Talk:Imperial College London

Opening of CGLI
"The Central Institution of the City and Guilds of London Institute was opened as a technical education school on Exhibition Road by the Prince of Wales in early 1885."

"Prince of Wales" is wikilinked to George V, which certainly means that something is incorrect in the sentence as it stands. The future Geprge V's title at this time was not "Prince of Wales" but "Prince George of Wales". If, on the other hand, the Institution was opened by the Prince of Wales of that time, the phrase should be wikilinked to Edward VII. Harfarhs (talk) 23:47, 2 September 2023 (UTC)


 * The source says "Prince of Wales", so I've changed the link to Edward VII. Robminchin (talk) 00:52, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Entrepreneurship and innovation
Rather than discuss this through edit comments, I thought it would be better to open a topic here :)

Thanks for adding the additional citation. While this does support the entreprenurial culture, it is based on what Imperial's president said in his speech rather than being an independent source. It would be much better if this was backed up by a third-party source as I'm not sure that this is within WP:ABOUTSELF, in particular whether the claim to have an entreprenurial culture is "neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim". While facts given by the president are almost certainly accurate, we must assume that opinions are influenced by his position. I've left it in for now, but if there is a third party source that would make it much stronger.

There should also be some discussion in the body for it to be in the lead (which is a summary of the body). The current 'Innovation' subsection falls under Rankings in Academic Profile – it would actually be good to change this to 'Reputation and rankings' (in keeping with other universities), and to discuss Imperial's reputation for innovation and entrepreneurship in this section. Robminchin (talk) 21:21, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, that sounds good. This is a better idea to discuss on the talk page then over edit comments.


 * Yes, I agreed with you, additional sources would be good. My first citation - wasnt clear at all, I agree.  The new citation by the university president describing the school simply, i thought was better and likely accurate, I should find additional sources that are third-party as you said, so the source appears less Wp:aboutself.


 * Yes, your point makes sense to me, and I agree too, it should be in the body more as well. I will work on incorporating that to rename the section 'Reputation and Rankings'.  Hopefully we can find something we both like and think is an improvement.  I agreed with all your points. :) I'll try to write something brief about Imperial's reputation from third party sources.  I'll ping you when i incorporate something, and hopefully we can edit that towards something that would be an improvement.Mikecurry1 (talk)


 * I just incorporated the section 'Reputation and Rankings' as per your idea. It was a good one.  It can be edited further, and I am sure editors will want to as it is not perfect yet, and will get better.  It was a good idea to incorporate that section though. Mikecurry1 (talk)


 * Looks like a good start. I tracked down some expert opinion sources when doing edits to the reputation and rankings sections of the Cambridge and Durham articles, some of which mention Imperial (quite a few older sources just talk about 'London'), you might want to take a look at those. It's normally better to base reputation statements on reports of expert opinion (c.f. WP:REPUTATIONS) rather than on rankings, which show how an institution performed in the measures used by that ranking rather than what their reputation is. Robminchin (talk) 15:43, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I checked out the Cambridge and Durham articles reputation sections for their edits, they looked good. For anyone wanting to update the new reputation section it is always appreciated, especially improving the expert opinion citations re:WP:REPUTATIONS.   Yes, it makes sense to base it on expert opinions instead of relying on only rankings.   I am glad you thought it looked good at your initial review.  I am sure editors will want to improve it over time. Great idea for the new reputation section!  Cheers, Mikecurry1 (talk) 17:43, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Update Logo
Should the new logo be updated to the new Imperial one?  example outside of buildings: 

Mikecurry1 (talk) 17:46, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

New Ranking Section (writing instead of bullet points)
I thought it was a really well written new ranking section. I thought the last version you wrote was better before my edit was reverted. I will go back to the last version you wrote and then we can add from there.

In terms of the Europe part, I do understand about not refactoring rankings. there are many other wikis that write about its rank within europe as i think some of these qs and the have that. Is it that you like the sound of it better just as one international ranking? I do understand about some of the specialty rankings not being meant for europe.

I think the reason I always liked the european rankings, is because it gives context as many of the other rankings base their rankings around the US schools, so you can see a context outside of the US how schools are ranked, such as in Europe or the UK. For example, on the US News most of their top 50 global rankings are from US schools. I do truly understand about the refractory rankings though, which I think is a fair point. I think that was the only edit I had off of yours which was possibly contenous. Otherwise I liked your last version and am happy using that.

I thought it was nicely written up how you wrote about the most salient contextual points without going into too much outside detail, which I thought was similar to how oxfords ranking section was written. Mikecurry1 (talk) 00:51, 3 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks. There are a couple of reasons behind not refactoring the rankings. The first, from a logical viewpoint, is that specific rankings for regions will use different information and will weight factors that might be more or less relevant in that region differently. Basically, the global rankings aim to do the best job at comparing universities globally, while a European ranking aims to do the best job at comparing universities in Europe and a British ranking aims to do the best job at comparing universities in the UK. The second, from a Wikipedia use-of-sources point of view (which may well be what is behind the advice in WP:UNIGUIDE), is that rankings are WP:PRIMARY sources for the outcome of the ranking analysis, so should have only minimal, if any, interpretation. I.e., they should be presented in the context in which they were derived. Robminchin (talk) 01:37, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Indeed, those are all good reasons you listed. I do understand that rankings should have minimal interpretation, and that rankings are specific to regions in terms of how they were meant to be used.  I agree with your points, so I am glad you explained it here.  I think that was the main source of the editing back and forth, was over that.  I am good with that.
 * It sounds like from what you were saying if there were one or two rankings specifically meant for the European region that would be appropriate there, then we can both have the points we were trying to make with my region specific rankings to add context, and your not extrapolating from the rankings into a European context when the ranking was meant for that. Then we both can have what are interest was in those edits, so I can add a broader European context, and you can have only rankings with minimal interpretation.  I will aim for that then.
 * The rest of your writing of the section I liked, so was good with using it as it well written. I may do small edits around it, but I do not think there will be any source of contention between edits, and any possible contentious edits I will discuss here.  Thanks for the nice explanation and well written section.  ::I will also continue to revert back some of the changes I made on other pages that had extrapolated rankings from an international context with interpretation into a more regional or local context, to aim for using rankings with only minimal interpretations.  Mikecurry1 (talk)
 * Excellent. Yes, if there are actual Europe-specific rankings (like the European Teaching ranking THE published briefly, or the Reuter's Europe's Most Innovative Universities, which also seems to have been dropped) those would be absolutely fine. Robminchin (talk) 20:50, 3 July 2024 (UTC)