Talk:The Queen's College, Oxford

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I'm glad someone knows so much more about the colleges and ex-students than I do. But which David Jenkins are we talking about here? The controversial ex-Bishop of Durham or the disgraced former Olympic athlete (or someone else entirely)? Deb

Bishop Jenkins was the one. Although now having looked back I'm wondering if he shouldn't rather be in the faculty section. Unfortunately I've been adding these without a lot of thorough back-checking (hopefully I can follow up later). Hephaestos
According to the UK Who's Who, he was a student at Queen's before he became a lecturer. Pruneau 11:09, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I would prefer Queen's College, Oxford to The Queen's College, Oxford, in the same way that University of Oxford is used rather than The University of Oxford, and it is shortened to "Queen's" rather than "The Queen's". --Henrygb 22:29, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

But the "proper" abbreviation is The Queen's, just as one should never abbreviate New College to New. Hackloon 23:48, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
No, it is not, although this is a commonly-held misconception. The 'The' was inserted by John Richard Magrath, Provost 1874-1930, and is no more correct than referring to, say, Brasenose as 'The Brasenose College'.
Can anyone support this assertion? The person who added this is not registered.Bduke 09:12, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
The form on the college website [1] is "The Queen's College". This form is also displayed on signs outside the college front gate. On the University website list of colleges [2] it is listed as "Queen's College, The", being the only college to have a "The" included. However on the college website it is referred to in the non-titular text as "Queen's", and I have never heard it referred to in conversation with a "The" at the front. I would include the "The" in the title of the article at least (just to be accurate), and perhaps add a reference to its presence if what is said above about its addition is true. Actually I just found out that the full name of the college is "Hall of the Queen's Scholars at Oxford" [3] so this could be included in the first line in the same way as other Oxbridge college articles. Rmbyoung 19:02, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I have added performance in Eights to that in Torpids, as Eights is the more important event, even though the crews are not as high on the river. This is taken from the latest Queen's College record, which has just reached me.Bduke 07:10, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Is it really correct that the College is one of the wealthiest? It certainly argues that it is not and that it is in the middle.Bduke 23:40, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know where the Wikipedia figures come from, but if they are correct, Queen's is the seventh wealthiest college (behind St John's, Christ Church, All Souls, Magdalen, Nuffield and Merton, and Jesus being eigth). Pruneau 18:25, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Can anyone confirm that the Georges Carpentier we are talking about is the boxing champion? I didn't add him to Category:Former students of Queen's College, Oxford because I wasn't sure.Pruneau 00:59, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

The article states "The college has been strong academically for many years.", but on the only known metric - the Norrington Table - the college has long been middling to low in comparison to other colleges. --Corinthian 12:20, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I see your point, but the Norrington Tables are open to criticism and they only cover undergraduate education. I believe Queen's is particually strong with postgraduates. However, I may have been remembering the time when Queen's had many more Scholarships than other colleges and since they were awarded before entry, the College attracted a strong academic group. How do you suggest we address this area? There should be a section on academic matters in the College. Bduke 22:55, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Userbox

I have added {{user oxon queens}}. --Bduke 01:29, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Modified to avoid putting this page into "Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: The Queen's College, Oxford". Click on link above to see the user box. Note that putting this userbox on your user page, puts you into that category. --Bduke 00:08, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scarf colours

I am probably being pedantic but I have changed the colours of the scarf to those in Academic scarf. I also earlier changed the colours in {{user oxon queens}} and {{user oxon queens current}}. I might be wrong but at least we are consistent now. If anyone thinks I am wrong, please change all occurances of the College colours. --Bduke 21:58, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Renaming categories

I've proposed to rename Category:Former students of Queen's College, Oxford and Category:Fellows of Queen's College, Oxford, to add the before Queen's College. You can discuss it here. Pruneautalk 20:16, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Choir

An "in recent years" has crept in there, this will need pinning down. Replacing with better wording related to the years of the three compact discs may be a way.--Alf melmac 18:46, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notable former students

The recent edit by User:Coldmachine with the edit summary "This list of alumni is too much of an example farm at present: I won't rm examples yet but I've tagged it accordingly" makes a good point, but I think it should be discussed here. I'm not sure myself, so will probably comment later. --Bduke 22:39, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi, sorry, I was meaning to make a note on the talk page too but I was distracted and didn't get around to it. I agree with Bduke: it's a difficult one, not just on this article but other university/college pages too, deciding what sort of entries in lists of this kind get included. There needs to be a balance between an illustrative list which is short but used to complement and highlight article content, and a list which includes all notable former students. I think the general idea is that this section on these articles is intended to illustrate the college/university's eminence in having 'churned out' a variety of high achievers in whatever field. But, at the same time, it's pretty vague on how we decide what sort of achievement gets included. There are a few options to consider, but don't take these as a signal I agree with any particular one:
  1. Remove all the red linked named individuals (e.g. Adam Lewis Buick)
  2. Rm policitians who have not served in government or regularly made headline news (e.g. Christopher Price)
  3. Rm all names and move to a new list style article, linked to via this section as a 'See X for notable alumni of The Queen's College, Oxford'.
  4. Rm individuals listed in relation to practice in a particular field (e.g. law, history, journalism) who have not had an international impact with their work (e.g. Brian Paddick)

These are just ideas. Probably the third option would more likely satisfy everyone. ColdmachineTalk 11:08, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

After reflecting on this, I think we should have no lists either in the article or as a separate list. If old members are notable they will have a wikipedia article and that article should place them in Category:Alumni of The Queen's College, Oxford. The category can then be linked from the College article. The only NPOV way of getting a list is make it identical to the category. In any even I agree about removing redlinks from the list. Without an article we really can not check whether someone is notable. If someone knows they are notable, they can write a stub before adding the name to the list. --Bduke 22:55, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Or you could move it to another page as other places have: List of Oriel College people is not the best example of a list, but it doesn't clutter the college article and allows for other notables, Provosts and such.--Alf melmac 23:43, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
I should have mentioned that we should also link to Category:Fellows of The Queen's College, Oxford as well as to Category:Alumni of The Queen's College, Oxford. A separate list article would just contain the people in those two categories as that is the only NPOV way to get such a list. Provosts of course are also Fellows. --Bduke 00:16, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Seeking consensus for change

After a quick look around at other University articles to see how this issue is handled, I came across this at the University of Manchester entry. I think it's a great example of how this sort of content could be handled. Is there consensus for this sort of change? ColdmachineTalk 21:33, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I support a change to something like that, but having a link to the two categories. --Bduke 22:02, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that makes sense, I think that's a good idea. Anyone else want to pitch in before I leap into the fray? ColdmachineTalk 21:31, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you had in mind for this list of former students, but since there was consensus that the list was too long, I started shortening it by removing those alumni for which the article was not longer than a stub (I might have missed a few, though). The list still needs to be shortened, but it's a start. Pruneautalk 11:03, 5 March 2008 (UTC)