Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities/Archive 4

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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University guidelines

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

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

William & Mary image

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

Florida Atlantic University

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

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

Requesting assessment for Panjab University article

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

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

Uniform template format

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

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

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

US News endowment figures

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

Student groups article up for deletion

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

Outreach Banner

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

Wikipedia Ads

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

DONE Image:Qxz-ad106.gif is now in the Wikipedia Ads circulation. Help promote WikiProject Universities by displaying this image on your userpage, or to place Wikipedia Ads to your user page, you may add {{wikipedia ads}}. - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 08:24, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

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

Korea University

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

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

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

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

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

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

History of schools

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

Newsletter prep

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

Alumni categories up for deletion

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

Canadian University Endowment figure disagreement on Wikipedia

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

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

State University System Template question

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

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

University Faculties

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

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

Zion Bible College's accreditation -- anonymous text deletions

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

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

BYU

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

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

MIT Nobel Laureate affiliations

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

Regent University alum controversy

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

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

Infoboxes

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

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

Collaboration of the Week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BYU Lead

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

Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities/COTF

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

Article for deletion: Wessex Scene

Wessex Scene at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wessex Scene (2007-12-06 –)

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

Article for deletion: SURGE 1287AM

Resolved.

SURGE 1287AM at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SURGE 1287AM (2007-12-06 – 2007-12-09) Keep, nomination withdrawn

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

Multiple Student Union articles up for deletion

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

User:Jamesontai/Sandbox07

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

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

Florida Institute of Technology

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

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

Red links on the WP:UNI infobox

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