Talk:Residential colleges of Yale University

Merging
The notability of individual residential colleges (as evidenced by receiving "significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject") is dubious especially since notability is not inherited from the parent topic or notable associates. I have merged the (worthwhile) content from the respective college articles here and made a preliminary attempt to strip out the cruft, peacockery, and other non-neutral and non-encyclopedic information. The article still needs a more thorough copy-editing scrubdown for consistency as well as many more references and citations to reliable and third-party sources. I would remind editors that Wikipedia is not a webhost for your particular college's activities and traditions. Madcoverboy (talk) 16:33, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd have to disagree with the merge. In fact, I'd suggest an opposite tack, in removing from this article much of the specifics regarding each individual college. Instead, I'd suggest that this article merely cover the residential college system, with each college being covered specifically in its own subarticle. I do agree with you, though, that there's currently a lot of fluff and trivia in the articles on the colleges that could be easily struck. Qqqqqq (talk) 17:10, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The lack of individual notability contra-indicates giving each college its own article: a search of Google News or Google books returns no evidence of significant coverage of individual colleges in reliable sources independent of the university. Obviously Google is not omniscient, but it nevertheless is a reasonable proxy for evaluating the extent to which reliable sources have covered these topics. Following WP:NNC ("The notability guidelines determine whether a topic is notable enough to be a separate article in Wikipedia. They do not give guidance on the content of articles... Consider merging such content to a more appropriate article."), I recommend merging the content of these stand-alone articles into a single article. Nevertheless, I agree that the article likewise needs some elaboration of the history and organization of the residential college system itself in addition to striking fluff, cruft, and trivia. Certainly if it becomes clear that one/some colleges have received significant coverage from reliable, indepedent, secondary sources, these can be spun out into stand-alone articles. But I wouldn't give every college blanket sanction to have their own articles simply because a few are notable. Madcoverboy (talk) 18:05, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I just can't agree with the assertion that Yale's residential colleges aren't notable on an individual basis. I'll see if I can find some external sources. Qqqqqq (talk) 18:28, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Disagree with merge proposal; agree with Q's paring down the long residential colleges article and moving material to separate college pages. For one thing, many of the colleges' articles are already good-sized; Ezra Stiles College, for example, is at 1,000 generally cruftless words. A merge would create a ca. 12,000-word article, which is longer than optimum. Moreover, each of the colleges have (or certainly could have) an infobox and lists of masters, deans, and notable alumni. Putting these four boxes x 12 colleges into a single article is a guarantee of clutter. Better just to break them out. PRRfan (talk) 19:05, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The current article stands at 8,000 words of prose with a substantial amount of cruft remaining. I disagree with including lists of masters and deans for every school (per WP:NOTDIR), but if there is consensus to include them, something like EasyTimeline would be a reasonably robust means of implementing it. Madcoverboy (talk) 19:22, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
 * A) Even 8,000 words is really long -- scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. B) The lists of masters and deans, I don't feel, are covered by NOTDIR. They are the senior officials of what are, Q and I believe, are significant institutions. Nor would adding EasyTimeline much improve the clutter. C) I think we have a difference of philosophy here. Though I'm certainly anti-cruft, I'm a WP:NOTPAPER kind of guy. I fear that your well-intentioned merger proposal is needless and prone to create a more unwieldy presentation of less information. PRRfan (talk) 22:31, 15 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Disagree with merge proposal.
 * —FlashSheridan (talk) 19:32, 25 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I also Disagree. I think they should be separate.  It is better the way it is now.  Cutting the information to fit all 12 on one page is not the right move.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.36.151.219 (talk) 15:22, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Disagree - Merger's a bad idea for all of the reasons listed above, and the Yale residential colleges, like the residential colleges of Oxford, are of historic significance and transcend the typical "college of X" that exist at every University. Shadowjams (talk) 18:44, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

The merge will only work if the amount of information about each RC is approximately halved. The problem with the current setup is that the articles exist both as part of this article and separately. Because of this, whenever an edit is made now, the old version still exists elsewhere on Wikipedia. -Phi*n!x 19:44, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
 * True. This article duplicates much of the information found in the 12 articles on the colleges. And can we agree that consensus is against merging? Qqqqqq (talk) 05:16, 23 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I Disagree with the merger proposal. The peacock self-advertising & dilettantism of the pages up until now is certainly annoying, & Yale colleges are not Oxbridge colleges, but they are an interesting experiment in American academia, & have aquired, over time, a degree of legitimacy & permanence. Merging them here will distort the whole purpose of their division in the first place, & more important for an encyclopaedia, deny the real differentiation & individuation that is taking place, albeit at a slow pace. --nielspeterqm (talk) 22:28, 27 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I also Disagree with the merger. There is no reason for each college to have its rich history condensed into a small subsection of another article. As a current Yale student, the individual material presented for each individual college is a brilliant source of information, and helps students catch up on the history of their college while promoting pride. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.36.154.163 (talk) 17:40, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Removing "merge?" tag at Ezra Stiles College per discussion.PRRfan (talk) 15:48, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Likewise removing merge tag at Davenport College per discussion. --Vivisel (talk) 13:18, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Likewise at Timothy Dwight College. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 15:17, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Delete?
Closed as unsuccesful - There's no real support for this, and it's especially a non-starter due to the recent discussions regarding Housing articles (which I've created as redirects to the residential colleges page in the special case of Yale). Also, despite the opening statement, it is a merge debate. Deletion debates need to happen at AfD, and have different procedures. Shadowjams (talk) 18:12, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

There is clear consensus against merging, so that leaves this article as a discussion of Yale's residential college system, not the colleges themselves. This could easily be accomplished by slight expansion of the Yale College article, which is itself only about the residential college system.

Therefore, I propose deleting this article and migrating its content to the Yale College article and individual residential college article. Thoughts? -Phi*n!x 21:54, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Support. Good idea. PRRfan (talk) 19:10, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose There is no treatment on Wikipedia of the clearly notable topic of residential colleges at Yale. This cannot be addressed in sufficient length on the Yale University article itself. Furthermore, it seems wholly inappropriate to redundantly note the history of the system on each college's article and there is no forum to discuss the comparative aspects of Yale's system to other universities. Furthermore, the notion that we should go around deleting articles on Wikipedia because they replicate other information or it's difficult to maintain consistency across articles fails to pass the smell test of reasonableness: one wouldn't suggest deleting special relativity because we already have an article on general relativity. The wikipedia model only works insofar as its incumbent upon every editor to ensure accuracy and consistency across articles, not collapsing encyclopedically-notable content because it doesn't conform to our personally-held knowledge ontologies and taxonomies. Leaving that aside behind us, what information and topics that are deemed notable enough to be spun out should certainly be done, but it is entirely inappropriate to conclude that because editors are opposed to merging and redirecting content from other articles to here that this article must therefore be deleted. Madcoverboy (talk) 21:06, 16 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Look closely at what I said to expand: Yale College and Yale University are two separate articles. The Yale College article is exclusively about the undergraduate portion of the university, and as I said before, its content is almost entirely about the residential college system.  I agree that the history of the system should not be in each individual article (they could link to "Yale College") and that this needs more depth than would be appropriate on the Yale University article.  Right now, the history portion of the Residential colleges article is more or less the same as the Yale College article, and the college-specific sections are copied and pasted from their respective articles.  Therefore, either the Yale College article and college-specific articles should all be deleted or this article should be deleted.  We're talking the same content, not related/overlapping content.-Phi*n!x 21:14, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Again, Yale College and the Yale residential college system are substantively different entities. The shortcomings in the scope and quality of the former cannot be used to argue for the deletion of the latter. Your proposed choices presume that the Yale College article cannot (or should not) be improved with respect to differentiating it from both the university as well as the residential college system. Clearly, the complete absence of any section on the history of the college, its organization and administration, curriculum, traditions, and student life are deficiencies that will not be solved by deleting the present article (College of the University of Chicago should serve as an example). I would encourage editors to work on improving the Yale College article rather than proverbially cutting off one's nose to spite your face by deleting this article: each has its role. Madcoverboy (talk) 14:28, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Eh; let's combine the few unique paragraphs of Residential Colleges (those that are not detail about the individual colleges) with the Yale College article, and if -- someday -- the Yale College article or its new subsection "Residential Colleges" gets too large, they can be split again. PRRfan (talk) 19:10, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm seeing Madcoverboy's point better, but yeah, I think it would make more sense for now to merge the limited extra content here to Yale College until it makes sense to separate it. -Phi*n!x 21:23, 26 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose. This discussion is actually about merging this article to Yale College, not deleting it and migrating its content to Yale College. If anyone wants to delete it, please post Template:Afd, not Template:Mergeto, at this article and go through the process per Guide to deletion. Thanks. --Pengyanan (talk) 20:02, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Though it seems this is a settled issue. As noted above, the subject is notable, and of a scope to warrant its own article. For the record, I also oppose the merging of all the individual residential college articles.— DMCer ™  10:22, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Yale Herald
Just to flag up an article that may provide a useful source for someone who knows a little more about the colleges (inc. notes on each college): --Philtweir (talk) 05:22, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Leadership
The time has come when Italian-Americans should hold the presidency of Yale. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.206.50.21 (talk) 14:02, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Strip this page down
This page contributes too much information on each college. Because the residential colleges all have their own pages, I think this should be stripped down to include less information. Before that occurs, we need to make sure that there isn't any information on this page that is not on the page for any individual residential college. --Ryan Vesey (talk) 23:35, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

History/Residential College System
There should be a note added that individuals who have immediate family that either were or currently in a certain residential college, that the entering student may choose to enter the same residential College. Also needs notes on the reported statistics of the percentage of Students who live on campus all 4 years. And a section noting the future expansion of Yale College (i.e. Yale is planning to build two new Residential Colleges)

Cbrown00 (talk) 14:03, 11 November 2011 (UTC)Cbrown000

Re-purposing?
Based off the discussions above, there seems to have at one point been strong support for re-purposing this page. Based off the "Delete?" and "Merge?" discussions, most editors favored removing the information about specific colleges from this page to the college articles, creating a list of the colleges, and using this page for an explanation of the residential college system as a whole, its history, and recent developments such as the 2000s remodel and the two new colleges currently under construction. I personally think this is the logical way to arrange things. Thoughts? Wardpackard (talk) 18:50, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Concur. PRRfan (talk) 02:04, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
 * sounds good, I will start stripping it down. Frietjes (talk) 15:27, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Masters
In 2016, Yale replaced the title of "Master" with "head of college". The article notes this in passing, but I think additional changes are needed. (Are "Master's Teas" now "Head of College Teas"? Is the "Master's House" now the "Head of College's House"? Is the "Council of Masters" now the "Council of Heads of College"?) I do think we need to maintain "Master" when used historically. It makes no sense to speak of a "Head of College" at Calhoun, nor to label the "Master's House in 1940" as a "Head of College's House". - Nunh-huh 18:03, 8 September 2017 (UTC)