Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher education/Archive 1

message: ===Conferences===
Many universities hold annual conferences. I was wondering whether or not specific conferences would be a good addition. --Morningstar2651 23:54, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A true universal template is impossible, as so many things are different in different systems. The original (American) template had stuff like "teams" and "mascot". In my view, it is better to accept that national, and sometimes even more specialized, templates are needed. up◦land 13:31, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Template:Infobox_University has benefited from the recent activities that have been marshalled by Netoholic.  This project at least lives on vibrantly through Template:Infobox_University and its ever-more-frequent successful usage in college and university articles.  Specifically in regard to national infobox templates, recent evolution of Template:Infobox_University has eliminated any need for the 42+ variants of Template:Infobox_*University*  Optikos 17:23, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Active discussion

message: Many universities hold annual conferences. I was wondering whether or not specific conferences would be a good addition. --Morningstar2651 23:54, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Conferences

message: One of the problems may be that the suggested table template does not include many of the items included on various "national" templates for universities (see e.g. University of Cambridge and University of Leiden). If no-one complains on this talk page, I will add these items to the template in a week or two. I also noted that the heading "Campus" is very specific (many Universities do not have campus) and something more general like "layout" or "location" might be better for a universal template. Rnt20 12:38, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A true universal template is impossible, as so many things are different in different systems. The original (American) template had stuff like "teams" and "mascot". In my view, it is better to accept that national, and sometimes even more specialized, templates are needed. up◦land 13:31, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Template:Infobox_University has benefited from the recent activities that have been marshalled by Netoholic.  This project at least lives on vibrantly through Template:Infobox_University and its ever-more-frequent successful usage in college and university articles.  Specifically in regard to national infobox templates, recent evolution of Template:Infobox_University has eliminated any need for the 42+ variants of Template:Infobox_*University*  Optikos 17:23, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: This project appears to have stalled

message: I have been working on a few university articles in the category Universities and colleges in Indiana for the past couple of weeks. Today, I discovered this WikiProject and began reading through the material that has come together so far. I seems like some good groundwork has been done,  but the project seems very disorganized and hasn't really accomplished its goals. I would really like to do some meaningful work on these articles, and I think the best way to do that is to get this project on track. It seems to me that we need to establish a clear set of goals, finalize the standard template, get organized, and start bringing existing articles into compliance, etc. Anyone have any thoughts? ALSO: I think a good place to start would be to organize and condense this talk page (its 45 KB). Acaides 05:51, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Where is this project going?

message: I'm going to start by cleaning up and organizing this discussion page. Acaides 01:55, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Reviving the project

message: I have moved the example of the standard template to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Universities/example. I think this should be a center of activity for the project at this point.  My idea is for the /example page to be home to an example article based on our template, and its talk page will serve as a sort of sand box for the development of the standard. Instead of wasting a bunch of words, time, and effort on this talk page deciding every little detail, we would all make our changes to the sand box (the universities/example talk page) until we get to a point where we're all happy with the sandbox template. Of course, some discussion should still take place here. I think this method would be more in keeping with the wiki philosophy. Acaides 04:57, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Standard template development

message: :Should student groups be put under "Students" or "Sports and Traditions"? --Jiang
::Sports and Traditions, so that Students is more for "official" info (enrollment, maybe courses, maybe racial mixup), and the SaT (maybe we need another name, maybe Sports, Traditions and Activities) is more for recreative things/inofficial things. -- till we *) 11:09, Aug 12, 2003 (UTC)
:::How's "Sports, Clubs, and Traditions"? --Jiang 06:31, 14 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Student groups

message: Here's a list of articles where the standard is applied so that we can see what needs to be done. When you apply the standard, please add your article to this list. Also you may briefly state a problem that the template helped solve.
*Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Germany
*University of Western Ontario, Canada
*Warsaw University, Poland
*University of California, Riverside, applied after serious controversy over what should or should not be in the main article. The original page was blocked for a while, but it was unblocked after I reworked the piece in my own Sandbox and then applied for unblocking and substituted my work for what was there before. Unfortunately, the controversy may continue, but now at least all the editors working on University of California, Riverside have a template to point to. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis 00:10, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: List of articles with template applied

message: After ongoing frustration with the boosterism that repeatedly crops up in Wikipedia's university articles (see Talk:Ivy League, Talk:List of famous universities and colleges in the United States, Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/HYP, among others), I have created a draft of a guideline similar to "avoid weasel terms" but specific to the academic articles.  It's now at User:Rbellin/Avoid academic boosterism.  I'd be happy to see edits improving it and/or comments on its potential usefulness/uselessness. -- Rbellin 19:51, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Avoid academic boosterism" guideline 

message: There's some discussion going on at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion concerning what we should call the parent categories that contain universities, colleges, and other similar institutions. (It looks like there's a trend toward looking at alternatives that do not explicitly mention either colleges or universities, since those terms are so ambiguous and depend so strongly on context.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 16:55, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Parent categories for universities and colleges 

message: AFAIK, breakout articles usually wait until the size of the main article makes the breakout necessary. However, a bunch of alumni/faculty/etc. lists have been broken out of the parent article even when the parent is nowhere near 30k, and the list is short enuf to not be unwieldy yet. Has this been proposed/discussed/decided somewhere other than here? Anyone else agree it's unnecessary, probably a waste of time/effort, and actually more cumbersome than leaving it all in one article so readers don't have to use a second click to see the list, when there are only a couple dozen names (EG List of University of California, Santa Barbara people), and the main article is small (EG University of California, Santa Barbara--12k). Especially since, also contrary to Wikipedia:Summary style, the entire lists are being removed, with no 'summary' of the most notable ones left in the section. Niteowlneils 22:36, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree on both points, and there is no general agreement on this as far as I know, but I don't think there is any point in having a discussion about the issue, as people will do as they like anyway. up◦land 13:18, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: When to breakout alumni/faculty/etc. lists?

message: Perhaps someone who participates in this WikiProject might care to lead an effort to clean up Portal:Education? 66.167.136.148 02:42, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Portal:Education]] needs attention 

message: Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-Class and good B-Class articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable University articles? Please post your suggestions here. Cheers!--Shanel 04:31, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

message: Articles for Deletion seems to have a few people who want to delete articles about residential Halls or to merge tham into the main University article. For example there was recently a call to delete Holland Hall at the University of Exeter. After calls to merge it into University of Exeter, the closing admin more sensibly merged it into University of Exeter Halls of Residence and also merged several other articles on other Halls into the same place. Then there was debate about a Hall at McMaster University but these was kept after no consensus. It then was merged in. See Talk:Whidden Hall for some interesting ideas. Smuts Hall is up for deletion now - see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Smuts Hall. Here I am not going to offer opinions on whether these types of articles should be merged, except to say that if these articles were as good as those on Oxbridge Colleges, they would not have been merged. In fact they were bad. The main point is that I think this project should try to formulate some guidelines about articles on residencial halls and colleges and also on how to keep them NPOV and stop nonsense being added. As an example of such nonsense see the call for deletion on a "part" of a College at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oswald, Grey College, Durham. Look at the article itself. --Bduke 03:03, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A question I would ask is whether the residence halls have specific significance on their own or not. If they are not significant on their own then they will most likely not be written to a high standard anyway and will be subject to deletion more often than not. I dont know what guidelines to follow to determine significance though. It seems like a vague area to me. Ansell 03:26, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Residential Halls and Colleges

message: In the United States, the men's basketball and football programs at Division I schools have an importance and significant approximately equivalent to that of professional sports teams - the University of Miami's football program, or Duke's basketball program, is at least as significant as any given NFL or NBA team, and even the programs of smaller places (say, Winthrop University's men's basketball team) seem to be more important than many minor league baseball teams that have their own articles (minor league baseball, for instance, is never shown on TV, while mid-major or minor conference college basketball can be found fairly frequently).  Discussing these teams in the context of a small athletics section in the article about the school is bound to seriously limit the amount of quality contributions we will get on the subject.  Some schools have separate articles on their athletics program, generally (Virginia Cavaliers, Florida Gators, and so forth).  But even these are going to give short shrift to the basketball and football teams, which ought to have articles at least as extensive as the articles on NBA and NFL teams, imo.  I'd like to suggest a) that articles on University athletics programs be made a general policy for Division I schools; and b) that the most notable programs, especially men's basketball and football, ought to have their own articles, so that we can go into full detail about these notable subjects.  Note that, say, the Washington Redskins, article, gives details of the team's performance in every year since its foundation.  Why shouldn't there be an article on Florida Gators football which does the same thing?  Is anyone interested in working on improving this area of wikipedia's coverage? john k 01:09, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Athletics 

message: Hi everybody,
I needed help with the page on Indian Institutes of Technology. The problem I am facing is that since it is about a group of universities under a common title, I can't really concentrate on any single one when discussing the usual sections like endowments, campus, etc. as it would appear odd. Can you suggest me in what way should I structure this article so that it conforms to the highest standards of Wikipedia. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 18:11, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are examples of groupings of universities that may be more appropriate such as Ivy League and Group of Eight (Australian Universities). Endowment is not a universal concept. Also campus does not have to relate to groups of universities. I don't know whether there is a specific structure mandated for this type of article. Conforming to the highest standards of wikipedia may seem to be a virtuous act but in reality things are always being formed and reformed. Leave feedback about what works and people will be able to critique it. Ansell 03:13, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Initially I planned it on lines of Ivy League, but some people objected to the format so I had to reformat it. Furthermore, they both are very short and wouldn't help in the long run. A lot of changes have been made over the past few days. Please comment on how the article appears now. In my personal opinion, it is FA material barring the fact that the Table of Contents is a bit too long. Other suggestions are welcome, here as well as on Peer Review. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 16:26, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Indian Institutes of Technology]] 

message: I was wondering if anyone had the time or inclination that they might do a peer review on the abovementioned article I've been working on? Soundabuser 10:29, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Australian Catholic University- peer review

message: I put a POV tag on Eckerd College, which an anonymous someone removed while claiming the article was fine. Since my concerns weren't addressed, I put the tag back. Only a handful of people edit the article, and I suspect many/most of them are connected to Eckerd in some way (including myself). Some external feedback would be nice. Anyone feel like reading it over? I indicated my concerns on its talk page. – Zawersh 01:22, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eckerd College POV 

message: I took the liberty of updating the University College of the Fraser Valley with a lot of information, and removing it's stub status.  I notice there are several sections this project would like.  Should I go back and fill in the missing desired information, or is the article good the way it is? - Superwad 08:46, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: University College of the Fraser Valley

message: I was wondering if a few of you could come on over to the Mount Holyoke College article and check it out.  I suggested some much-needed merges, and as I'm unfamiliar with any conventions with separate articles, especially ones that have been established by this wikiproject, I'd appreciate the help.  Many thanks!  -Rkitko 03:26, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks like the main contributor over at that page has gone ahead and taken my suggestion on the merges.  The page could use some help, though, if a few of you want to help out!  Thanks, all.  -Rkitko 05:54, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Mount Holyoke College]] 

message: I am alumnus of Austin College, which has a Wiki page. I have noticed that other college and university pages list "Notable Faculty" members. It would be my intention to start such a listing on the Austin College page since, in my opinion, there are faculty members there whose records of publication, leadership in professional associations, public service, and other accomplishments make them notable under the guidelines of WP:N and as I have also seen on other university pages. Any suggestions or comments from the WikiProject Universities?Jackkelley1410@hotmail.com 03:04, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notable Faculty Members? 

message: Hello! We at the Work via WikiProjects team for Wikipedia 1.0 would like you to identify the "key articles" from your project that should be included in a small CD release due to their importance, regardless of quality. We will use that information to assess which articles should be nominated for Version 1.0 and later versions.  Hopefully it will help you identify which articles are the most important for the project to work on. As well, please add to the Zoroastrianism WikiProject article table any articles of high quality. If you are interested in developing a worklist such as this one (new) for your WikiProject, or having a bot generate a worklist like this one automatically for you, please contact us.  Please feel free to post your suggestions right here.  Thanks! Badbilltucker2 23:30, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Key articles for Wikipedia 1.0 

message: I really believe that a university's history should be the first complete section after the introduction. This has taken a standard among university articles I have seen. I think we should move history as such in the main article. --Noetic Sage 21:42, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. I just did a quick search on four universities: Yale University, Witwatersrand University, University College London and Humboldt University. They all put history (or in the case of Humboldt, an equivalent) in the first section after the introduction. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis 23:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I would also agree. Prior to coming across this WikiProject, I was cleaning up college and university articles related to Kentucky, and I put History first intuitively. Acdixon 14:10, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Structure in relation to history 

message: Having discovered the broader naming conventions for categories pages, I've relocated this discussion to: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)#University categories Timrollpickering 15:48, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Format for categories 

message: I am trying to work to improve my own college's article (basically I've built it from a stub  up to what it currently stands at.  However, being a relatively small school, I'm not too sure what to include in here.  DOes anyone have some suggestions on what I should write about?  Metros232 15:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, Metros. Thanks for stepping up to the WikiPlate to expand the entry on Hood College. I would suggest starting with the history, which you can find at http://www.hood.edu/welcome/glance.cfm?pid=glance_history.html . Be sure to paraphrase and cite your sources. You certainly have a find school there, and I look forward to seeing your contribution. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis 19:17, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, I've already used a bit of that history (take a look at the references).  I could maybe get another paragraph out of that by adding more of the details of the early beginnings, but where do I go from there?  What else should be addressed aside from history?  Metros232 22:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Just click on project page on the page you are now on, then scroll down to Structure. GeorgeLouis 01:45, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Hood College]] 

message: Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory.  This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you.  B2T2 21:27, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Project directory 

message: *I have created a preliminary infobox for professors. The bare template with usage instructions can be found for now at User:Chabuk/Sandbox, and a filled out example can be seen at User:Chabuk/Sandbox2. Please let me know what you think, what improvements can be made, if there are any fields that I've left out, etc, etc. Thanks! -- Chabuk 18:29, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Where would you put this infobox? Sincerely, GeorgeLouis 02:36, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *On articles for Professors. For example, Alan Dershowitz, Desmond Morton, Gil Troy, Paul Axelrod and so on... There are hundreds of these articles, and the infobox makes them a lot easier to read... -- Chabuk 03:19, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks for taking so much time to do this. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis 05:27, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

text: To be blunt, I find it completely useless. Nothing personal; I think most biographical infoboxes are useless, and we have far too much of this kind of garbage in articles already (not just infoboxes, but navigation boxes, succession boxes etc. etc.). You should not be surprised if you will be reverted when you start adding it to articles. up◦land 05:45, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well that was constructive. That being said, this is exactly why I asked for input before putting them on the articles. Personally, I find infoboxes and other boxtypes very useful, I'm sure others do as well, otherwise we wouldn't have so many around. I would very much like to get more feedback, so its not just me in favour, and you opposed. And I'm not sure if that last part of your comment was a threat or simply a guess, but I must say, if people were to start blanking the infobox after not taking the opportunity to give feedback during its creation, I would be a little taken aback. -- Chabuk [ T • C ] 05:50, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is nothing to be constructive about. The box is redundant. Everything in the box will be in the first couple of paragraphs of any good biographical article. And along with every other box of some sort that other people are going around adding to articles, it will completely overwhelm the actual text of the article. We are already seeing this happen all over Wikipedia. up◦land 07:22, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Another point: People are not giving feedback because they have not noticed. Not everybody who will eventually find this box added to an article on their watchlist are also watching this particular low-traffic talkpage. up◦land 07:56, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And a further point - the box looks a bit US centric. "Professor" in other countries means only the senior ranking lecturers in a university - "academic" would be a better term for the box rather than one that will just encourage loads of edit summaries like "Remove Infobox Professor - he/she is a Reader". And "State" should not be a required value - it's very confusing trying to use that term in countries that don't have federal structures (for instance in the UK does it mean the county, which is sometimes the same as the city, the region, which isn't terribly meaningful for many and/or an anachronism, or the constituent nation?). Timrollpickering 12:06, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox Professor 

message: Beginning cross-post.
:See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 03:02, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stablepedia 

message: :Image:Columbia SEAS.GIF is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
If there is  other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page.  Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.
BetacommandBot 02:29, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:Columbia SEAS.GIF

message: There's currently a rather small participation debate on Talk:List of universities in London#Why use Guardian rankings here? over whether or not the information should be a straightforward list of universities in London (give or take sections to distinguish foreign universities and the colleges of the federal University of London) or whether it should be listed according to the institution's placing in a couple of newspaper league tables. Since this could lead to other lists of universities being rearranged wider input is highly desirable. Timrollpickering 22:44, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  problematic, due to the proliferation of widely different ranking scales, besides basic problems how much the rankings actually mean, obviously the difference between say, Oxford and Bolton are clear but why 'rank' Wolverhampton over Bolton? (or vice versa?)--Isolani 21:29, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lists of universities - to use rankings or not? 

message: Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention.  Badbilltucker 23:02, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia Day Awards 

message: The Infobox template has recently been adjusted. Would anyone like comment on the discussion over on its talk page about the use of images in the box? - mholland 01:16, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox University and images 

message: Is there a template to go on relevant article talk pages? At the moment it seems a lot of editors don't know about the existance of this project and this often leads to changes on individual articles. Timrollpickering 12:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've created one at Template:WikiProject Universities which I'll add to articles as I come across them. Help in getting the template everywhere would be much appreciated. Timrollpickering 15:14, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject template 

message: Looking at some of the other WikiProjects, especially Military history, I feel that more could be made of this project with a clearer structure, more detailed guidelines on issues (ranging from "what is an alumnus" above to naming conventions) and targetted articles.
I'm going to ask about for ideas. One early priority is to get this project more widely known - a starting point is getting this template  onto all university articles which is not the easiest of tasks but one that will in turn make it easy to reach the relevant articles. Timrollpickering 21:36, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: From early suggestions and looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide the single biggest thing this project is missing is an internal review process to assess articles, nominate individual ones for improvements, hold up good practice and so forth. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to implement this? Timrollpickering 11:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Making better use of this WikiProject 

message: I've noticed that many universities, like the University of Chicago and Penn State, use markup to show samples of the school colors within the infobox for that article. I'm relatively new to this project - has there been any talk about creating a template to standardize this usage? -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 23:43, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My personal opinion is that that's a template (or parameter) too far.  I think that if users need a little square of maroon and another little square of white in order to visualise the colors of the University of Chicago, then they need to put the mouse down and step away from the keyboard.  There's a standard on pages using  for putting a strip of the college scarf on (e.g. Clare Hall, Cambridge) which I'm more in favour of - at least it's an arrangement of colours.  Other UK universities which have adopted a scarf have put that in  (e.g. Durham University).  In general, though, I think that just mentioning the colours in words suffices for most colleges. — mholland 21:51, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

text: * I would agree. It used to be that school colors were just stated as a wikilink to the color itself. That, IMHO, is wholly sufficient.  The boxes—way too much. —ExplorerCDT 21:57, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

text: * P.S. Thanks for mentioning the Academic scarf article. I learned something new, found something I like enough to recommend via e-mail that Rutgers adopt one. —ExplorerCDT 21:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Understandable. After I made the suggestion, I did a little research of my own and found out that a template similar to the one I described already exists - . Not to be difficult or argumentative, but I don't think it's a matter of "needing to visualise" the colors, but it's a matter of making as user-friendly an encyclopedia as we can, providing the kind of attention to detail that users might expect. I'm certainly not saying that this needs to become a requirement or make it a part of the infobox, just that since these aren't the only two articles I've seen use such a template (I've seen similar uses of boxed color swatches as part of legends, keys, or other descriptors elsewhere), it might be worth thinking about making it easier to provide this functionality. -- PSUMark2006 talk | contribs 21:59, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's fine.  The boxes certainly aren't harming the Chicago article. — mholland 22:05, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  School colors 

message: Hi. I'm starting a WikiProject that is somewhat of a spinoff of this one, WikiProject Big Ten. Anyone in this project who is especially familiar with the Big Ten would be an asset, and we could certainly combine on the main college articles. If there's no interest here my apologies, but hopefully there is. --Wizardman 03:15, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:BIGTEN|WikiProject Big Ten]] 

message: I would like to propose an addition to the Infobox_University template:  Yearbook / Yearbook name
Every school has (or had) a yearbook in it's history.  The yearbooks represent the institutional memory of the university and are an important resource that should be added to the template.  For example, did you know that the University of Mississippi got it's nickname "Ole Miss" from the yearbook?  These yearbooks contain relevant and original content such as:
*Pictures of hundreds of thousands of alumni
*Photos from all the sporting activies (trips to the Rose Bowl, basketball national championships as well as all the sports teams)
*Photos of all the greek organizations and activities
*Pictures of faculty, staff, Board of Regents, Deans of Schools
*A broad photo portfolio of student organizations and activities
*Original photography by students of important events on campus 
Does anyone disagree with this proposal? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.198.39.140 (talk) 04:38, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not of sufficiently general application for a field on the infobox, I think.  Add a note to Template talk:Infobox University if you really want to push the case.  But I wholeheartedly encourage you (User:71.198.39.140) to create an account and add relevant, sourced information to the articles under this project. — mholland 17:59, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  University Yearbooks 

message: Hello, while on vandal patrol, I noticed this article taking some hits. Loyola Marymount University seems like it should be part of your project. I noticed it did not have a tag on its talkpage like Stanford University does. Cheers. Ronbo76 06:24, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Then feel free to add the tag in. I'll go do it now.--Wizardman 06:29, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I was also out on vandal patrol and spotted a university that needed adding. I've added it but I think someone from your project should have a look at it because to me it reads like an advert from their prospectus. Thanks. - X201 09:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Forgot to add the link. Sorry. The university is this one, University of Wollongong - X201 09:35, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Loyola Marymount University]] as part of your project? 

message: FYI: I've started a WikiProject, hopefully to be under the auspices of the New Jersey and Universities WikiProjects to direct efforts to articles related to Rutgers University, at Wikipedia:WikiProject Rutgers. —ExplorerCDT 16:40, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: WikiProject Rutgers

message: I'm requesting a peer review for the University of Oklahoma article. One other editor gave me some great feedback and I've made most of the changes he recommended but I'm still working on others. I'd like to nominate this article for FA sometime soon. Please let me know of your opinions: Wikipedia:Peer review/University of Oklahoma/archive4.--NMajdan•talk 14:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request Peer Review 

message: I put a request in for Rutgers University to be peer reviewed at WP:PR two weeks ago, and got a disappointingly minimal response. The only people who reviewed were users I asked to chime in with their examination and scrutiny.  Peer Review right now is badly inactive.  If anyone from this wikiproject has a few minutes to read through the article and give a few pointers or suggestions, I'd be much obliged if you'd stop by and leave some comments at the Rutgers University article's discussion page. —ExplorerCDT 22:38, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll try to take a look at this tomorrow. But, would you mind doing the same for University of Oklahoma? I also tried the PR process and only got the response of one person who is on the college football WikiProject with me. He left some detailed notes on the OU peer review page. I'll try to review Rutgers tomorrow at the earliest or mid next week at the latest.--NMajdan•talk 22:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

text: * Coincidentally, I just started reading the Oklahoma article a few moments ago, right after I initially posted this request. (I intend to read it twice...first for style and technical issues, second for content) I should be able to provide my input at OU's peer review shortly after dinner this evening.  Thank you. —ExplorerCDT 22:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Rutgers University Peer Review

message: * Started a straw poll to discuss/decide whether to rename Rutgers University to the official name, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.  Come discuss, vote, etc., at: Talk:Rutgers_University#Straw_Poll:_Which_name_to_be_used —ExplorerCDT 09:07, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Straw Poll regarding renaming Rutgers University

message: What is you opinion of the proliferation of articles on buildings at universities? I am of the opinion that many of them are not sufficiently notable for inclusion in Wikipedia. Besselfunctions 16:18, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Could you provide some examples?  A lot of buildings which aren't sufficiently notable get a few lines merged into the Campus section of the parent article, or deleted outright. Is that not happening efficiently at the moment? — mholland 18:00, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I haven't read this whole discussion yet but the topic made me think of something I saw awhile ago. List of Male Dorms at Notre Dame & List of Female Dorms at Notre Dame. About 25-30 dorm buildings each with its own article. See also :Category:University_of_Notre_Dame_residence_halls↔NMajdan•talk 04:55, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Most of those links in the list articles are redirects back to the list. There are only 10 entries in the Category. --Bduke 06:00, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proliferation of Campus Building Articles

message: Hi! Please take a look at this article especially the part where it says "Contributed by" (last lines). I don't know what to do with it. Thanks! Fddfred 07:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Bicol University]] 

message: I regret if this has been covered previously, I did not find a specific answer in my brief review to this point.  I am writing to inquire on whether this group has developed, at a very general level, a baseline on what defines a "notable alumnus" of an institution.  I am beginning to see, and I sure it has always been prevelant, the inclusion of individuals, perhaps by their own addition, whose achievements or other determining qualitative factors do not merit inclusion.  How have others handled this issue? Internazionale 18:41, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In the past I have seen a number of lists of alumni which are essentially limited to those who have a wikipedia article. I don't know if this is necessarily an official policy, but it acts as a reasonable guide. Obviously some exceptions will occur - not everyone notable necessarily has a wikipedia article (though most do), and some people with articles in wikipedia are not particularly notable (though in this case the page about the person probably shouldn't exist). Rlfb 20:33, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

text: AS I say, just a guideline really. Certainly with academics it is harder to quantify their "notability". If, however, there are people adding themselves as advertisement, then I'd have though this contradicts the conflict of interest guideline. Rlfb 21:24, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notable Alumni 

message: The infobox puts a lot of extra spaces all of a sudden. See George Washington University or University of Tennessee. What's the deal? --AW 17:35, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Someone fixed it. thanks --AW 17:38, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: University template not working

message: This issue may have already been raised in the "Rankings" discussions, but I've noticed university articles making claims such as "The largest school in the state,county,etc." While these statements may have been true at the time they were written, student enrollment continues to fluctuate and articles should be contiually updated accordingly. Comparisons should use the most currently available data. I suggest that sections with these statements be should contain some sort or temporal tag. Perhaps a new type of tag needs to be created for this very purpose.
Hanjabba 05:23, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you give any examples?  Claims of that sort should cite a good source, or be deleted as puff - if there's no current statistic quoted, you'd be right just to delete the claim.  Have you encountered WP:AO, which deals with quickly-dating statistics?  It may be what you're looking for. — mholland 12:28, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Yeah, if the authors had just stated "as of xxxx" then this would clarify matters alot. Thanks for the advice. I should be able to remedy the articles now.Hanjabba 22:27, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Problem of continually changing statistics

message: I am surprised to see that Oriel College, a featured article belonging to WikiProject Universities, lacks any mention of academics. There are many other problems with the article as well, and I have noted them on the talk page of the article. I would request experienced editors of this WikiProject to share their comments over the issues raised. — Ambuj Saxena (talk) 11:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oriel College 

message: this and it's branching articles need clean-up so they read less like adverts. I've done a bit but assistance would be nice --Fredrick day 11:46, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Indian Institutes of Management 

message: Wesleyan was in the news a lot for its ban on chalking.  This seems worth mentioning since it is probably one of only a handful (the only one I'm aware of) that has banned chalking.  This relates both to student activism and to university policy that would be of interest to many students. 71.144.50.17 23:18, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I notice you've already added a section to the relevant article.  Keep up the good work – you may like to cite a source for the paragraph you added.  You might also get a better response if you try the article's talk page: this page is a general forum for issues relevant to Wikipedia's coverage of all universities.  Thank you. — mholland (talk) 00:42, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Internal politics missing

message: I have added an assessment page, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities/Assessment.  I elected NOT to add an importance section as I thought this would lead to a lot of trouble.  I can just see trying to explain what the University of Michigan is more important that Butler County Community College.  Please update your articles with a rating at your pleasure. PadreNuestro 23:57, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Assessment Page 

message: I have requested that Tepper School of Business receive both a peer review and be considered as a good article. Any assistance in either of these matters would be appreciated.  PadreNuestro 00:00, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Tepper school]]

message: UCSC	Chancellors
# All measures all in pixels
ImageSize  = width:170 height:570
PlotArea   = width: 26 height:500 left:40 bottom:65
AlignBars  = early
DateFormat = yyyy
Period     = from:1960 till:2007
TimeAxis   = orientation:vertical
ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:10 start:1960
# there is no automatic collision detection,
# so shift texts up or down manually to avoid overlap
Define $dx = 25 # shift text to right side of bar
Legend  = columns:2 left:20 top:40 columnwidth:100
Colors =
 id:invested value:rgb(0.16,0.35,0.57) legend:Invested
 id:acting value:rgb(1,0.87,0.51) legend:Acting
PlotData=
  bar:Leaders width:25 mark:(line,white) align:left fontsize:S
  from:1961 till:1974 shift:($dx,-3) color:Invested text:Dean McHenry
  from:1974 till:1976 shift:($dx,-3) color:Invested text:Mark Christensen
  from:1976 till:1987 shift:($dx,-3) color:Invested text:Robert Sinsheimer
  from:1987 till:1991 shift:($dx,-3) color:Invested text:Robert Stevens
  from:1991 till:1996 shift:($dx,-3) color:Invested text:Karl Pister
  from:1996 till:2004 shift:($dx,-3) color:Invested text:M.R.C. Greenwood
  from:2004 till:2005 shift:($dx,-5) color:Acting text:Martin Chemers
  from:2005 till:2006 shift:($dx,-5) color:Invested text:Denice Denton †
  from:2006 till:end shift:($dx,+0) color:Acting text:George Blumenthal
::†Died in office	
# All measures all in pixels
ImageSize  = width:170 height:570
PlotArea   = width: 26 height:500 left:40 bottom:65
AlignBars  = early
DateFormat = yyyy
Period     = from:1960 till:2007
TimeAxis   = orientation:vertical
ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:10 start:1960
# there is no automatic collision detection,
# so shift texts up or down manually to avoid overlap
Define $dx = 25 # shift text to right side of bar
Legend  = columns:2 left:20 top:40 columnwidth:100
Colors =
 id:invested value:rgb(0.16,0.35,0.57) legend:Invested
 id:acting value:rgb(1,0.87,0.51) legend:Acting
PlotData=
  bar:Leaders width:25 mark:(line,white) align:left fontsize:S
  from:1961 till:1974 shift:($dx,-3) color:Invested text:Dean McHenry
  from:1974 till:1976 shift:($dx,-3) color:Invested text:Mark Christensen
  from:1976 till:1987 shift:($dx,-3) color:Invested text:Robert Sinsheimer
  from:1987 till:1991 shift:($dx,-3) color:Invested text:Robert Stevens
  from:1991 till:1996 shift:($dx,-3) color:Invested text:Karl Pister
  from:1996 till:2004 shift:($dx,-3) color:Invested text:M.R.C. Greenwood
  from:2004 till:2005 shift:($dx,-5) color:Acting text:Martin Chemers
  from:2005 till:2006 shift:($dx,-5) color:Invested text:Denice Denton †
  from:2006 till:end shift:($dx,+0) color:Acting text:George Blumenthal
::†Died in office
I ran across a cool feature while I was helping rein in the orgy of vandalism today at the Virginia Tech page.  Someone had hard-coded a chart listing their presidents' tenures, with a bar showing length of tenure.  I ripped it off and reverse-engineered it (not being by any means proficient in Wiki- or any other kind of coding, it took me quite a bit of experimentation before the sucker finally worked), and now I have a UCSC-specific version hard-coded onto UCSC's page.  I am wondering if anyone here knows how to make things like this into workable templates  that everyone can use.  Here is the finished product; you can see the code from edit mode.  
Is there a Wikimagician out there who can help me out?  --Dynaflow 07:47, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure that there's much that templating could do to make the EasyTimeline extension simpler to use.  Have a look at the documentation on meta. — mholland (talk) 13:10, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow, I'd hate to see DifficultTimeline.  I guess I'll start wading through the documentation.  Thanks for the heads-up.  --Dynaflow 13:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Can someone better than me make this into a ready-use template?

message: This just popped up on my radar screen.  It's a dispute about whether the University of Wisconsin article should redirect or be about the Madison campus or the University of Wisconsin system.  It's not too different from discussions some of us have held about other universities and university articles so maybe we could offer these editors some assistance and sage advice (or at least some more input as the discussion seems to be occurring between a handful of editors).  --ElKevbo 18:40, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: University of Wisconsin RFC

message: I'm looking for people that are interested in working on Student Affairs related articles on Wikipedia. There is a very low amount of information on Wikipedia about this topic I started a WikiProject related to this. Please visit the previous link and add your name if you are interested! Thanks -- Noetic Sage 04:51, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject Student Affairs