User:Dpbsmith/Boosterdampers

I'm withdrawing this proposal; see below.

PROPOSAL for a committee to be called the Academic Boosterdampers

Whereas Academic boosterism is a problem due to the existence of positive feedback mechanisms, and cannot be solved on an article-by-article basis because an increase in boosterism in one article is often followed by increases in boosterism in other articles... I propose the formation of a damping mechanism.

The Boosterdampers place an "Academic boosterism" tag on any article with excessive boosterism, and remove it when the boosterism has been adequately toned down.

Boosterdampers will follow a VfD-like/VFU-like procedure. Proposals to add a tag require a 2/3 majority of valid votes. Proposals to remove a tag require a simple majority of valid votes.

Anyone wishing to vote must declare all of the institutions of higher education they have attended. Nobody may vote on
 * an article about an institution they have attended, or
 * an article about any other institution in the same athletic conference as an institution they have attended, or
 * an article to which they've made significant edits.

Voting proceeds for X days (I provisionally suggest five) before action is taken.

Action is taken by anyone on a list of Boosterdamper moderators. The list of moderators is to be determined... how?

Comments encouraged. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:02, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Oh, yes. Obviously this won't work if we can't Assume good faith to some degree. My assumption is that we can... and that people will respect the tags if reasonable number of people agree before the tag is placed or removed&mdash;and that sysops will enforce that to some degree. And that addressing the problem in this way might work better than having it be addressed a) in individual articles by b) people involved both in the school and in the editing of the article.

Comments
The only thing I worry about here is the high level of subjectivity involved and the tendency for angered stakeholders in one school to "retaliate" against others. -- MITalum 05:05, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea, but we need to clarify criteria for what is acceptable. For example, I think that the threshhold for deserving mention in the list of a school's alumni is probably lower than threshhold for meriting an article of one's own; others may disagree. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:45, July 26, 2005 (UTC)


 * Hmmm, a good point. My thoughts run like this:  suppose I want to establish that Lake Wobegon University is a notable institution, so I start listing its alumni.  One of these alums, Clayton Chiclitz, founded the Yoyodyne aerospace company.  Now, this is just about all Chiclitz has ever done, so his biographical article is a stub at best, while the article on the company is pretty substantial.  Therefore, I add a bullet point to my alumni list, saying
 * Clayton "Bloody" Chiclitz, founder of Yoyodyne.
 * If a person is notable because of a single invention, artistic work, company or whatever, I'd say they're probably noteworthy enough to go in the list. However, their entry on the list should clearly direct to the article which establishes their notoriety.
 * Anville 17:17, 27 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I think that's about right. Of course, Mr. Chiclitz is more notable for who has written about him than for what he actually did... -- Jmabel | Talk 04:48, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

Why not start with a simple to-do list of problem articles, it would save a lot of bureaucracy... Physchim62 11:33, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree with you that my proposal is too bureaucratic. However, the issue is not a "list of problem articles," it is a continuous and ongoing problem. All of these articles have been repeatedly fixed, but the problems recur. I can't give you a list right now because I haven't bothered to look, but I'll bet that if you just go through the Ivy League and/or check any fairly well-known university you'll see problems.


 * I'm going to put that to the test right now. I'm going to look at: Cornell University and Stanford University. Yeah. Stanford says right in the first paragraph that its campus is "expansive and picturesque," its medical center is "world-renowned," and "Stanford is considered to be one of the most prestigious and well-known universities in the world, combining top-notch academics with winning athletic programs." Bleeaagghhhh! Cornell is better: the boosterism is deferred to the "about Cornell" paragraph and says merely that Cornell is "well known" for its research and education, that its students "hail from all corners of the globe" and that "Cornell consistently ranks in the top decile in college and university rankings; it ranked 14th in the 2005 U.S. News and World Report ranking." I'd say Cornell is tolerable.


 * Personally, I think that with regard to boosterism, Cornell University is tolerable ("all corners of the globe" and all), but that Stanford University rises to the actionable level. What do others think about these two specific examples?


 * My feeling is that we need some fairly simple ongoing way to keep the enthusiasm within reasonable bounds, that has enough group consensus and community support that boosterism can be damped down without starting an edit war every time.


 * Nunh-huh and others have pretty much convinced me that article tagging is not the right approach. See User_talk:Dpbsmith. MITAlum's concerns are appropriate. I have another idea which I'll probably get around to writing up fairly soon, which is a scoring system for evaluating the degree of boosterism in an article, a la User:Dpbsmith/BEEFSTEW. If the word "prestige" appears in the article, one point. But subtract one point if it is within quotation marks. If it appears more than once, another point. If it appears within the first three paragraphs, another point. And similarly for: U. S. News and other "rankings"; words such as "leading" or "preeminent;" and vague phrases such as "generally regarded as."


 * The scoring system would be used on the talk page to add moral weight to whatever changes are proposed. The hope is that "boosterism score 7, editing first paragraph to reduce it to 2" would then tend to get more community support and stick better than "I don't like the first paragraph."


 * The reason why it will take a little while to write it is that in order to validate the scoring system itself, I want to write up the scoring system first, otherwise I'd be too tempted to tailor it to articles that I particularly dislike; then score some of our articles, and for comparison purposes score some articles from traditional encyclopedias. But if anyone wants to start on it before me, feel free. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:03, 26 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Snap, snap, as they say in stuffier places than this. I agree that the scoring "metric" should be written first so that it is not skewed by a particular school's article.  Furthermore, I agree that boosterism "points" (demerits, really) should be given for U. S. News and suchlike rankings, since they are right up there with the SAT and ACT on the list of Evil Things I Hate. Anville 15:57, 26 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Whilst there is something of a 'boosterism' problem, I don't think there is much needing to be done about things like U.S. News. My equivalent, being from the UK, would be The Times' League Tables. I would have no problem with an article including verifiable fact relevant to the Uni. Giving out demerits for things you hate is a bit POV, really. Moreover, I'd be concerned at some blanket scoring of articles like this: we'd need to tailor it to every country if it were to be useful without having systemic bias. -Splash 17:25, 27 July 2005 (UTC)