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Parameters for Graduation Rate and Acceptance Rate

Should there be parameters in the university infobox for Acceptance Rate and Graduation Rate? Has this already been considered and discussed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TeuberC26 (talk • contribs) 17:35, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Acceptance rate isn't very useful – it has been dropped by USN&WR because it became meaningless as a measure of selectivity. Graduation rate (or completion rate) might be a useful parameter but getting a consistent definition across universities in multiple countries is probably impossible (the UK definition from HESA, for example, is based on projecting "what proportion of the full-time first degree starters are likely to be in each of the 'end states' after a period of fifteen years" based on "the current pattern of students at the HE provider"), and I'm not sure it's the sort of basic information that should go in the main infobox. Robminchin (talk) 01:36, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Robminchin: acceptance rate is not a good parameter for the infobox and graduation rate is too complex for this infobox. In my opinion, acceptance rate isn't a good parameter (in the U.S. context) because it's too often used primarily as a way to advertise an institution's selectivity as a proxy for prestige. It's also way too easy to game and it's lost much of its meaning with the advent of easy-to-complete applications particularly those done online and especially the common applications that allow students to apply to multiple institutions at the same time. (We should, however, think about adding "open admission" to the "Type" parameter for U.S. institutions that have no selectivity in admissions; that is a significant part of their institutional mission that affects many parts of their organization and its operation beyond just admissions.)

Graduation rate is a more interesting parameter but one that is much too complex for this infobox. In the U.S., data are available for nearly all colleges and universities through the federal government (i.e., IPEDS) but those data are so limited that they are often dangerously misleading as they have historically focused only on full-time undergraduate students who began only at that specific institution (i.e., no consideration of part-time students, transfer students, graduate students, or any other populations). That is why we've seen significant efforts in the past several years to collect additional data e.g., the Student Achievement Measure, additional data in IPEDS. As those data become available, we should consider a new template for U.S. institutions to display them (and ensure they're being regularly collected and updated in Wikidata so we can just pull them from there). But the data are too complex and multifaceted to add to this already bloated template. ElKevbo (talk) 10:10, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Parameter conflict

Frietjes, this template uses |location= or |address=, |city=, |state=, |country=. I found Anugrah Narayan College, Patna was using |location=street with the rest of the location in city/state/country parameters, so only the street was displayed. Do you want to make a "conflicting address parameter" tracking category so other cases can be found and fixed? MB 17:39, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

User:MB, okay now added along with a bunch of others, see the tracking categories. will take some time to fill up. Frietjes (talk) 18:07, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

note that the |affiliations= is confusing since there is also |sporting_affiliations= and |affiliation= which do different things. if I were sure that everything in |affiliations= was non-sporting, I would move it to an alias for |affiliation=, but this is probably not the case. Frietjes (talk) 18:51, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

The Template Data monthly report provides links to a list of articles using each parameter, including |affiliations=. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:11, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

University of Central Florida uses |affiliation= and |sporting_affiliations=. Both should display. There is no way to fix this without making a guess if the value in |affiliation= is academic or religious. MB 19:36, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Same problem with Butler University and probably many others. Contributor321 (talk) 19:58, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Just figured out that specifying |sporting_affiliations= and |academic_affiliations= shows both. Contributor321 (talk) 00:26, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

I've fixed all the affiliation conflicts, mostly by changing affiliation to academic_affiliation. It wasn't hard to determine that they weren't religious affiliations. I fixed all the other misc errors also. The only ones left are all color/colour and location conflicts. MB 02:11, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: We're long overdue for a project-wide discussion of the intended use of the "affiliation" parameter. It's been used willy nilly by editors to include all kinds of trivial organizations and partnerships that are fine in the body of the article but nowhere near important enough for the infobox. Is there an easy, automated way to pull out all of the text that being used in this parameter so we can get an idea of what it's being used for? Or is simpler to just grab some articles and do it manually since we only really need a small sample? ElKevbo (talk) 20:02, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

The friendly folks at Wikipedia:Bot requests usually have the skills to run a report like this. Just make sure to ask for exactly what you want, since they are not mind-readers. Something like "for all transclusions of {{Infobox university}}, a list of all values used in the parameters |x=, |y=, and |z=, displayed in the following manner: ...". – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:08, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

RE MB, speaking of |sporting_affiliations=, I was trying to get it to work on my own but it would be useful to have that with a substitute/interchangeable parameter for |athletic_affiliations=. I don't know if "sporting affiliation" is used commonly in other English speaking parts of the world, but for US/North American universities, "athletic affiliations" is the commonly used NA English language. Adjusting that could also help cut down on the confusion of the other affiliation parameters because North American English speakers would know what |athletic_affiliations= is intended for. I think right now, many don't look for "sporting affiliation" so they throw athletic conferences into the general |affiliation= or other parameters. --Bhockey10 (talk) 18:22, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Language code for motto not appearing?

Am I mistaken or is the motto_lang parameter not actually displayed in the rendered infobox? For example, United States Merchant Marine Academy has "la" specified for this parameter but nothing relevant is displayed in the rendered infobox. Is this correct behavior? ElKevbo (talk) 17:27, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

The motto is tagged with the language code, like this: <div lang="la">Acta Non Verba</div>. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:06, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Ah, ok. Any thoughts on using the parameter to add an explicit link to the language in question? I haven't done a detailed audit but my impression is that very few articles about U.S. institutions use this template but many have a link to the language manually inserted into the motto parameter. If we added an explicit link using this parameter we could standardize the appearance of the motto instead of the many variations we have right now e.g., quotation marks, italics, language linked in small letters, language linked in parentheses. ElKevbo (talk) 19:14, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

If the variation in formats is a problem, the first step is to change the documentation to something more specific than "University's motto; usually in Latin." When the documentation does not provide guidance, you should expect editors to make a wide variety of choices. What is your proposal for new documentation instructions? Maybe something more specific, like "University's motto; usually in Latin. Do not use italics, bold, quotation marks, or other formatting."? Once a consensus is established on what should be in the |motto= parameter, then the 8,309 infoboxes with mottoes can be cleaned up. We could probably submit a bot request for a database report showing each article that uses |motto= and the text of its |motto=, |motto_lang=, and |mottoeng= parameters. After the mottoes are cleaned up, it is a simple matter to change the infobox code to display the motto differently. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:01, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Yes, those are all things that would have to be done. But before discussing those details, we need to figure out if the broader changes - creating a consistent formatting and adding an explicit link to the language - are desirable. That is my primary question at this point. ElKevbo (talk) 01:07, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

I am definitely in favor of consistency. What do you propose? Perhaps you could point to an infobox that does things in a more consistent way that seems like a good approach to you. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:25, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

I, too favor consistency. It seems like the changes and steps you began to outline make sense with the ultimate goal to consistently format the motto parameter in the rendered infobox, including consistently formatting and linking to the appropriate language if the language parameter is filled in.

I can't point to any similar examples in other infoboxes; I'm not terribly familiar with other infoboxes. But there are some loose parallels in how the location parameter is constructed in this and other infoboxes with multiple (optional) parameters combined together to present a consistent rendered format (which can also be manually overridden with a direct entry into the "location" parameter, right?). ElKevbo (talk) 01:44, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure how the construction of location parameters is relevant to displaying text in a non-English language. {{Infobox school}} has some decent instructions for how values for |motto= should be formatted. Here is a search that shows many infoboxes that use mottoes. Look through those for instructions that make sense to you. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:46, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Public transit

Can someone add parameters for transit here? Specifically |publictransit= to display "Public transit access". This is pretty important connection information, available in many infoboxes like {{Infobox station}}, {{Infobox shopping mall}}, {{Infobox museum}}, {{Infobox park}}, and more. Vaselineeeeeeee^★★★ 00:56, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

That's only really appropriate for infoboxes for places, not for institutions. Most universities have large campuses, multiple sites, or both. There is therefore no such thing as "nearest public transport stop" (to use the language from the museum infobox) for a university. Robminchin (talk) 03:45, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Our definition of public transit access could include any stop that leads to the university. For example, Toronto Eaton Centre is a very large mall that has two subway stations listed. The point about multiple campuses is tricky, but judgement can be used. For example, University of Toronto is large enough that that page is used for its main downtown campus, and its other campuses in Scarborough and Mississauga have their own pages, and therefore their own public transit stops can be listed. However for other schools such as Seneca College, all their campuses are listed on its main page and do not have a separate article. For this article, the publictransit parameter would therefore not be used. Vaselineeeeeeee^★★★ 15:11, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't think you appreciate the size of university campuses. I had a quick look at Durham University, a medium sized university in England, and there are at least 10 stops. It is quite common in universities to take public transport from one part of a campus to another, because they are far, far bigger than shopping malls. The Eaton Centre, which may indeed be a very large mall, has (according to its article) a retail area of about 20 ha (across 4 floors) and from Google maps it has a footprint of about 450x120m, giving a consistent area of 5 ha. University campuses are normally in the hundreds of ha. Even a city-bounded university like Columbia has a 120 ha campus, while some universities are much larger (a random sampling: Durham 225 ha, Warwick 290 ha, Cornell 300 ha, UC Berkeley 500 ha, Texas A&M > 2000 ha). They are orders of magnitude larger than your very large mall and cannot be sensibly compared.

I agree with ElKevbo that listing the public transit stops for a university falls well outside of the scope of an encyclopedia article. Robminchin (talk) 01:33, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Sorry but I think this falls outside the scope of an encyclopedia article especially the brief summary that is the infobox. This is content that is appropriate for a visitor's guide, tour brochure, or official website (to which we already have a link in the infobox) but not an encyclopedia article, in my opinion. 15:20, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

sporting affiliation

I was trying to get it to work on my own but it would be useful to have that with a substitute/interchangeable parameter for |athletic_affiliations=. I don't know if "sporting affiliation" is used commonly in other English speaking parts of the world, but for US/North American universities, "athletic affiliations" is the commonly used NA English language. Adjusting that could also help cut down on the confusion of the other affiliation parameters because North American English speakers would know what |athletic_affiliations= is intended for. I think right now, many don't look for "sporting affiliation" since it's not commonly used in NA English so they throw athletic conferences into the general |affiliation=, athletics, free_label, or other parameters. --Bhockey10 (talk) 16:47, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

For most of the world, athletics = track & field. I don't see a problem with having this as an alias for sporting_affiliation, but replacing it would be a mistake. Robminchin (talk) 02:13, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

That's what I assumed, the use of sport is used in other parts of the word, outlined nicely in the article College athletics where many other parts of the world use "University Sports". I'm definitely not advocating for a replacement, just an optional additional parameter for like how |athletics= and |sports= work interchangeably with the description to "Use Athletics or Sports, whichever is appropriate" in the Template:Infobox university. In for US universities, "athletics" represents the entire sports offerings so athletic affiliation fits with the naming convention of College athletics in the United States, athletic conferences, etc... --Bhockey10 (talk) 02:28, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

University Anthem

Dear All,

Almost every university has an anthem or official university song.

Let us add a new parameter as

<code>
|anthem = ''[[Anthem_label_text]]''<br />{{small|''English_Name_of_the_Song''}}<br />[[File:Uploaded_anthem.ogg|center]]
</code>

Thank you SrLnKn — Preceding unsigned comment added by Srlnkn (talk • contribs) 06:17, 14 January 2014‎

I know I’m six year too late, but this is a great idea. Grey Wanderer (talk) 21:29, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I am skeptical that this is critical information that must be documented in the infobox. ElKevbo (talk) 22:10, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Hmmm perhaps I let my own zeal for school song and tradition blind me to the average reader’s interest in this. We do have similar identity and tradition parameters like “mascot”, and “colors”, but I suppose this side of 1900, school songs are just trivia. Grey Wanderer (talk) 22:33, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

There are a few examples of anthems or fight songs that are recognizable by many people e.g., University of Notre Dame's Victory March, University of Tennessee's Rocky Top, U.S. Naval Academy's Anchors Aweigh (which is recognizable by most people outside of its original - and continuing - use as the academy's fight song). But otherwise it seems that college and university anthems and fight songs for institutions in the U.S. are only of interest to dedicated alumni and athletic boosters.

But if other people disagree or if this U.S. view is not shared in other countries, feel free to ignore me. If it were up to me, we'd remove many of the parameters in this infobox as unnecessary fluff. ElKevbo (talk) 23:40, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

The only fight song that was well known in Britain was Tom Lehrer's Fight Fiercely, Harvard. As far as I know, the tradition is very much American, and linked to the US college sports scene, so if the US editors don't think it's notable enough to include I would go along with that. Robminchin (talk) 01:12, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

We do include national anthems for country pages, so I could see this being a reasonable addition, but the concerns about it being trivia also deserve consideration. I have no strong views. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:25, 1 August 2020 (UTC)