain. Lucky number 49 22:21, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Project example template?

Greetings! I couldn't find anything by a quick glance through your project's page, but do you have anything like an example outline of how a page should be written, beyond the list of FA or good articles? I'm also wondering if anyone with a better understanding of the guidelines could take a look at the lists of student organizations and "notable" alumni at The Evergreen State College. An editor recently tagged those sections with {{notability}}, but I was under the impression that sections regarding the student orgs and notable alumni are, well, notable when in the context of the main page (except for larger universities that have their own list of notable alumni). Thanks! --Rkitko (talk) 01:47, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Celebration of an Centennial Anniversary 2007

templates

Can someone with more template experience than me add the nocat= functionality to the various project templates (Template:WikiProject Universities and Template:Cleanup-university)? This will prevent the Project's main page from showing up in the "universities articles needing cleanup" category and the like. I did it for the userbox template, but I don't want to screw up any of the "more serious" templates, if you will. Of course, if someone knows another way of achieving this functionality, that'd be great, too. Cheers! Esrever 20:24, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Naming conventions

I have raised an issue at the College Football Project with regards to naming patters. This discussion has not gone well. As that project can be seen as a subset of this project, perhaps some more input would be appreciated. I feel as if that project is using partisan tactics to address issues. Jmfangio| ►Chat  05:39, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Looks like a non-issue to me. If it's an American football team in America, it'll be referred to only as a football team, with a pipelink in the first line to American football. Naming conventions are based on the country viewpoint of the article (See WP:ENGVAR where it talks about "Strong national ties to a topic"... some great examples, Labour Party (UK) and Labor Party (United States)). That's not breaking NPOV, that's staying true (and encyclopedic) to the subject. --Midnightdreary 13:47, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Although there are American football teams at non American universities - see British Collegiate American Football League and the associated Category:British Collegiate American Football League teams. Timrollpickering 14:00, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

(Dons flame-proof vest) Actually, I think that many articles on individual college sports teams are thoroughgoing examples of non-notability and cruft, which should be merged into a single article about athletics/sports at Institution X. If that. I've read through Wikipedia:WikiProject College football/Notability, and apparently individual games of college football are notable if "Something truly whacky happened". As far as naming goes, I think I agree with Midnightdreary. — mholland (talk) 14:47, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree but that's a separate issue altogether. --ElKevbo 14:57, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Ha! Good point, Mholland. Oh, and good point to Timrollpickering, too. In those cases, the answer is still fairly clear, though. --Midnightdreary 15:08, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
AH - FINALLY - someone has provided a useful Guideline example that supports the current state- THANK YOU MidnightD!!! I read WP:ENGVAR while i was considering this and the problem is that i consider this a WP:D issue as much as I do anything else. These institutions have soccer teams and the the majority of the english speaking world equates the word football equivalent to "soccer" or "association football". What happens if the university is in another country?
With regards to the separation of certain articles: The University of Florida has a rich history in american football and basketball (amongst other things). There is no way to include those in one article, especially when there is a need to address other parts of their athletic department. That aside, I think Mholland is right that a lot of them are not notable. I'm inclined to continue this discussion here and not at WP:CFB as you guys seem to be much more impartial and have done a better job of asserting status quo than the people at WP:CFB. Jmfangio| ►Chat  15:28, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, you have to put yourself in WPCFB's shoes. To us, when you want us to label every article as "American football," its the same as wanting all English football articles to be changes to soccer. Sure most of the world, calls what we call soccer football. But we don't. As I said, that talk page is probably not a great play to get a consensus.↔NMajdan•talk 19:05, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't think the two are equivalent as soccer is not ambiguous. Calling the teams soccer teams is not going to create confusion. That being said, I do agree with you on that and I'll let it develop for a bit over there and move forward with an RFC if more valuable input doesn't occur. Jmfangio| ►Chat  22:00, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I am single handedly adding to my ulumni page of North East Wales Institute. It is currently classed as a start page howeverafter looking at other pages with the same class i think I am right in saying that considering it now has twice as much info on the page it should move up a class. Especially as i have seen many pages with the same class which are no where nr the quality of information of this one therefore i would like some feed back as to wether i should move it up to B class, also this institution is incredably inportant to the community it serves and to internation projects therefore I think it should be mid range or high on the importance scale. Plus if anybody would like to give me a nice star for my wonderful efforts feel free. Delighted eyes 16:32, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

"Pretty" Infoboxes

I'm not sure if this was discussed before, but I was wondering about the colorful, "school-spirited" infoboxes that have begun to appear, especially among Florida's universities, see Florida Atlantic University, University of South Florida, Florida State University (a GA), and one that is difficult to read, University of Florida. I think they are distracting and not very encyclopedic. It also makes them less consistant with the rest of the universities. When the infobox is updated, these universities will obviously not be updated.

Do other people think this should be reverted as well? --Aent 02:24, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I too think they should be changed to the "standard" infoboxes. I think the infoboxes that those articles use are cluttered and hard to read. Esrever 05:51, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
They should be standardised. Hard to read and some of the markup isn't cross-browser compatible. The technicolor navboxes are bad enough, but Infobox University is a widely-held standard. Unfortunately, there's a local consensus for the "school spirit" box. I think we should discuss this with those editors first. — mholland (talk) 16:06, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree that uniformity is fairly necessary for any encyclopedic entry. Aepoutre 23:08, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. The color of the title of the infobox (where it says the school name) could still be changed, but changing the entire infobox defeats the entire purpose of it. -- Noetic Sage 23:21, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Someone needs to add a link to here to all universities invloved because before they changed the box they probably established some consensus also. KnightLago
I did check, and the design was copied and introduced unilaterally on those articles [1][2][3][4][5], with one editor giving the edit summary "following suit". — mholland (talk) 16:31, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
While one person may have made the new boxes they were not done without some consensus or they would have been reverted. I talked to the person who originally changed the FAU article. And the new box has stayed on the page even though there are a number of different editors. So the people editing that article think it is fine. If you want to change them all back you had better at least notify everyone that you intend to change it or someone is simply going to revert you and claim that there is consensus to have them. I am just trying to save you from more hassle than is necessary. KnightLago 20:07, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
You are right, of course. I will leave a note on each talk page. — mholland (talk) 20:38, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree to the use of the standard infobox. Those look terrible.↔NMajdan•talk 21:34, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, please remove those non-standard and hideous tables (they're not infoboxes). While I applaud the initiative the execution proves that the idea just doesn't work. Readability must be an infinitely higher goal than display of school spirit in an encyclopedia. --ElKevbo 19:31, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Rather than wait for someone else to do this, I went ahead and made the changes myself. Please let me know if you object (since you haven't spoken up yet) or if I made any mistakes! --ElKevbo 19:52, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Thank you.↔NMajdan•talk 20:04, 3 August 2007 (UTC)


I think the primary format of the infobox should be maintained, but if some want to be creative we should let them be creative to the extent that it remains an infobox. The only stipulation is that the infobox should remain an infobox.
Rkowalke 20:17, 8 October 2007 (UTC)


University rankings (new, not improved)

Internationally, ARWU 2007 is out. In the UK, the Telegraph has published a new ranking: not in-house, but the first table in the Torygraph since 2003, I think. Editors may wish to push POV on their own alma mater update old rankings where they find them :) — mholland (talk) 14:06, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Should majors/programs have separate Wikipedia pages

There are many pages which describe a single major or program at an individual school. My belief is that, in itself, an individual major or program is not Notable. I came across a few of these pages and nominated them for deletion -- please comment there if you have input. I then found the larger list and thought we may need a broader standard. (If there's a better place to discuss this issue, please let me know). Guanxi 21:33, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I've got to agree with the concern. Some of these programs *may* merit coverage on the article about the respective school, but for the most part, I'm doubtful of their individual notability. FrozenPurpleCube 22:30, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
  • The fact that so many people have taken the time to write numerous articles of this type is good evidence that these articles have an audience and fill a need. We should work on improving them and making them useful resources for all the readers who are interested in such things. Johntex\talk 05:43, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
    • I wouldn't equate propensity to write with need/desire to read. I find it difficult to believe that many schools/colleges/department within universities that currently have their own articles fulfill the notability requirements, to say nothing of majors or programs within a school/college/department - it's simply too fine a level of detail to have any non-original research, NPOV coverage. It's the same issue as the oft-cited example of having individual articles for each Simpsons episode or Pokemon character. Call me a reductionist or exclusionist, but the preponderance of these school/college/department stub articles that say nothing more than "The School of Something is one of n schools at Somewhere University" followed by uncited and unverifiable claims of prestige, exclusivity, or quality and a list of previous administrators is information that could easily be condensed into a single article/list. And were such entries in a list juxtaposed with each other, the laughable nature of their content would all the more readily obvious. I broadly support merging school/college/department level entities into lists and support the deletion of any academic projects/groups/entities at any finer level of detail. Madcoverboy 06:10, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
    • While interesting, those are not the standards for inclusion in Wikipedia. Guanxi 14:18, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
    • The propensity of people to write about a given thing is only evidence of their personnel interests, not an indication of actual notability of encyclopedic nature of anything they write about. I've found articles on rowing teams at colleges. Sorry, but I just can't see including them as viable. For another example, take the recent spate of "In popular culture" articles being deleted. I've got some concerns about how that's been done, but it's generally not been persuasive to folks that the articles exist. So they exist. Big deal. The monkeys put a lot of things on their typewriters, not all deserves preservation. FrozenPurpleCube 16:07, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
  • As for genuine academic departments, some can be very notable--and some things called programs are in fact departments. I doubt many undergraduate departments will be but the major departments in the most prestigious research universities have a life of their own, and even academic articles are written about them in an increasing number of cases. An example of the level needed is he article on the Department of mathematics at Cambridge University; there probably are 5 or 6 other departments in the subject that should have them also--but surely not all 200 or so phd-granting departments, and certainly not the thousands that give BA degrees. But anything less than that, should be very strongly discouraged. There will be exceptions-- eg Oxford PPE. I wouldnt like to say anything absolutely can not ever ever be an article. DGG (talk) 06:35, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
  • As someone who spent a few hours of my life yesterday writing out stub articles so as not to have so many redlinks in UCR's associated template and infoboxen, I must say I heartily agree with Madcoverboy's sentiment. I am cringing at the thought of finishing out that last one on the School of Education, which is so non-notable in itself I don't think it particularly needs a presence on the web. However, off-setting specialized content into collateral articles, as a general idea, is one way of keeping the main parent article less cluttered and overly detailed. That is about all I can say in defense of the concept. Ameriquedialectics 06:40, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
I think better judgment should win out here. I would suggest that most individual academic departments are not notable but, perhaps, others certainly would deserve their own article (the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard seems to be a good example). A lot of law schools also tend to operate as completely separate entities from the college proper so a separate article may be called for in those situations as well. But, like Amerique says, if you're cringing at the thought of putting in the work of creating a full article, that's probably a sign to let it go. :) --Midnightdreary 14:12, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree: this must be judged on a case-by-case basis. Many departments or programs are not notable but there are obviously many exceptions. For example, we would be remiss not have an article about the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago but we would be foolish to try to write articles about every sociology department at every institution. --ElKevbo 14:19, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Obviously (begin American bias) Law at Yale, Business at Harvard, Economics at Chicago, Medicine at Johns Hopkins, International Relations at Georgetown, Science at Caltech, Engineering at MIT, Journalism at Northwestern will and should warrant substantial independent articles as these have historically influenced their fields through faculty scholarship and alumni productivity, not just been favorably ranked one year by some magazine. Nevertheless, the vast majority of departments within the prestigious institutions of the Association of American Universities wouldn't warrant such coverage. Fold departments, labs, and centers into their parent school/college's article.Madcoverboy 05:13, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
things vary: Unfortunately -- unfortunately in every possible respect, in my personal opinion--the secret societies in the Ivies and their imitators have been of historical and present great economic and social importance. More fortunately, the debate teams are significant at the colleges where t hey are strongest--they have a smaller audience than the football teams, but the intrinsic importance might be similar. Even better, some radio stations, and many newspapers, have been and are significant in their regions and in some cases nationally. The problem is that there are a great many universities, and everyone thinks their own to be truly important in the world at large. I've noticed that some of the most generally recognized elite universities have relatively underdeveloped sets of pages considering their probably undoubted importance--as two of mine fall in that category, I like to think its because their graduates have better or at least more conventional things to do than contribute here.
and a special consideration--colleges have PR staffs, and they slowly have come to the realization that perhaps they should transcribe their web sites here. when I see this I try to work with them individually--some of them can be taught how to do it usefully and appropriately, by entering the correct basic skeleton and leaving out the propaganda. Some can't or won't. I've learned not to advise them just to get GFDL licensing, because I have yet to see such pages that do not have to be totally rewritten to make it encyclopedic. But it can be very useful to ask them to license the photos. If anyone needs help with this part, just ask. DGG (talk) 04:53, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
I can relate to being the sole soul holding back the flood of crap on what should be busy MIT articles; supposedly we know a thing or two about computers and open source. Likewise, I nominated Princeton for WP:GAR after several rounds of editing and failing to cut through the accumulated cruft, and not a peep was heard as it was delisted. Moving on...
Astroturfing is definitely a problem, but its also easy to spot when you have (1) new or anonymous editors (2) posting large chunks (3) of high-quality text (4) with a poor understanding of style guidelines.
I'd say that most radio stations and newspapers meet their local notability requirements (i.e., WP:WPRS and WP:JOURN respectively). However, I am seeing a preponderance of articles on overwhelmingly non-notable articles on ephemeral acapella groups, dance troupes, sports fan clubs, etc. that all should be rolled up into a Traditions and student activities of Somewhere University and made to compete for space with their self-referential citations and blatant boosterism. Madcoverboy 05:13, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

How many university subpages?

This builds off of the discussion above about separate articles for majors/programs, but how many subpages should a university have? One sees a proliferation of pages on non-notable student governments, dormitories, clubs, traditions, and other "cruft" — just click on almost any template in States education navigational boxes. Many of these are red-lined as a result of mergers and AfDs, but my point is not that we should cleanup the nav boxes, rather that we need to broadly examine and establish some criteria for what type of content is appropriate enough to warrant separate articles.

Call me a m:reductionistmergist, but the vast majority of these college cruft subarticles will never meet notability, NPOV, and NOR requirements. Nevertheless, universities are large, complex organizations that can't be adequately addressed in summary style so a balance has to be struck between the propagation of stubby and ultimately abandoned subarticles of low quality and a monolithic page that cannot adequately address notable features of a university.

Using the established WP:UNI structure (History, Campus, Organization, Students and faculty, sports clubs traditions, noted people) its fairly obvious that each of these could be justifiably be broken out into a sub-articles and lists. But what of separate articles on fight songs, mascots, individual buildings (dormitories, stadiums, nuclear reactors, libraries, "old" buildings, affiliated R&D campuses), sports fan clubs, student governments, newspapers, student groups, etc.? Should these each be broken out into separate articles or should they be compiled into lists or "master subarticles"?

Obviously I'm of the latter opinion. Traditions of Texas A&M University is a good example where many aspects of student culture and traditions are covered in a "master subarticle" and those of sufficient notability are given subarticles. (However, A&M still has a number of stubby articles that likely don't warrant subarticles below "Traditions" like Reed Rowdies, Student Government Association at Texas A&M University, Gig 'em Aggies, Midnight Yell Practice.) Likewise, List of MIT undergraduate dormitories represents an article/list that will never branch out into subarticles since no one constituent member has any notability/importance, but nevertheless, taken together, has encyclopedic value. On the other hand, Ohio Wesleyan University PhD productivity strikes me as a topic that is far too specific (and likely represents the manifestation of a meme from an admissions pamphlet) and would be better folded into History of Ohio Wesleyan University.

What I would recommend is that first, every university initially limit itself and indeed condense its various subarticles into these "master subarticles"

Second, once organized into these master subarticles, the determination could then be made whether or not a topic is sufficiently important to warrant its own, separate subarticle. (Obvious the Aggie marching band would likely warrant a subarticle, whereas the MIT marching band wouldn't, and so on.)

I believe the advantage of this is that it generally overcomes the issue of notability/importance by aggregation, prevents stubby and abandoned articles, focuses editors talents and attention on fewer, higher-quality articles, encourages standardization of style, reduces cruft introduced just to "fill" a page, and makes boosterism and other blatant pamphlet-isms more blatantly obvious. Let me know what you think. Madcoverboy 18:32, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I think that categorical list sounds really good as a broad directive. I am more or less already developing UCR's sub-article content along those lines, to the extent I can find good references. Ameriquedialectics 21:38, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Notability aside, I think it's a great idea to set standard precedents for these types of forked articles. Once a really good article of the like is established, people might go to it for an unofficial naming convention. Nice idea. --Midnightdreary 01:22, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd agree but a word of caution that structures and notability are different in different countires - for example on the notability side in the UK students' unions (the nearest to "student government") are generally more notable than university sport (which is rarely run by the institution but by the students themselves). On the structure side "school" is generally an alternative term for "department" at the subject specific level (although there are exceptions) and there's a lot of debate over which departments are individually notable - medical schools seem to be (often having a stand alone identity and history) but I really don't see that my various Schools of History are notable enough to warrant articles on them. Timrollpickering 11:27, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
just discussing the US, the real problem is not standardization, but deciding how far down to go. As one relatively simple case, how many individual sports teams should be listed? The local patriots will want every last one of them at every college. As a more complicated situation, what buildings get listed? Some university projects have tried to list every last one of them, administrative services buildings and all. its with details like this that the problems will arise.
In a spate of psuedo-OCD a week or so ago, I tried to create a list of all the named Northwestern University buildings and, as anyone can see, it's fairly obvious that because of the size of list it is hugely onerous to create and maintain. How to balance comprehensiveness and notability/importance? Some criteria might include those buildings which naming rights have been sold, buildings which are centers for gatherings or displays larger than lectures, buildings which have a corresponding WikiProject (museum, stadium), and historic buildings.Madcoverboy 12:23, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

To show a degree of good faith, perhaps all of the over specific Aggie article mentioned above should be combined into more general ones. Alternatively, failing that, they should be nominated for deletion as a test to see where the consensus lies. DGG (talk) 04:07, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I would support nominating the aforementioned articles to be merged into Traditions of Texas A&M University, but won't be the first to move; I don't want to overspend my wiki-social-capital after I just made analogous nominations for a spate of MIT-related stubs and non-notable articles. Madcoverboy 12:23, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Questions for other editors regarding Georgetown University

As an editor of the Georgetown University article, I have a few quick questions for other editors, that I would love some feedback on.

  1. Should a history section be broken into subsections? Even if a subsection is just a single paragraph?
  2. How many alumni should we list by name?
  3. Should we try to keep the Events section?
  4. Should there be a new, separate section on Jesuits? Many articles make a big deal about student life (as students tend to be primary editors), but I can't find an article that deals with a religious order that is hosted on the campus. Boston College does have a Jesuit-Catholic tradition section, but otherwise this is unique to Georgetown.

Any thoughts at all are appreciated!--Patrick 20:28, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

  1. Should a history section be broken into subsections? Even if a subsection is just a single paragraph?
  • If the section is particularly lengthy, I think this is a good idea. So long as the subsections are coherent.
  1. How many alumni should we list by name?
  • No more than 5... ha, ha, ha! I don't have an opinion. But I would keep it as short as possible without pissing off too many alumni.
  1. Should we try to keep the Events section?
  • I think the first paragraph is ok... the second paragraph on speakers may be a bit crufty
  1. Should there be a new, separate section on Jesuits?
  • If you have the sources for it, go for it. It also may be integrated into history. governance or administration, also, would seem a likely place for it, that doesn't seem to be currently addressed in this article. Ameriquedialectics 17:59, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
alumni--usually this is not appropriate in the main article except for a very few of the most famous--a separate article, usually titled something like X University people is the way to go. And in such an article anyone with a WP article is appropriate. Those without are not. That sems to be the usual distinction.DGG (talk) 08:28, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

2008 US News rankings

To those who haven't checked it out yet, the 2008 US News rankings have been published. BlueAg09 (Talk) 23:08, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Brigham Young University review request

I'm wondering if I can get a larger body of opinions on this article. I'm determined to get it to GA status. Please look over it and let us know how we can make it better. I'd post this at peer review, but it takes months to get any replies there nowadays. Thanks. Wrad 03:29, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

the future?

Okay, as of about 30 minutes ago, there are officially no unassessed universities articles. Every single page that's been tagged with {{WikiProject Universities}} has been given a class rating. As you can see from the project's front page, there are 18 Featured Articles, 3 A-Class articles, and 36 Good Articles. It occurs to me that a worthwhile goal for this project might be to go about improving these top articles (i.e., improving the A's to FA and the GA's to A). Is anyone interested in perhaps pooling our collective resources and going after one of these articles every week or other week so that we can improve the lot? Esrever 05:20, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

MIT mergers

It has been proposed to merge a number of departments and laboratories at MIT, see Wikipedia:Proposed_mergers#August_2007 for a list--the discussions are linked from there. I have strong objections. I certainly agree that in general we should not have articles on individual university departments. But sometimes we should. And singularly distinguished departments such as some of those in this group, --some of the best in the world, at a university that is also one of the best in the world, seems the ones where we should. I would in fact think that for universities of the stature of MIT, many of the departments would be considered notable. We obviously need to discuss the point in general, or it will be a long battle, university by university.

I think the concept wanted is "world-class", but I think the criteria to be taken into account need discussion. Attacking individual sets of articles may not be the way to do it. Incidentally, notability is permanent, so if a department ever was notable, it remains so. I also note that probably every or almost every present or past full professor at MIT and similar research universities have published sufficiently important work that they would be held notable at WP:AFD under the provisions of WP:PROF. And that notable alumni is universally defined in WP education articles as alumni with WP articles. There should thus me no shortage of material. In my experience, futhermore, a great many such departments do have independently published 3rd party sources discussing them--it's become a major area for the study of the history and sociology of science. DGG (talk) 09:18, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
(from my talk) It's not a matter of removing the articles, but redirecting and reincorporating the articles. Coverage of the topics is spotty; I believe a central page might facilitate standardization of structure, coverage, etc until such time that an article could stand on its own without being an indiscriminate list of information/faculty, orphaned/abandoned, or stubby. I certainly agree that many of the MIT departments meet notability requirements to be included within wikipedia, but much works needs to be done to establish why MIT EECS, Mathematics, Economics, Biology, etc. merit their own articles over any of the other similarly notable departments.
In short, redirects are cheap until such time as the article-editing community develops a critical mass. Unfortunately for some reason, editor shortages seem to be endemic to historically notable universities (Ivy League, MIT, Stanford, UChicago, etc.) while there are thriving editor communities among less-notable universities and colleges (Texas A&M, Ohio Wesleyan, Georgia Tech, Michigan State, etc.) -- in the case of MIT and its role in GNU/GPL call it irony, elsewhere call it karma. :) My merge proposals are utilitarian attempts to concentrate efforts among disparate editors rather than wasting time on maintaining "WikiProject MIT" guidelines that no lay editor will pay attention to. When a passing editor attempting to boost the Chemistry department has to come to terms with what a Physics editor has already contributed, one might hope that competition among the disciplines breeds improvement. Madcoverboy 14:37, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I applaud the initiative demonstrated in starting this discussion but I can not support the proposed mergers as an entire group. I would almost certainly support many of them but I don't think it's appropriate to lump all of them together in one discussion. They need to be considered in smaller units and many likely require a case-by-case analysis and discussion. I will, as time permits, comment on each proposed merger. --ElKevbo 19:43, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I further opine that the number of proposed mergers requires a more organized system for discussion than the (lack of) one currently in use. I would go farther and recommend that the proposed mergers all be backed off except for a handful - 2 or 3 - that can be managed at the same time rather than the overwhelming number currently proposed. I don't see a need to rush into these mergers. --ElKevbo 19:46, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
"less-notable universities and colleges (Texas A&M..." There's a landmine there...
But seriously, I have no problem with separate articles for these departments as long as there is sufficient breadth covered in an appropriate depth. If you have articles that sound more like boosterism, they can probably be consolidated into the main University/College page and dramatically reduced in size. Specific instances should be considered individually. An article about the Theater Arts Department at Texas A&M could easily produce lots of facts and cited references and could even be lengthy, but it isn't particularly notable. Whereas individual units of Texas A&M's Corps of Cadets are Featured Articles with a storied history (I am using subject material I know only as examples). In short, Colleges of universities seem fine as separate articles, since they cover a wide range of details, but departments and degree programs generally shouldn't unless they are of particular note. — BQZip01 — talk 20:02, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm sure this can be debated endlessly. I certainly agree that departments, programs, social organizations, individual buildings, etc. shouldn't be granted their own articles unless they are of particular note. The question is, of course, how is that notability determined? I would argue that a lot of individual departments at (to go with the example) MIT are quite notable, but that notability is not granted to the individual department but to the institution as a whole. MIT's notability is based on its solid academic programs, so that is what establishes the purpose of the main article. Beyond that, most of those departments, no matter who corporations are sponsoring research or which professors/students are doing breakthrough research, will never be more than a stub class. Oh, and don't forget your NPOV in suggesting they are the best (fill in the blank) in the world. =) I feel I'm rambling incoherently but I think I made a point somewhere... --Midnightdreary 21:28, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

The question we need to be getting at is not whether or not these topics meet the notability requirements, but rather, what is the best way to go about expanding these articles? Is it better to have a monolithic page including many of the departments and those with substantial content can be spun off, or should each department start with individual pages and allow these pages to develop in a more piecemeal fashion? Madcoverboy 00:49, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

1) It has to be looked at case-by-case. 2) This is part of a general problem: Wikipedia does not have any very good structure or mechanism for dealing with topics comparable in size to Encyclopædia Britannica "Macropædia" articles. It's basically a hypertrophied Micropædia.

Taking a very quick glance, I would certainly concur with merging "Student groups: Tim the Beaver, Time Traveler Convention, MIT Symphony Orchestra, MIT Mystery Hunt, MIT IDEAS Competition, MIT Enterprise Forum, MIT Monarch B, MIT Technology Insider, 6.370 (MIT), MIT Wind Ensemble, MIT Energy Club, MIT Logarhythms, Resonance (MIT) and Chorallaries to Traditions and student activities at MIT." I don't think any of these have much importance outside the Boston area, if that. We're not talking about organizations comparable to the Yale Whiffenpoofs or the Harvard Lampoon or the Polytechnic Question Society.

Most of the individual department articles look rather puffed up and boosterish to me. The MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department has a IMHO an interesting Notable alumni section. Apart from that, it's just material that could be obtained easily, and continously up-to-date, from MIT's own website. The departments and labs that seem offhand to me to have some genuine historical, cultural, or national importance would be the Radiation Laboratory, the Research Laboratory of Electronics, the Department of Economics, the (former, I think) Department of Naval Architecture. There are probably others equally worthy. (Under which lab's auspices did the time-sharing and AI projects begin? RLE, I think) (Actually, I suspect "Building 20" is probably a more important "category" than the any organization-chart names of "laboratories.")

Apart from a list of faculty (inappropriate) and notable alumni (decent but unreferenced; please remember that Wikipedia articles are not reliable sources for other articles), the only "factual" content in MIT Mathematics Department Department of Mathematics at MIT is one of the leading mathematics departments in the world." Well, that's vacuously true, since who knows what "one of the leading" means. But why stop there? Why not throw in "top-notch" and "world-class" and (of course) "prestigious?"

Just my $0.02. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:21, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Queen's University, Belfast

At the above artice, there is some disagreement over the use of the Irish name for this university in the "native name" field of the infobox; wider opinions are sought. The most recent discussions can be found here --Mark H Wilkinson (t, c) 06:29, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

  • Also welcome are comments on the usage of the Irish name of the university (in the articles introduction, i.e. other than in the infobox) in Northern Irish articles. Djegan 22:30, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Logo of the University of London

Suggestions please, re this thread at Talk:University of London. Looks to me like a routine, spurious objection by a copyright owner, but I'd like to make sure that we're agreed on the logo's use per WP:NFCC. Does the logo add more than the picture of Senate House I've replaced it with? It's not a very widely-used logo, because the University of London is a federation, and each (much better-known and more comprehensively-branded) college has it's own logo.

If someone better-versed would also volunteer to draft a nice explanatory message to the copyright holder, that would be useful. WP:LOGO appears to say we should just put the logo up and wait for UoL to remove it themselves, which seems a little unnecessary to me. Thanks, all. — mholland (talk) 23:03, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Halls of residence AfD

Several University College London halls of residence are up for deletion - you may wish to contribute at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Schafer House. Paulbrock 17:19, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I commented there to the effect that as a general practice combination articles were the way to go unless it was an historic building. (this is similar to the treatment of individual fraternity chapters) DGG (talk) 19:25, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Recognition for participants

Hey all! I figured if we want to be a legit WP we should probably have our own barnstar. WikiProject Video games has a basic image (to the left), and we could use the graduation cap logo we have on everything. I'm just wondering what others think about this and if someone wants to design it! --Noetic Sage 04:49, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I created a Barnstar and added it to the main project page. Check it out and start using it! -- Noetic Sage 02:25, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Student Affairs

I'm trying to create an offshoot of this WikiProject for Student Affairs-related articles. I have noticed a large absence of these types of articles on Wikipedia. If you're interested, post here so I can judge if I should put in a request to start this WikiProject or not. Thanks! -- Noetic Sage 23:13, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I think you need to define its scope first. Will it only include stuff related to Student Affairs or will it also cover Halls of residence, Student Unions, etc.? Right now I see the possibility of a task force of this WikiProject, but it may well be that what you want does not even need that and you could just work within this Project. --Bduke 23:38, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I do think such a project would be valuable but agree that it needs appropriate scope. I'm encouraged by Noeticsage's interest in this potential WikiProject. Student affairs is notoriously ill-defined here on WP and elsewhere. The current Student Affairs article, for instance, addresses such as merely a university-level administrative position or department, which is a narrow and overly simplistic description of Student Affairs. I'd emphasize bringing in a broader focus on student-directed and student-focused organizations both within and beyond university administration and emphasize advocacy and activity that transcends the individual University articles themselves. WikiProject Universities' scope is defined as structuring university and college articles. Apologizing for the following being of an overly-Canadian perspective (I work as staff in Student Affairs in Canada at a Students' Union) the Canadian Alliance of Students Associations is a pan-Canadian, multi-university federal student organization, as is the Canadian Federation of Students. Further examples: multiple unions share health and benefits plans for students between Universities, lobbying exists within disparate groups at Universities themselves -- the various student affairs experiences at Concordia since the start of this century alone deserve particular attention and demonstrate what is perhaps a lacking in this area on Wikipedia -- and increasing competition between OECD universities and colleges have resulted in a great deal of innovation and uniqueness between schools and student affairs programs -- admin-led and student-led. Additionally, governments themselves are getting independently or cooperatively involved in student affairs (in Canada, at least) with regional and provincial health authorities, particularly on anti-tobacco and alcohol/sex/STD/debt awareness campaigns that involve multiple stakeholders in and out of Universities.
I believe this is something that requires its own WikiProject, but recognize it is GREATLY dependent on the interest of participants for its success. It would be ill-advised to start such a thing and let it wallow and stagnate. With support, striking out alone would be great. Without, a smaller focused task-force might be more appropriate so as to not have to deal with some of the larger infrastructure and organizational issues of a Wikiproject until additional Wikipedians get on-board. TheArcologist 07:16, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
As a former student affairs administrator myself, I'm curious to see where this goes but don't necessarily want to offer my support (to be honest, no offense meant). Some suggestions: Why a full WikiProject and not just a task force relating to this Wikiproject? Also, consider dropping a line at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals. Best of luck. --Midnightdreary 14:01, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
As I said on my Talk page and others have already said here: There is a need to work on many of the topics traditionally associated with student affairs but I don't think there is enough of a critical mass here to sustain a separate project. In fact, I remember at least one attempt from not too long ago in which such a project was proposed but was not created due to a lack of interest.
I again recommend trying to focus energies on a few select articles to improve them as both a immediately useful attempt to address the quality of articles and to gauge the interest and energy levels of editors. I would suggest focusing on the main student affairs article and student development theory. --ElKevbo 17:41, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Alright, I think the consensus is that we'll create a Student Affairs Task Force for this WikiProject and see where it goes. I will set it up and get everyone the information. I think ELKevbo is right and we should concentrate on some of those basic articles first and then expand. -- Noetic Sage 21:49, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The Student Affairs task force has been created. Please join so we can start improving Student Affairs articles! -- Noetic Sage 22:22, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Message Board

Feel free to add anything you think might be of interest.

List of universities in india

There is a major problem here - not with the list itself but with the individual articles themselves - even a cursory glance shows that many are nothing more than adverts, I'm going to attempt clean-up but it's a big job for one man alone - please pile in! --Fredrick day 23:47, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

List of colleges and universities in Vermont

I've totally rewritten this list, with hopes of getting it up to featured list status. I'd like it to be a good template for the other by-state college lists, which are pretty skeletal right now. Any improvements or comments on the talk page are welcome. Toohool 19:28, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

University guidelines

I suggest we create specific guidelines for University articles. We already have a structure that we want all university articles to have, but if we could provide more specifics and move the structure section to the article guidelines page (which hasn't been created yet), that would be excellent. Many WikiProjects have their own guidelines, so I suggest we get going and start one of our own! -- Noetic Sage 18:38, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I am particularly concerned with the proliferation of subarticles for University schools or departments, and think we need some guidelines to establish that they get written in proportion to importance. DGG (talk) 20:18, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Some of the University schools or departments article are still tagged by {{subst:merge}} template. We need proper guidelines to establish their importance.--NAHID 22:25, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
And it's not just the departments - the issue of whether students' unions are notable or not has never really been settled. This seems to be particularly problematic because of different perspectives in different countries and especially when terms like "student organisation" are thrown about, when current Wikipedia use of that redirect sends it to a page that doesn't encompass students' unions!
Individual ones have been put up for AFD but these are not a good place to thrash this one out as a) people demanding "external sources proving notability" for the individual SU in question is confusing the "inherently notable matter"; b) too often most people working on the articles only see the demand when the AFD has been initiated and such formal processes are a disincentive to make the effort in the limited window of time available and c) other pages on SUs are not getting put up for AFD so confusing people as to whether they are or aren't - yes WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS isn't the best of argument but that rejoinder gets overused and doesn't address the general question. Timrollpickering 22:46, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree this is something we should write a guideline about. Featured university articles such as Michigan State University could serve as examples. That particular university (which is also part of a featured topic) features the following break-off articles: Campus of Michigan State University, History of Michigan State University, Michigan State University academics, Michigan State University Libraries, Michigan State Spartans, Michigan State Spartans football, Michigan State Spartans men's basketball, and lists such as List of Michigan State University people and List of Michigan State Spartans championships. I have also seen (and been a part of) "X in popular culture" articles, which are usually very low quality (See Yale in popular culture). Perhaps we should urge contributors to integrate or remove that type of information (usually indiscriminate lists) from Wikipedia altogether? It seems that the other articles spawned from MSU are acceptable and notable, although it's hard to determine if every university should have its own campus page.
We should come to a standard for student union pages and maybe these popular culture pages and systematically go through each one and AfD all of them. That way there is a standard and people won't get confused and use WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. -- Noetic Sage 23:57, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
All right people, I crafted some sort of article guidelines. So please check them out and comment on the talk page there. Hopefully we can get these stamped out for future excellence!!—Noetic Sage 23:01, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

William & Mary image

Can we please get some neutral editors to monitor and weigh in at The College of William & Mary? Some editors insist on placing an image on the article at the very top and on the left. I've provided incontrovertible evidence that that placement screws up the TOC and first section for some readers but the image continues to be moved because "it looks better" to those other editors. --ElKevbo 11:59, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Florida Atlantic University

I'm having Florida Atlantic University undergo peer review before taking it to WP:FAC. Please review the article here and offer advice/suggestions.

Thanks, KnightLago 20:51, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Requesting assessment for Panjab University article

Hi! The article on Panjab University, Chandigarh is currently rated as stub class. I think it at least qualifies as start-class. Can someone please assess it and make suggestions. Many thanks! Amit@Talk 17:19, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Looking over the article, it could probably barely qualify for start-class. The only things that have changed since the last assessment (Sept. 25, 2007) are a few added wikilinks, some rewording, and one reference. Article class doesn't really matter until it's a good article. I'm a bit reluctant to change the rating as of yet, unless one or two more people believe it is start-class. However, what should be important to you is improving the article in accordance with our proposed article guidelines. The article still needs a lot of work, and changing the class isn't going to affect that as of yet.—Noetic Sage 19:37, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I guess I'll have to try to make it better. Probably also travel to Chandigarh to get some pictures of the university :-/ Amit@Talk 13:11, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Uniform template format

It is easy for a University's main template to become very large as it includes a vast majority of articles relating to that University. Several months ago, I began recoding several template to all be one similar, smaller format. Some of the ones I have recoded include {{University of Oklahoma}}, {{Oklahoma State University}}, {{University of Texas at Austin}}, {{University of Michigan}}, {{Ohio State University}}, and maybe a few others. They have been warmly received and somebody else has copied this format for {{East Carolina University}}. The great thing about this template is it separates the various articles into groups and then hides them. But, with a parameter call, the group the current article belongs to will be shown. For instance, check out Oklahoma Sooners football. All the groups are hidden, except for the Athletics group that contains articles relevant to the one currently loaded.

These templates are kind of complex, so I decided to create a template to allow them to be created easier. The new template is located at {{Navigation with collapsible groups}}. So far, the only template I've implemented this on is {{University of Oklahoma}}. I hope to convert the other templates I've created to this base template in the comings weeks. But feel free to use it yourself. If you notice any bugs, please let me know.↔NMajdan•talk 19:03, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Looks great! I would prose adding the v-d-e template to the header of the template. I believe this is the template for that: {{tnavbar-collapsible}}
Yeah, I want to add those two, but I hate the way it throws the title off center. Those vde characters take up about 20 pixels or so of space which then pushes the title over that much. If I can figure out a way to have those but keep the title centered as if they weren't there, I'd be all over it. I'll keep working at it. Glad you like it.↔NMajdan•talk 20:09, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I found a template that added those links, but it messes up the custom color for the header. This is a bug with the template. I can't find the issue, so I've brought it up at WP:VPT so hopefully somebody will handle it soon.↔NMajdan•talk 20:26, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

US News endowment figures

Just out of curiousity, have any of you noticed marked discrepancies between recent US News endowment figures and endowment figures made available by respective university publications? There was some discussion of what seems to be overreporting by over 400% at Talk:University of California, Irvine#Endowment again, followed by a system-wide removal of the US News figures from all UC campus articles, which all seemed to have been misreported to various extents. I was wondering if this misreporting seemed consistent across all university articles, or if anyone can explain what US News seems to be measuring here. Ameriquedialectics 22:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Student groups article up for deletion

Hey everyone. I should have posted this earlier, but the article on Dartmouth College student groups is up for deletion and discussion ends tomorrow. As Dartmouth College is a featured article, the result of this vote will probably set precedent for our proposed article guidelines. It'd be nice to get opinions from other participants in our WikiProject. Discuss here.—Noetic Sage 15:20, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Outreach Banner

Just made a banner... I didn't know what size you guys wanted it. But when I searched for Wikipedia:Banners, most of the banners were around 468x100 or 468x165, so I made one similar size... (I round to the nearest "25".) Let me know what you think. Banner located on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities/Outreach Thanks. Jameson L. Tai 22:17, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ads

Do we need a banner for Wikipedia Ads? Template:Wikipedia ads#Current ads has the information on how to ad WP:UNIV into the ads. The gif needs to be 468x60px.
Some guidelines I pasted from their page in case someone else wants to take on the job of creating one. - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 01:13, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
"If you wish to create ads yourself, you are welcome to do so. In order that the template works properly, however, please ensure that the image is:
* In GIF (multi-frame) or PNG (single-frame) format.
* 468 pixels wide by 60 high.
* Named in the format Image:Qxz-ad#.gif or Image:Qxz-ad#.png, where # represents a number to be incremented with each new image. :This vastly simplifies the template coding.
Additionally, the following requirements must be met to ensure copyright and Wikipedia's image use policy are not violated:
* If the image includes other images (a derivative work), it must only include images under a free license or in the public domain.
* The image itself must be released under a free license or into the public domain.
* Some free licenses specify that derivative works must also use that license (for example, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0). If an ad contains images under such a license, the ad itself must also be released under that license.
* Non-free images must not be used.

DONE is now in the Wikipedia Ads circulation. Help promote WikiProject Universities by displaying this image on your userpage, or to place Wikipedia Ads to your user page, you may add {{Wikipedia ads}}. - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 08:24, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

While it is very well done, I find the ad quite obnoxious and would like to see it go. I don't know what recruiting purpose it serves if it's only on this page where people are likely already members. Moreover, wikipedia (with the exception of the static fundraising banners) was just about the last place on the internet that didn't have crap blinking and flashing all over the place. Madcoverboy 18:39, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
Your comment has been noted. Well, if I was the only one using an animated picture file, I'd say remove it... but since my ad is actually one of the least "flashy" and uses the least number of obnoxious primary colors (in fact, most of the file can be blended to whatever color the background of the page is), I think if you have a problem with Wikipedia Ads being displayed, feel free to add the script that will disable you from viewing Wikipedia ads to your Monobook.js file. - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 06:16, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Korea University

Hi all! I want to tell you about problems at Korea University. A dispute on the content (POV, reads like an advert, citation problems) of the article has been going on for a while. One editor thinks that any edits or changes to the article are part of a plot by students of other universities in Seoul to make Korea University look bad. However, I cannot find evidence of that from the article talk page. There are violations of WP:NPOV, WP:OWN, WP:AGF and others. The article talk page for Korea University has become a location for the editors to hurl nasty personal attacks and groundless threats against each other. If there are patient and conscientious editors who wish to address this problem, by all means please do. The Korea University article need your help. ne more thing -- a similar dispute with the same editors is ongoing at SKY (universities). Grunty Thraveswain 11:32, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Wow, I joined this project to ask for 3rd party advice, looks like Grunty Thraveswain has beaten me to it. I was the editor who thought that the Korea University could use some help to improve it from a start article, but I was rebuffed (I did not actually make any edits since I wanted to go to the talk page first). I have since asked for 3rd party help from several quarters in hope that we can get some new blood in there. In particular those who have a long record of experience with Wikipedia, so that no one will try and call you a "puppet." Anyway, I definitely second the motion- if anyone wants to wade into that, please do! Also, feel free to contact me on my talk page User_talk:Epthorn with any questions on concerns, including if you feel the article needs no help or that I have been uncivil, etc- at this point I'm open to anyone else since I can't imagine it can get worse. G.T. is right that the entire thing has spilled over into other areas, as well.
Thanks! Epthorn 19:46, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
(incidentally, as I state on the page, I am more than happy to take this project on and help the article rise from above a 'start' level- but I need help to prevent any change from being immediately reverted, regardless of its impact.) Epthorn 20:35, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I suggest both of you go see WP:DISPUTE and follow the directions there. KnightLago 23:18, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

My assumption is that they are following those directions and have gotten to the part suggesting they reach out to third parties. --Midnightdreary 23:22, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Good point. But I was thinking more along the lines of WP:RFC after reading about the multiple editors involved. KnightLago 23:36, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I used some non-binding dispute resolution regarding user civility to help at least calm down the page, but I think the best way to find a consensus is to find more users. While inviting everyone to look at it is fine, I felt (and feel) that the users who will be most useful at editing a university page are... well... users who do it often. Users who know what other pages look like, etc. Epthorn 15:26, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Update: A most helpful new editor came in and really reworked the page so that it looks much better. I think we'll be removing the POV tag soon as well. Epthorn 21:16, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

History of schools

I populated Category:History of schools and Category:History of United States colleges and universities today. Enjoy :) —Disavian (talk/contribs) 06:39, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Newsletter prep

The October newsletter has been started and will be sent out in the next week. Please contribute anything to it that you think is valuable! The promoted article list is already accurate unless anything changes in the next couple days. —Noetic Sage 18:48, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Alumni categories up for deletion

All, if you have an opinion either way, please note that the bulk of user categories for your school of graduation are up for deletion at this page right here. This is a chance to speak your mind about how education can/does/does not affect Wikipedia work. —ScouterSig 03:59, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Canadian University Endowment figure disagreement on Wikipedia

There are two articles that list Canadian university total endowments, and endowments per student:

They are not in agreement with each for all the numbers and who knows which one is in agreement with the truth. I have marked both pages to question the factual accuracy. Having these two lists seems troubleseome as they would have to be maintained to keep upto date information, plus at the least they should agree with each other! 99.231.89.235 05:04, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

State University System Template question

Are templates such as Template:State_University_System_of_Florida to be used only on the actual university articles in the template or should they be used for university programs as well. I ask, because if you look at what links to this template there a number of colleges within universities, centers, and university histories using the template as well. KnightLago 02:01, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I think personally that the only articles which have that template box should be those that are linked to in the box. So colleges within universities, centers, and histories should not have the template appended at the end. Other people may feel differently —Noetic Sage 05:03, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
It looks expandable, I mean if you really want, you can make the template be a two-column list with the list of universities and the right column could be the departments and whatnot of the respective universities. However, it would make the template look very messy. I suggest if you really want to put a navibox at the end of a university article, make your own for that state univ. See Template:FloridaTechTemplate. Although this is a private university, it is still applicable for this purpose. Hope this helps. - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 07:25, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

University Faculties

Are the faculties of universities notable (in general) ive come across alot of articles on particular faculties of Australian universities. Can someone please reply on my talk page. Cheers. Twenty Years 14:37, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

If you mean individual faculty members, see a full discussion on my talk page. If you mean what the US calls Academic departments, generally not. If you mean something like what the US calls a college, like the faculty of Medicine, then quite possibly if there is enough sourced material. (all this based on previous decisions at AfD) DGG (talk) 20:22, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
We may need a page of terminology if this goes on - I've seen several confusions, particularly on "faculty". Here in the UK a "faculty" is primarily a top level division into things like "Humanities", "Sciences", "Social Sciences", "Medicine", "Education" (the subject), "Continuing Education"/"Lifelong Learning" (meaning the delivery mechanisms) and some combinations (with some specialist institutes having more specific faculties). Now practice varies across the board (and Medicine in particular tends to be an exception) but for a lot of institutions the Faculty itself isn't terribly notable beyond the university in and of its own right - most attention tends to be on either the subject specific departments or the university as a whole.
FWIW the current proposed guidelines says this:
If a university's faculties or academic colleges (US) are especially notable or significant they may have their own dedicated article (e.g. Tisch School of the Arts, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania). In general academic colleges are not notable and should not be split off from the main university article. If some academic colleges have significance and others do not, it may be the case that the university's academics as a whole are notable. In this case it may be acceptable to create a separate academics article (see Michigan State University academics)'
Timrollpickering 20:48, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Zion Bible College's accreditation -- anonymous text deletions

Zion Bible College is a new England seminary not accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, the regional accrediting organization. IPs have just started deleting properly cited information about accreditation without engaging in any dialogue on the subject. I do not wish to run afoul of the 3-revert rule -- any suggestions? --A. B. (talk) 17:53, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

semiprotected for a few days against anons. DGG (talk) 20:22, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, --A. B. (talk) 20:24, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
For the record, I would call this institution a Bible college, not a seminary. (See the linked articles to understand the difference.) Since the Association for Biblical Higher Education has been recognized as an accreditor by the cognizant US authorities, it counts as an accredited school. There are many Bible colleges that aren't even accredited by ABHE, and it's relatively unusual for a Bible college to have regional accreditation. In articles about other similar schools, Wikipedia generally does not include text about the fact that ABHE accreditation does not count for much in the secular academic world. In my humble opinion, that message should be communicated effectively by the sentence in the article lead that says "The school's sole purpose is to educate and prepare Pentecostal leaders for work in pastoral ministry, prophetic ministry, evangelistic ministry and teaching". Furthermore, the article should state that the only major field of study offered in this school is "Bible." With those inclusions, I would acquiesce to the deletion of the information about Zion's lack of regional accreditation -- but the article should have links to articles about accreditation. --Orlady 22:02, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Good points, Orlady -- I stand corrected. --A. B. (talk) 22:47, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

BYU

The BYU article has been fully protected due to edit-warring over the lead. We seriously cannot come to a consensus on a good lead on our own. Please come and contribute to the discussion to help us hammer something out that will be in accordance with WP:LEAD. Wrad 01:20, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of leads, I'd appreciate it if someone would try to expand the lead on Georgia Institute of Technology. —Disavian (talk/contribs) 04:41, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
We are having problems with the lead again. Please come back around and help us resolve issues. Wrad 19:42, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

MIT Nobel Laureate affiliations

There's been a bit of a brushup over at MIT regarding the number of Nobel Laureates affiliated with MIT. User:MITBeaverRocks has been boosting the number of affiliated Laureates based upon information available in their Nobel biographies and asserting that other universities similarly inflate their numbers by citing visiting and postdoctoral appointments, but User:Mike Lin contends that this is an unpublished synthesis of information. While MITBeaverRocks is likely correct in both quantification and underlying argument, I similarly raised concerns mirroring Mike Lin's. Further input is requested to reach a consensus. Madcoverboy 18:33, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Regent University alum controversy

Over at Regent University there has been a dispute about whether or not an alumnus who became involved in a national political scandal should be mentioned in the body of the article in a controversy section. An RFCpolitics has already been opened, but input from the WikiProject Universities editors would likewise be appreciated. Please see Talk:Regent University#RFC re: Goodling and comment. Madcoverboy 18:33, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

(Repost from the RfC) As much as I hate politics, I believe that it is unfounded to nail an alumna's failures to the institution who gave her an education unless there is direct involvement of Regent University in the scandal. This sets a negative precedence for future articles, in which people involved in any scandals or controversies will then subsequently bring down the NPOV of the articles belonging to the involved party's individual affiliations, from elementary school to the grocery store they shop at. - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 06:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes

I'm thinking we might start some more infoboxes for furthering our WikiProject coverage into the people related to different universities. I'm currently in the process of creating a standard infobox for university presidents, and will soon expand (depending on the success of president infobox) to university deans and other major characters in a university. Is this a good idea or has someone already done all of this? - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 20:32, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the university president box sounds interesting, but I am not sure if boxes for deans and others are really necessary. KnightLago 20:59, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
There's already an infobox template for university presidents: {{Infobox University Chancellor}} (which is appropriate for any university chief executive, no matter the title). Are you proposing to simply edit that, or were you looking to create something new? No objections either way, really, but I just wanted to you know that such a box already exists. As far as other university-affiliated people go, I imagine that the above template could be fairly easily adapted for use on those pages, too. Thanks for proposing this. Cheers! Esrever 21:42, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! I'll try to adapt to this one. If I find stuff missing, I'll probably add fields to the box so we can expand the infobox's usage.  :-) - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 00:59, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
And on that note... I just updated that university chancellor's infobox. There is no longer a 250x225px resolution limit on the images so we now have more options. We should probably include {{Infobox University Chancellor}} into our WikiProject so we may include them in more university-affiliated articles. - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 04:24, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Excellent! Feel free to add it to the main project page. Also, you might make a note there that {{Infobox University President}} redirects to that template, so people can use it for either "title". Esrever 16:40, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Week

I would like to suggest a Collaboration of the Week where members of the entire WikiProject can Be Bold and contribute in order to uniformly improve some of our more lacking articles.

We have a section on our main project page...why not use it?

Wikipedia:WikiProject California#Related collaborations is a pretty good example of what other WikiProjects are doing. :-)

Let me know what you guys think! - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 06:44, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I have created what we would be doing if we were to start the COTWs. Take a look at my sandbox for what we could use. Links to articles on the COTW box is random and may not be what we first start on. Please refer to User:Jamesontai/Sandbox08 for more details. (And as always, I appreciate comments :-D) - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 07:06, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm all for instituting a CotW program here. I think it'd be a nice way for some of us who are active in the project to bring our collective and disparate talents to bear on a variety of articles. I think my personal preference would be to focus on just one article each week (starting perhaps with the well-developed B-Class articles to get them GA worthy or to A-Class, or perhaps with the GA- and A-Class articles to get them to FA). We might also consider doing one B-Class/GA-Class article and one Stub- or Start-. I might also make it a "Collaboration of the Fortnight", too, given that we're seemingly not one of the larger or more active WikiProjects. Perhaps giving people two weeks to work might get more folks involved. Again, thanks for the suggestions and the work. Keep 'em coming! Esrever 16:39, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, I love collaborations! But I'd echo Esrever's concern that we might not be able to get too much done in a week... I'd even go so far as to suggest a collaboration of the month. We'd also have to be clear as to what our expectations are. I, for one, don't have many resources that apply to all universities - so I'd be at a loss to do much more than clean up or copy editing. In those cases, it's probably best to look for well-sourced articles that just need better organization or better writing to get up to recognized quality. --Midnightdreary 17:01, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I'd love to help out with a collaboration. I share similar concerns about both collaboration of the week and month - one is too short to truly improve an article while the other is too long and discourges concerted collaboration. Maybe since we're are so erudite, we could have a collaboration of the fortnight.Madcoverboy 20:03, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Fortnight isn't so bad either... I also like the idea of having two collaborations per month. By that, I mean leaving two collaborations open per month - say, one for a specific university article, another for a more ancillary one - that stay open for the duration of that month. Does that serve as an alternative compromise? --Midnightdreary 20:52, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
This probably isn't a bad idea, although I'm curious as to what you'd include as an "ancillary" one. Also, having collaborations on a monthly basis would give Noetic Sage something to write about in his newsletters. :) Esrever 21:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I recognize this concern. However I believe if we give some kind of variety to our project members, it will at least get some of us together. I still think a week will do though. I think some of us might get bored if we make it 2 weeks (or longer). - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 21:47, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) I like the ideal of collaborating on articles in parallel over a month. Perhaps we could have a "B-class" track to get an article up to and through GA review by the end of the month and a "GA/A class" track to get another article up to and through FA review by the end of the month. How do we determine what articles to work on (editors nominate their pet article, we prioritize articles as a project, etc.)? Who will be the "pointman" for heading up each article collaboration and how will that be determined? Madcoverboy (talk) 22:09, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the unindent. :D If no one wants to do it, since I'm the guy pushing for it, I'd do it if you want. Referring to the process of what article(s) to pick, I think editors here should be able to nominate their article(s) of choice. However, I'd like to keep the three-article focus. That way we'll have one article that is nominated, one B/A-class article that is ready to be upgraded to GA/FA class, and a stub/start-class article to be upgraded to B-class. How does that sound? In terms of the length of time, I think two weeks sounds like a good plan. - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 22:42, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
I'd actually like to see us prioritize some "vital" or "core" topics or universities owing to their importance or notability. I say this only because I could see this dissolving into a university's editors "slashdotting" the nomination process resulting in scenarios where "Well History of Y got nominated just a week after University Y, but College X still hasn't been selected!" In other words, I feel like we all have our pet projects we could quid-pro-quo our articles into the nomination. But then again, I don't know that much about the dynamics of collaboration of the X projects. Some thoughts, nevertheless:
As a first rule, perhaps we should concentrate on the main university articles (University X) initially, not the daughter pages (History of X, Campus of X, School of X) since so many university wikiprojects and editors are already adept at assessing and improving those.
Secondly, there are also many essential and neutral header topics we could attend to (eg, University, Liberal arts college, etc.).
Thirdly, should we only be in the business of evaluating articles? What about building lists, supporting pictures, making portals, or other featured content? I would propose limiting only to articles.
Finally, how do we ensure the nomination or prioritization process is fair? We could go through the GAs alphabetically or use another metric like ensuring the oldest (Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Harvard, Yale...) are collaborated upon first. Certainly there is an inherent Anglophone bias, especially towards American universities? Should we make a point of rotating among continents or countries every round?
I actually think we should come up with a list of all the articles that previously failed FA and concentrate on those to build rapport among editors and work out kinks in the system.
I only say all of this because I think it will reveal how problematic and poisionous the discussion can become as soon as I suggest (for example) "Let's get all the Ivy League schools standardized/promoted/etc." I don't purport to have the answers to all of these, but they're things we need to keep in mind as we move forward. In any case, count me in. Madcoverboy (talk) 23:23, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Good points. Apparently I wasn't clear on my description. If we were to have three articles for the collaboration every 2 weeks, we can cycle through potentially 2 GA articles, 2 stubs upgraded to at least B-class articles, plus 2 articles of the consensus of the editors of this WikiProject. This means that 2 out of 3 articles shall be chosen at random. What we could utilize is a list of articles on our WikiProject and cross them out as we go along. Since the two articles are chosen at random, there shouldn't be a problem with biased picks. I'd like to keep one that IS in fact biased towards the editors - because let's say the two random articles are on... I don't know... a university in Bengal and a college in Zimbabwe. I don't know about you, but I probably wouldn't spend as much time editing just because:
  • a) I don't know their education system/structure
  • b) I have no clue what language they speak in Bengal... (just to name a couple)
Essentially we need one that is either biased or purposefully controversial to promote the "Be Bold" philosophy and trigger user responses. I believe by doing this we can accurately run through the list of articles, promote our WikiProject, and promote editor activity at the same time. As always, comments welcome! - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 00:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Bengal is partitioned - in Bangladesh (an independent country) they speak the Bengali language. In West Bengal (a state of India) the state official language is Bengali as well, although the Nepali language is also recognised. Language is a complicated (and politicised) matter in India - see Languages of India and Official languages of India (and may also be in Pakistan and Bangladesh given their shared history, though I'm not sure). Indeed looking at List of universities in India#West Bengal, the first on the list is Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur whose website uses English at least at the start. Ditto practically every other university on that part of the list. The first few universities on List of universities in Bangladesh also lead to websites in English. Timrollpickering (talk) 01:40, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
I can understand the fear of Anglophone bias, but after all, that's a common problem across WP. As Jameson notes, it's going to be tough for most of us to contribute to articles on Bengali universities because we don't know the education system, nor do we speak the language well enough to find good sources. I think we'll be limited on our collaboration choices in a lot of ways.
I'm still not sure that more than 2 articles is realistic, but I'm happy to be proven wrong. If the consensus is 3 articles, I'll plug away on 3 articles. :) I suppose this is my proposition, then:
  • 1 GA-Class article edited to FA standards and submitted to FAR.
  • 1 B-Class article edited to GA standards and submitted to GAN.
  • 1 Stub- or Start-Class article edited to B-Class.
I'm in favor of a somewhat random approach to selecting those articles. I do agree that "University of X" should be looked at before "History of X". I'd also steer clear of articles belonging to one of the "Related WikiProjects" (e.g., WikiProject University of North Texas). Perhaps we could let any interested editor nominate an article at something like WikiProject Universities/COTF poll, and then let everyone vote on perhaps 2 under each "class" of nominee, so long as they don't vote for their own (I've put together a test case to demonstrate what I mean at the above site—am I making this too complicated?). I'm also not opposed to finding failed FACs and working on those. Esrever (klaT) 01:44, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

(deindent) In terms of potential Anglophone bias, that's generally true across the board on Wikipedia, although bear in mind that English is used a lot in academia, even when it's not a major language in the relevant country, so it may actually be less of a problem here than elsewhere. (One possibility is that every time an article from a specific country is covered we also notify the relevant country Wikiproject to see if anyone there can help find sources and/or translations.) As for understanding the education system, perhaps general articles on "Universities in Country" may be useful.

As for articles if we are going for three a month then I think at least one should be a general topic (university, academic degree, university and college admissions etc...). In terms of individual institutions, I reckon leave out those with their own Wikiprojects. Otherwise I guess a nominations page (perhaps with some criteria on voting - e.g. can't vote for your own nominations or affiliations, must vote for at least some from another country) is the least worst way to do this. Timrollpickering (talk) 02:41, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow...someone took it seriously when I mentioned Bengal. Anyways... back to the main subject. It seems like we have a pretty good consensus we want the timeframe to be around two weeks. To minimize confusion, let's just draw the line here and focus more on how we nominate the three articles. Since I know little about Wiki scripting, I'll need some help devising an active list where I can take off articles from the list of articles currently covered by WikiProject Universities. Next would be writing a rand() script that would give me a random number or something that would ultimately determine the random articles. Nomination is still up in the air, and I'm pretty sure some of us want to see a nominated article as well as randomized article selection. Have you guys thought about my proposal with 2 randomized articles and 1 nominated article decided by ourselves (I guess we vote on them every 14 days or something). - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 03:18, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, all of the WP:UNI articles can be found in each of the individual article classes (e.g., FA-Class Universities articles). The links to all the article-class categories is found in the table on the main page (here). Of course, those classes are only as good as the articles in them, so people will need to assess the 780 unassessed articles if you want those included, too. I personally would probably still prefer that 2 or all 3 collaborations be nominated on and voted for, if only because that's more likely to draw the attention of users who would otherwise be uninterested in helping out with such an article. But again, I'll bow to consensus. :) Cheers! Esrever (klaT) 03:55, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Alright, I'm tired of scrolling... and my attention span is waning. This isn't good... so... remedy: scroll down and look for the new COTF stuff. - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 04:29, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:UNI participants might want to contribute to the discussion of a university article that has been nominated as a featured list. See Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of colleges and universities in New Hampshire. --Orlady (talk) 14:13, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

BYU Lead

Trouble is brewing here again. Could all those who participated last time please return? I want to avoid having an edit war that gets the page blocked this time. Thanks. Wrad 20:08, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities/COTF

At last. After our long discussion, it is finally here. The code is done. - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 06:10, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Article for deletion: Wessex Scene

Wessex Scene at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wessex Scene (6 December 2007)

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 11:43, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Article for deletion: SURGE 1287AM

Resolved

SURGE 1287AM at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SURGE 1287AM (6 December 2007 – 9 December 2007) Keep, nomination withdrawn

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 11:46, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
updated --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Multiple Student Union articles up for deletion

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 18:37, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
- Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 19:09, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

User:Jamesontai/Sandbox07

I'm beginning to work on a new WikiProject Universities header infobox replace our current Template:WikiProject Universities. Please take a look at the template. Thanks! Comments welcome as always! - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 04:22, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Looks good, but I'm not really sure why the current template is not sufficient. The only additions I see are the prioritization and infobox-needed parameters. I personally don't think prioritization parameters are necessary - that's why we have COTF. Prioritization is much more subjective than class-ranking, and I don't think it would be of much usefulness. The infobox-needed parameter is definitely useful and, although 95% of all university articles have an infobox, would help eliminate the list of universities without infoboxes. —Noetic Sage 05:17, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
It's very infobox oriented, but I like the B-class rating. It gives many Start/Stub class articles goals in fulfilling the minimal requirements to satisfy as a B-Class article. I think it will contribute and help the COTF.  :-) Let me know what you think! Thanks! - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 05:38, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't much care for the "priority" rating, either. How do we decide what universities are "highest importance"? I don't think it's something this particular project needs. Others may disagree, of course. Cheers! Esrever (klaT) 17:26, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
I have commented out the Priority section of the coding for review of the rest of the template. Any other suggestions? Thanks! - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 15:19, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Where do the B-class criteria come from? I can see how it would be useful, but I'm not sure it should be integrated into the template. If its purpose is to help COTW, then why not have some sort of list like that on the COTW page for the stub article? Personally I'd rather see a stub-improvement task force that would do this for one article at a time. It could be very helpful though, I'm just not sure how much I like it yet. Just some thoughts. —Noetic Sage 01:08, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
The original coding is from WikiProject Florida. Well, I think it guided my first couple of articles to achieve B-class from stub/start class. The 5 categories are simple and easy to understand while still important enough to not be ignored. I personally really liked it. But I mean this B-class category system is really what I like about this template, if you don't want it, I don't see a point in keeping this template at all. - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 03:13, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Florida Institute of Technology

Is this article near GA status? If not, please let me know what needs to be done. Thanks. - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 15:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll give you a couple quick suggestions. First, expand the intro per WP:LEAD. I'd also get rid of all the redlinks that are unlikely to be articles any time soon. Check your sources, too. The more "fit.edu" sources you use, the less weight the article carries. Even an alumni magazine is a start, but local newspapers, The Chronicle of Higher Education, etc. will give it more credibility. Also, I see a reference note to another Wikipedia article - I'm pretty sure that's not a good idea. Consider putting it up for peer review for some deeper insight. --Midnightdreary (talk) 15:18, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

"Templates" under Manual of Style and "Peer Review" are both red linked. Are we going to pursue these functions on this WikiProject? And are we going to establish some kind of Portal Revision Committee that will update the core parts of the portal at least once a week? - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 05:00, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Templates page

Merged from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher education/Templates. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 02:49, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I am working on creating the templates page, which will include of a table of current templates in use by this WikiProject. This will probably be my next sandbox article: User:Jamesontai/Sandbox09. If you have any suggestions for this page, please feel free to comment here or the sandbox's talk page as I edit. As always, comments, suggestions, and the like are always welcome! - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 02:26, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I have successfully transferred the former Templates section of the main WP:UNI project page to the Templates article. Also, I have updated the page with more categorizations, such as Project Banners, with General Project Banner and COTF Banner (in the future, when the Student Affairs Task Force has their own banner as well, we'll add it in), and added the University Chancellor infobox as well. If there are missing infobox listings regarding universities that you believe should be added in, please feel free to do so.
To accommodate this new page, I have added {{main}} to the main project page to redirect them to the Templates page. Also, I have made a new shortcut that will redirect to the templates page. It is now WP:UNI/TEMP. I hope I didn't screw up anything. If you think I have made an error, please feel free to let me know.
(NoeticSage, yes, I know I didn't add the example infobox for Infobox University. The Project sidebar was in the way, pushing the resulting sample infobox output to the bottom of the article, so I removed it. If you know a way around it, please feel free to add it back in.  :-)
As always, I welcome any feedback regarding my work! Happy Holidays! - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 04:32, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
Looks great and very useful! Nice work! —Noetic Sage 06:23, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

The existing template for Institutions of higher education in [State] has three categories at one level: Public institutions, Private institutions and Community Colleges. Since community colleges are public institutions, I think a crossed classification would be better SPONSORSHIP vs. HIGHEST DEGREE GRANTED.

Ideally, sponsorship would include state, county, city, religious, and private. Highest degree granted would include associate, bachelor, master, Ph.D., and professional. That would give twenty-five categories: too many.
Therefore, I suggest each institution be classified as Government or Private and as Associate or Bachelor Or Higher. That would give give a 2 • 2 grid with reasonably equal membership in the four categories.˜˜˜˜

Outdated templates

Merged from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher education/Templates. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 02:49, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm wondering if anyone actually uses {{Infobox University campus}}, {{Infobox Universitydepartment}}, or {{Infobox World university rankings}}. They seem rather clunky and to almost contradict the infobox template and our guidelines. A university department should rarely have its own article, and the world rankings template appears to be only used on one article. What does everyone think about these templates? —Noetic Sage 06:23, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I was contemplating about whether to include those links at all on the article, but I thought if I took it out completely...someone's going to complain...haha. Anyways, I'm perfectly fine with taking them all out... although I think the Campus one might be used for Honors Colleges or something (which, technically if they're off campus and they establish WP:N, then this infobox should be available to them. The department one should be deleted anyways... it looks... well... horrible. The World Rankings one is good if anyone actually cared to use that. - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 07:10, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
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