Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher education/tables

Most of the comments have been made irrelevant by Template:Infobox University

Cleanup
As a part of reviving the univerity wikiproject, I'm going to clean up and organize this talk page. Much of what has been discussed here is now settled and not really relevant anymore, so a lot of it will be removed. Acaides 20:56, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Current standard
The table currently included in the university example (sandbox) is the university infobox template. I think a wikipedia template is definately the way to go for the table in university articles. It greatly simplifies the article source, it makes uniformity very easy, and style changes can be applied to every article that uses it by just changing the template. Acaides 20:56, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Contents
The following fields are currently included in the infobox, in order:


 * Motto - the offical motto of the school
 * Established - year the school was founded
 * School type - private or public
 * President - president of the school
 * Location - location of the school
 * Campus - size and type of campus (urban, suburban, etc)
 * Enrollment
 * undergraduate - number of undergraduates at last count
 * graduate - number of graduate students (masters, doctor's, etc)
 * Faculty - number of full-time academic faculty at last count
 * Free - any useful statistic at author's discretion
 * Homepage - the offical website of the school

Images

 * Adding in the university logo might be nice, but be might run into copyright issues. See how it's done at Drexel University. Disclaimer notice?--Jiang 21:27, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * It's legal as long as we provide the copyright notice, right? --Jiang
 * We also could use photos of the campus or famous buildings instead of logos, were available. -- till we *) 22:53, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)
 * I don't think photos should be put in the table. Photos naturally come in different dimensions. What standard would there be? What would the photo show? --Jiang
 * The photos should show the university, simply ;-) (i.e., the most remarkable building), and logos don't have a standard size (some are quadratic, some not, ...). A landscape photograph could be perfectly included into the table. (Only in cases where no logo is available).
 * About logos - I was thinking of putting either the coat-of-arms, or the corporate logo in the template on the UWO page. The logo is kind of boring looking, but they apparently prefer it to the actual coat-of-arms (and there are no good pictures of it anyway). Which one should we use? On the other hand, the logo is presumably copyrighted... Adam Bishop 02:32, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * Logos has some guidelines for using them; the talk page has more on what the community is thinking about future usage. It all boils down to "go for it, within reason." I would be especially careful to make sure that the  template is in the description, because that will make all the logos easier to track down should the policy change later. iMeowbot~Mw 12:49, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Rankings

 * National Research Council rankings are done every 5 (?) years or so, i think. US news rankings are done every yr. But to inlcude them would be endorsing them? We could send in a bot to change them when new rankings come out, I guess. Yes, no. of students/faculty could be added. Maybe including the official name would be redundant, as it would be bolded in the first intrductory paragraph. Most of the time, the title of the article is the official name. I don't think photos would fit into the table. I think it'll be interesting to know what their sports teams are called...--Jiang 22:11, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * We have rankings like that, done in Maclean's magazine, but they are considered either completely accurate or completely useless, depending on the school :) Adam Bishop 22:28, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * I don't think putting rankings in is a good idea. There are solid reasons to reject quantitative data like that.  In my opinion (and this is, of course, all this is) there's too much controversy over rankings to include them in Wiki data.  --Paul Musgrave 22:45, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * I agree! -- till we *) 22:52, Aug 10, 2003 (UTC)

Application

 * I think the sections that don't apply (i.e., with "n/a") should simply be left out of the table. I think the photos are better placed in the body of the article. --Jiang 23:33, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * I had another thought - if the school has official colours, shouldn't the table reflect that? For UWO for example, the table would look better (for me, as a UWO student :)) if it had purple in it somewhere, in the headers for example. I'll put that in so you can see what I mean. Adam Bishop 22:22, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * I think color-matching each table to each university is a bad idea. The whole point of this project is to establish a sort of universal standard for these articles, this wouldn't help that goal. Also, if you ever look at Encarta or print encyclopedias, you won't see this school color matching. In fact, in every article I have read from other encyclopedias, you don't even see a mention of the school colors, let alone an incorporation of them into the encyclopedia's look and feel. One table color for everyone. Acaides 20:56, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Mottos

 * What about including mottos in the table? I don't know if every school has one, though (UWO does). Adam Bishop 00:47, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * I think the motto might be a good idea for the table, but I know not all universities have one. This could be a big problem. Maybe it would be better to mention in in the text of the article. Acaides 20:56, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Religious affiliation

 * In my version, I readded the "religious affiliation" line because it needs to be more clear when no religious affiliation exists. I also rearranged the order. Just as the president of a country is listed first, I think the u. leader might as well be lister first also. --Jiang 00:51, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * I think religious affiliation should be in the table. It is not a part of the current Infobox template, we need to take a look at how to incorporate it. Acaides 20:56, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Endowment

 * Adding the school's endowment is a useful piece of information that might be hard to work into the body of the article. Rkevins82 15:58, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Table placement

 * Align=right, okay. but vertically aligned to the first line of text (placing it right in front of the definition/intro in the source code) or aligned with the start of the toc, or where? I'd prefer the first one. -- till we *) 00:49, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)
 * And related: If we use one of the photo templates (or put it as an option on the WikiProject), we should say how wide the photograph could be -- I set the photo tables from 285px to 300px (because my photo has that width), but it doesn't look that well. Good night everybody! -- till we *) 00:55, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)
 * I vote for aligned with the TOC. Just like with country articles, I think that a defining paragraph should always be the first thing in an article. Also, 300px is quite a standard width for photos in tables (see WikiProject Constellations). --seav 01:03, Aug 11, 2003 (UTC)

Country-specific infoboxes
There are now the following country-specific university infobox templates, with one example for each (of several in some cases) where it has been applied:
 * Template:Infobox_Austrian_University, applied at University of Vienna (added to the list today / up◦land 17:26, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC))
 * Template:Infobox_Belgian_University, applied at Ghent University (added by Phlebas 18:26, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC))
 * Template:Infobox British University, applied at University of Cambridge (added to list today. - up◦land 21:14, 4 May 2005 (UTC))
 * Template:Infobox_Czech_University, applied at Charles University of Prague
 * Template:Infobox_Danish_University, applied at University of Copenhagen
 * Template:Infobox_Dutch_University, applied at University of Leiden
 * Template:Infobox_German_University, applied at Ruprecht Karls University of Heidelberg
 * Template:Infobox_Hungarian_University, applied at Eötvös Loránd University
 * Template:Infobox_Irish_University, applied at National University of Ireland (added to the list today / Djegan 13:56, 8 January 2006 (UTC))
 * Template:Infobox_Italian_University, applied at University of Pisa
 * Template:Infobox_Norwegian_University, applied at University of Oslo
 * Template:Infobox Peruvian University, applied at University of Lima (made by User:StarbucksFreak on May 30, 2005; added to list today. --up◦land 10:21, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC))
 * Template:Infobox_Polish_University, applied at Warsaw University
 * Template:Infobox_Portuguese_University, applied at University of Coimbra
 * Template:Infobox Ancient Scottish University, applied at University of Edinburgh (added to list today. - up◦land 21:14, 4 May 2005 (UTC))
 * Template:Infobox_Spanish_University, applied at University of Salamanca
 * Template:Infobox_Swedish_University, applied at Lund University
 * Template:Infobox_Swedish_University2, applied at Uppsala University (added to list today. - up◦land 21:14, 4 May 2005 (UTC))
 * Template:Infobox_Swiss_University, applied at University of Geneva

(Check "What links here" on the infoboxes for other examples.)

These represent three different designs. Some of them have been around for some time. I made a bunch the last few days based on one of the designs. The point in making one for each country is that relevant or specific data varies between educational systems, and that adaptations can made for each country. Additionally, differences occur within national systems. In Germany, education is in the hands of the Länder, and thus may vary to some extent within the country. It is possible that there will be a need for additional infoboxes for each country, reflecting different types of institutions or regional differences.

Sometimes the variation lies in terminology: In some universities the rector is called a rector magnificus. I just put a box on Georg August University of Göttingen, and noticed from the webpage that the head of the university is called a Präsident. I don't know if this is a recent import from American terminology (presumably connected with the recent creation of a foundation for the university) or has existed before. The infobox should reflect this, and perhaps it can be solved by making the title a variable, as is the case in the Template:Infobox_Swedish_University.

For the Italian box I added a "Sports teams" header, as it was there in old hard-coded infobox on the University of Pisa page. Generally, this is not as relevant with European universities as with American ones; I am not well enough acquainted with Italian universities if this is usually significant there. OK, there are other things which deserve comment, but I think I'll stop for now. / up◦land 00:03, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Regarding the British Universities infobox, it still doesn't apply to all British universities. For example, University of London colleges all share the same Chancellor/V-C, but have individual heads of colleges who often wield as much power as the V-C in other universities in Britain. e.g. King's College London has a Principal, UCL has a Rector (and President, oddly). Any advice on how to best adapt for these, or should another template be created? I note those entries have adapted the template for themselves already. --81.178.106.116 11:03, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

European Universities information template
(moved from Talk:University)

I'd like to make a Template for European universities, like the one for American (Template:University_information). Let's take a look at which terms I think don't fit for a European one:


 * Motto: mine doesn't have a motto. I think this is an american thing.

(snip)


 * Sports Team: Sport team? What? There is 1 team per sport. They don't have silly names.

So, how could we do it to fit for all European universities?

Phlebas 16:18, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * There have been a number of these already for a while, and I have made a number for different European countries, based on the pre-existing templates, which I have then modified. I don't know if you have looked at these or not (Template:Infobox German University etc.). I don't see any reason to have one in common for all European universities. U.S. universities have some characteristics which European universities mostly don't (like the emphasis on sports with teams with "silly names" and mascots), but there are enough differences to warrant one for each country. If someone wants to modify one of these, it won't affect the other templates and create unnecessary conflicts between users with knowledge of different educational systems. For Leuven (I just looked at your user page), you could probably use and perhaps modify the Template:Infobox_Dutch_University (look at University of Leiden). Please continue this discussion at the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities/tables, in order to keep the topic in one place. / up◦land 17:27, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for showing me the way (it's easy to get lost in wikipedia). I have made one for the Belgian (Wallonia and Flanders) university (identical to the Dutch one, except for Rector Magnificus), used for now for the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and Ghent University. Here: Template:Infobox_Belgian_University.