Talk:University of California, Riverside/Archive 8

message: Numbered among constituents of Riverside, California, are relatives of families displaced when the Kinzua Dam was built near the Pennsylvania-New York border here in the United States.  Num-bered among visitors no doubt have been some of the refugees themselves.  Call-demand strategies have been operative to write an account of the flooding of the Kinzua River Valley with tons of river water, using a hydroelectric dam, that inundated homes, farmlands and businesses.  A historical treaty made with the Seneca tribes existed at that time which prohibited such dam construction "as long as the grass may grow" in the Kinzua Valley.  
The United States Army Corps of Engineers used a vote process to consider a change and began its immense project, caring little for the treaty and totally non-cognizant about the actual intent to engineer a jar or bowl  featuring an internal moisture-control dam so as contain a mucousal artifact known as an oracle bead chronicle.   beadtot   21:33, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wouldn't this material be more suitable in the article dealing with Riverside proper instead of UCR? SoCalAlum 04:31, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  populations frequenting Riverside, California 

message: I think that the article needs a word clean up; it's a bit long winded at times. I am speaking about the HISTORY section mostly.
WPW 18:06, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article word clean up 

message: Oh wow, I just graduated from this school with my B.S. in biological sciences and my four years there was nothing like it's described here. UCR is a great science school, we have several nobel laureates teaching as professors, and I know groups of kids who took transfer spring and summer courses in the science courses from UCLA and failed miserably, stating our lower division science courses were much harder than theirs, especially the lab coursework. Our labs are in great condition and the school has been spending a ton of money building not only on campus but helping to build up the area surrounding the campus. This article is completely biased, I've never read anything like it. There is not that much crime on campus, either. I know for a fact because I received an email from the UCPD every time there was one in the past school year. There's also a much higher income regarding most of the kids I knew. Not to mention that I have received numerous educational opportunities from this school. And several well-paying research jobs at great institutions, like City of Hope's Beckman Research Center. Whoever wrote this has no idea what they're talking about. It's embarassing and thankfully, no one reads wikipedia to learn about higher education... they go to real sources with real facts... which are quite different than what is written here. UCR has a good reputation as far as education is concerned. Their cmdb graduate program is in the top 25 science graduate programs on several internet search engines and in several newsweek articles and books I have read on the subject. I switched to another UC for graduate school, but I did apply for UCR again, because it's a great program. [anonymous user]
:Dear recent graduate, thank you for sharing your opinions on this article.  A few things:
#You provide a lot of anecdotal information, and as I'm sure your strong science education has taught you, "personal observation" is one of the weakest forms of evidence you can muster. 
This is the internet, I'm not writing up a theory. 
 
#For instance, your impression that UCR has "several nobel laureates teaching as professors" isn't quite consistent with the FACT that UCR has ZERO of these faculty.
Incorrect. 
#It is irrelevant whether a handful of academically-inept UCLA students felt "challenged" by UCR science classes.  In reality, strong students who had taken AP biology, chemistry, and physics could easily pull an A or A+ in the UCR-equivalent-class with minimal studying and minimal class attendance.  
I have kept in touch with these students. All of them graduated with their bachelor's degrees in the sciences in four years, from UCLA. And they had GPA's above 3.2, several of them are continuing in graduate schools. They're not failures by the UCLA terms, so I wouldn't call them academically inept. People have no idea how hard the lab courses at UCR actually are. There's no way you could miss classes and easily pull an A in the organi chemistry series. I know from taking the courses and getting A's and B's in them, myself. Simply put, your opinion is wrong.
#In terms of academic standards, may I remind you that over HALF the freshmen class cannot read, write, or perform math at the college level.
Same with all the other UC's. Give the blame to the high schools, where it truly belongs. These kids are kicked out after the first year. That would make a more accurate reason for the freshman dropout numbers. THEY ARE NO LONGER ALLOWED TO STAY THERE.
#Your personal experience with crime on campus really fails to supercede the validity of PUBLISHED crime statistics.  FURTHERMORE, may I remind you that UCR was busted a few years ago for grossly underreporting campus crime rates, in direct violation of their duty under federal law.  
They corrected this problem in 2005. 
#Your impression that UCR has a "good reputation" isn't quite consistent with reality - perhaps you'll realize this when you leave the Inland Empire. UCRGrad 05:19, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting theory and series of speculations.  For the record, all of the information about UCR I found is easily obtainable using something called "Google."  In my attempt to make this article as objective and informative as possible, I merely looked up all of the aspects of UCR that I would consider important for ANY major university.  ALL references were the most authoritatve and credible AVAILABLE TO ME.  It just so happened that UCR did not perform as favorably in many of these areas.  I don't know why you and others are so hard on me.  UCR is what it is!  I can't change the average SAT scores.  I can't change the fact that it's located in "the 909."  ...but by not mentioning these important facts, ALL readers are disserviced. UCRGrad 05:25, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

text: As a reminder, it is common courtesy to sign your contributions with the "UCRGrad 05:27, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

text: INCORRECT.  Dr. Mohideen was NOT awarded a Nobel prize.  If you disagree, give us the year (or cite some actual evidence). UCRGrad 17:48, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

text: The article does not dispute this...but given the hundreds of majors and departments, it really isn't that exciting that one obscure department is well-recognized by entomologists. UCRGrad 17:48, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Nobody is holding a gun to the UCR admissions committee, forcing them to admit students who aren't capable of performing a the college level.  This just goes to show what the quality of education is like for freshmen.  Note that many of these remedial students can "barely pass" and advance to the sophomore-level...still doesn't make the student body first-rate. UCRGrad 01:09, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

text: If you believe you have superior sources that contradict existing ones, I encourage you to provide them.  So far, I have seen none from you, only anecdotal evidence and your "strenuous insistence" that there are Nobel laureates teaching at UCR (despite clear evidence of the contrary).  thanks. UCRGrad 01:09, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

text: On the contrary, all of the citations in this article meet wikipedia standards and were the best available to me.  Everything is presented in an objective manner.  UCRGrad 01:09, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

text: This is an encylopedia article. I'm trying to produce an authoritative and informative source of information.  Naturally, this is NOT the forum to why "kids don't like it." UCRGrad 01:09, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Urbandictionary.com is only one of the references used to support the information provided in that paragraph.  Whether or not there is white trash is difficult to quanity, however, the fact that the 909 has a REPUTATION for "white trash" is irrefutable.  It is irrelevant how many wealthy people live in south Riverside/Corona, given this reputation. UCRGrad 01:09, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm not here to write the article for other UC schools, because I am not as familiar with them.  Furthermore, I am not here to "provide a service" for any school, as you suggest.  Wikipedia is NOT the office of recruitment and publicity at UCR. UCRGrad 01:09, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Note from Recent UCR Graduate from IP address  24.205.124.171 

message: UCRGrad,
I'm glad you brought up the WP guidelines to opinions and reliable sources.  I took some time to read it, and here are my thoughts.  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:Reliable_source#Using_online_and_self-published_sources
In particular, I looked at this:
"Bulletin boards, wikis and posts to Usenet
Posts to bulletin boards and Usenet, wikis or messages left on blogs, are never acceptable as primary or secondary sources. This is because we have no way of knowing who has written or posted them." 
So this is why the quote from studentsreview.com should be omitted.  i repeated myself many times why this is so, but this quote from wikipedia's own guidelines summarizes the reasons.  Teknosoul02 18:07, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are three problems with this:
# StudentsReview.com is NOT a bulletin board, Usenet, wiki, or blog.  Therefore, the above rule does NOT apply.  
# The review section is NOT being used as a primary or secondary source for FACTS or STATISTICS, which is what the WP policy in-context is referring to.
# StudentsReview.com has multiple validation mechanisms (http://www.studentsreview.com/faq.shtml)
Q: Exactly how does it work? 
A: Topically, it is very simple to understand. Self selecting students come to the StudentsReview site and take the survey. Their survey is archived into a database, where it is analyzed statistically to determine its authenticity. If it passes, the survey appears on the StudentsReview site on the next half hour, and affects the rankings the following day. We delay the effect on rankings to prevent people from getting carried away with "making their university #1", and the delay on survey appearance to the site is done to reduce the strain on our database system and webserver for all the people visiting. 
Q: How accurate is the information? 
A: While technically it is only as accurate as the number of surveys we get on a school, we have found that each survey provides an accurate picture on some element of the university. On a whole, we find that 5 "different" comments (focus on different aspects, with different experiences) give a well rounded picture -- more comments provide more in-depth information and detail of what is going on "behind the scenes" in the university and student environment... Every comment also provides insight into the student body -- besides reading the comment for "truth", it is important to ask "would I like to go to school with a student who makes "this type" of comment?". 
Q: Could someone who either loves or hates a particular school go on and fill out numerous surveys to skew the results? 
A: No, it is not possible to skew the results in this manner. Yes, we allow students fill out multiple surveys -- as many as they want in fact, but we have an extremely sophisticated statistical modeler that easily catches multiple submissions or duplicates. As far as things go, detecting multiple submissions from one person is one of the easiest things to do. But several people have tried to defeat our model so far, without success. We've had 3 years of watching survey patterns, and 6,000 known valid surveys to train on, so it actually is easier to round up 200 different people and have them all take the survey than it is to falsify data to the site. 
As far as the statistics go, approximately 5% of the submitted surveys are invalid ones (either accidentally or intentionally) -- of those 5%, the statistical model catches >95%. This brings the error rate down to .2% -- 25 surveys/10,000.
UCRGrad 22:31, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reliable sources