Talk:Stanford University

Human Resources & Labor Review ranking

Another editor has inserted a reference to this ranking system. I challenge the importance and noteworthiness of this ranking system. There doesn't appear to be any methodological information to help us understand its reliability and validity. Nor does this ranking appear to be widely used or respected. On those bases, I propose removing this addition. ElKevbo (talk) 20:09, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Overhauling the article

While the article is definitely strong as is, there are many areas in which it's lacking. Some are completely fine - the intro, the sections on libraries, athletics, Greek life, etc. But most need improvement:

• History - currently it's very hit-or-miss; some eras/points ignored, others (like football - really?) overemphasized. Here's one source to draw on: http://www.stanford.edu/about/history/
• Campus - mostly good information, but it needs to be reorganized. The "landmarks" and "faculty residences" sections are out of place, and the random picture of Lake Lag needs to moved. There should also be a section on sustainability.
• Administration and organization - should include a list of the schools (perhaps with other info, such as whether it grants undergrad degrees), rather than embedding such in the text.
• Academics: Research centers and institutes - needs to be expanded. Perhaps it should include a section for interdisciplinary studies, which are important. This could be a starting point: http://stanford.edu/academics/programs.html
• Academics: Rankings - this needs to be made more concise, and I think a table would do well for much of it. Also we need a review of which rankings should be included and which ones shouldn't.
• Arts - good section as it is, but there's a lot more recent information to include (such as SICA, the Arts Intensive, the Anderson building, the McMurtry building, the Bing Concert Hall, etc.)
• Dormitories and student housing - poorly written (huge paragraphs) and very outdated information (e.g. it still mentions the pre-Manzanita housing, which I'm sure very few people on campus even remember).
• Traditions - needs sources, should be pruned for what's actually a tradition and what isn't.
• Student groups - there seems to be no method to what's included and what isn't.
• Notable alumni, faculty, and staff - stats on current faculty need to be moved to the "Academics" section, which is what other university articles do, leaving the last section as "Notable alumni."

• pictures - the article needs more pictures that are recent. Some ideas: Green Library contrasted against the pic of the destroyed library from 1906, the new engineering quad, a pic of one or two of the dorms in the dorms section, etc.
• other sections - perhaps we should add more sections that other universities often have, such as controversies (e.g. the ROTC debate, the FIRE controversy at the ed school), pop culture references, etc.
• sources - many, many statements need sources. Almost as important: since we currently have a great many sources (160), we could consolidate many statements' sources. For example, there are 7 sources citing Stanford as the top fundraising university over the years; perhaps we could link to one source showing the fundraising totals over the years.

It seems like a lot, but most of these sections have remained essentially unchanged for years, so this is really just a conglomeration of changes that should have happened a long time ago. I can make changes slowly, but hopefully other Stanford-affiliated people will step up as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Loslix (talk • contribs) 01:25, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for a lot of good ideas. I just moved the faculty information to Academics as you suggested and will continue to work on this list. In particular there is a lot that is out of date and needs updating. --MelanieN (talk) 18:33, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Faculty Ghetto vs. Professorville

Are these in fact two different places or one in the same? Should the name be change to one or the other or should both be used? Is one perferred over the other or is one official? Ttenchantr (talk) 17:34, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

They are two different places. Professorville is an area of Palo Alto not owned by Stanford where many early professors lived (not so many now as most can't afford it). The faculty ghetto (which is a nickname) is on Stanford owned land where the residents own the improvements (housing, landscape improvements) but lease the land. Leaseholders must be University faculty or senior staff (which staff can vary a bit) or emeriti. If the leaseholder ceases to have that status, they must sell out (an exception is that a widow or widower who is not themself eligible can stay on until death or remarriage). --Erp (talk) 14:32, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Split off Libraries into a new article?

Someone just proposed splitting off the Libraries section into a separate article, Stanford University Libraries. Discussion is supposed to happen on this talk page. Personally, I don't favor the idea. The libraries are adequately covered in the present article without overwhelming it, and they are not significant enough for a separate article IMO. --MelanieN (talk) 16:30, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

I was going to start a talk page discussion yesterday but I forgot to. Anyway, my theory is that many major universities have articles about their libraries/library systems; we could also merge and redirect the Green Library, J. Henry Meyer Memorial Library and Stanford University Libraries Digital Image Collections articles into said Stanford University Libraries article, while giving a broader coverage of the subject. Disavian (talk) 17:35, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, you're right - I see that other major universities do have articles about their libraries. However, I'm not so sure about redirecting the existing articles about individual libraries to that page. Would you really put all the detail from those articles into a "libraries" article? I notice that Harvard University Library does not redirect, but retains separate articles for its major libraries. So do Princeton and Yale. So I would oppose a redirect of the individual libraries. I'm still not sure this separate article for libraries is justified, but I am willing to be convinced. The example of other major universities goes a long way toward convincing me. --MelanieN (talk) 17:56, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

P.S. OK, this settles it! If University of California, Berkeley Libraries get a separate page, so do ours! (j/k) --MelanieN (talk) 18:05, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

You don't have to redirect them. It's up to you... I'm just proposing it. :3 Disavian (talk) 18:52, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

I thought other people would chime in here - this article has more than 200 Watchers - but nobody has. Looks like you can go ahead and create the article if you want. Thanks for the suggestion. --MelanieN (talk) 13:52, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, not everybody edits Wikipedia every day, and I feel like active editorship is on the decline as of late. I don't have the hard statistics to back that up, though. Nobody is going to object to more comprehensive coverage of a subject, although it seems the greatest barrier to entry is actually creating the relevant article. Disavian (talk) 17:10, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't think there's a hard and fast precedent either way for including or excluding this content. In the interests of being bold, I would encourage you to go for it and if it's a total catastrophe, we can go back to how things were before. Madcoverboy (talk) 18:49, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

I went ahead and implemented this after someone reminded me that I'd completely forgotten about it. Anyway, we now have Stanford University Libraries to expand at our leisure. Disavian (talk) 08:02, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, great job! I have added some comments to the article's talk page. --MelanieN (talk) 18:59, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

BTW you were absolutely right; there is more than enough material for a separate article. --MelanieN (talk) 19:18, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Wow, you've added a lot of referenced content! Nice job. Disavian (talk) 01:12, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

So I noticed that the {{Stanford University}} template is a bit cluttered at the moment (and doesn't have Stanford University Libraries on it). I'd like to suggest that we make it closer to {{Georgia Tech Navbox}}, which is rather clearly segmented, and links only the most important articles about the school. Disavian (talk) 01:12, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

I took a stab at improving this tonight. Disavian (talk) 06:34, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

First graduating class?

As noted here, the article doesn't state what year the first class graduated. Seems like 1895, but that's just a guess. Can this be researched and added with a citation. Daniel Case (talk) 22:44, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea! Esrever ^(klaT) 22:53, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Most sources seem to say 1895; in particular that year is given for Herbert Hoover who is always cited as a member of the first graduating class. (There is even a picture of that class here: [1]; is that a picture we would be able to use?) However, 1895 was the first graduating class that attended all four years at Stanford. It appears that there were transfer students who graduated as early as 1892.[2] --MelanieN (talk) 19:05, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Notes to remove clutter

I've added a notes section to allow people to smooth out the main body of the text. Notes should be used for extra information that isn't directly relevant but might be of interest and aren't significant enough to include in its own article (I used it for a digression on the two other parcels of land that made up the initial endowment but have long since been sold; both are mentioned in other articles which I linked to in the note). --Erp (talk) 22:12, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I had to add some notes to the James E. Boyd (scientist) article for things that clarified existing text but were not entirely relevant, and I think it's a good example of using them properly. Figured I'd chip in my two cents. Disavian (talk) 07:57, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Stanford's Nobel laureates

The article used to say that "more than 50" faculty, staff, and alumni have won the Nobel Prize. An ISP just changed that to "17". But According to this, there are 17 Nobel laureates on the faculty RIGHT NOW, so there are obviously many more associated with Stanford if one counts alumni and deceased faculty.

This lists the current 17 as well as 6 of the most prominent deceased faculty; there are many others. What would be a fair number to list, and do we have to detail all of their names in the article? Maybe we should make a category or a list so that we don't have to cite them all here in the article which is already overly long? --MelanieN (talk) 13:42, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Actually I see there already is a place to list such affiliations; it's at List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation#Stanford University. That list is somewhat problematic but already includes 27 such affiliations. I had started on a separate, more detailed list which you can see here, but I think I will concentrate on updating the existing list instead (it's very incomplete) - and then put an updated count into this article. --MelanieN (talk) 14:24, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I updated that list, it now has 43 entries. I modified this article to say "more than 40". --MelanieN (talk) 16:01, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Inaccurate translation of motto

The German word "Luft" means "air" in English. The English word "wind" is also "Wind" in German. Therefore the university motto should be translated "the air of freedom blows". It is just more accurate :-) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.113.113.82 (talk) 15:40, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest. Both "air" and "wind" are valid translations of Luft,[3], but in combination with "weht", the meaning obviously is air in motion, air moving - in other words "wind". A better English translation would actually be "The wind of freedom is blowing" rather than "blows", but "The wind of freedom blows" is the official translation embraced by the university for decades - and we should stick with what the university itself intends to say with the motto. --MelanieN (talk) 16:16, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi guys, yeah the transliteration "The wind of freedom is blowing" is more fitting, but why German in the first place, I must wonder. This reminds me of "Vom Winde verweht", the official transliteration for "Gone With the Wind". (Yes, I do speak German, by the way.) 14.201.95.31 (talk) 07:22, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

You mean translation, not transliteration. A German motto was chosen in part because German had become the language of scholarship (replacing Latin) in the 19th century. And partly because David Starr Jordan, the first president of Stanford, was a lifelong admirer of Ulrich von Hutten, the source of the quote. There's quite a long discussion of the motto here: [4]. --MelanieN (talk) 14:58, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

1.) Thanks for responding. That German was to replace Latin was new, even surprising, to me. Very interesting piece of information. Thankyou indeed.

2.) As you know, literal or word-by-word translation does not always work across languages. Try translating Chinese or ancient Greek into modern days' languages to see. That's why the term "scholarly interpretation". For the paragraph above, I did mean transliteration. Cheers! 14.201.95.31 (talk) 06:45, 30 January 2013 (UTC)