Talk:University of Edinburgh

Thomas Jefferson quote
I commented out the quote from Thomas Jefferson as I'm not sure it belongs with the history of the university. link The fact that Thomas Jefferson wrote to a family member doesn't seem relevant, also the emphasis seems POV (ok Thomas Jefferson thought the courses were great in 1786, but...). Any other opinions?

Moving 'Colleges and Schools' to academic profile?
Hi all,

I'm new to Wikipedia but I thought I would ask: would it make sense to move colleges and schools to the academic profile portion of the page? I would think rewriting a small blurb regarding the schools would function well for the governance portion while moving the juicy parts to the academic section? Bobbyshmurday (talk) 21:04, 24 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi Bobby, welcome to Wikipedia! Sorry it's taken so long for someone to answer your suggestion. I have taken a look at the two areas you mention, and 'Academic Profile' has to do with the University's performance and international reputation, and the measures taken to sustain and enhance that - hence the categorisation 'profile'. The Colleges and Schools are administrative layers integral to the University's organisational structure, and so I believe they're best left under present heading of 'Organisation and Administration'. Does that make sense? Chrisdevelop (talk) 02:50, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Boosterism
@Arcaist There has been at issue with the placement of rankings in the lede of a university article, which I of course flagged as a WP:BOOSTER issue. What was previously there was certainly a WP:SYNTH of the sources which reached a conclusion not supported by the sources.

Adding individual website rankings in a university's lede has always been a very poor outlook IMO, especially that on the university — a university such as the University of Edinburgh certainly doesn't require the appraisal of a ranking to be one of its defining features. This is why most inclusions of such information in the lede (including the original sentence in the lede here) usually fall far short of WP:HIGHEREDREP, specifically WP:UNDUE. The revised sentence you have in the article still falls short of WP:UNDUE — ARWU and THE specifically do not have the body weight to support such a prominent place in the lede, QS maybe just barely.

When I did a brief read-through of the article, I did spot some WP:SYNTH and WP:UNDUE problems (I'll post them later). I appreciate your attentiveness in communicating your WP:COI, but some things have slipped through the cracks. GuardianH (talk) 21:10, 29 October 2023 (UTC)


 * @GuardianH I don't think things are quite as clear-cut. Placing ranking information in the lead is not "of course" a boosterism issue — students and the interested public use them routinely to form opinions and make choices, they serve as the basis of public policy, and they guide decisions by the universities themselves. It's an elementary characteristic of a university, whatever we feel about the utility of ranking universities in the first place. For the record, I'm not a fan of comparative rankings, and am quite aware of their shortcomings. But whether you — or I — believe Edinburgh "doesn't require" ranking information is immaterial, given how widespread their use is.
 * The last RfC (which you linked) consequently did not reach the conclusion that ranking information has to be removed, but I'm happy to be corrected.
 * Regarding the body weight of the rankings, that seems to be a matter of opinion. The RfC concluded that "There was insufficient discussion to find a consensus on whether inclusion of text on specific individual rankings are appropriate in a lead section." I don't see what the specific standard for inclusion would be, save for the fact that those three are the most-cited comparative rankings. Given that you insisted that a short 'synthesis' sentence has to be removed, the only alternative is to state the non-synthesized rankings. If that is still too much for you, then I don't understand what the solution would be: synthesis is unwelcome, and stating the data is also unwelcome - but removing all ranking information goes against the RfC consensus.
 * On a sidenote, I disagree with your interpretation of WP:SYNTH — using three different rankings of 22, 30, and 38 to say "top 50" is a summary, not an improper synthesis. It isn't reaching a conclusion that's not supported by the sources, since all three sources place the university in the top 50. But maybe I'm reading WP:SYNTHNOT wrong. — Arcaist (contr —talk)  21:38, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Why change the Short Description?
The short description was changed from "Public university in Edinburgh, Scotland" to "Public university in Scotland". Chrisdevelop (talk) 01:58, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi @Chrisdevelop, the reason I did that is because the title already mentions Edinburgh, so it's not necessary to reiterate it in the short description, IMO. Revirvlkodlaku (talk) 03:15, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * As the main editor for this article, would you like to chime in here? Do you agree with this reasoning? Chrisdevelop (talk) 01:02, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for looping me in @Chrisdevelop. My main consideration is consistency, and it does indeed look like most, if not all, other UK universities that are already named after their city (e.g. Aberdeen, Aberystwyth, Glasgow, Oxford, etc.) omit that in the short description. So I'd be happy with the change. — Arcaist (contr —talk)  09:32, 7 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Chrisdevelop (talk) 13:36, 7 July 2024 (UTC)