Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stanford University/Stanford biography task force

Stanford Presidents
I was surprised to see that Category:Presidents of Stanford University is not listed on the Category Tree. It is hidden as a subcategory under Category:Stanford University staff. Same with Category:Stanford Cardinal coaches and Category:Stanford Cardinal athletic directors. "Staff" seems like an inadequate description of a university president (more like faculty?) but that's not my issue. My issue is that the Category Tree omits these "sub-categories" and I think they should be included for completeness. What good is a Category Tree that omits many of the most important categories? Can we get it to display ALL the relevant categories? --MelanieN (talk) 18:22, 12 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Presidents (and provosts and deans) are staff and usually faculty (not all deans are faculty and I'm not sure President Tresidder was ever faculty), but, I think their salary comes from the staff side of the budget. Not sure how to fix the category tree, but, I'll look into it. --Erp (talk) 04:26, 19 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I think I have the category tree showing up front the subcategories. I also added a Provosts of Stanford University category under staff though several provosts do not yet have articles (Albert M. Hastorf, James N. Rosse, Gerald J. Lieberman, William F. Miller, and Douglas M. Whitaker). --Erp (talk) 04:58, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your good work on this, Erp. A couple of other things, since you seem to know how to tweak the category displays: your new category "provosts" doesn't show up under staff. (BTW many/most provosts are former faculty; I assume they would simple be categorized both places?) Also, there are a couple of subcategories for "fellows" that should be moved from being subcategories under "alumni" to under "fellows". Again, I assume an alumnus who was granted a notable fellowship would be categorized both places. --MelanieN (talk) 15:53, 26 December 2011 (UTC)


 * This might have been a caching problem. It shows up for me now (I also pointed out that some articles may be in more than one category but none should be in both child and parent category).  Provosts (and Presidents) are usually still faculty while also being president or provost and when they step down as president/provost they are still faculty (Donald Kennedy, Richard Lyman and Gerhard Casper are all professors emeriti now).  When Casper was appointed president he was also given a faculty appointment since he came from outside and he sometimes taught classes. I'm not sure whether Tresidder was given a faculty appointment when he became president and he is the one possible exception (except possibly David Starr Jordan who went from president to chancellor but never a simple professor); he was never in a position of only being faculty as he died in office. BTW the chancellor position seems to have been held by Jordan, Wilbur, and Sterling but is not filled as far as I know since Sterling's death)--Erp (talk) 18:56, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Category Stanford University staff
I was looking over the category, and, I wonder whether we wish to distinguish (A) visiting professors and (B) Academic Staff (non-faculty but holding research or teaching positions). I'm inclined to do the first division and create a sub-category Stanford University visiting faculty since those will rarely be significant enough to include in the project. The second less so since relatively few people in wikipedia, I think, would be non-Academic staff (key exceptions would be someone like Sandy Lerner). Thoughts?--Erp (talk) 01:29, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Erp, I'll look into this when I have a little more time. I want to look around and see whether or how other major universities list them before I reach a recommendation. My inclination would be that visiting professors don't even rate a category, since their connection with Stanford is slim. I do agree that they should not be categorized as if they were regular faculty - when they may simply have spent a year at the Farm. --MelanieN (talk) 15:47, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Stanford Fellows
The categories now have
 * Stanford fellows
 * Sloan Fellows - we have a problem here as Sloan fellows can be at any of three different universities.
 * Stegner Fellows

However 'fellow' has no formal meaning at Stanford so the different types of fellows should probably be kept distinct. I'll work on splitting Sloan fellows into their respective universities and we should probably check the various Stanford fellows articles and see where they actually belong. Also we should probably add Knight Fellows as a category if and when we find any Knight fellow bios. --Erp (talk) 19:11, 26 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I've now redone the Sloan Fellows category and put Category:Stanford Sloan Fellows under Business school alumni. I've create two new categories Category:CASBS at Stanford fellows for those people in Stanford fellows who fall into that category.  CASBS (Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences)  is like Hoover in that it is and is not part of the University; it is a place for social scientists to spend a year's sabbatical.  The other category is Category:Stanford University postdoctoral scholars.  One person I moved to Hoover Institute people.  That leaves a few people in the Stanford fellows category who seem to be visiting scholars.  We could rename it; however, visiting scholars is very much a catchall term at Stanford.--Erp (talk) 20:14, 26 December 2011 (UTC)