Wikipedia talk:College and university article advice

Comments

Please comment on the guidelines here so we can get them up and maybe even part of the manual of style. —Noetic Sage 22:57, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Terminology used

A few initial suggestions on better wording for the guidelines:

• "School" - here in the UK at least this term is never used for a university overall, though is used for some internal departments. "Institution" is probably the best term to use if "university" is being overused.
• "Athletics" - this seems to mean "sport" rather than just track & field. Would "sport" be a better overall term?
• "Academic colleges" - this seems to mean a department, rather than a subdivision of a collegiate university, but I'm not too sure.
• "A larger system" - this seems to mean a university system as used in the US. Elsewhere there are a lot of collegiate universities (e.g. the University of London), federal universities (e.g. the former Federal University of Surrey) and I'm not sure what term to use for the University of Paris. I'll come back to this in my thoughts on some of the instructions.

Timrollpickering 16:35, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, thank you!! I knew when writing the guideline that it was horribly US-biased but I have little experience with non-US systems. Your terminology suggestions are exactly what I think needs to be improved with the guidelines. Perhaps we can go through and use more general terms (or even use clarification for different countries in parentheses). Then again I love parentheses (really!). —Noetic Sage 19:55, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Comments on substance

Generally these look good, some comments on individual areas... Timrollpickering 20:22, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Naming conventions

• the common (not necessarily official) name of the school

"Official" is a complicated word as a lot of institutions have more than one "official" title - for instance Durham's charter says it's the "University of Durham" but the official university style is "Durham University". In casual conversation in an academic context "Durham" is usually sufficient to identify this place (the same with "Cambridge", "Leiden", "Heidelberg", "Harvard" and many others) but that is really a casual usage and would look silly as an article title. Because it's very hard to determine what the current common name of the institution is (especially when the name change is recent), most UK university articles are at the current branding as the best way to work out the titling. I really can't see an easy way to determine the "common name" for many universities.

There's also the problem of what to name universities in non-English speaking countries as some use an official branding that is the name in English (e.g. University of Heidelberg) but others keep the name in the native language form (e.g. FernUniversität Hagen) and some don't have that much of a profile in the English speaking world at all (but shouldn't be considered non-notable). Timrollpickering 20:22, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

• I agree this is problematic. Perhaps we should word it as the "current branding" of the university? I only used the term "common name" because that's what WP:NAME suggests. What do you think? —Noetic Sage 01:24, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Hmm - I actually think the common branding may be the best form to go with as a default - it's normally what the university is currently putting out to the world, it's usually the main "formal" usage rather than casual nicknames that no-one would ever write formally and it's the easiest way to settle "University of Foo"/"Foo University" debates and exactly where to put any punctuation. Otherwise a "common names" founders on the problem that most common usage is often over casual and would never be contemplated for formal writing. Timrollpickering 10:35, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

• Never use abbreviations in titles.

This could be another point of contention as several institutions explicitly markets themselves by the acronym. Until the institution changed its name completely this month we had an article at UCE Birmingham, the name the institution was using, rather than varieties such as "University of Central England" or "University of Central England, Birmingham" and so forth. Timrollpickering 20:22, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

• Although some universities might market themselves this way, I think we need to say (in accordance with WP:NAME) that abbreviations not be used. SUNY Cortland and other schools in the SUNY system brand themselves this way, but I do believe we should discourage it. After all, I had no idea what UCE meant until you just told me. Similarly, I'm sure you probably don't know what SUNY stands for. It is most clear if we avoid abbreviations.—Noetic Sage 01:24, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Hmm - the thing is in some cases the acronym is so well used to the point that the full name is less familiar (e.g. BBC, NASA) and in this particular case "UCE Birmingham" was a very common name used to refer to the institution regardless of what it actually means. It's the "what the heck is the common name actually in use?" problem again. Timrollpickering 10:35, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

• For universities that are part of a larger system, in general the university name is followed by a comma and the name of the city in which the school is located. For example University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Diego. Some systems use at, which is acceptable (University of Colorado at Boulder). Most university websites should provide clarification, but all schools in the system must use the same naming convention.

See my comments above about the need to be clear what this "system" covers. The UK doesn't have "university systems" as I understand them but does have both multi-campus universities with a wild variety of names for campuses and some federal universities. Trying to impose any consistent name form on the colleges of the University of London would be very messy - whilst King's College, London is only a comma away from the name the institution uses, Birkbeck College, London is seriously out of date (it's Birkbeck, University of London) and Queen Mary, University of London offers the problem that "& Westfield" has been dropped from day to day usage and "Queen Mary College, London" strictly refers to only one of the four colleges that merged to form the current QMUL. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Colleges of the UK) for an attempted standard form that wisely failed because of this.

Then what about non-English speaking countries where it's hard to decide if these are or aren't systems? For example the University of Paris - there's thirteen (independent) parts including Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne University, University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris-Sorbonne University, Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris 8 University and Paris-Sud 11 University to pick just a few of the names. Timrollpickering 20:22, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

• Perhaps we can actually make a separate section for each country's standards in this realm. In the US it is very systematic and schools make the most sense to have similar naming conventions within the same system. What I mean by a university system is a collection of schools in the US that are all part of the state school bracket and share a governing board - one board of regents oversees all schools in a university system. As almost all non-US schools are public, you're right that this is a hard distinction to make. I think separating this subsection by country might help. —Noetic Sage 01:24, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Timrollpickering 10:35, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation

• For schools that share a name, both schools should follow their name with the highest uncommon location in parentheses.

Another potential problem is that whilst in the US "University of Foo" and "Foo University" may have separate meanings (e.g. Miami University isn't the same as the University of Miami), this isn't the case in the UK were both name forms are used for most universities. Fine to a point but what about cases like the University of York in the UK which is often called "York University" per this, but York University is in Canada. We may need something on what constitutes international ambiguity with such name forms. Timrollpickering 20:22, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

• I think this goes back to the naming convention of institutions. Even though University of York is also called York University, that isn't the name of the article. So if there was a University of York in the US I would think the US article should be titled "University of York (United States)" and the UK article would be titled "University of York (United Kingdom)"

It's not the article name but the two versions are very commonly in use for institution. An obvious case is the University of Oxford where "Oxford University" is heavily used in the formal title for many individual parts of the university e.g. Oxford University Press, Oxford University Student Union (spelt that way) and so forth. Here I don't think the "University of Foo" and "Foo University" distinction is enough to separate two institutions - this may be different in other parts of the world where such a distinction is often in day to day use. Timrollpickering 10:35, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

• For university athletic programs University can be dropped from the article name and instead followed by the mascot name. For example: Stanford Cardinal and California Golden Bears. Some schools may keep University based on convention (New York University Violets). Also see #Sub-articles

This probably needs to be tagged as US specific - an article on sport at my college would look downright incomprehensible at "Queen Mary London Mary"!!! Timrollpickering 20:22, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

• You're right, the Division I standard in the US isn't clear in other countries. Perhaps we could just say "Division I programs in the US or exceptionally large programs in other countries" could have their own article?—Noetic Sage 01:24, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Article structure

"Campus" - a lot of institutions have multiple campuses and sometimes these are branched into individual articles. Clarity on when to do this, and also how to name the articles (especially as sometimes the same name can mean different things in a university's history - for instance the University of Kent at Canterbury was the name of the university as a whole until 2003 but is now officially the name used for the Canterbury campus only, but still widely used for the whole institution). Timrollpickering 20:22, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

• We should create some clarity here, yes. How about we say that branch campuses should have their own article only if they are semi-autonomous in that they could potentially operate without the assistance of the main campus. So US-based state systems (like mentioned above) would have their own articles whereas institutions that have a remote campus overseas would not merit its own article.—Noetic Sage 01:24, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

"Organization" - "Discuss the administration, especially the president" doesn't mean much at first other than a thought "feel free to vent your spleen". Also "president" could be an ambiguous term - here in the UK universities have a split head system with the Chancellor a titular head and the real heading being done by the Vice Chancellor. There have been rows on some pages such as University of Bradford as to whether or not information on controversial things a Chancellor has said or done should be listed on the university page. Timrollpickering 20:22, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

• Totally agreed. Could you help clear up the terminology as far as President goes? We could mention that too much information on a university president/chancellor/etc could merit a split into that person's own article, but that this section should be a summary of the organization of the university.—Noetic Sage 01:24, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Versions of English to use

This may need to be specifically mentioned as English is heavily used for international communication in academia so there could be a lot of universities where there's an appropriate "local form of English" to use but it could be very hard to determine what that is from websites alone (and the output of their academics may not reveal it either as most journals and publishers have house styles).

This is easy for the Anglosphere - use British English for the University of London, US English for New York University, Australian English for Monash University etc... etc... But what is the correct form of English to use on Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, Leiden University, Nangarhar University, Agostinho Neto University, Salahaddin University and Universidad Católica de Temuco? Timrollpickering 10:00, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

• I think this issue is explained by WP:ENGVAR. Simply stated, we should first go with the relevant version of English (as you mentioned the US version for New York University and British English for University of London), and if that's not possible (as in the French universities) then we should use what the primary version is historically in editing that article. Wikipedia prefers to use words that are the same in all variants, but there are some guidelines to start.—Noetic Sage 01:29, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Dominant/distinguishing characteristics

When reading university articles myself, I'm often just looking for a thumbnail of the dominant or distinguishing characteristics of the institution. I'm thinking it might be a good idea for it to be a guideline to put some sort of summary of these in the intro. For sourcing, it might be easiest to look at how press reports describe the school, or for what reason the school appears in press reports. In many cases, "community college that serves the ___ area" is all that needs to be said. There are so many random liberal arts colleges in the country, it might be necessary to dig a little deeper. What are the largest departments? What are the highest-ranked programs? What is the dominant demographic (local, national, from a particular ethnic group or religion, etc.)? Are there graduate schools? Does the school have a claim to fame, such as a sports program, or notable professors?

Look at say, Wake Forest University. The intro only tells me the location and that it's a private coed university. It seems there is more to the story than that, which should be in the intro. Compare that with MIT, which seems to have the sort of information I'm looking for, even though it is a bit scattershot. (I'm thinking that having a list showing departments by size and ranking would give you a better idea of what's MIT is best known for, and what most students go there for, instead of the rather vague "science and technology focus" angle.) Harvard's intro has a collection of random facts, most of which don't seem that important. Reading about it for the first time, I'd want to know that it's the oldest college in North America (which is mentioned) and that it's the most applied-to university (which isn't mentioned). It would also be a good idea to get an idea of the scope of the institution (liberal arts, but also with strong science programs, plus several top-rated graduate schools). -- Beland 17:15, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

The issues you're bringing up are prevalent in almost all Wiki articles. The problem is that many people do not understand the WP:LEAD policy. The lead is supposed to be a summary of the article, not an intro. This seems to be what you're looking for. For an article to become a good or featured article it must satisfy this criterion. If you take a look at some of our WikiProject's accomplishments you will see that most have a good lead. If you think the info you're looking for is important, I suggest being bold and adding it yourself. Good thoughts. —Noetic Sage 19:35, 2 November 2007 (UTC)