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Notability of faculties/academic colleges

I've noticed time and time again that university articles are being split off into separate articles for each faculty or academic college. What do we think about this? Do they each need to satisfy general notability guidelines or are they notable at major universities? Some examples are:

• Kennesaw State University College of Science & Mathematics
• Camberwell College of Arts
• College of Arts and Sciences (University of Nebraska–Lincoln)

etc, etc. Take a look at this search —Noetic Sage 03:52, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I am fine with this. To have a decent university article you need to split off the colleges, especially if there are a lot with encyclopedic information. Notability could be established on their own, or as part of a larger university. They are at a minimum as notable as a high school, which are assumed to be notable. KnightLago (talk) 04:07, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I disagree as you seem to be saying that all departments or faculties are notable. I certainly agree that many of them are notable but I do not accept a blanket assertion that they are all notable. If I recall the last time we had this conversation, the general consensus was that each case should be judged on its own merits so if a particular department or faculty is notable enough and sufficient sources exist to create a separate article then that's the way to do. --ElKevbo (talk) 05:06, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I think they need to be colleges, not simply a small department. I am fine with the previous consensus also. KnightLago (talk) 15:30, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

University colleges/faculties that are independently notable may have their own article, otherwise, it may be wise to just fork the colleges into a "X University Academics" article instead. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 02:38, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

There is an immense difference between a department and a faculty. By "faculty" we mean the first order academic divisions, often called "Colleges" in the US and sometimes "Schools"--the terms are usually interchangeably, but some places use them idiosyncratically. At a major university, such as a US flagship state university, I would expect that most of these are notable. I would expect that almost any separate medical or law school/faculty/college would be notable. the question comes at a/smaller units--business schools often, but what about a small school of say Podiatric Medicine? and b/smaller and less notable universities. I think for those judgment is needed.

As for Departments, I think the rule goes as "undeniably world-class" and that actual sources have to be demonstrated saying something of the sort. It's one of my medium priorities--I have about a dozen such departments in mind which I know about where i know there are good sources to that effect, & I intend to try them. It's a question of putting in the necessary work. I'll list them here when I do them so people can attack them at pleasure if they disagree. (but again its the essence, not the nomenclature--something can be called a department and really be a college in the sense I use above)

for the traditional european university, its harder, because the organization is usually flatter, and there is often no separation between the two. DGG (talk) 19:29, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

See, the problem here is that many US universities have departments AND colleges, such as having Civil Engineering Department, Chemical Engineering Department, Computer and Electrical Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department grouped together as part of the "College of Engineering". We really need to straighten things out with the naming, which I thought was settle already last year, but I guess it's resurfacing again? - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 20:42, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

You'll never get the language "straightened out." This is not a Wikipedia issue. :) --ElKevbo (talk) 21:17, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

but to the extent there is any pattern, the departments of X-engineering would not normally have articles, the College of Engineering would. An interesting example of the sort of problem that arises is University of California Berkeley, where there is a UC Berkeley College of Chemistry with departments of chem, chem engineering, and chemical biology -- in contrast to everything else at that university and I think to any other also. The reason is the historic development, as you'll see from the extraordinary people listed there--they had enough prestige to insist on running things their own way. DGG (talk) 22:41, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Granted that the organizations of universities varies but tends toward a structure involving a specific knowledge domain (department of chemistry, pediatrics, etc.), an agglomeration of domains into a unit (college of science, school of medicine, etc.), and that these units are constitutive of a university. With this definition, departments should almost never have their wikipedia article barring a few overwhelmingly notable exceptions, but a university's colleges and schools almost certainly have enough notability for a separate article. Madcoverboy (talk) 19:17, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

A list of the teaching departments is necessary, either in this article or as a sub-article. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:55, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I would reiterate Jameson's argument above that almost any (accredited or otherwise legitimate) university would be entitled to have a "Academics at X University" in which all schools/colleges would be included and expanded beyond the information on the mother page. If it becomes clear that this school, college, department, faculty, etc. information would overload this academics daughter article (as I imagine would be the case for law, medical, business school) then editors would be justified in further forking the content into daughter/granddaughter pages. Madcoverboy (talk) 20:51, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Three Canadian residence halls nominated for deletion

I have nominated for deletion three articles about Canadian residence halls: Medway-Sydenham Hall, Ernescliff College, and Saugeen-Maitland Hall. Although I am interested in hearing your thoughts on these particular article, I am more interested to see if this establishes a general consensus regarding the notability of individual residence halls which do not appear to have extraordinary histories of any sort. --ElKevbo (talk) 18:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

BLP discussion of alumni

A discussion has begun at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons regarding the listing of alumni in articles. Your thoughts and opinions would be welcome in the discussion! --ElKevbo (talk) 15:23, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

I've listed the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill article at peer review. Any feedback would be very much welcomed. Thanks. Artichoke2020 (talk) 03:32, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Duke University FAR

Duke University has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. 152.2.128.80 (talk) 01:03, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Satyr

Have you replaced User:SatyrTN's User:SatyrBot? We at WP:CHICAGO are looking for a replacement since he is no longer active. Please respond at my talk page.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 18:46, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Student Life articles

I have merged Student Life New Zealand into Student Life (university ministry), and plan to do the same with Student Life Australia. The article they are being merged into seems to lack notability too, as I have indicated with the template, and might itself be merged into the apparently notable Campus Crusade for Christ. Nobody seems to be watching them, and they were all created by one-edit wonders, so I need some more feedback. Richard001 (talk) 03:50, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

BYU article slimming

We're trying to get this article down to a more manageable size and suggestions would be appreciated. We're getting close to what we want. Wrad (talk) 00:53, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the article looks much better. Any more slimming and it would start taking away crucial parts of a proper article. Great job again! :D - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 23:45, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Template usage

We've got some questions about use of the infobox template, asked at the template talk page and discussed initially here. Anyone familiar with the usage of {{Infobox_University}} is welcome to shed some light. Thanks! Franamax (talk) 21:08, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for letting this WikiProject know. :) Esrever ^(klaT) 21:20, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

University Challenge userbox

{{User:UBX/University Challenge}} {{User:UBX/University Challenge|University of Birmingham|2007}} {{User:UBX/University Challenge}}

For anyone who's interested, I've created a userbox for the long-running British quiz show University Challenge – visit {{User:UBX/University Challenge}} for instructions on how to use it. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:38, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Indiana Wesleyan University

Greetings,

An editor named "Me" has placed a tag on the IWU page, of which I am the primary editor. His reason for doing so is simply because I am affiliated with the school - not that I made any biased POV comments. The vast majority of Wikipedia contributors edit a page they are affiliated with, so I don't know where he's going with this. He even admits that I cited everything, but that he just wanted other people to know that I'm affiliated with IWU. I'm sorry, but you don't place a massive warning tag on the top of an article just because you feel like it. I've never had any problems with this page and do everything by Wiki guidelines. This guy is clearly overstepping his authority - I think he's a wanabee Wikipedia administrator. Please remove his tag and tell him not to put it back.

Thanks,

Manutdglory (talk) 19:24, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Flagship issue at BYU

An edit war is threatening to brew over this issue at the BYU article once again. Those who participated earlier are welcome to do it again, as well as anyone else, of course. Wrad (talk) 01:13, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Rankings in lead

I think that more than being extremely tacky, putting any ranking in the lead generally violates a number of WP policies as relating to WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:LEAD: (1) citing one source's rankings, usually ignoring less favorable rankings in others, (2) citing all rankings, everywhere, (3) citing out-of-date rankings since their stock has since decreased, (4) parsing the rankings to improve standing (eg, "top 10 university starting with the letter Q"), (5) and any number of other games. I have gone through and stripped WP:PEACOCK and WP:PRESTIGE from the leads of several dozen US colleges and universities as well as modified the Article Guidelines. Similarly, I removed instances of "highly selective" since this is the epitome of a weasel words.

Moreover, the leads I edited were often devoid of any other information about the school besides what its name was and where it was located. If editors want cause to put rankings in the lead, at the very VERY least, the lead should summarize the rest of the article's topics on history, campus, organization, enrollment, research, athletics, and so on first. Indeed, I concede that it will be impossible to completely excise rankings from university articles, so a reasonable compromise is just to confine them to a single exhaustive section where they're all laid out rather than selectively included. To that end, I had created Template:Infobox US university ranking a while back where US News, SJU ARWU, Times Higher Ed Supplement, Measuring University Performance, Newsweek, Washington Monthly, can all be included. If you want rankings in your article, include all the sources -- even ones where you're not ranked favorably, or at all.

Just looking for consensus on this one when editors start crying that they want to make their university's WP page back into an admissions pamphlet. Madcoverboy (talk) 15:49, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

You removed a sentence from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill article that was merely a summary of the small, well-sourced rankings subsection as should be there per WP:LEAD. Moreover, that article went through peer review, GA review, and GA reassessment with the lead exactly as is, which would suggest consensus over your unilateral (though, of course, good faith) action. LostOldPassword (talk) 16:05, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

User:Bobak has gone and reverted all the changes I made. I'm not going to get in a revert war, but it's apparent that these reversions were not made in WP:AGF. Madcoverboy (talk) 16:41, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that's "apparent" at all. I think Bobak would agree with me that you first need to establish consensus on a broad, sweeping change like this. Esrever ^(klaT) 16:55, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Consensus is being invoked as a counter-argument when I see no pre-existing or explicit consensus on the issue. UC-Davis and Duke have been invoked as examples, but the majority of FAs have no mention of rankings in the lead (Cornell, Dartmouth, Florida Atlantic University, Georgetown, Michigan State, University of Michigan, Texas A&M) if we are to accept that FAs are sacrosanct and indicative of consensus. Madcoverboy (talk) 17:00, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'd argue that the fact that you found "several dozen articles" with rankings in the lead seems pretty clearly to be pre-existing consensus, no? Esrever ^(klaT) 17:02, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

WP:WAX: "The nature of Wikipedia means that you cannot make a convincing argument based solely on what other articles do or do not exist; because there is nothing stopping anyone from creating any article." Is it consensus or just an unchecked practice? Madcoverboy (talk) 17:08, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Had I tried to get UCR through FA without rankings in the lead I'd have been accused of trying to "cover-up" the school's reputation. Amerique^dialectics 17:10, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I completely understand where you are coming from, but I find this to be a revealing strawman argument because it demonstrates the extent to which editors and readers rely upon rankings to legitimize or calibrate how they are going to read about the university. Employing rankings becomes a crutch to describe the university rather than just describing the university and placing these rankings in their appropriate and limited context later in the article. I don't imagine the leads for articles on companies describe their stock prices, performance or other rankings and statistics; a politician's article the number of votes in the last election or rankings by various institutions; a country's article its statistical rankings; and so on. Doing any of this would reek of recentism and bias. The same applies here. An obvious implication would from this argument is that if we are to include rankings at all in any article, should we not include historical rankings as well? Likewise a strawman argument, but it should frame the essential problem of having one publication's (admittedly widely-cited) yearly ranking in the lead of a university article. This is an encyclopedia, not an admissions brochure, or a syndicate for US News. Madcoverboy (talk) 17:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

FAU, Michigan State, and Texas A&M are all FAs without rankings in the lead that would likely fall into the same boat at UC-Davis regarding positive POV/lack of popular prestige. I'll have to go back and look at their FACs to see if this was mentioned. Madcoverboy (talk) 17:39, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) UNC was widely reviewed, so I would see that as consensus in that case, though of course that may not hold for other articles. I think all the existing guidelines cover what should be in a lead, and don't think all these articles can be grouped together and say that university articles shouldn't (or even should) have rankings in lead. It will be appropriate for some and not for others, but we definitely want variety in the leads and not a formulaic set of guidelines. If an article has gone through FA, GA, or PR and a ranking was there and passed through, then it was appropriate, and if it wasn't there, then it's omission was also appropriate, etc. etc. LostOldPassword (talk) 17:17, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

One other note, I think "highly selective" is actually a technical definition of the Carnegie Foundation (or something similarly), so it may not WP:AWW if in context and appropriately cited. LostOldPassword (talk) 17:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Almost right, it's more selective (and there's selective and inclusive). See Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Highly selective probably should changed to one of those and cited in the main text, I guess. LostOldPassword (talk) 17:33, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

More fuel for the fire: Among GAs on US universities and colleges (not daughter pages like history of, campus of, school of X, etc.) and excluding the service academies: 13 have no explicit mention of rankings in the lead and 8 do mention rankings in the lead. Madcoverboy (talk) 18:09, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the absence of something proves consensus either way. It just shows that articles can be good or featured with or without rankings. Since that is the case, is there any reason to change the status quo? I see no reason to remove rankings from some articles, nor add them to those in which they are absent. Evaluate each article on it's merits, because a Wikipedia with a rigid list of "do's" and "do not's" would be a very poor place to be. LostOldPassword (talk) 18:26, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Well WP already has a lot of Do Nots since we're trying to make a coherent encyclopedia rather than a hodgepodge of webpages, so asking that there be stylistic consistency across articles is not a sea change. I merely dredge up these facts to point out the clear lack of consensus on something for which there should be a clear consensus. It's clear on what side of the coin I fall. Madcoverboy (talk) 20:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Some people are misconstruing that I am advocating for wholesale blanking of every mention of rankings ever on every page which is idealistic at best: the prevalence and subsequent fetishization of rankings among universities and students means that we would do our readers a disservice to not include some of this information in the article. Rather, what I am arguing based upon WP:LEAD and WP:UNI/AG, is that quality/prestige/reputation rankings have no place being mentioned in the lead of a university article: "Consideration should be given to creating interest in reading the whole article...the relative emphasis given to material in the lead should reflect its relative importance to the subject according to reliable sources." Rankings have little if any importance to the rest of the topic at hand, namely describing a university. It seems then that rankings are being used as a crutch in place of summarizing the variety of attributes that contribute to that university's "measured" quality/prestige. Likewise, if you want to mention the metrics that were used in calculating a ranking, by all means, do that or put it in an infobox. Mentioning an average SAT score or admissions rate for a given year in the lead would be summarizing the information already present in the article but it also would and should appear silly and tacky.

Indeed, wouldn't it then make more sense that if one wanted to make a claim as to the quality or prestige of a four-year university, the rankings from the past four years should also be included or averaged? Is the freshman class really better or worse than the senior class? Why are all the rankings not summarized or included in the history section as well? Why only the US News rankings - certainly ARWU and Times and CMUP all merit inclusion as well under NPOV? The answers to these questions highlight the idiocy of rankings which most people agree on. Why then privilege an idiotic measure in a lead where the limited space could be devoted to more important matters? I have rarely seen the an annual ranking made by a magazine or other organization included in the leads of articles on companies, politicians, countries, biographies, etc. except to assert notability. All accredited universities are notable, so I see no reason why their articles should have to rely upon rankings as a crutch to describe the university. Keep the rankings out of the lead and confined to a single section in the article. Madcoverboy (talk) 20:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

None of these questions are unique to Wikipedia, though. Subjective rankings seem to be a fact of life in many things. Averaging rankings would violate WP:OR, I think. I don't see why rankings should be treated differently to other content in WP:LEAD as long as they are appropriately used. If there is a ranking section it should be summarized, but nothing more (or less). If rankings are being used as a "crutch" in a lead, you should fix the problem there instead of a proposing to remove all rankings. Can you list some articles that you feel have problems, and your reasons for each? LostOldPassword (talk) 20:49, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

A point on the assertion by Madcoverboy that putting rankings in the lead is like putting stock quotes in the lead for a company and therefore violates WP:recentism and WP:bias... I disagree with this analogy and the asserted violations. First, stock quotes differ in kind from rankings. Stock quotes by themselves are temporal measures that are valid at a single point in time and meaningless unless context is provided. University rankings are temporal measures also, but they have validity for a length of time usually beyond a year. The ranking itself also provides context since 1st is a measure relative to the field of all universities. Second, WP:recentism does not necessarily apply. Just because a ranking is recent, does not mean that it does not necessarily have value. The fact that so many university rankings exist and that they are updated on regular bases pretty much indicates this is information that people find important -- note I don't care if a given individual thinks they are not valid, the fact is the public views this as important. While historical ranking information can be of interest, in general, the more recent the ranking information, the more relevant people will find it. Third, WP:bias does not apply unless one can demonstrate the cited rankings mislead or give a false picture of the university ranking. Likewise, personal distaste for rankings or for a particular ranking system does not indicate wp:bias exists.Vantelimus (talk) 05:43, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

None of this speaks to whether or not rankings should appear in the lead. You are hammering away on the obvious point I don't like rankings at all, but as I've repeatedly stated, I'm not advocating their wholesale removal from every article. Rather, rankings have no place being in the lead of an article for the reasons I've outlined above - read any of the leads for the FAs and GAs I mentioned above to see examples in which a substantial amount of information that can and should be conveyed in the lead to the point that stating "State University was ranked 19th by The Daily News in 2008" is overly specific, recentist, biased, and a waste of space. Moreover, one magazine's POV ranking should not be privileged over all other POV rankings no matter how pervasive or popular it is -- thus any mention of a university's rankings should be placed in an NPOV context (namely, a single section) in which all possible rankings are contextualized rather than being selectively cited or framed to cast the school in a good light. Madcoverboy (talk) 06:14, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

The fact that TIME ranked Einstein, FDR, and Ghandi as the "Top 3" people of the century does not appear in the leads of their article because their substantial accomplishments and reputation preclude the need for such ornamentation -- it appears in the appropriate context later in the article. Despite the fact that WalMart and ExxonMobil are generally atop the popular Fortune 500 list in recent years doesn't mean this fact is mentioned outright in the lead, it too is mentioned in the appropriate and limited context later in the article. Rankings for universities should be no different. Madcoverboy (talk) 06:26, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Correction: It is mentioned in Einstein's. Madcoverboy (talk) 06:27, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I did address your substantive concerns. Let's see if I can say it better this time. Rankings, in and of themselves, are information that many readers find significant and important. There are a handful of rankings that carry weight, any one of which would be appropriate to cite in a short stand alone article on a university without the need to enumerate all other rankings for the sake of context. Since the lead is supposed to be able to stand alone as a short article, the inclusion of a well-known ranking can impart a lot of information about the quality and reputation of the university -- both pieces of information that are important. Your argument that some FAs don't have rankings in the lead does not carry weight as other FAs do have rankings in the lead. This shows that there is no ad hoc consensus for omitting rankings from the lead. Your argument against privileging one magazine's POV over others misses the mark. Most instances of rankings do not use an obscure source, like the Daily News, but rather reference a well-known and often used ranking such as USNWR. The fact that you don't think USNWR should have its rankings given privileged status ignores the fact that the USNWR rankings are the most often used and most influential rankings. Indeed, the fact that USNWR is considered authoritative by the general public would argue for its use in place of a more obscure ranking, not its omission. Finally, I do not think rankings in the lead necessarily indicate biased nor boosterism. It may be the case that a school's booster might add "State University was ranked #2 regional university by USNWR" in the lead as a point of pride, but that doesn't mean the fact isn't an important one that readers will find valuable information as a quick indication of the quality of the university. Vantelimus (talk) 09:59, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

The lack of consensus is the very issue I am raising - I am asking the question "Should a university's importance or prestige be established in the lead?" and if we accept that we should, how should we generally assert this in an NPOV and verifiable manner? I don't know why people are so wedded to invoking rankings in the lead when the only useful and appropriate context to understand these rankings is in a list of other universities' outcomes or other publications rankings, so they really do not impart any generalizable or summarizable information about the quality and reputation of the university by itself. The top 10 USNews schools have "scores" between 90-100. Compare this with the rankings for schools with the same variance in "scores" lower in the rankings: Is Princeton University (100, #1) twice as good as Texas A&M and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (50, #62) or are A&M and WPI twice as good as Arizona State University (35, #124)? Clearly the answer is no but you imply that a problematic metric based upon a single-year of data point conveys information about a university's quality or reputation, thus the analogy to a stock price. Similarly, because rankings rely upon similar data (SAT scores, retention, admissions rate, etc.) there is some correlation between different publications' rankings -- again then, why privilege one over another in the lead to assert quality/importance/prestige?

I referenced GAs/FAs only because other editors had been invoking cases of FAs in which rankings were in the lead as examples of consensus when there is clearly a large degree of variance in the practices among these articles and no explicit consensus. You ignore my argument that we are privileging a single publication's (a hypothetical Daily News) problematic ranking for one year because they are (Vantelimus alleges) authoritative, common, and influential even when the methodology for rendering these scores is a secret and varies every year which raises issues with WP:RS, WP:V, WP:NPOV. Likewise, because access to the full USNWR rankings requires a paid registration, how can we as a project ensure that all universities' ranking information is up-to-date? USNWR rankings may be common and authoritative within the United States, but any consensus we reach here becomes problematic when deciding how apply it to universities in other countries -- do we use different rankings for universities in different countries? But that would undermine the comparative argument Vantelimus advances. Should we use a general international rankings for all universities? But this wouldn't be authoritative or influential enough. How about we just leave rankings out of the lead so we can avoid importing all the analytic baggage that accompanies them? Madcoverboy (talk) 16:12, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think it's pretty clear that there's no consensus for the removal of rankings from the lead of all the universities articles. Moreover, I think it's also pretty clear that more editors find their inclusion in the lead useful than don't. While Wikipedia isn't a democracy, the weight of this discussion seems to be tilting away from your argument. I don't think anyone here believes that USN&WR's methods are perfect; rather, we're arguing that the rankings matter when talking about U.S. institutions and should therefore be included in the lead of articles about those schools. So long as one notes the year and cites the source for the rankings, I see no problem with their inclusion. Cheers! Esrever ^(klaT) 16:54, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Hm... sorry I haven't been watching this particular discussion, but I think Esrever's last comment pretty much sums up the majority of what my thoughts are at the moment. Although Wikipedia is not a democracy, right now the general gist of things suggest the current lead format with rankings properly cited is not really that big of an issue. I recognize Madcoverboy for his boldness and I think taking the initiative by making everything completely NPOV and PC is a nice goal, but in reality, university rankings the the very indication of a university's level of competence, whether it directly indicates prestiege should be up to the reader to decide. I think it is important that Wikipedia does not place specific and direct thoughts into our readers' minds. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 19:29, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Rankings have no place in the lead of an article about a university. This is just creeping academic boosterism. I defy anyone to find any other encyclopedia that does this. The only reason it happens in Wikipedia is that most of the work on university articles tends to be done by students and alumni of that university, who, while understandably non-neutral, should try to avoid letting their loyalty to their alma mater color their encyclopedia contributions.

The lead paragraph of a university should do its best to characterize what is unique, individual, and of general interest. What is historical about the university? What unusual courses of study are available? Its unique facilities? Whether it is placed #15 or #33 on some list tells you very little of interest about that university. It doesn't even tell you much if you happen to be a high school senior contemplating college. Who cares whether Harvard outranks Cornell if you want to go to hotel school and Cornell has one and Harvard doesn't?

Every college has some ranking number. But only Rutgers can brag about Selman Waksman's work. It's bizarre to think that it's more important to mention that Rutgers is #59 than to mention that streptomycin was discovered there.

Our article about Antonin Dvorak does not mention his numerical ranking among the great composers. Our article on Alice Freeman Palmer does not try to give her a numerical rank among great teachers.

The rankings are crap to begin with. In a lead paragraph they serve no function other than a pseudo-objective substitute for bragadocio.

On a list of things that are important about colleges, ranked in order of importance, rankings rank about #65, and don't belong in the lead. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:53, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

No other encyclopedia is going to do it because other encyclopedias can't update themselves as fast as we can. It has nothing to do with usefulness. There is absolutely no reason to make a rule about this. It can be decided on a case by case basis by each individual article. The article I work on in this project, BYU doesn't have such information in the lead. It used to, but we decided it just wasn't notable enough. The biggest problem I've seen with University article expansion is that people spend all of their time arguing about the lead and zero time actually improving and referencing article content. Wrad (talk) 01:36, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. --ElKevbo (talk) 03:19, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Just in case people missed it: academic boosterism says "remember that a university article's lead paragraph should be a quick summary of the most important facts about that institution. Move detailed listings of facts deeper into the body of the article." Madcoverboy (talk) 06:04, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

In response to Dpbsmith... I disagree that a brief mention of rankings in the lead is "just creeping academic boosterism". You admit the lead should characterize what is of "general interest". Well, rankings attempt to summarize the reputation and quality of universities, both of which are of general interest and of especial interest to those seeking to compare universities (e.g. potential students). It may be an interesting historical note that streptomycin was discovered at Rutgers in 1943 by an exceptional grad student. But what is more interesting to a potential student is where Rutgers stands relative to other universities in biochemistry today.

The fact is that the general public, private educational foundations, and public policy makers find rankings very interesting and useful. Much time and money is spent by public and private institutions (worldwide) to develop rankings that capture different notions of quality specifically to help students and policy makers make decisions. College rankings are different in kind from someone's subjective ranking of great composers. Thus, I don't find the argument about rankings of composers at all relevant to the current discussion.Vantelimus (talk) 12:18, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

In Riverside's case, we put the important scientific discoveries in the lead's first paragraph, followed by institutional history, followed by rankings, followed by sports. While I agree that rankings are not as important as the first two categories, they are at least as relevant to most WP readers as sports, if not moreso, and for legitimate informational reasons that don't necessarily have to do with boosterism. In some cases, these rankings may be the only third-party publication on some topics of student life at some institutions. While I only trust them to the extent their information can be collated, in cases where there is no university-published information on, for instance, the percentage of students in the Greek system, US News may be the only available source for this info. I'm not saying any rankings necesarily belong in the lead, but in Riverside's case apart from a couple news articles there were no third-party sources or publications that cover the development of the whole institution. Places with a lot of history (and a lot of legitimate scholastic resources that can be brought to bear) probably don't need to rely on rankings, or can legitimately do so to a lesser extent, but for institutions that don't have that, these rankings may provide the only information avaliable on some aspects. I entirely agree that the information is superficial, but it's all some places have got, so I'm not opposed to using rankings as a source for some statistics when there are no other sources available. Amerique^dialectics 13:19, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

---

For a Separate University Rankings WP Hello. University rankings can be both encyclopaedic information and, by their very nature, promotional information. The top paragraph of this section shows several real, current issues associated with rankings on university WPs. Tackiness aside, the worst of these is turning WPs into advertising. This corruption of a core principle of Wikipedia deserves our attention. I edit one M.B.A. page and these issues are amplified by conflict-of-interest. Given that rankings data influence starting salaries, the editors themselves seem motivated by self-interest; after all, conflict of interest is not as much about facts as appearances. I believe that this ranking information should be standardised to include the current rank, three-year moving average and a few sentences to describe any special purpose or parameters of the study. I believe in showing all rankings in order to circumvent any potential for cherry picking favourable numbers. Frankly, university pages would be better served with links to this proposed WP "University Rankings" page. Controversies and encyclopaedic information about the rankings could be appropriately added there. Every chart and table would have its place and university WPs could then link to them. This saves space and is an elegant solution. Isn't this is a step in the right direction? COYW (talk) 19:26, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

There is no overwhelming consensus across all university WPs even though each individual WP-- even featured ones-- may have evolved to have one. There are reasons for changing the status quo and --como se dice-- risking an improvement! Let's be bold! It is easy to have consensus amongst like-minded people... but Wikipedia is for everybody and not those chuffed with themselves for having added that their school is numero uno in some way. I never notice people writing 'we are #82'. Editors prefer to write we are #1, #2 or #3 in some narrow ranking if the big-pond rankings do not look so favourable. Magazine companies may also be self-interested and, naturally, want to sell their magazines. They may have pressure to appease schools in order to gain access to the needed data. The fact is any school can look like a big fish in a sufficiently small pond. Rankings have devolved into a kind of dirty game. What's more, disruptive revert wars start up when someone from *another* school visits and makes changes. Yet, assuming good faith means we must concentrate on these edits on their on merits. It would be foolish to overlook ulterior motives, though. Let's put consensus aside for a moment, and consider this question: Are rankings promotional info? The only answer is yes, for some people. However few they are, the answer is yes. Can their boosterism be contained by the usual ways? Hmmm? The thing that has struck me this past year, editing the Schulich School of Business page, is how easily a small group of motvated people can set up camp and assume they are "custodians". Consensus is over-rated in hostile take-overs of WPs. Realistically, people usually edit info on their alma mater's WP. You all can assume good faith. I'll continue to assume good faith like a hawk!! Rankings are advertising to many and it is naive not to see how that manifests itself on our pages. COYW (talk) 20:18, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Consensus

Is there any? The only consensus I read out of the the previous debate was that it depends on the university. I frankly find this to be a failure of will and a continued lack of consensus. I admit that it appears that many editors feel that rankings can or should remain in the lead, but by no means should this discussion be WP:SNOWed. UNC's lead, for example, would appear to be palatable:

In both teaching and research, UNC has been highly ranked by publications such as BusinessWeek and U.S. News & World Report.

It lacks the tackiness and recentism but introduces peacock-ery since "highly ranked" is completely unsubstantiated - top 10? top 100? when? etc. Indeed, that many leads still claim the school has "high selectivity" in the very first breath reveals the extent to which boosterism must be actively combated. What consensus, if any, do we have on including rankings in the lead? Madcoverboy (talk) 04:26, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, based on the above comments, it seems like the weight of the discussion leans pretty heavily toward leaving things as they are, i.e., determined on a case-by-case basis. While that may be unsatisfactory to you, I think it's indicative of the fact that there are many right ways to write a Wikipedia article. If there are specific instances of "peacockery" or rankings overkill that are unpalatable to you, perhaps you could bring that up on those individual articles' talk pages. As it is, though, I don't think you're going to find WikiProject-wide consensus for your proposed changes. Cheers! Esrever ^(klaT) 04:33, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

It depends not only on the university, but one how it's said--yes, I agree the UNC statement is perfect--there's not really the need to say any more. Those who advertise them more prominently give the implication that without the emphasis, people won;'t realise how good they are. Perhaps the guidline should be: as ingle sentence, without specific numbers. DGG (talk) 18:38, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

It appears the consensus is case by case. On the example sentence from UNC, I'm inclined to lean towards Madcoverboy's opinion that it is neither tacky nor too recent. but lacks precision and hence leans toward peacock-ery. It is the imprecision that bothers me most. As for inclusion of "high selectivity" in the lead as an indication of boosterism, I would say it depends on whether a reference (such as the Carnegie ranking) is given. I realize that rankings and selectivity statements sound like peacock-ery and boosterism to many people, but I do think they have value. I have had many conversations over the past few years about university quality with people. From my experience, there is vast ignorance about the differences in quality between different schools. Rankings may be imperfect and may be imperfectly applied by some, but they have great value just in raising questions of what differences in quality along diverse measures (e.g. class size, faculty ratios, publication rates, research emphasis, awards, etc.) might mean to the prospective student. They raise the discourse from a level of raw boosterism to one based on relevant comparable characteristics. Vantelimus (talk) 23:03, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

assuming the material is supported in the article, I continue to think it appropriate for the lede paragraph. You are giving arguemnts why the ddetailed material on ranking should be included at all, not why it belongs in the lede. DGG (talk) 00:20, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I suppose that's one way to look at what I wrote. Another is to infer importance of including rank information in the lead since it is important information to a great number of those likely to be reading the article.Vantelimus (talk) 20:38, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Assessments

I'm not sure if anyone watches the page, but there are few requests for (re-) assessments at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities/Assessment#Requesting an assessment or re-assessment if anyone who contributes here can help. I'm probably not impartial enough to look at them myself... LostOldPassword (talk) 04:13, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I normally try to go through and clean those out on a semi-regular basis, but I hesitate to futz around with the GA-to-A-Class assessment. I find the distinction between GA and A to be fairly meaningless; both represent a standard of excellence that falls short of FA (not that there's anything wrong with that) but that is still well above B-Class. I think those articles are typically better served by peer review or the FAC process than they are by me taking a look at them. If others feel like taking a crack at them, though, by all means do so. Cheers! Esrever ^(klaT) 04:39, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Högskolan/University College

Hello. I was disambiguating links and after a series of pages while looking in-depth, ended up on Högskolan pages, one which needs to be histmerged (University of Kalmar) and another I'm not sure about (University of Skövde). Should they stay (and the latter also histmerged) or should they be at University College (with the latter redirected)? --Squids'n'Chips 22:53, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Secret society infobox?

I can't find anywhere else to ask this. Is there an infobox for collegiate secret societies in North America? If not, what might be the best alternative? --Geniac (talk) 13:29, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not aware of one. You could try asking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Secret Societies or modify the fraternities one. Hippo (talk) 16:29, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, crap. I would have asked there if I had found it. Thanks. --Geniac (talk) 16:39, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, it is a secret. - X201 (talk) 17:23, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 1272 of the articles assigned to this project, or 28.1%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 18 June 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. Subsribing is easy - just add a template to your project page. If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:22, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 21:29, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Need help with Kalyani Government Engineering College

Okay, I stumbled onto this article when it was created and I've tried to assist those involved with the article ... but the simple fact is that I'm not active with WikiProject Universities, so can't provide those writing the article with the amount of assistance that they need to fix this article. I've simply started ignoring some issues as they get reverted back whenever I try to clean it up. Can someone with more experience with WP:UNIVERSITIES take a look at Kalyani Government Engineering College, and see if you can help the contributors over there get it cleaned up to at least follow basic style guides? Thanks in advance. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:26, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I have given it a preliminary article review and have made recommended article revisions. Any attempt at reintroducing non-notable information or any promotional/advertising sections/sentences/phrases should be promptly removed and have those editors properly addressed. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 07:49, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help - I'm glad I posted here, I had spotted many of the issues you mentioned and had left notes on one of the contributor's talk page; but had also missed a few. Familiarity with the guidelines goes a long ways towards simplifying the copy-editing of such articles! --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 14:56, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

No problem! I'll start putting some standard headers in so that others can improve upon it. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 16:45, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Collaboration of the Fortnight........

So... I've kinda stopped doing them from the lack of interest and lack of real progress. I kind of want to start it back up again, but I want to see if there will be enough support for me to attempt it. Any followers?

Thanks. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 04:21, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Eastern Nazarene College

The above article is currently being considered for GA nomination. Any comments regarding how ready the article might or might not be for such consideration would be more than welcome. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 14:07, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

History of Northwestern University

I've been working on the History of Northwestern University and have taken care of most of the pre-WWII history and a smattering of topics since then. I would welcome other editors' assistance in expanding the article, getting it assessed, and nominating it for GA and FA in the coming months. Madcoverboy (talk) 17:12, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

2008 NRC assessment

The 2008 NRC assessment of US research doctorate programs will be released in September 2008: [1] All you boosters and rankings-lovers out there, get ready to start your engines! Madcoverboy (talk) 18:05, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Who was that who was talking about using bots to do this kind of stuff?? - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 18:29, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Please vote/participate

List of Brigham Young University alumni is undergoing an FLC here and your help is needed—it didn't pass its first time through because not enough editors commented. Please assist...thanks! --Eustress (talk) 20:54, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll take a look. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 23:35, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Looks good, just take out the booster-cruft (acclaimed, best-selling, etc.). Madcoverboy (talk) 01:29, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Consensus on corporate logos/traditional crests in infobox

I see this has been discussed to some extent previously, but could a consensus be reached on the inclusion and placing of corporate logos and traditional crests & coat of arms in the infobox. I've noticed (particularly for UK universities) that there is an inconsistency around what appears at the top and at the bottom and editors often swap them around. They both have a distinct purpose and presence so I feel they both should be there but some consistency would help all round. Funkejazz (talk) 08:53, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, as I've argued here and other places, I don't think there really is a distinct purpose to having both a corporate logo and a traditional coat of arms, especially if both are copyrighted. Many American universities' articles on Wikipedia have their seal at the top and the logo at the bottom, and I'm of the mind that that is a violation of the non-free content criteria, especially #3A:

Minimal usage. Multiple items of non-free content are not used if one item can convey equivalent significant information.

In other words, I think logos and crests serve exactly the same purpose: to visually identify a university's "brand" using some university-approved image. Since they are, in that case, redundant, I feel only one should be in place in an article. If I had to pick one, I'd probably go with the corporate logo, but that's more just personal preference. Cheers! Esrever ^(klaT) 12:35, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

What I've seen some of the universities do, and actually my university's article does this as well, is that the seal or coat of arms goes on top, and if and only if they have another logo they go by for athletic purposes (like UC Berkeley has "Cal") that one goes on bottom. I guess this depends on the size of the university and its athletic programs. If your university has a separate athletics article, then the athletics logo should go to that article instead, if not, then technically, since they represent the university in uniquely different ways, they they should not blatantly violate the NFCC criteria. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 18:32, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the above, actually. I think an athletics logo serves, in some small way, a visually distinct purpose from a "corporate" logo and/or crest. Esrever ^(klaT) 19:03, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the problem is that some universities still use the coat of arms for day to day purposes, some incorporate it into the current logo and some only use it on the degree certificates, merchandise and the like but not on day to day stuff and so the importance varies. But certainly the two usually serve distinct purposes.

Sport is not a big part of a UK university's external identity (only the Oxford-Cambridge boat race has much of a public profile) and certainly isn't subject to corporate branding. Complicating things further is that sports teams are not organised by the university themselves but by the separate Sports Federation/Athletic Union or Students' Union, and some will use the university coat of arms, some the Sport Fed, AU or SU logo and virtually none a university corporate logo, but these decisions often take place on a sport by sport basis not a unified branding. Timrollpickering (talk) 19:35, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think it's fair to ignore the sports branding part, then, for UK universities at least. But what would you say are the two distinct purposes vis-à-vis a Wikipedia article that would justify including both a seal and a corporate logo? I'm not saying that the two don't serve distinct purposes at a university, but the university owns the copyright and can use the images however it chooses. Wikipedia has to justify the inclusion of copyrighted images. Esrever ^(klaT) 20:45, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Well then, if they have individual sports federations, then if the federation is notable enough, then that logo goes to a separate article. I think it just simplifies it for UK universities. And regarding your question, Esrever, I think the case would be focused on US universities where their athletics department/section is no notable for their own article, hence merged into the main article of the university. I understand there are other universities that have several logos depending on the occasion, I believe we need to draw the line to a maximum of one official seal/logo, and one athletics logo if and only if there is no subarticle on athletics. This should be a quite clear and definitive answer that we may refer to in the future. Does this work? - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 21:06, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Well sports federations fall into the same area as students' unions and often whether the two entities are separate or not is just a matter of internal arrangements, finances and history rather than any measure of significance, so it would wind up in the perennial AFD debates on inclusion there. But with regards the logos it would feel very strange to have a rule of one coat of arms or logo only and to have an exception for something like sports which in so many universities is of very little importance (and messy for places like my current institution where the sports teams are making more use of the coat of arms than the institution itself!). The coats of arms are part of the long term legal and chartered identity of the institutions and often are used for the most prestigious stuff, including on the actual degree certificates, so have a clear identity in themselves whereas the corporate logo is very often just something cobbled together by the marketing department and altered or replaced on a very regular basis. Again the standing of coats of arms may be different in other countries - do US universities have them formally granted or are they just commissioned and approved internally? Timrollpickering (talk) 21:39, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd say ignore the sports stuff on this one. My point isn't whether sports logos need to be included; I'm certainly okay with them being included in universities articles. I think the original poster's question was over which image (seal/coat of arms or logo) should be placed at the top of an article about a university, assuming both are included. My point was that I don't think both can be included. For instance, take a look at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I think that's a violation of the non-free content criteria because the seal and the logo serve the exact same purpose. There's no distinction between them in my mind; both serve only to represent the university's brand identity. Frankly, I don't think it's any different for a UK university either. If both images are copyrighted, then for the purposes of Wikipedia the seal and the logo have the same function and thus shouldn't both be included. Make sense? Esrever ^(klaT) 21:56, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I think this discussion has been worth having. If the issue, based on Wikipeida guidelines, is that only one copyrighted image can be used if both convey the same equivalent significant information, then the question is what is the purpose of providing a visual identity in the infobox? Is it to represent the organisation's recognised presence in the world or the formal and often historical recognition of its standing as a university? I'm not sure what my view is. Given, in the UK particularly, there is inconsistency from universities on how they use their corporate and formal logos, then I think the community here can be bold in defining what should be the agreed standard. Thanks Funkejazz (talk) 11:49, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

K. Banerjee Center of Atmospheric and Ocean Studies

[cross-posted from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject India:]

K. Banerjee Center of Atmospheric and Ocean Studies (an article on part of a university) is a gruesome mess. The gruesomeness is quite distinctive, too: it immediately reminded me of the deleted article on Prem C. Pandey, who perhaps not coincidentally is prominent within the article on the Center.

My gut feeling is that this is such a shambles that even if an article is worthwhile it should be started afresh. Should it be started afresh? Should it be deleted? -- Hoary 01:08, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

A quick way to clean up that article is to first have all of the PDFs and ELs deleted. See what meaningful text remains (clean up the blobs of text that has no encyclopedic value), and then add the correct relevant ELs for ref tags. I know I may be removing some good EL refs, but at this point, I'm almost to the point of nominating it for CSD as a list of links. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 21:03, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Philip Larkin as a librarian

As far as I can tell, this is the best place to ask for the help I'm needing: I've been doing a lot of work on the Larkin page, and am aware that we're missing an evaluation of his work as a librarian. Someone gave me a link to a useful source, but since I know nothing on this subject I thought it would be good to try to find someone with specialist knowledge of university libraries to decide what would be the notable elements that should be included on in the article. I've put a very brief sentence, with this ref, at the end of the Philip Larkin#Posthumous reputation section in the hope that someone else will expand it. Thank you! almost-instinct 10:47, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Just as a clarification, this is a WikiProject on the universities themselves. You might get better help if you asked the guys at WP:Biographies, where they focus on WP:BLPs. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 10:51, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

You could also try WikiProject Librarians. KnightLago (talk) 11:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I tried to find a project like that! Wonder why I failed. Bye! almost-instinct 11:54, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

No problem, always here to help. KnightLago (talk) 14:12, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll get some references. There's a great deal--he would have been notable for that alone. DGG (talk) 23:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! There are "Larkin's work as a librarian" sections in both the main page and the talk page eagerly awaiting contributions. almost-instinct 08:24, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Princeton University Department of Psychology at FAC

Just stumbled upon the above article at FAC. See here to leave comments. KnightLago (talk) 21:55, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Indiana Wesleyan University

Greetings,

I am the primary editor of the Indiana Wesleyan University page. A sourced 'criticisms' section was recently added to the article, but there have been several attempts by people associated with IWU attempting to delete this section using unregistered accounts. This seems contrary to Wikipedia standards - simply deleting something because you don't like it, even if it's true and sourced. Anyway, I'd appreciate it if you could put a partial lock on the page for awhile to divert attempts at deleting the section by unregistered users. Thanks.

Manutdglory (talk) 23:52, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

The section you mention is an unsourced, original research, and highly-POV atrocity that should be stripped out of the article in its entirety. The single source is a blog post by a coach, the rest of it are textbook violations of WP:COATRACK, weasel-words and event notability - where is the justifications from the administration, reactions from the student newspaper, coverage by local newspapers, comments by church leaders, etc.? If it was really a historic controversy worth mentioning in the Wikipedia article, then its coverage would be legion from these sources. If this coverage did exist, it should be merged into the history section, not stand as a standalone section. My google search for Indiana Wesleyan and Shane Claiborne returns nothing of import besides blog posts, so I don't see how this condition being met. Since Wikipedia is not a soapbox for this kind of ax grinding, it should come out. Madcoverboy (talk) 13:58, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Invitation to notability discussion

The Wikipedia:WikiProject College football project would like to invite all interested parties to a discussion on College Football player notability.--Paul McDonald (talk) 01:52, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

• I don't think the vast majority of those criteria can displace overarching WP policies on notability, reliable sources, and biographies of living persons. The vast majority of college players don't warrant articles besides those who win major awards or are drafted to professional teams (clearly, the second often presupposes the first). Madcoverboy (talk) 14:30, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Thanks for participating! The intent is to foster discussion on the topic, not necessarily to promote broad-reaching notability guidelines. Our project welcomes further comments from your project members and looks to work together with WP:Universities as much as we can!--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:54, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

List of UK universities by date of foundation

I have tagged List of UK universities by date of foundation as unsourced: the classification -

1 Ancient universities 
1.1 Medieval universities 
1.2 Universities founded during the Victorian period 
2 Red brick universities 
2.1 The civic universities 
2.2 Intermediate period 
2.3 Second wave of red-brick universities 
3 Plate glass universities 
4 Intermediate era 
5 New universities 
5.1 1992 universities 
5.2 Second wave of new universities

and the text looks like WP:OR to me. The list also seems to be ordered mostly by date of Charter or grant of university status, and not establishment. The two are rarely the same, and for some institutions, identifying a date which is both neutral and objectively 'correct' is very difficult. Would it be more prudent to reformat this list into a single table, or to redirect it to List of universities in the United Kingdom? — mholland (talk) 11:01, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

seals and logos

Hi all! There's currently a discussion brewing over at Talk:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill over the inclusion of both seals and logos in university articles. My argument is that it's not a valid fair use under the non-free content criteria because #3A calls for "minimal usage". Since seals and logos serve the same point (displaying a university-approved visual identity), I don't think it's acceptable to include both. However, I'm certainly willing to acknowledge that consensus may hold that is kosher. Any thoughts from anyone on this end? Cheers! Esrever ^(klaT) 16:46, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

what license do i use when i upload the logo of my university. the logo is from our university's identity standards group. the logo is for the info box. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.96.226.88 (talk) 09:16, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

This is what I'd type if I were putting together the information for a university logo:

{{logo fur
 |Article = Article_name
 |Source = THE URL YOU DOWNLOADED THE IMAGE FROM
 |Use = Infobox
 }}

 {{Non=free logo}}

 [[Category:University logos]]

Cheers! Esrever ^(klaT) 20:35, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

School name change - opinions needed

Will a few people take a look at Talk:Loyola College in Maryland (in the Name Change section at the very bottom) and offer their opinions. Thanks! KnightLago (talk) 16:51, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

FAC: Texas Tech University

Just in case you missed it on the Project homepage, Texas Tech University has a featured article candidate: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Texas Tech University. I invite you all to go and comment on it. Madcoverboy (talk) 04:00, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Community College

Long story short, I'm looking to improve an article on my own community college. It's in fairly decent shape but I did want to expand it a bit. I was wondering if anyone knew of a community college article that I might be able to use as a reference? Bvlax2005 (talk) 11:39, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

In the accomplishments section on the main WikiProject Universities page there is a list of good and featured articles. See here. But, I only saw one Community College and it is a good article. The problem with good articles is that they range greatly in quality. My suggestion would be to find a featured article that is like your community college. If your college has multiple campuses or is part of a system, is really old, or newer, etc., scan through the featured articles and find one or even a few that fit, and then you can model your article after those. This will ensure you have a good reference. KnightLago (talk) 14:08, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

FAC: 2007 USC Trojans football team

2007 USC Trojans football team is a featured article candidate:Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/2007 USC Trojans football team. Please review and comment on the nomination. Madcoverboy (talk) 05:31, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Dispute at Indiana Wesleyan

I invite others to contribute to a discussion at the Talk page for Indiana Wesleyan University. There is a dispute involving a textbook used for a required course and criticism related to that text and course. We welcome others' views and input. --ElKevbo (talk) 16:17, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Help sought at Wesleyan University

This edit may be partly a correction, but it is clearly a mess: no summary, no new source, different numbers, and (unless things have changed greatly since I was college age and they've added a third SAT) combined SAT scores of 2100 are impossible. Could someone on this WikiProject possibly sort it out? Thanks. - Jmabel | Talk 02:17, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Carnegie

ElKevbo has raised the issue of making greater use of the Carnegie Classifications in WP:UNI articles because they are comprehensive, NPOV, and well thought-out. Obviously, I agree with him and I am trying to think of the best way to incorporate them and here are the unwieldy solutions I have come up with:

• (Easy) Expand the University infobox to include these classifiers and create either a main-space page or documentation page to describle the acronyms. Native editors or a task force populate the fields on their own.
• (Medium) Include the classification in the body of the article to structure a paragraph elaborating upon it with specific data. Native editors or a new task force populate the fields.
• (Hard) Create a bot (similar to the geography bots) to scrape the Carnegie database and either create new articles or populate new sections within existing articles. I have no experience here and I don't know that the development, testing, and approval time would ultimately be any more efficient than just strapping down and doing it by hand.

Let me know your thoughts. Madcoverboy (talk) 04:34, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

It's important to note that Carnegie only classifies US institutions. That is why in the past I have advocated for a separate infobox for US institutions so we could include this info. I would be amenable to inserting the information using a template in the body of the articles, too, although I'd like to think about that more or see how it might look. We might be able to take some text from our article on the classification scheme. --ElKevbo (talk) 16:15, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Easier, just do what we do know and include it in the text where it can be fully and properly explained. That seems to work fine now, why change it? Also, I don't like the idea of some kind of structured paragraph. KnightLago (talk) 19:38, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I disagree that things "work fine now." Further, why the opposition to some structure and consistency? Isn't that what we use other templates for? --ElKevbo (talk) 23:34, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Without distinct US/other national infoboxes at our disposal then yes, I'd agree with KnightLago that status quo is probably the best way forward; simply use this resource as a third party source to support any assertions on classification etc. If people dispute the use of this particular source then they might cite another to show contrast (i.e. everyone can 'win' here). Coldmachine^Talk 20:09, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I would view anyone who seriously "dispute[s] the use of this particular source" with grave suspicion. It's certainly not perfect or above criticism but it's definitely the gold standard. --ElKevbo (talk) 23:34, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I understand that the ratings are limited to US institutions and are thus imperfect, but I would still like to see this far more valuable information more comprehensively included in articles than the typical USNWR, SHJT, THES rankings trash. I certainly didn't know about them until recently and my pet articles would certainly stand to benefit by them. The question I posed, is how to incorporate this information equitably and efficiently using either templates or body text.

I think a reasonable first step is to develop a consensus on how and where to incorporate this information into the existing structure and then update WP:UNI/AG to explicitly mention this information. I would fall on the side of putting it in the body text under "Academic profile" and making sure to pay attention to providing enough context to the meaning of the classification without having to elaborate unnecessarily on all of the classifications generally. Secondly, having reached consensus, this information should be seeded into the appropriate FAs, GAs, and other prominent institutions/articles to both vet the local consensus here against the native editors as well as to serve as an example for the hundreds and thousands of other articles. Madcoverboy (talk) 05:23, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Help with Cal Poly Pomona

Hello I would like to know if you could use your editing expertise to help us get Cal Poly Pomona's article reach GA-status. I have been working on it lately but I've found it hard to improve without compromising NPOV or using peacock terms since I'm a student at Cal Poly Pomona. We have a WikiProject to have things more neatly organized and already requested the aid of the Collaboration of the Fortnight but they haven't responded yet. Thank you.--Dabackgammonator (talk) 06:56, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Templates for deletion?

What do my fellow university article editors think of templates like Template:University of North Texas and Template:Southern Nazarene University used in articles such as University of North Texas and Southern Nazarene University? I'm tempted to point out the ridiculous number of redlinks and dubious associations with extant articles.... Aepoutre (talk) 17:22, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, my biggest problem with the SNU template is that it's just terrible to try to read. I mean no offense to its creator, but it's poorly designed color-wise. But I see your point here: clearly, some of those redlinked articles will never reach Wikipedia's notability standards. I don't have a problem with redlinked articles in navigation templates per se, as I think it can be a nice map for an editor or team of editors to follow as they expand on the various topics associated with a university. But I don't know how to go about telling the people who are working on the SNU articles, for example, that student housing (which I assume Chapman Apartments, for example, is) isn't worth including in their template. I have a slightly bigger problem with things like {{NorthTexasBasketballCoach}}, actually. You don't need a navbox for two people.

I'd love to see other people's input on these topics, and I'll leave a note on the talk pages of those particular templates. Cheers! Esrever ^(klaT) 19:21, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I have taken these suggestions and cleaned up the template. More articles have been created. The intent was to create a template that would grow with the as the main article grows. So in the future, there won't be any redlinks. Where as the main article Southern Nazarene University just has to say for example "the basketball teams play in the "Sawyer Center" and instead of having all the Sawyer Center info in the main SNU page. (Make sense?). As far as Wikipedia's notability standards are concerned, some articles could be grouped, like all the housing linked to one main article "Student housing at Southern Nazarene University", or just unlinked the links. Please let know on my user talk page if there is anything else that could be done, or other thought ya'll have. Thanks! Moonraker0022 (talk) 21:19, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Fitchburg State College

I have been working on the page Fitchburg State College for quite some time now. It hasn't been assesed by any of the Wikiprojects it is part of. I have reached the point where I realy need some more help or at least a peer edit so that I know what needs to be fixed or what can be added to make it better. I know that this school is not a world famous institution, but I would appriciate any help that anyone wants to give.--Found5dollar (talk) 14:31, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Sure, I'll take a stab at trying to see if there's anything I can do. First a format check, then typo check, then if I have more time today, content/reference checks. I'll post on the article's talk page regarding my comments. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 15:05, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I left some comments on talk regarding sources that should definitely be included before moving ahead as well as stripping out or converting the bulleted lists. Madcoverboy (talk) 15:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I saw your comments. I'm not going to proceed with content improvement until those refs are fixed. The lists needs to be converted into one big gigantic academics section as mentioned on my review on that page. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 15:56, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Talk:Southern_Nazarene_University#Merger_proposal

Discussion of a merger. Please provide opinions if possible. Thanks. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 18:29, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Public Ivies

Can someone please take a look at this user's edits? He or she has been making many edits to university articles related to their status as Public Ivies. I'm rapidly losing patience with him or her and would appreciate more level-headed advice and intervention. Thanks! --ElKevbo (talk) 12:09, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Please don't let yourself get wound up by this discussion. I find that Cite needed's point is useful. Articles should say "this university was included in .... list of 'public ivies' ", not "this university is a public ivy". Categories of institution are hardly every very hard-and-fast. And people outside the US are unlikely to be familiar with the term "public ivy" since it is quite new and doesn't apply in the countries where there is no clear distinction between public and private university. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:29, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I don't understand either concerns about readers not knowing what the term means nor why we should use the needlessly long language of "is considered by" or "is included in the list of." Relative to the first point, we have an entire article on this topic and that article seems more than sufficient to explain the topic in detail (it's not at all complicated). For the second point, why is that kind of language even necessary? If Moll or his co-authors decide an institution is a "Public Ivy" then the institution is de jure a Public Ivy. They made up the silly term and they get to decide how it's used. So any extraneous language is just that - extraneous. Eschew obfuscation, my friends. --ElKevbo (talk) 15:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't suggest getting into an edit war about it, but I do see your point. I saw the borderline NPA violation on your talk page. It seems clear to me that we should determine a standard for this. I believe if we can determine some kind of consensus we can perhaps have him refer to the results of the discussion. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 14:54, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

As I have written elsewhere, I am okay if we decide that this label shouldn't be used in the lead or anywhere in college and university articles. But that decision should be reached through consensus and based on sound judgment, not merely because one editor thinks the category is silly and useless (a judgment with which I agree). --ElKevbo (talk) 15:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to agree with Cite needed as well, just because some author published a book inventing a new catchy new category shouldn't be cause for these universities' articles to relabel themselves as such. The same goes for the "Colleges that change lives" and so forth. It often seems these laudatory passages take the place of the requisite rankings-cruft that would normally occupy the lead when the rankings aren't quite high enough. Similarly, the Princeton Review publishes all kinds of unflattering "rankings" and one almost never sees these included in the university's articles. Besides, all these "public ivies" or what-have-you are already well-recognized as excellent universities through a myriad of far more NPOV and reliable sources, so keep this book spam out of the articles. Madcoverboy (talk) 15:53, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I am amused and saddened that despite the lack of consensus and discussion a handful of editors, including one anonymous SPA, are continuing to remove this information from articles making vague reference to a non-existent consensus (hint: because information is not in some articles does not mean there is a consensus to exclude that information). The continued antagonism displayed by these editors ("book spam," "spamming," etc.) is quite annoying and has no place here. --ElKevbo (talk) 22:52, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

MIT GA/R

Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been up for good article reassessment since June 7. Please go and comment on the reassessment so that further consensus can be established. Madcoverboy (talk) 22:30, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd have to agree with you. You've been doing some great work improving the article and it really should stay GA. MIT's been on my watchlist for quite a while now and I hope it does not lose its article class. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 23:24, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Just finished up with another round of edits and reorganization. I'd appreciate it if we could get some more eyes on it and wrap up a 6-week old good article reassessment. Please read MIT and comment on the GA/R assessment. Thanks! Madcoverboy (talk) 04:47, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll take another look. We really need to get the old gang back together. This project is getting quite...quiet... - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 05:00, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Could someone swing by MIT sometime and re-assess for A-class? Madcoverboy (talk) 20:37, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Universities

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:07, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Loyola College in Maryland

Loyola College in Maryland has gone under some drastic changes over the years including the more recent decision to change the name to Loyola University Maryland. It is a competitive Jesuit institution with a very big influence on the city of Baltimore but its wikipedia article is like its reputation-awkward and comprehensive only to those who are affiliated with the university. If anyone can give me some help with this article that would great-im pretty new to this. Thanks.

P.S. Please be as harsh as possible.Interzil (talk) 23:57, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

2009 US News Rankings Out

IF anyone hasn't noticed, US News & World Report has released the 2009 version of their rankings. Right now, I'm seeing lots of editors updating articles without changing the source information. It's also pretty common to misstate the methodology employed by USN&WR by stating that institutions are ranked "__ best in the country" when USN&WR doesn't compare all institutions against one another. Keep an eye out for these things. Of course, this would also be a prime opportunity for vandals and others to insert incorrect or misleading information so it may be worth looking out for that, too (which is one reason why it's good to have updated source info). --ElKevbo (talk) 15:34, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Could you provide us a link to the latest rankings? When I try to access it I get a notice to subscribe... :D - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 18:42, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

All the links on their website work for me. There are many other links a few levels deep that require a subscription but we seem to be able to get to the basic listings without paying.

Anyone who would like access to the "gotta pay for it" info should check with their local library, particularly if you're affiliated with a college or university, as they will likely have a subscription. --ElKevbo (talk) 19:17, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Though I loathe rankings and US News in particular, I have subscriptions to the 2009 undergraduate and graduate rankings, so drop me a note at your talk if you need something verified, updated, cited. Madcoverboy (talk) 18:48, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Auto-archiving

Can I get consensus to get autoarchiving started for this talk page? I have the code on the page commented out. When we get consensus I'll decomment to activate. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 17:04, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

The following is the code I have placed.

<!--- Commenting out archiving prompt until consensus is reached. {{User:MiszaBot/config |maxarchivesize = 100K |counter = 7 |minthreadsleft = 1 |minthreadstoarchive = 1 |algo = old(45d) |archive = Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities/Archive %(counter)d }} --->

- Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 17:12, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

OK... no discussion? May I proceed then? It's been 10 days... - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 00:04, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

These look like very aggressive archiving parameters. old(21d) would leave 14 threads here, which doesn't seem unreasonable. The default values for minthreadsleft and minthreadstoarchive would likely be better also.

I'm not a project member. I find it useful though, when I'm thinking of asking questions on a WikiProject talk page, to look at the recent activity to gauge whether there is any point in asking my question. A surprising number of WPP's are moribund. It's also always interesting to read up on the recent talk threads, as it tells an interesting story on what the particular project is currently trying to achieve (in practice, as opposed to the stated goals on the WPP page itself). Franamax (talk) 01:01, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, it's been 10 days and I didn't catch the typo.... -_- My fault. It was suppoed to be 45d, not 48h. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 02:37, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

That's even more reasonable. Change minthreadsleft to 5 or so and you've got my agreement. Among the editors commenting in the thread, an overwhelming consensus supported auto-archiving :) Franamax (talk) 04:35, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Y Done. Time interval = 45d; min set to 5. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 06:23, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

So, 51 threads, 28 went to archive, 23 remain. 28 threads are in Archive 7, apparently matching the removed threads. Last-mod date selection looks OK. Of course, we can still suspect the bot until it fills and turns over a 100K archive - but it looks like that Misza13 knows what they're doing! Well possibly Misza has since gone crazy, but he left a good bot behind :) Archiving (first pass) looks good. Franamax (talk) 11:15, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Good to see. I've been using MiszaBot(x) for a while with several other WikiProject Talks, article Talks, and User Talks already. It works wonders... :D - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 12:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Best Practices - Posting Information/Content

Our firm has a client that has many colleges/universities. Some of the articles about their company and colleges contain inaccurate information or biased content. We respect the Wiki community and do not want to do anything that undermines this environment.

Is it OK to have a 3rd party firm post information on behalf of the client?

Should the content be posted directly by the client from their IP address and login?

Does anyone have any guidelines or advice as to whom and how the content should be posted to the articles? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ryangambrill (talk • contribs) 18:44, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

In my experience, as long as the content is neutral, unbiased, and verifiable, a user (not a company) may post on Wikipedia as a contribution to an existing article. However, it may be wise to propose exactly what you wish to change on the articles you want to edit. If you are unfamiliar with wikicode, I suggest you test your material coding via WP:SANDBOX. WikiProject Universities does have several guidelines regarding university articles. Please review WP:UNIGUIDE for the general guidelines. If you require more help regarding looking for policies and guidelines, click on my user page and near the top right corner you'll find a list of key Wikipedia guidelines and policies. Of course, if you require further assistance you may reply here as needed. Hope this helps. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 19:13, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

It is our goal and commitment to only have content posted that meets the editorial guidelines listed above. In your professional opinion what would be the best option for posting content:

1 - Client creates username/account similar to company name and makes all postings directly from their network & IP. 2 - Client creates username/account similar to company name and we (their 3rd party firm) post from our network & IP.

We would like the content postings to have as much credibility as possible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ryangambrill (talk • contribs) 23:51, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, your username should not be similar to a company at all. Please review our username policy. Many times usernames that violate such policies end up in WP:UAA. I would once again suggest that you post what you want to change on the individual talk pages of the articles you wish to change first. This way other peer editors may verify the information. If you need further help, please continue to discuss the issue here. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 00:00, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Setting aside the username issue for the moment. Wikipedia's business FAQ is probably a good place for you to start. The FAQ answers a lot of common questions about how businesses should use Wikipedia. What type of business are you in? How many clients/colleges/businesses on Wikipedia do you represent? In what way is the information biased? Can you provide examples? I agree that it is probably best you post your suggested changes on the article talk pages and then let other editors implement the suggested changes. Returning to the username question, please see Wikipedia's username policy. Generally, accounts should be unique and personal to each individual editor. They should not be shared. Also, a basic introduction to editing Wikipedia is located here. KnightLago (talk) 03:14, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the information. We are in the SEO business and know there is no way to SEO a Wiki article. Some of our clients see Wiki articles that appear in the SERPs that possibly contain inaccurate information. These clients want our firm to update the information as they do not have the time, resources, or knowledge. We want to make sure that we are following all of the TOC's.

Let's assume for a moment our firm follows all TOC's (guidelines, talk pages, citations, references, etc.) and individuals that work at our firm register individually. All postings from these usernames would most likely come from the same IP as well as most conversations on talk pages as well as edits will be done on behalf of our clients. Is there any potential backlash or downside that can harm our reputation or the reputation of any clients that we may have or will work on their Wiki articles? ryangambrill (talk) 06:18, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

As long as your employees (a) are upfront about their employment and motives (I suggest writing something on each User's page with this info) and (b) respectful of and compliant with our standard practices and culture then you should be okay. When in doubt, post suggestions to the article's Talk page rather than editing the article immediately unless it's a clear-cut case with substantial references. --ElKevbo (talk) 11:39, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

WP:BOOSTER

There is currently a debate at Wikipedia talk:Avoid academic boosterism#Highly selective regarding whether or not terms like "highly selective" or "elite" (1) should be mentioned in the lead and (2) if they are examples of boosterism at all. Other editor's comments are welcome to develop a more thorough consensus on this issue. Madcoverboy (talk) 22:51, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

After extensive discussion and blood-letting, we are seeking to establish consensus on a variety of issues relating to selectivity, classifications, and style in university articles. Please review the proposals and join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Avoid academic boosterism#Proposed consensus. Madcoverboy (talk) 15:07, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Large number of AfD's in progress

There are (at present count) 58 pages up for deleletion in AfD Discussions at the College Football Project. Since your project is listed as a related project, your project members may wish to participate. This large volume is really more than we can handle in such a short period of time and the project asks for your input. Please review Articles & Pages being considered for deletion immediately.--Paul McDonald (talk) 20:33, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll give it a shot. But you guys are probably looking for more participation than that...:D - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 20:40, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

This seems to be a policy issue with WP:ATHLETE. I believe our efforts will be better spent on working on this policy to find a consensus rather than to create debates (on repeated issues) on individual AfD pages. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 21:21, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. I've been attempting to gain attention to College Footbal Notability for some time, but a few editors seem to rather just hit deletions. Thanks to all who pitched in, future comments are always welcome (and remember, you don't have to agree with me... I'm more interested in your take on it than if your take on it matches mine).--Paul McDonald (talk) 20:21, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Higher Technological Institute

The above article, about a university in Egypt, needs masses of attention and probably a name change. It is listed in the Articles in Need of Translation, where I have suggested that there is an English-language prospectus on the website that could be used for a complete rewrite. Thanks all for your continued efforts. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:52, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't know a thing about Arabic... except for the numbers... eek - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 16:43, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Me neither, but I found the English stuff on the website and it was fine, like a standard university prospectus. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:47, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Autoassessment for the Project

10 of 110 unassessed articles of WP:UNI were autoassessed based on already done assessments by other projects on the same talk page per request of - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} by TinucherianBot. FYI -- Tinu Cherian - 09:41, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! :D - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 13:16, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

WP:UNI/COTF Reunion

There are at least two other editors (plus myself) who are willing to restart the Collaboration of the Fortnight for this project. If you are interested, please express your interest here on this thread. Thanks. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ contribs} 23:35, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

-I'm in. --Dabackgammonator (talk) 04:47, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Endowments and the University of California system

There appears to be quite a difference between what the universities in the University of California system report as their endowment to NACUBO and what is posted on the UC Annual Endowment Report. In reviewing the UC report, it states that donors can either give directly to the university foundation or to the regents on behalf of the university. However, the UC report also includes life-income funds and gift annuities that are not generally included in endowments until they mature. The NACUBO Endowment Study has usually been the best source for the endowment figure, but I wanted to get feedback from other editors about the best source for University of California schools given their approach to accounting for gifts. Thanks, Alanraywiki (talk) 15:26, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm for using the NACUBO figures for individual campuses as the en. wiki standard for US universities. it would seem to be a good way to keep List_of_U.S._colleges_and_universities_by_endowment consistent. Amerique^dialectics 16:50, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. Well, kind of. I think we should use the NACUBO figures where appropriate (for schools like Harvard, that have one, combined endowment fund). But in the case of the UC schools, I don't think the NACUBO figures are, by themselves, helpful. The UC endowment funds, as Alanraywiki mentioned above, are comprised of two distinct values: the earmarked portion of the general UC-wide fund and the campus-specific foundation. Ignoring the former value, will only result in an inaccurate figure. It doesn't matter if other state schools don't consider their aggrigate endowment funds as part of their individual ones. What does matter, is the fact that the UC campuses do. The "consistency argument" doesn't apply here because there is an inheritent inconsistency among Universities, in terms of whether or not they conisder/include there larger, aggrigate endowment funds as part of their individual endowment values. We should look at public schools, on a case-to-case basis, starting at the NACUBO report to see if seperate figures are listed for a school, and then go to the individual system's own report to see how these aggrigate funds are allocted for the individual campuses. Yeah, this is much more work, but it reflects a much more accurate figure. — ŁittleÄlien¹⁸² (_talk\^contribs) 21:28, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I would guess that the individual campuses don't have control over the Regents funds. The earmarked Regents funds can be considered in assessing the total value of the UC endowment, as provided in the systemwide UC article. "Consistency" would mean using the universal metrics the universities themselves use to report their endowments to NACUBO. I would be ok with listing the earmarked Regents funds for individual campuses on the UC systemwide page or on the individual campus article pages, but leaving the NACUBO figure in the infoboxes, as it seems to represent what people who work with these things in the real world mean when they say "endowment," without "life income funds" or anything else. Amerique^dialectics 23:01, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

A couple of points:

1. "I would guess that the individual campuses don't have control over the Regents funds." Not true. These funds are earmarked and, as such, are more tightly regulated than the individual foundation funds, but the individual campus ultimately decides where the accrued dividends are allocated.
2. True. ""Consistency" would mean using the universal metrics the universities themselves use to report their endowments to NACUBO" I'm not suggesting anything different. However, individual UC campuses don't report their individual portion of the UC endowment to NACUBO because it is already accounted for in the combined figure. It wouldn't make sense for the UC system to report it's aggrigate endowment amount, and then for the individual campuses to report there values with their individual portion of this aggrigate value included. If they did, they would be reporting the same money twice, in the same report. We could maintain "consistency" by adhering to these metrics such that combined values of the total endowment figures of all of the UC campuses is the same as the sum of the UC foundation value and the indivual foundation values listed in NACUBO.
3. When we have access to the total endowment figures of individual campus', we shouldn't ignore this information. They are the values that the campuses use themselves and report to the media (e.g. Berkeley reported that their endowment was approximately $2.9 billion earlier this year in a bloomberg report).

Simply put, I haven't seen the Berkeley or UCLA endowment funds reported as less than $1 billion in a very long time, but that is exactly what you are suggesting if we are to use your criteria. Are you sure this is what you want? For all the readers of the UC articles, it would seem to be a contradiction. — ŁittleÄlien¹⁸² (_talk\^contribs) 23:36, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

What you are talking about in terms of "consistency" would seem to imply Original Research. On WP, we just report what the (hopefully) reliable sources say, and if they are in conflict, we go with whatever one seems most likely to be accurate, we don't try to collate discrepancies. However, as i've said before, finance isn't my field, so if i'm wrong or if anyone else wants to take a shot at explaining this in better terms than i can please step in. Amerique^dialectics 00:02, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Please reread what I wrote. I'm not asking us to reconcile any discrepancies. — ŁittleÄlien¹⁸² (_talk\^contribs) 00:41, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

We've established that the NACUBO and UC AER figures are not mutually consistent. You are not suggesting we should compare the NACUBO report with the UC AER when you say, "We should look at public schools, on a case-to-case basis, starting at the NACUBO report to see if seperate figures are listed for a school, and then go to the individual system's own report to see how these aggrigate funds are allocted for the individual campuses. Yeah, this is much more work, but it reflects a much more accurate figure"? How is the more accurate figure to be derived otherwise?

I would just list the, separate and combined, campus foundation and regents totals on the uc page and the campus article pages, but leave the nacubo totals for the endowment of the campus foundation in the infobox. nacubo is a lobbying organization, but as such seems to be the only organization that has a universal metric for consistently keeping such records on a national scale. if we allow the uc to define it's own endowment terms, the value in the endowment parameter in a UC infobox would mean a different thing than it would for a CSU campus, for instance, not to mention Harvard or some such. So, i am for using NACUBO figures as they seem to be used for making arguments to Congress and are respected by professionals in this area. Amerique^dialectics 01:44, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

No --I was not suggesting that we compare the two values and then determine which is the "best." Once again, please read what I wrote carefully. I was saying that we should use documents like the UC AER to determine how aggregate endowment funds that are listed in the NACUBO (e.g. the UC endowment) are split up among individual campuses (if they are split up at all). The two aforementioned documents don't seem to have any egregious conflicts. In fact, I think they should both be referenced in every UC article. And I, too, think that both values should be listed in the article, but I think the total endowment value should be listed in the infobox. This is the number that the individual campuses use themselves. — ŁittleÄlien¹⁸² (_talk\^contribs) 07:09, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Requesting comments for the List of universities in Ontario FLC found HERE

The article List of universities in Ontario is currently at FLC; since the article falls under this WikiProject's scope, I am posting this notice here. It needs more comments, so if you've got time, please post comments on the FLC. If you do not believe that the article can be improved further, feel free to Support it; otherwise, if you find issues with the article that are actionable, then please Oppose it. Thanks in advance! Gary King (talk) 04:17, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

DoEd College Navigator

I recommend editors, in addition to using standardized data from the Common Data Set (if available), use the Dept. of Education's College Navigator to provide relevant and accessible statistics on their institutions as well. Obviously this is only pertinent to US institutions. On a related note, I notice that most articles do not include information on freshman retention or 4 or 6-year graduation rates, even though this information is often included into the rankings (which are so dear to many editors' hearts). I would encourage editors to include information on retention, graduation rates, as well as some financial aid information such students receiving need-based support, percentage of students who receive Pell Grants, etc. Madcoverboy (talk) 17:41, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Deletion and school projects

I see I posted this at the wrong wikiproject Deletion of teacher assigned projects Kopachuk Middle School...there has been a reply to whit that the student in order to meet his teacher's pre-requisite had to use user space rather than article space. Why invite teachers and students to learn and write articles on wikipedia if they are deleted? It seems moot. SriMesh | talk 16:51, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Here is another school project where the teacher has asked the kids to write about local Edmonton bands which got speedy deleted, and the kids are giving up and asking why bother with the teacher's assignment if they won't stay on wikipedia. band article deletion The articles created at this Unannounced class project for the most part survived AFD, and they received help from various wikipedians about manual of style to help them through the AFD nominations. SriMesh | talk 23:05, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikiproject membership - Admins - coordinators

Can this Wikipedia talk:School and university projects talk page project page have membership and admins -perhaps through wikiproject Education or its child projects, Wikipedia:WikiProject Education in Australia, Wikipedia:WikiProject Education in Canada, Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities, Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools, Wikipedia:WikiProject School Years, Wikipedia:WikiProject Alternative education, Wikipedia:WikiProject Homeschooling... to help find articles which come onto wikipedia as is commented upon in the deletion section above and get deleted before it is discovered they are part of a class project, so that the teacher/students can be contacted about templates etc. This message also posted at the other wikiprojects as well. Kind Regards SriMesh | talk 23:20, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Found it ....Wikiproject Classroom coordination with coordinators, and instructions for students with contacts. Tis already made. SriMesh | talk 23:44, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Cornell FAR

Cornell University has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:00, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

CfD for Category:College radio stations in Oregon

The category Category:College radio stations in Oregon has been listed at CfD for those parties interested in the discussion. Aboutmovies (talk) 10:04, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Requesting comment for St. John's University (New York)

There is an ongoing dispute at the Talk:St. John's University (New York) page between several users about the content and structure of the article. The argument is basically over what defines "controversy". Some argue that some of the items placed in the controversy section not only carry misinformation but also should not be considered controversial. The other side wishes to maintain all of them (and implement others that were deleted). Can some of you who are more experienced with University articles help in the dispute? I don't wish for another edit war to start. NyRoc (talk) 00:10, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I'll take a look, but it would be nice to have more eyes on this. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ guestbook ♦ contribs} 07:31, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Corinthian Schools and other expasionalist institutions

Hi, I'm not a member of this project and do intend to become one, but I work in the world of colleges and universities and have noticed something that you might not be aware of. In recent years there have been a number of schools aquired by Corinthian Colleges. And all of their names have been changed (usually to Everest, sometimes to WyoTech) and, as far as I can tell, their histories are nowhere to be found on the new websites. Which makes the work done by this WikiProject that much more important because without it, these histories will be lost.

Other expanionalist institutions are The Art Institute, Kaiser College, and (I think) Kaplan College/University. --*Kat* (talk) 00:59, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree and understand what you're saying. What needs to happen is essentially what happened to some of the editors who gathered the full history "family tree" of DeVry University. They did a great job digging through their history. Other ones very prominent include UTI and ITT Tech. If you would like to start with one set of colleges for one university chain and move on to another one, that's fine too. Let us know what you would like to do and what you see that you'll need assistance with.  :) - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ guestbook ♦ contribs} 07:56, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I repeat...I'm not a member of this project and I don't intend to become one. But I will be happy to help provide information.--*Kat* (talk) 21:47, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

O...k... If you don't want to update this article, that's fine, and you don't have to be a member of this WikiProject to edit articles. If you simply want to leave the information to update the article, you may leave a message on the article's talk page. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ guestbook ♦ contribs} 21:58, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Introducing: WikiProject Universities Collaboration of the Month

Yup! We're starting the collaboration project again, but instead of every 14 days, it'll be every month. Please vote for the topic you would like to improve!

The current University Collaborations of the Month are Ohio State University & Princess Nora bint Abdul Rahman University
Every month two B-, C- or Start-Class higher education-related articles are chosen for you to improve. Be bold! This COTM is organized by WikiProject Higher Education. (vote for future collaborations or see past collaborations) This collaboration is effective: May 20, 2011 — June 20, 2011 until someone updates it. Pick the next WikiProject Higher Education COTM!

Thanks. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ guestbook ♦ contribs} 22:01, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Friendly Notice of an Article for Deletion

The article Paul LaVinn is being considered for deletion. You may participate in the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paul LaVinn.

This notice is intended to make editors aware of the discussion and to help make Wikipedia a better place, not to influence the discussion in question in any way. Please notify the discussion group that you came to the group from this notice. If you feel this notice is a violation of Wikipedia:Canvassing please let the posting editor know.--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:34, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Template:Infobox University Chancellor

This template is being changed and I would like to have someone take a look and make sure it's ok (the infobox affects multiple articles). I tried to revert the changes until one of us double checks the code, but I don't think the editor read the edit summary on the edit and got... well... ticked off perhaps? I don't know (see my talk page for the discussion. Thanks. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ guestbook ♦ contribs} 22:17, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Rice University

Maybe I just did a COTM on my own, but Rice University's article was atrocious - a "reputation" section at the top, absolutely no description of research activities, and huge sections on traditions. Somehow it was classified as B-class as well. I bumped it down to C and was bold and made a bunch of changes to align it with WP:UNIGUIDE. Swing on by and check it out and give some recommendations on what they can do to get it back up to par. Madcoverboy (talk) 23:48, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Major Notability Discussion

ATTENTION WP:ATHLETE is being re-written. There is a very big discussion here. The re-writing is focusing mainly on amateur athletes (which has an impact on University athletic programs). You may well wish to participate.--Paul McDonald (talk) 16:49, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I've mentioned this on #wikipedia ^connect and #wikipedia-en ^connect. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ guestbook ♦ contribs} 18:10, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

USNews historical rankings

For all those boosters out there, a table of US News & World Report rankings going back to the 80s: [2] I haven't run the statistics, but it doesn't look like the rankings for any one university have shifted more than 5 positions for any one university in 20 years (except UPenn and WashU). Madcoverboy (talk) 22:05, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

A new round of Collaboration of the Month is about to begin!

The current University Collaborations of the Month is University of California, Berkeley
Every month a B-Class higher education-related topic is chosen for you to improve. Be bold! This COTM is organized by Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities. (Nominate future collaborations or see past collaborations.) This WP:UNI/COTM is effective: Dec 01 2008 ~ Dec 31 2008. Pick your next WikiProject Universities COTM Candidate!

Yes, it's that time! A new article has been chosen our COTM next month.

Here's something I want to try, start treating it as a peer review. Start by skimming through the article, making sure the article fits our article guidelines. Then review for content: any copyvio, notability issues, reference listings, following the Manual of Style. Again, let's make sure we stick to the objectives listed on WP:UNI/COTM. Feel free to use the talk page of the article or COTM page to reflect or express opinions on how to make this program even better. Feel free to utilize #wikipedia-en-robotics ^connect if you wish, that channel doesn't get used enough and I'm usually there if I'm near a computer.

And here's something even more radical. See if you can attract authors currently maintaining the different COTM articles to join our WikiProject and better yet, our COTM project. I found when I started this program, jumping ships and editing other universities' articles was a big leap, but it's been very fun so far. I'd like to see more people actively participating.

Let's start off the new COTM program the right way. I want to see those articles in GA and FA soon. Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving holiday and enjoy those Black Friday deals. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ guestbook ♦ contribs} 21:17, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I just went through the Berkeley article and did a bunch of work to start standardizing citations, stripping out the recentist bias, and introducing standard descriptive information and statistics on governance, student body, and classification. Madcoverboy (talk) 23:40, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Large template input - delete?

I'm looking for some input on this CCCU template. It isn't complete, as it should link at least 110 separate articles (110 members, 70 affiliates in the CCCU, for which I've updated the lists someone began). IMHO this is rather large and makes navigation more cumbersome than a simple category. If so, would this make it a candidate for deletion? Am I simply wrong about the unwieldiness and shall I contribute to its completion myself? Looking for general consensus, as well as input from more experienced editors. --Aepoutre (talk) 04:43, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, there are always methods to further classify a long list into shorter lists. For example, you could technically split the list into regions of the US before alphabetizing them; or perhaps maybe you could classify them by history, enrollment, or any other method. But I see what you're saying. I don't necessarily believe this should be deleted, as it does look like a useful navibox. Perhaps more people may discuss what ways we can try to ease navigating the long list. - Jameson L. Tai ^{talk ♦ guestbook ♦ contribs} 05:56, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to have to agree with Aepoutre that I think that any category named as such should include all 110 schools even if they're red linked. However, this in onerous to use so I would recommend just splitting it into regional groups and making templates for each region and then exhaustively including all colleges and universities. Universities and colleges are accredited by regional associations, so this might be a useful distinction. Madcoverboy (talk) 08:37, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd concur with the above: this sort of template really ought to be comprehensive, even if that means redlinked articles. Geography does seem like a useful way of separating some of them out, though. Perhaps you could put expandable regional sections inside the larger template, or divide them into groups and lists based on geography. Esrever ^(klaT) 16:14, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, perhaps I should clarify on the redlinks, which don't exist in the template last I checked (and won't, since every member school has an article): I wasn't worried so much about redlinked articles, but was simply commenting on the fact that this template (which I once contemplated creating but did not because of its immense size) is absolutely huge, IMHO. It occurred to me that, if navboxes are made to ease navigation, something this large wouldn't do that job at all. As for breaking it up, it seemed a bit odd and contrived for the CCCU, which doesn't tend to do that, but I can try. The only issues I see pertaining to the suggestions: 1) As a guy who went to a small liberal arts college, I've never been keen on breaking it down by enrollment, which doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose unless you're a "bigger is better" type; 2) Places like New England, which fall under the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, will have a total of 2 colleges in the CCCU. Even if I were to break it down by region, would I be creating separate templates for the regions, or have I completely misunderstood that one? --Aepoutre (talk) 01:13, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Screw it, I added all the articles and made the text of the navbox smaller so as to be less overwhelming. I examined the template for the Annapolis Group in order to do so. Gracias a todo. --Aepoutre (talk) 06:38, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Infobox: location, state, country

Hosei University has three campuses. These are in Chiyoda, Koganei, Hachiōji, all of which are in Tokyo. So here's what I wrote in the infobox that somebody stuck in the article:

  city           = [[Chiyoda, Tokyo|Chiyoda]], [[Koganei, Tokyo|Koganei]], [[Hachiōji, Tokyo|Hachiōji]] |
  state          = [[Tokyo]] |
  country        = [[Japan]] |

The result is "Location: Chiyoda, Koganei, Hachiōji, Tokyo, Japan" (multiply linked, of course). I know that the first three are in the fourth, but I don't suppose that this is obvious. So what's the best way of getting this to say "Location: Chiyoda, Koganei, Hachiōji (all of which are in Tokyo, Japan)", or similar? Tama1988 (talk) 09:10, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I know that schools like Arizona State University or St. John's University (New York) with campuses spread within a large metropolitan area simply link to either the metro article or the city in which the headquarters reside. In this case: Greater Tokyo Area. I see this likewise becoming a problem with universities opening campuses worldwide (e.g., Texas A&M, Cornell, Georgetown, Northwestern opening campuses in Qatar) and something on which we should develop a consensus. Madcoverboy (talk) 09:21, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

"Greater Tokyo Area" is not a bad solution for this university, except that it sounds curiously evasive: rather as if Columbia were described as in "New York State". How about the following instead?

  city           = <!-- Skip this; it's clearly explained in the article. -->
  state          = <!-- Skip this; it's clearly explained in the article. -->
  country        = <!-- Skip this; it's clearly explained in the article. -->

Tama1988 (talk) 09:43, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Adding external links to sites already used in references

Can I ask for some input on whether adding external links to sites that have already been used in references is advisable in university articles? University of Chester has an external links section in which all of its entries occur elsewhere as references. I have removed one particular one before I noticed all the others were or could be made into references, but the editor who edits the article a lot has re-included them, despite them having been removed by someone else for the same reason before. WP:IAR is being invoked for this, but I wonder if there are some particular reasons why including them in university articles is more acceptable than elsewhere (e.g., if references are mainly to department pages, whereas the EL is to the main university page, though this could be easily made into a reference if required, and in the case I mention here, it occurs already in the Infobox.) Many thanks.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:34, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the official stance is on this but "it's used in the references" seems a very silly reason to remove useful, informative, and appropriate links from the External links section. I have, however, removed a few links from that article as they don't seem to meet those criteria; I'm not inclined to edit war over them, particularly if there is a genuine consensus that they should remain. But I can't imagine ever using the rationale you've presented as a reason to remove external links. --ElKevbo (talk) 00:47, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

It is a direct and straightforward interpretation of what is written in WP:EL, and also taken from comments I have seen made about articles trying for GA and FA status.  DDStretch  (talk) 00:53, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid that I'm not following you. Can you please be more specific with your examples? --ElKevbo (talk) 02:09, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Sites that have been used as sources in the creation of an article should be cited in the article, and linked as references, either in-line or in a references section. Links to these source sites are not "external links" for the purposes of this guideline, and should not be placed in an external links section. Thus, if it is used as a source, it does not belong in the EL section. Aboutmovies (talk) 09:19, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I completely disagree with your interpretation of that sentence. The way I read it, if the only reason a link is in an article is to function as a reference then it's a reference and not an external link; that's reasonable. That, however, does not preclude the link from being useful in and of itself as an external link and qualifying for inclusion in the "External links" section on those grounds. To view that sentence in isolation from the rest of the EL guideline is mistaken and misleading. --ElKevbo (talk) 14:31, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but no. Read the very first sentence to WP:EL: Wikipedia articles may include links to web pages outside Wikipedia. Such pages could contain further research that is accurate and on-topic; information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as copyright or amount of detail; or other meaningful, relevant content that is not suitable for inclusion in an article for reasons unrelated to its accuracy. (emphasis added) Thus the above quoted sentence fits in exactly with the guideline and is not in isolation. If the information has been added, then the EL is no longer useful in an EL section. The EL section is not a WP:LINKFARM that exists to drive traffic to other websites, it is a place for (as the first sentence says) contain further research. That is, stash it there until you use it as a source, but if you integrate it as a source, then remove it, leaving only those whose information cannot be integrated. Aboutmovies (talk) 15:02, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Read the rest of the guideline, please, particularly WP:ELYES where it specifically lists some links that should be included. Specifically, note the statement "Wikipedia articles about any organization, person, web site, or other entity should link to the subject's official site, if any." --ElKevbo (talk) 19:52, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Then wouldn't that be back to your in isolation bit? Going to the last version you edited, there are two ELs. The first is the official link, and as you point out, it should be included as an external link that can be separate from the refs section. But, remember not to look at this in isolation and see Wikipedia:External links#Important points to remember point number 2 (its important which is why it is in that section) where by the official website should not be in the EL section since it already is in the infobox (a more prominent placement). The second EL is not the official website of the school (only the one just mention is the main official one for the school), thus since it is already used as a ref, it should not be repeated in the EL section. Aboutmovies (talk) 20:10, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I continue to disagree with both your reading of the guideline and your rationale. If I'm incorrect in my understanding of the guideline (and I don't think I am, otherwise I would have a different understanding of it!) then it's wrong and it needs to be changed. To put it more precisely: it's stupid and you're stupid. Nah nah nah! :)

With respect to "if it's in the infobox then it shouldn't be in the External links section": I think it's terribly silly for anyone to assume that readers would only look for the link to an institution's official website in the infobox and not in the (apparently-misleadingly-named) External links section. Not only is there nothing wrong with having the link in both locations I assert that it's the courteous and smart thing to do pending actual usability testing to see if readers do look for this link in the infobox. And once again, anyone who disagrees with me is a doo-doo head with cooties.

Now pardon me while I take my leave and administer a cooties shot. --ElKevbo (talk) 01:04, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

If you have a problem with the guideline, then you need to discuss it on the talk page of that guideline and try to work towards consensus towards getting it changed there. Until then, the EL guideline evolved through consensus, but that doesn't mean everyone agrees, but the community does need to follow the guideline (except in rare circumstances otherwise they would be suggestions and not guidelines). If you choose to try and change the consensus, then I wish you luck as I doubt you will find much support for multiple listings of the same EL. Aboutmovies (talk) 08:52, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

(Resetting indent) Hi guys. I don't want to fan any flames here, but I thought a comment from another editor passing by might be of some value, in case it casts light on how these things can be interpreted. On reading this, I took "... Links to these source sites are not "external links" for the purposes of this guideline..." to be a way of saying that the references don't need to be treated strictly in the same way an external link would be; it seems to be poor wording (not uncommon in the consensus-built manual of style!) that has led to that perhaps being readable as saying "don't (also) use these references as external links". However, I appreciate that there are also other parts of WP:EL to be taken into consideration, so I shall now pass on by and leave you to the discussion! But I'm interested to know where it ends up. :-) – Kieran T ^(talk) 02:33, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

New Rankings: Academic Analytics

Just saw this added to Johns Hopkins University. I don't know how reputable or stable these are and I haven't had a chance to go through their methodology, but keep an eye out for them: Academic Analytics Madcoverboy (talk) 05:37, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Could someone update Template:Infobox US university ranking to include Forbes and this new source? Madcoverboy (talk) 05:39, 23 December 2008 (UTC)