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United Kingdom free-use coats of arms

There are currently free-use alternatives for many universities in the United Kingdom's coats of arms. Whilst some coats of arms, such as Edinburgh, use a circular seal as their normal emblem instead of a shield, so the currently available substitution would not be appropriate, for many it would seem sensible, since fair-use imagery is only meant to be used if no free-use alternative exists. Right now, Oxon, Cantab, Dunelm, Exeter, QMUL, and York, to name a few, let alone almost all constituent colleges outside of London, are using free-use arms. However, there hasn't been a push to replace fair-use with free-use arms for universities; the switch normally seems to happen when a fair-use rendition is transferred to Commons, where it is invariably deleted as against Commons policy, and then the free-use emblazonment is quickly put in to fill its place. Instead of this less-than-reliable approach, we might want something more standardised.

Right now, coats of arms available with free-use break down into the following categories:

• Drop-in replacement – Free-use emblazonments are available which are not only true to blazon, but are mostly true to common depictions (based on the overall geometric positioning of elements, or on historic reliefs in buildings, neither of which is a copyright concern). These could probably be substituted without much notice or effect, for example: Imperial (commons), Birmingham (commons), Newcastle (commons), and Sheffield (commons).

This has already been done for Cantab, Dunelm, Exeter, QMUL, LSE, so would seem to be the sensible thing to do at least, especially given the inaccuracy of "no free-use available" guideline for these fair-use images.

• Truer to blazon - A couple coats of arms are truer-to-blazon than the symbolic and stylised arms used by the university. This holds for Warwick (commons), whose blazon, which is available in the Commons file description, does not match the official "flat logo" style rendition currently used.

This logic has already been steadfastly applied to Oxon and York, and recently to Bristol without complaints either, even though the drop-in could be improved; the university-supplied digital Bristol arms available were low quality and used excessive shadowing, looking more like clip-art.

• Shield only - Many free-use coats of arms are perfectly good renditions of the shield only, apart from notably QMUL and York. Whilst they could be rendered with mantling, this would be extra work to get it correctly, and when they are they would be handled by one of the above points anyway, so let's deal with them as currently is the case. These arguably are not under "no free-use available", as they aren't a true replacement, however, they could be considered as such, as they are a "good enough" replacement. As traditionally most university arms are displayed as simply the shield, it wouldn't be unreasonable to display these free-use emblazonments instead, for any of: King's—London (commons), Southampton (commons), Liverpool (commons), Leeds (commons)

Only Cardiff University has this in place, and only because the official arms were on Commons so were removed and replaced with the free-use arms (and subsequent attempts to revert back also went through commons)

• True-but-off emblazonments - Many other emblazonments available freely are not quite perfect: although they are true to blazon, they don't quite look official, not just only being the shield, but also needing some possible tidying. Some of these could be improved with a bit of effort, namely Glasgow (commons) has awkward bell corners (although the overall shape isn't too bad), Manchester (commons) has a bad nebuly border. These could be quickly fixed if we wanted to drop-in Shield only replacements, but there is no impetus to otherwise.

St Andrews's looks a bit tired, and the University of Nottingham's has awkward towers, but both are in place because their official renditions were deleted off commons

Just looking for what the community would think is a sensible course of action with this. Personally, I think replacing all up to any of the first three categories could make sense (as in replacing just the first, the first two, or the first three), and that official renditions should be re-uploaded not to Commons for other universities to make it more consistent. Shadowssettle_(talk) 11:41, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

My feeling is that we should be using free versions of the cost of arms wherever they exist – even if they are shield-only and don't show the full achievement. The Wikipedia policy says (WP:NFCCP]) "No free equivalent. Non-free content is used only where no free equivalent is available, or could be created, that would serve the same encyclopedic purpose." (my emphasis). If we take "or could be created" seriously, we should not be using non-free coats of arms at all, because they fail this test. We should certainly thus minimise the use of non-free images of coats of arms as much as possible. Robminchin (talk) 02:41, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

As I said, this is fine by me. I've tried to clean up the minor touches with Manchester, Nottingham and Glasgow, but if you think there are others improvements which are needed (there probably are) feel free to upload new versions. If you're adding achievements or mottos, I would prefer them to uploaded as a separate image, but do overwrite if it's just shield fixes. I guess it's best to boldly go ahead and replace them, I'll start with the "drop-in" replacements, but feel free to go ahead with the rest, and then we can revisit the issue once the inevitable complaints come in. Shadowssettle_(talk) 09:36, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

@Robminchin: Thanks for adding the long list of Durham colleges and more blazons. I'm just wondering (as I discussed below) if we are taking crest as the blazon (i.e. what you'd find represented in an encyclopedia) then should we take WP:NFCCP literally? In countries without traditions of heraldry (i.e. the United States), where seals are often in use, this doesn't apply, but in the UK, shouldn't official crests (even without current replacement) actually be removed by failing to meet the point you bring up? Shadowssettle_(talk) 08:51, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I think this is going to depend on the usage made of the cost of arms. I am not a lawyer but it seems to me, based on the fair use guidelines, that:

• If the university actually uses a true-to-blazon version of the arms as a logo then use of that precise image can be justified under fair use as representing a logo. This would normally mean that the second image field in the infobox would be empty (as it is for universities that use only a logo and have no arms, e.g. UCL). This also means that the image of the shield can normally only be used once on the main article for three university and not on other article or elsewhere on the main article, per the fair use guidelines.
• If the university's logo is a stylised version of the arms (e.g. Durham) or is completely different from the arms (e.g. Cardiff) then the use of a copyright image of the shield is going to be very hard to justify as fair use. If the image of the arms is not the logo of the university, then it should probably be replaced by a free-to-use version of the arms or removed.

It is likely that free-to-use versions will resemble "official" versions of the arms, but they shouldn't be exact copies or they would would infringe the copyright of the official version. The official version can change over the years as well (e.g., compare the historical development of Hatfield College, Durham here with the Wikipedia version). Robminchin (talk) 15:05, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

If it is their logo, then I completely agree, however for no university I know is their logo a true-to-blazon emblazonment with no name or text. Thus there will be both a logo and shield, so are you saying those shields should be changed to fair-use, even when the logo correctly shows how the university portrays itself, so the crest should be representing the coat of arms not brand (see my point below to Moxy). That would mean reverting the crest on University of Cambridge to a non-free-use one, which seems silly to me... Shadowssettle_(talk) 15:25, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're saying here. As long as the arms are shown, I don't think there is a need to show the crest (if there is one – many of the old universities have arms but no crest) or other parts of the whole achievement, although this can be done if desired. How much of the achievement to include is probably not something that needs to be specified.

If the university is not using the arms as a logo, then it is very hard to see how a fair-use argument can be made to use a non-free image (the other part of policy that might apply is WP:NFC#CS if there is sourced discussion of the image itself – but my understanding is that this would have to discuss, in this case, the artistic decisions made in the rendering of the blazon rather than discussion of the elements of the achievement, as it would be possible to illustrate the latter with a free version). But I don't understand how that would result in having to use a non-free image for Cambridge. Robminchin (talk) 19:01, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Although just because an institution isn't using the arms in its brand identity on its website, that doesn't mean it's not using them as a logo on degree certificates, for example. This might satisfy the fair use criteria, although it would still be better to use a free use version if possible to be on the safe side. It's not so clear cut that we need to go around deleting all of the non-free coats of arms. Robminchin (talk) 00:29, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Fair, I just think it depends on what we mean by arms, I feel like the role of "how the university projects itself" is the point of showing the logo, so generally free-use should be better Shadowssettle_(talk) 12:49, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

This has come up before for a few country articles. In many cases a "fake" alternative was rejected because its not a true representation of a copyrighted item although it satisfied Harold criteria. And those that a very close in recreating the certified version end up being copyright infringements. That said fake version that may be non true representations are used all over and usually only removed AFTER a discussion.--Moxy 🍁 01:49, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

@Moxy: I don't exactly know what you mean by "Harold criteria" (feel free to link), but yeah, this is the reason why I personally have been cautious about replacing arms, because it's not an issue of heraldry, heraldry is generally quite clear that same blazon=same arms, it's an issue of what we mean by crest, do we mean the blazon, or do we mean how the university represents itself. However, I've seen Oxford as the lead example (not because of it's prestige, but because what it shows) of not only what we mean, but why we mean it. Oxford shows a (very neat) free-use emblazonment, but it needs to show it because any of the official renditions these days are too simplified, so do not match the blazon, or what people would be shown if they walked around Oxford looking at reliefs, read a history book or manuscript, wanted to know what this symbol meant when somebody was talking about Oxford, or wanted to know what the coats of arms are. It's just how the University wants to brand itself right now. The arms shown match how Oxford is represented in churches, books, buildings and the like around the country (see commons for some); unlike logos, which are purely branding exercises, crests are frequently part of the historical fabric of some monuments and ties. The logo is the place to show the universities choice of mark and contemporary branding, and if the crest isn't a lead emblem for the university, it's probably not used that often (outside of regalia) and so the official rendition isn't that important.

This boils down to why even show the crest_{(and no, I'm not bringing up the argument of if "we should get rid of it", that's been around too many times, please do not bring it up)}: it can't be to show how the University sees itself—many don't really use their crest much—instead, it's because these are the official symbols of the institution, which have historical, legal, and encyclopædic value. Logos and emblazonments come and go, but the crest is a unique identifying symbol that is used (in the United Kingdom at least, which is what this discussion is on) to frequently distinguish institutions. Note, this is not an attack on any points; I don't know where you stand on the issue, I was just trying to clarify Shadowssettle_(talk) 08:51, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Help with DeVry University

Hello,

I am attempting to publish several very straightforward updates to DeVry University. I believe these will benefit the encyclopedia as they all replace out-of-date information. As I have a WP:COI, I can't make these edits myself without an independent reviewer(s). The first proposals are Talk:DeVry University#Request Edit May 27. Thank you for your consideration. NaturaRagazza (talk) 16:12, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

@NaturaRagazza: I have responded on the talk page and added the {{request edit}} tag to add this to the list of outstanding requests: the process is explained in Wikipedia:Edit_requests. TSventon (talk) 16:46, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Please help improve the format of a University President article

There is an article about Judy Genshaft the former president of the University of South Florida that is very badly formatted. I have created a draft, and a list of specific proposals, to dramatically improve the structure and format. None of these are content changes. Talk:Judy Genshaft#Please help improve the format of this article Since I have a personal relationship with Genshaft, I’d be grateful if an independent editor would review and decide whether to implement this proposal. I am posting this here, rather than Request Edit, since it is a substantial restructuring of the article, not a straight-forward request edit. I don’t think this is contentious but an editor here will be a better judge. Rocky.abcd (talk) 18:33, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Well my first suggestion regards the opening:

Judy Lynn Genshaft (/ˈɡɛnˌʃæft/; born January 7, 1948) was President of University of South Florida from 2000 to 2019. She stepped down from the position in July 2019 after a 19-year tenure.

Surely it's unnecessary to tell the reader twice that she left the presidency in 2019, and that 2019 − 2000 = 19. EEng 22:40, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I think that we pay way too much attention to college and university presidents and give them way too much credit for the work that is done by many others so I choose to not spent my personal time working on articles about college and university presidents. But it might be helpful to know that the most common failing that I see in these kinds of articles - one shared by the current version of this article - is too narrow of a focus on the subject primarily or exclusively as a "university president" with not enough attention paid to their other accomplishments, challenges, and biographical details. This is most strongly seen in the lede of these articles which often begin with and sometimes only define the person as a college or university president to the exclusion of the rest of their education and experience in other jobs and broader disciplines. Bluntly, these are humans with rich, complex lives that preceded and will follow their tenure as a president. Few if any were explicitly and solely trained to be a higher education administrator so focusing too narrowly on that one job sells them short and makes the article much less interesting and informative than it should be. I suspect that much of this is because many of these articles are written by marketing and public relations staff that work for the institutions or editors that draw heavily or solely on institutional sources that are inherently and intentionally biased and promotional. These should be biographies, not promotional hagiographies that assign credit for all institutional accomplishments to these individuals. ElKevbo (talk) 23:55, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Boosterism, a wider conversation

Hi, as per WP:BOOSTERISM and WP:UNIGUIDE academic boosterism shouldn't be anywhere on WP:HED articles. However, it seems to have become the norm, with Yale, Harvard, Cantab, and Oxon articles all starting with a prestige statement. This issue has become noticeably endemic on business school articles. The links guides and essays already cover the reasons to avoid this kind of language, but given the current situation I was wondering two things:

• This should be gotten rid of, right? If the answer is no, then what about Princeton, UCL etc. which are highly ranked where these kinds of claims aren't present, in the opening paragraph at least. If not also consider Trinity College Dublin, which mentions this kind of thing a lot in the intro, but ranks quite lowly. If we are to take rankings and prestige separately, can't anyone and everyone claim prestige, shouldn't this just be got rid of?
• This problem has become quite endemic and it might be helpful to have a special project page or section dedicated to instances of it and removing it, so editors don't have issues when trying to handle it against conflicting editors. I'd be more than happy to help with anyone fighting POV issues on articles across the project, for example, however I feel this problem is going to keep returning unless there is a concerted effort.

Thanks Shadowssettle_(talk) 12:57, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

I think noting the academic reputation of places like Harvard is perfectly appropriate (and, in Harvard's case, the consensus language was achieved after a great deal of debate). Quoting WP:SUBJECTIVE, which is part of the NPOV policy page (unlike WP:BOOSTERISM, which is just an essay): it is sometimes permissible to note an article subject's reputation when that reputation is widespread and informative to readers. Describing Harvard as one of the most prestigious universities in the world is little different than noting that Shakespeare is considered to be one of the greatest authors in the English language. That said, where I definitely agree with you is that not everywhere is a Harvard/Wellesley/Oxford/Julliard/Pomona/MIT/insert-your-top-of-its-class-pick, and it's important to keep unsubstantiated claims of reputation out where they're not supported by reliable sources. I wish it were as easy as just instituting a blanket "no mention of reputation" policy, but for places like the above examples, doing so is not only permitted but required to provide readers with the essential basic facts about the subject of the article. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 01:46, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree with you shadowsettle. I think boosterism is rampant on the HED articles, and has become the norm. Yes, it does seem like most business school articles have boosterism across almost all of them. The question is, how do you address it? It would seem necessary to address it on most of the notable articles. Yet, it is hard to do so, particularly when editors are proud of their school. I tried to establish a more npov on some schools wiki's, and have had some resistance from proud students. The other alternative is to allow wiki universities to have some boosterism as the norm, and only remove egregious violations? It seems that is a better idea than trying to remove every example of boosterism as it is more feasible. For example, you were noting it is the norm on most business school wiki sites where it has become an endemic. So do you remove it from all the business school wiki university sites? Or do you accept some norms that there will be some boosterism on them all? I think there should be some kind of standards, so what is allowed on some sites is allowed on others, or what is not allowed on some sites, should not be allowed on others. For example, the boosterism article mentions not to use vague terms of praise including prestige. Yet, some editors are very articulate and convinving to allow it on some pages, for example harvard's page, but other wiki sites that want to use the word prestige on their page too and are not allowed, even if they are prestigious schools too. So I think the most eggregious examples should be fixed for sure, and what is allowed on some wiki sites should be allowed on others generally, or what is not allowed on sites, should not be allowed on others. It does not need to be universal, but there should be some standards for sure so it is more consistent what is allowed and what is not.  Mikecurry1 (talk) 03:29, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Sdkb is right: There are a few institutions that are genuinely notable for their extraordinary reputation and it's important that we include that information just as we include any other information that is extraordinary in the lede. What is unclear is exactly how we draw the line between the articles that must include this information in the lede and those that should not. The compromise that we stumbled our way to in the lede of Harvard University was one that relied not on individual rankings or Wikipedia editors' interpretation or aggregation of rankings but one that relied on multiple independent, tertiary, and high quality sources that explicitly describe the institution as being especially reputable and held in high regard. If we can get a project-wide consensus to follow that model - which would explicitly not allow individual rankings or aggregations of rankings - then I think that might be a workable solution. ElKevbo (talk) 05:56, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

The first thing to note is I think everyone so far can agree that things should be more consistent, so I think it's sensible we come up with some kind of consensus here and apply that as far as reasonable to make sure that there's not the current disparity between "equally reputable" university articles

@ElKevbo and Sdkb: I can see how there are merits to saying somewhere has a noteworthy reputation. However, I still don't think that's something Wikipedia articles should be getting involved with. Firstly, as WP:BOOSTERISM explains: "Allow the facts to speak for themselves and let the reader decide", why can't it just be left to the rankings, alumni/ae etc. to talk about it. Now whilst a good reputation could be a fact, is a relatively subjective one. And this importantly means anyone can claim it. All it takes is for editors to find the word leading or prestigious in its Forbes review or on Times. Faced with comments that "that's a regional statement" it will move elsewhere; such as to the Atlantic and do a bit of interpretation; it isn't hard to find an independent local paper that will call the local university prestigious in some regard. What will end up happening is any leeway on this will be used to to make any and every university article talk about being prestigious.

The wording that is left after some compromise would be a clear breaking of the WP:MOS's WP:PEACOCK guideline, so I don't see how it can be done in a non-peacock-y way.

Also note the some articles need it, and "well use WP:COMMONSENSE" arguments don't work, because this means different things to different people. Coming from the UK there was a noticeable absence in Sdkb's list of Cantab Toronto etc., and I would argue that Wellesley, Pomona and the like have next to zero international reputation, and Julliard may only have one within its subject, so would have to clarify that it's domestic/subject specific, which opens up the terms to far more articles. Should University of the Highlands and Islands be "the most prestigious university in the Highlands" (it's the only one)? Should University of Glasgow be the one of the most prestigious in Scotland, does that count as a country if we're limiting the regions to a national level? I feel like any leeway on prestige risks ignoring the foundations of What Wikipedia is: an attempt to be a neutral source of knowledge, that presents the facts not a viewpoint.

I would say that if something is really a noteworthy as any article will claim, the reader will know that, as that what noteworthiness means (unless of course this is expanded to a regional level, but if its not on an international level what's the point).

@Mikecurry1: I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this is a problem, however I disagree that (a) it's unfixable (b) we shouldn't try.

• Imagine if every country's "proud" citizens wrote that their country was prestigious. Now I imagine you could agree that the USA has some prestige, maybe the UK? Now someone from Russia edits it. They say Russia is prestigeous. Are they wrong? Probably not. Okay, then Monaco edits it, they have some claim to prestige. Where does it end, and what's the point of having it. Obviously, this would be reverted, so why shouldn't it be here.
• Now take an article on some form of mumbo-jumbo, whatever you find most ridiculous (anti-vax, homeopathy, herbal medicine, science, whatever viewpoint you're coming from, I'm not trying to offend anyone here), you will find constant attempts to undermine the NPOV and basis in reliable facts. Should they stop too just because some impassioned editors won't give up? Again, I, the editors of such pages, and I hope you too, would say no.

@Everyone, what this all boils down to: Why should uni articles be given a free pass on WP:PUFFERY? Things people might want to say can easily be said in other ways, and any opening in a submarine hatch lets a lot of water flow in very fast. Shadowssettle_(talk) 09:06, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

To address your specific examples, no, of course University of the Highlands and Islands shouldn't say that it's the most prestigious university in the Highlands if it's the only one; it should say that it's the only one. And if the University of Glasgow is widely considered the premier university in Scotland, I'd be fine with its article saying so. (Note the "widely considered", as it's a key phrase — we're talking about reputation, not dictating prestige directly.) As someone unfamiliar with Scottish higher education, that's probably the number one thing I'm wondering when I go to that page, and I shouldn't have to dig or read between the lines to figure it out (see WP:SPADE). More generally, I'm fine with mentions of reputation being put in context of the domain under consideration. Julliard's article says It is widely regarded as one of the world's leading drama, music and dance schools, with some of the most prestigious arts programs, which sounds good to me, and I'd have no problem with e.g. CalTech saying that it's widely considered the premier technology-focused research university on the U.S. West Coast. Are there valid concerns about a slippery slope? Yes, of course. But that's true with tons of different aspects of Wikipedia. We should do what we always do — stick to what reliable sources say, and use extra scrutiny/higher standards in areas like this one where WP:NPOV issues are a high risk. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:05, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

I apologise for my time delayed comments, as my edits should show in on a mobile right now, so I'm responding a little out of step, please excuse any confusion it might cause. Shadowssettle_(talk) 23:44, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

I can agree with this iff we're going to let prestige into the articles, that these maybe should be ones that get that coverage (Julliard and CalTech, not Glas necessarily). I still disagree that Wikipedia should be telling you what's prestigious, but that quickly devolves. I get that there's a strong argument that we shouldn't be worried about that bad things could be done because of one thing that might need to be done, however, it is this is the very problem uni coverage is faced with, and always will be unless there are strict guidelines, hence the view that it needs to put out completely. As I have explained more extensively under Robminchin's comment below Whilst I personally am open to some clear, concise and undisputable metric for determining prestige from purely reliable sources without WP:OR interpretations of them, I doubt any can exist. I am yet to see anything here that would safely differentiate between universities, and anything that would protect against a biased school-touting journalist's piece being abused. I also have addressed concerns about "noteworthy smaller liberal arts colleges" and other non-notable "prestigious" institutions below. Shadowssettle_(talk) 11:49, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

• Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, and others are prestigious and are regarded as highly prestigious by neutral coverage. I agree lesser known schools should not be fill with self-promotion, however saying Yale is prestigious is stating a verifiable and very important fact.--Hippeus (talk) 10:39, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

  I'll thank you to stop mentioning Yale in the same breath as Harvard. EEng 15:14, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

@EEng: Harvard Yale Harvard Yale Harvard Yale, but seriously, no need to bring school rivalries here Shadowssettle_(talk) 15:19, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

You may expect a visit from the Trileteral Commission. EEng 15:25, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm a little lost there (is this some Yale Alum thing related to the Trilateral Commission). By the way, do you have any thoughts on the matter at hand, academic boosterism? (apart from that Yale should be allowed and Harvard shouldn't?) Shadowssettle_(talk) 15:56, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

You'll find out soon enough. Don't call them, they'll call you. EEng 16:24, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

@Hippeus: Where does that fact end though? If Yale is and Harvard is, then Princeton should probably be. If all those are, probably Penn. Okay, now editors from Cornell and Dartmouth have sources to claim theirs as well, so the Ivy League. Okay, if Dartmouth, a liberal arts college is, then probably Amherst and Wesleyan. Where is the line drawn? Just saying you find some of these prestigious (and I would agree) doesn't mean the article should say it. If you read through WP:BOOSTERISM and WP:PUFFERY, it's much better to state the facts: alumni (presidents etc.), rankings, then go into some vague notion of prestige. I am still waiting on someone to respond on the underlying point of what prestige should mean. Shadowssettle_(talk) 10:43, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

If graduates receive significantly higher wages than run-of-the-mill schools, then it is a hard metric for prestigious. It does need to end at some point, but to omit that Yale/Harvard/Oxford are highly prestigious is to omit one of the most defining aspects of these institutions.--Hippeus (talk) 10:48, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Some of the ones you mention don't necessarily earn the highest in the country, with Havering College having a specifically highly earning course in the UK, despite having no reputation (it's an industry-associated course so is an anomaly). Also, these change year on year, and often other institutions outrank those institutions. It might be a start to a way of doing it, but I would disagree that their prestige is their defining characteristic, rather their impact of society, which may be an alternative? Shadowssettle_(talk) 10:57, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

References

@Shadowssettle: Yes, i agree. That was the problem I was trying to bring up is the grey line, such as if Harvard is using it then soon other colleges will want to use it, Amherst, Wellsley, etc. I think there was this problem with editors arguing about using the word prestigous on UC Berkeley's site. Some editors wanted to use that word prestigous, and apparently an editor thought it was unneeded as boosterism. I personally did not want to enter that argument of whether prestigious should or should not be used on UC Berkeley's wiki page or not because harvard is able to use it. For me I would think rankings are better than words like prestigious as a standard. Whteher rankings are used or not, I think generally some kind of boosterism standards should be in place. For what is used on one school, should be allowed for others, or what is not allowed on one school site, should not be allowed on others. I did not mean to say that it's boosterism is unfixable and we shouldn't try, as I do not believe that. Rather I was trying to say the most feasabile path is to fix eggregious points, as there are so much resistance from editors and to create standards across what is allowed and is not, so it can be more universally applied. What some people may consider boosterism (ie using prestigious on Wellsley or Amherst's site, many others do not). Fix the grey line issue. I agree with what Elkablo said too, universities should be allowed to put what is notably reputable or extraordinary about the school including in the lead, for example stanford is notable for entrepreneurship, without considering this boosterism. Perhaps, we may want to discuss boosterism standards that could be used across schools?Mikecurry1 (talk) 14:24, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

@Mikecurry1: I generally agree with your points, the grey line issue is the one of the leading problems, and I'd like to break these points down into two parts:

• Mentioning that actual underlying point and facts is a better solution "Harvard has 8 US presidents who have graduated from the university", "Stanford has been the birthplace for many of the world's leading technology companies" (or something along the lines of entrepreneurialism as you said) might be a better way that cuts down on the direct WP:PUFFERY. The point that has been made by others that "the reputation must be there and it's a disservice not to mention it" could find some common ground with this, as again just saying that it should be there clearly ignores the points in WP:BOOSTERISM without addressing them.
• Any consensus formed here should be reflected in the guidelines and advice on the subject. You're entirely right that there is needs to be a standard used across schools. There is currently quite some disparity across articles, and its important that whatever consensus is reached here it is reflected and applied consistently (I brought up points about specific universities earlier). Shadowssettle_(talk) 15:16, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

• All the American universities are too recent to be considered prestigious. In the English-speaking world, only two universities can really lay claim to such an appellation, and one would hope that neither would feel it needful (and the merits of some of their constituent colleges and courses are debatable anyway). Seriously though, we try to remove prestigious, illustrious, innovative, renowned, award-winning, exceptional and such words from other articles, so why do we need them for universities? Edwardx (talk) 20:15, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

@Edwardx: Totally agree with all that.^{except that tarned Oxbridge elitism!} However, right now it seems to endemic, even on the two universities you said didn't need it, hence the need for some consensus here on some form; especially as there's disagreement among the editors here. If you know any other project-uninvolved editors who have been involved with WP:PUFFERY you might want to get them involved (you're ancient compared to most of the editors here apart from User:ElKevbo, a compliment not an insult), I feel like this was the whole reason WP:BOOSTER was made, and it's strong message has slowly decayed over time Shadowssettle_(talk) 20:26, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

We should approach these articles like we do all other articles: We summarize what the best available sources say about the subject. For a few subjects, numerous sources stress something exemplary or unusual about the subject e.g., highly prestigious, oldest, most wealthy, first to do __. It's POV for an editor to omit that information simply because he or she disagrees or find it distasteful.

I also think it's disingenuous or naive to think that some institutions aren't so well-known or held in such high regard that their reputation is one of their most noteworthy characteristics. Yes, it's dumb as hell that so many people focus so much on Harvard; sometimes, I genuinely feel bad for some of our colleagues who work there who can't make the smallest decision without The Chronicle of Higher Education breathlessly reporting it as the future of all colleges and universities. But that is indeed the reality and hiding that from readers because we don't like it is malpractice.

To me, the question is how and where we set the bar for including this kind of information in the lede of articles. As stated above, I think that if we can set the bar really high, get project-wide consensus, and then place the onus on editors who want to include this kind of information then we'll be in better shape. ElKevbo (talk) 21:19, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

@ElKevbo: very well put. The one caveat I'd add is that, when characterizing reputation, we should try to characterize reputation among a slightly more educated audience than just the general public. E.g. most people on the street probably couldn't tell you what Julliard is, but that doesn't make its academic reputation any less valid. Same goes with top-tier small liberal arts colleges, which are pretty much unknown to the general public but whose academic reputations are comparable to Ivy League schools when it comes to employers/grad schools/etc. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:44, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

When we're discussing colleges and universities in broad terms (i.e., not specific departments or programs) then we're in very well-trod territory that is the subject of a lot of scholarship. So we should be relying on that scholarship, particularly secondary and tertiary sources that explicitly and expertly synthesize multiple sources or many years of information. That keeps us out of the mess of trying to judge or use specific rankings or create our own judgments using rankings. That also keeps us out of the mess of trying to keep up-to-date with changing rankings, surveys, or popular press accounts that typically aren't grounded in scholarship, rigor, or history. ElKevbo (talk) 22:20, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

This happened whilst I made my last post, so I'll address it here: if you have an exact bar of how to use these then go ahead and propose it: using academic papers does seem to make some sense. However ignoring rankings could be seen as WP:OR when they're published by publicly (if not academically) respected sources. Shadowssettle_(talk) 22:32, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: See this is where I disagree strongly. Wikipedia shouldn't be trying to spread that institutions are prestigious, that aren't, well, widely considered prestigious; this leads to a massively slippery slope. The list given is rather loosely defined, and at least to me seems to open up a whole can of worms. Shadowssettle_(talk) 22:29, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

As I said above, valid concerns about a slippery slope with more borderline cases isn't a justification for leaving out information in cases where it's clearly warranted. And Wikipedia is about compiling information, not just about reflecting back the opinions of people you'd meet on the street. We can't just say "oh, my next door neighbor has never heard of Williams, so that must mean it doesn't have any academic reputation worth noting". To do that would be to introduce a huge unfair bias against smaller or more specialized schools. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:28, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

@ElKevbo: There's no need to call opposing views names, let's keep this WP:CIVIL. It is neither naïve nor disingenuous to say that it might be preferable to address reputation through actual hard facts and statistics. Instead of repeating the same point, it might be helpful to address the actual suggestions brought up here in a collaborative fashion. If you strongly disagree with them, then argue the point on what you think is wrong with them. Notably personal anecdotes don't help.

On the point of whether we can set the bar high, this could be an option if the consensus ends up there. However, there are two things to note:

• Just saying "set the bar high" doesn't achieve the goal: we would need to explicitly and unequivocally explain exactly what that bar is. As User:Sdkb notes, some might think institutions that don't actually have a widespread public reputation should still be noted as having a reputation, whilst others (myself included) see this as part of the problem trying to be addressed here. Also, any such bar would need to be applicable in such a way that article's can be handles under a fair and just metric.
• This still doesn't get around the concerns of breaking Wikipedia's guidelines on WP:PUFFERY and the whole explanation of what shouldn't be on university pages on WP:BOOSTER, which seems to have been designed specifically to stop this argument.

At least I feel we all agree that whatever is consensus should be applied more consistently, so we don't have the Yale—Princeton disparity. Thanks! Shadowssettle_(talk) 22:29, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

What or who is this "Princeton" of which you speak? EEng 00:10, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

A lawless place only accessible by a creaky old train. Shadowssettle_(talk) 09:07, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

I followed your "lawless" link (re Princeton's attempt to establish a law school) and found Previously, in the 1820s, an attempt was made to organize teaching in law, but this plan ended with the death of the designated professor, which I momentarily misread as "ended in the death of the designated professor", and I thought, oh dear. EEng 16:24, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

I addressed WP:PUFFERY above with "widely regarded", although I think my comment got buried because the conversation had already moved further down the page. WP:BOOSTER is just an essay, so it doesn't have much weight compared to policies/guidelines. And I still think WP:SUBJECTIVE addresses the question here more directly. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:20, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't see how widely regarded really helps the the argument about why the consensus should be what you've stated, but it would make sense if does end up as such. I've tried to explain the issues with the ideas here, could you please address those? It doesn't seem to solve the issue hence the conversation continues: can't we just state the claimaint as the WP:MOS suggests and as rankings allow us to. Or what's the issue with using similar but more fact-centric metrics like presidents/alum, companies founded etc.

I am well aware that it's just an essay, otherwise this conversation would never have started here, as it would be in a much more prominent place given the impact proper guidelines have. Shadowssettle_(talk) 23:35, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

We're not going to come to a consensus on a subjective measure of prestige, using subjective piecemeal statements from a variety of sources - none of which actually quantify or define prestige. Just ridiculous. I think the most shocking of all statements on this board comes from the highly pedigreed ElKevbo who claims the definition of a truly prestigious university is one that is "so extradorinary and genuinely notable for their extraordinary reputation". Let's have you write a mathematical proof on that one Kev and get back to us. Those who fall into ElKevbo's camp very clearly believe that we should form a subjective opinion based on ... our highly subjective opinions of the most opinionated of all matters: prestige. We are here to provide a basin of encyclopedic information, not to force opinions down people's throats. Some of the discussion on this board worries me that Wikipedia is morphing into a 8-chan like community that seeks to dig its heels into a polarized world view. Stop doing that.

I think we can keep this very straightforward. If we agree we want to highlight a university's excellence, editors may reference overall national and global rankings. Unlike Kev's model - "so extradorinary and genuinely notable for their extraordinary reputation", university rankings are put together by Higher Ed experts and data scientists who are paid to develop well-thought out and quantifiable methods for stratifying universities. Any claim that these rankings are "arbitrary" should not be reassuring to your argument, but a complete contradiction to your insistence on Wikipedia defining the "prestigious" universities of the world. XXeducationexpertXX (talk) 21:58, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't know where the line is but at some point misrepresenting other editors' positions and referring to them with blatant disrespect and condescension crosses into a personal attack. At a minimum, you're ensuring that other editors disregard your own opinions because we can't trust you. So cut it out. ElKevbo (talk) 22:15, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Those are your words copy and pasted and there is absolutely nothing there that constitutes personal attack. What you suggest is in essence is normalizing WP:POV, which is what makes the conversation so incredibly ridiculous. You are opening the door to every Ivy League school having an opening tag line of "one of the most prestigious universities". XXeducationexpertXX (talk) 22:25, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

There's a lot of WP:UNCIVIL going around here, from using "Let's have you write a mathematical proof" which might be seen as patronising, to calling the opposing view "disingenuous or naive". Can we please keep this WP:FUN? Shadowssettle_(talk) 22:37, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

My feeling is that it's is impossible to set an objective standard for when a university may be considered prestigious, this it is better to let the facts speak for themselves. If we rely on third party sources calling something prestigious, them most universities will be able to find something. Certainly many sources will describe LSE, UCL, Durham, Edinburgh, Bristol, St Andrews as prestigious – and compared to an average British university they are probably right. But this way lies chaos. It is better to say that no university should be described as "prestigious" by Wikipedia – that is the sort of judgement call that Wikipedia is not supposed to make. The second part of the question of addressing this. One thing that can certainly be done is to ensure the criteria for "Good Article" prevent any article that uses prestigious or other boosterism from reaching that level. (We also need to revisit articles that were adjudged GA standard many years ago and have changed since).

Actually addressing boosterism actively in articles is exhausting (and you need to bed prepared for some name-calling from editors who are sure you are trying to do their institution down because you are from a "rival"). That is why we need absolutely clear guidelines saying that boosterism is not acceptable. If it is acceptable anywhere, editors will find a way to apply it to their article and it will be impossible to prevent all manner of problems. Robminchin (talk) 05:43, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Whilst I completely agree with all this, I just wanted to relate this to the concerns that other editors have about something along the lines of: but there are reliable sources for this an it's unhelpful not to have it. As Robminchin notes there are reliable sources for most places having prestige, just saying that is not enough. Whilst I personally am open to some clear, concise and undisputable metric for determining prestige from purely reliable sources without WP:OR interpretations of them, I doubt any can exist. No one has yet shown one here, as far as I can see? Rather than repeating the same argument of Harvard xyz. place no-one else might think needs a prestige statement which keeps this argument circular, it might be more helpful to address the concerns of how we would create such metrics; how we can argue any interpretation of them isn't OR. Also what the issues are with the alternatives laid out here, such as using facts which convey the same meaning? I also am quite worried about dismissing the point via saying others are doing anything along the lines but my neighbour hasn't heard of. Whilst of course my neighbour hasn't heard of argument is silly, it's easy to straw-man the counterargument as often it may turn out: wait no this place actually isn't prestigious, when a place isn't prestigious enough to be widely known. If this counterargument becomes the norm as User:Robminchin explains this will quickly become the issue. Hence the need for a undisputable metric. Shadowssettle_(talk) 09:07, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

This conversation was had---at length---about including mentions of prestige in the lead of Harvard's article, I argued for having an explicit and incontrovertible standard lest it become a precedent for every university to include booster language. For that, my motives were repeatedly impugned. I have nothing more to say on the matter and leave it to others to fix a mess I fought hard to avoid creating in the first place. Madcoverboy (talk) 14:08, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Laying out the arguments

There seems to be a lot of going round in round in circles on both sides, so I thought it may help to try a different way of structuring the conversation, by laying out each individual point which can then have a point of response and a response to that. I think it would be helpful to not treat this part like a conversation, but more as a series of point and solutions/counterarguments (but hopefully more solutions). I added the insults in place already so people don't feel the need to add them. Please do add your points/solutions/counterarguments below, and ~~~ (3 * ~) any thoughts you subscribe to. (don't delete points you disagree with; how does that help)

If you find something offensive or that doesn't accurately portray your view, please see at the attempt to show how the argument develops, add you view, or change it. This isn't an attempt to bring one side over the other; if you feel it does so I apologise in advance. It's an attempt to lay out the points.

Pro-inclusion

POV pushers, unrealistic about where this will end

• It's silly to not have a comment about some of these universities being prestigious, they clearly are. It's Wikipedia's job to inform people; this is information
  • Being prestigious is a subjective quantity
    • In some cases, yes, but the institutions being discussed here clearly are.
      • Which institutions, though, what's prestigious to one source isn't to another, and how do we decide what's prestigious (continued on the other side)
  • If they're prestigious people will know
    • Not in all cases. Some institutions are only prestigious within a country or academic discipline
  • Can't we inform people of similar facts which convey the underlying message
    • Why should people have to read between the lines? WP:SPADE
      • WP:SPADE is about user discussions, hence: WP:NOTSPADE. Also, it's not reading between the lines, the prestige isn't the fact, the related facts are
        • But prestige may be a fact
• Reliable sources note prestige; it's clearly sourceable
  • Where does this end? (continued on the other side)
  • Reliable sources can carry many glowing comments, that doesn't mean Wikipedia needs to spout them all
    • Wikipedia often covers positive reviews and the like
      • Does it need to be in the intro?
        • Yes, since it can be a defining characteristic
• This would seem to be covered under WP:SUBJECTIVE
  • Subjective only states it is permissible
  • Where does this end? It doesn't and that's the issue (see other side)
  • Subjective is about artworks and the like, not this
    • It mentions them but it can extend wider than that
      • However, these don't need to deal with the factional inter-uni fighting allowing prestige would cause

Pro-exclusion

"disingenuous or naive" reality deniers, who can't see, or choose to ignore, the obvious

• Where is the to be drawn? I don't see how any line can be drawn that doesn't rely on WP:OR interpreting ^{The line must be drawn here! This far! No further!}
  • The line can be drawn at good sources to keep only the really prestigious ones.
    • But any leeway in sources leaves it open to being abused (see below)
    • I have yet to see any realistic proposal to show where the line is to be drawn!
  • Don't draw the line! Anywhere that is somewhat prestigeous should mention it
    • ~~anger boils~~ N O. Wikipedia shouldn't be a mass prospectus selling universities.
    • This makes it pointless. If everyone has a pony let's just not have ponies.
• Wikipedia doesn't need to have prestige statements, it's not encyclopedic and seems tacky
  • Oh yes it does need them since it's informative. (see other side)
• The only solution to stopping an exhaustive fight happening where it should is to not allow it at all
  • We shouldn't not do a thing because we're worried about what may happen
    • Yes we should, as there is no way to draw a line under the sand anywhere (see above)

This may not be helpful, but we can see? (note this is unlike User:Mikecurry1's attempt to find solutions which I agree we're not ready for, instead it's to find where the arguments are and actually make this followable so points aren't missed) Shadowssettle_(talk) 18:21, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Follow up

Yes, Shadowsettles thread is the primary one for these discussions on boosterism (as I understood from the heading - Boosterism, a wider perspective). It seems like a place to discuss boosterism from a broader perspective. My thread is a complimentary side textbox to this discussion, and if you have any ideas to create consistency across university articles we can brainstorm them there in a focused place on ideas, to be discussed later when we are ready. Mikecurry1 (talk) 18:50, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

These are reasonable summaries but I think it's a mistake to focus exclusively or primarily on "prestige" when there are many other similar concepts that are all similar concerns. (I think the "prestige" derail may have begun in the Harvard article but that is mostly because some of the sources explicitly focus on prestige so we used that specific word because it's what the cited source(s) used. It's actually a good example of what we should be doing in articles - following the lead of and accurately summarizing what high quality, reliable sources say.) ElKevbo (talk) 19:54, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

@ElKevbo: You mention a lot how the Harvard article is a good example of it being applied. I would be interested in an example where such work would lessen current coverage, and how and what exactly strict sources would be usable to make sure it doesn't pop up everywhere. Where would the Harvard-model end up allowing this thing into. I feel if it lets it in "everywhere" (i.e. a lot of places so most unis with any notability, say Manchester/Glasgow/name-your-place) have it then it's going to cause a lot of disagreement. Whilst there is a strong group here who don't want any prestige comments anywhere, I would say that there would be much less resentment to a policy which would limit it, could be well-defined, and we could see in action Shadowssettle_(talk) 20:17, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

My preference would be to limit this kind of information in the lede to only material that has been explicitly discussed by reputable scholars and experts in independent venues e.g., not material written by the institution, journalists without education expertise, or the ranking system publications. I'm not very familiar with how our colleagues in WikiProject Medicine apply their content guideline but my ideas do seem to be very similar to how they handle medical information ("Ideal sources for biomedical material include literature reviews or systematic reviews in reliable, third-party, published secondary sources (such as reputable medical journals), recognised standard textbooks by experts in a field, or medical guidelines and position statements from national or international expert bodies.") although I freely acknowledge that there are numerous differences between these bodies of knowledge particularly their relative importance and the number of editors willing to apply the guidelines.

In practice, I think this would remove this information from the lede of many and perhaps most articles, at least for U.S. institutions (my only sphere of expertise). For example, the current version of the University of California, Berkeley includes this sentence: "Berkeley has been ranked by numerous major education publications as among the top ten universities in the world." I think those references aren't nearly good enough to support this kind of statement in the lede of an article. It's not a question of the sources being reliable - they are - but whether the information merits inclusion in the lede. In my opinion, if multiple experts have not explicitly written about this specific topic then it doesn't belong in the lede of an article. You could make an argument that the information could be included without any citation as it's just a summary what is already in the article but I think we're all already in broad agreement that too many editors either misunderstand that concept or they abuse it to insert boosterism into the lede.

(I also freely acknowledge that this particular example could certainly be rewritten as I'm positive that there are high quality sources that explicitly discuss the preeminence of Berkeley; the sources that are currently cited are not sufficient and the onus is on editors who want to retain or edit the information to help us find adequate sources.) ElKevbo (talk) 23:46, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

References

I agree with ElKevbo that it is a mistake for articles to focus so much on prestige in the lead. ElKevbo brought up this sentence, "Berkeley has been ranked by numerous major education publications as among the top ten universities in the world." I used that example with XXX in the side textbox to brainstrom solutions for. If rankings are in the lead, this is probably not the best way to explain them across articles, including that a school is in the the top 25 or 50 as well. For the most part I would prefer the lead to focus on the things the university is actually doing, their history, or what is in the article. A similar problem is occuring in sports articles too. Who is THE GOAT, Michael jordan or Lebron james? There is a predominance of focus on prestige across domains, and we need consistent standards to address this so that editors are not engaged in edit wars trying to implement changes for a more npov. And then from these academic boosterism guidelines - one article has certain expectations for what is boosterism and other articles have other expectations for what is boosterism - having consistency of standards across articles in my opinions would stop some unneeded editing wars as we can cite a consensus of what is acceptable across these articles.Mikecurry1 (talk) 03:58, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

In addition to universities being described as "prestigious", there are more insidious forms of puffery that give the impression without using the words. For example, the lead of the Durham University article used to contain the quote "Long established as the leading rival to Oxford and Cambridge" from The Times. The same source could also give the quote "Durham is often described as the Oxbridge of the North", a description also found in The Daily Telegraph (where Durham is "known amongst students as the Oxbridge of the North"). Putting this in the lead would clearly be an attempt to gain prestige by association (how many American schools are the "Harvard of the South"?), but would also be defensible as having multiple reliable sources stating that this was common usage. Robminchin (talk) 06:01, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

References

@Robminchin: This is a really interesting point, and probably one we should address! Any consensus from this should deal with whether this should be allowed anywhere near the lead Shadowssettle_(talk) 09:20, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't think those sources are sufficient for information in the lede of those articles. They're reliable but that is not sufficient for inclusion anywhere in an article, particularly the lede. ElKevbo (talk) 13:47, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

@Mikecurry1: I feel prestige has become a metonym for the wider problem, it should probably be read as the wider issue of WP:BOOSTER comments, especially as there are arguments here over whether some prestige comments are even WP:BOOSTERism Shadowssettle_(talk) 09:20, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

@ElKevbo: This suggestion is interesting, I have a question: How far down would it go exactly? Can you find sufficient sources for, let's take Vanderbilt or somewhere of that level (remembering many of us are not American). I would be interested in seeing this because as I said working out how far exactly it would go and importantly seeing such a system give a clear no would go some way to calming some fears of a free for all. We would need to create a guideline that could be applied such that the work would be on article editors to find enough sufficiently appropriate sources, and until then articles would not be allowed to have such statements.

• If such a system does work and does have quite a high lower bar so we can in general remove it apart from exceptional cases, I think that's something we might be all able to cope with.
• If we are going to have such a system, we would need to see it in practice played out for a couple cases, some where it accepts and some where it rejects. I know rejection is hard to say, as a more comprehensive search might return sufficient results, but if you could give some where a reasonable search doesn't find any that would be really helpful (sorry for asking you to do more stuff, it's just this what your pushing for)
• Examples would also be required so we can all understand the system; and allow us to try and apply it fairly as editors to other articles.

The next two points deal with the one thing the pro-exclusionists have been clearly expressing again and again, which this can't be solved without addressing. "The fights and school editors bringing this to lower and lower levels" is one of the most important problems here, and it needs to be addressed in a strong and effective manner before any agreement would be reached. The following bullet points address it.

• To repeat, such system would need clear formalisation, and we might want to try to see how we can form a community-accepted guideline (not just essay) we can apply without prejudice or risk of reversion-and-fight ("see guideline" would be sufficient) to reduce squabbles this will cause.
• There should be a [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Higher education/Request for Boosterism Discussion]|} (WP:HED/RfBD if you will), a noticeboard where any boosterism-specific discussions can be brought up so we can handle them. This would just be a WikiProject page so it wouldn't be much of a problem. Any application of these is going to flood talk pages with arguments, and possibly WT:HED would just be one long stream of separate sections for each one. It would make sense for a central noticeboard which editors can monitor to make sure that other editors can get involved if there are issues with WP:POV editors trying to box them into a corner and not have the backing to help fight it.

If those points could be addressed, it might go a long way towards forming consensus here. Shadowssettle_(talk) 09:20, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

@Robminchin, Mikecurry1, Sdkb, EEng, and Edwardx: Any thoughts on this as a suggestion? Any strong disagreement? It would be nice to get this to a consensus rather than a dead thread as it's still a large problem across university articles. Please see the arguments laid out above to avoid this circling, so you can address the concerns of the other side. Shadowssettle_(talk) 20:02, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

• Sorry, this thread is too long for me to read at this point, and I'd rather unengage than engage without having read others' comments. My perspective from earlier, that characterizing reputation is at time appropriate, is still my view. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:51, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
• Whatever ElKevbo says, I'm behind it. EEng 20:54, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
• I still don't think we can make a distinction between some universities that are allowed to have 'boosterish' text and others that do not. There simply is not going to be a clear dividing line. And even if we can come up with something that seems satisfactory to us, it is unlikely to be satisfactory to all of the editors who are alumni of institutions just below the dividing line. Any rule that allows some institutions to be called prestigious and not others is going to have to be absolutely rigorous and robust to any perception of bias (including pro-western bias), and I'm not convinced that that is possible. Robminchin (talk) 21:32, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

• As an addendum, from a philosophical viewpoint, if the subjective reputation of a university is important enough to warrant putting in the lead for a subset of elite universities, it is worth mentioning for all universities. I have not seen any arguments (although I may have missed some) that set out why reputation is a more valuable piece of information for Harvard or Oxford than it is for Edinburgh or UCL. Even if we can find multiple sources saying that Oxford is prestigious, the equivalent for another university where sources differ would not be too omit the information but to state both sides – that it is considered prestigious by some sources, that it is a member of Group X, that other sources don't call it prestigious, etc. (We actually already have something like this with regard to whether LSE and King's College London are considered part of the golden triangle). Robminchin (talk) 05:23, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

@Robminchin: The idea here would be to allow it for any university where independent (i.e. one not in any way affiliated or published by the university, which should already be the case), academic sources discuss its prestige (not its ranking) with serious coverage (similar to notability guidelines in this regard, just an off-hand mention is insufficient). Only allowing academic sources prevents the question of is this local newspaper enough for me to make a claim of how great my school is or this newspaper does say it's well-respected when talking about an alumn, that's enough right for me to say it's the best in the world?, or any WP:SYNTHesis of rankings to claim that being in the top 100 means it's highly prestigious.

This would take exactly which are sufficiently prestigious enough out of editors hands and into academia, much like on WP:MEDicine and WP:SCIENCE project where they have academic standards for contentious issues (see COVID-19 right now). This would be an attempt to unite the ideas behind on one side WP:SUBJECTIVE and the need to mention what many not-affiliated editors consider pretty much basic top-priority information the encyclopedia would be incomplete without, and the opposing desire to make sure Wikipedia is not a WP:SOAPbox or a marketing tool, by just keeping it to where there is a studied and independently noteworthy subject. If UCL, LSE, etc. have papers on them, (as I would imagine they might given I'm sure there was a recent study saying that most of Russel Group aren't statistically more so except..., although this may not actually cover the topic, reading sources would be required). This doesn't set a bottom bar for exactly which universities would be allowed, as any such would be both WP:OR and a wrong assumption of power by WP:HED. Adding this kind of requirement seems like a sensible test we can try to consistently apply.

Note, it would seem to require three further things if it's going to work

• It's needs to be well-defined and explained. We'll need to update WP:UNIGUIDE with this, or even have a separate article summarised there clearly laying out:
  • What the consensus is across the project, and how to apply it
  • Why the consensus is as such, what were the arguments and how have they been addressed
  • Why it's important to apply things evenly
  • What Wikipedia (articles about universities) is not
• We need it to operate under "POV unless sourced", removing any comments until an editor has found sufficient sources.
• We need to apply it. Personally, as I've said, setting up a project noticeboard for this (i.e. either WP:HED/ABN academic boosterism noticeboard or WP:HED/ABfD for discussion or whatever) I think would be key to making sure editors involved in such conflicts can get more not-affiliated sources for the discussion; I know I would be happy to follow such a noticeboard, and I'd hope many here would, as it's the largest issue facing this project. This could also help editors bring up other concerns over less-direct forms of boosterism (by association etc.)

I understand that this isn't perfect, but it should be a much better approach to the current "whatever the old consensus was don't you dare change it I will revert you to hell" system in place, and it should be something we might be able to form a consensus around here.

@Robminchin, Mikecurry1, and ElKevbo: (etc. I think everyone else has become uninvolved) Is everyone okay with this idea? Shadowssettle_(talk) 08:26, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

There are plenty of studies using Russell Group membership as a proxy for prestige/elite status, so this is basically an open invitation for every university in the Russell Group to be described as prestigious. And according to the Bolivar study (which I think is the one you were referring to) virtually all of the pre-1992 universities in the UK form a single cluster in their analysis of elitism with the Russell Group (excluding Oxbridge). This just seems like an "everyone gets prizes" approach. It would be far better to not mention prestige or elite status or anything of that nature and WP:Let the reader decide. This is not medicine or another branch of science where there can be an authoritative, correct answer – which universities are prestigious in a particular study will depend on how prestigious is defined, so remains subjective. We should not try to make this into an objective, encyclopedic fact. Robminchin (talk) 20:21, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Stop being right! Although I'm sure the argument coming from the other side is maybe they should be able to mention it. The frustrating thing is that without consensus no one wins, with some articles now much worse then they should be on prestige, and others those in favour may view as being able to have prestige comments that don't, all the while other boosterism we can all agree is bad still remains. Argh! We keep on coming back to the idea of using facts (like presidents, impact, historical figures, schools of though or discoveries, companies started, etc.) and as you say, letting the reader decide. The response will again be WP:SUBJECTIVE and the reader shouldn't have to read between the lines.

I think we can all agree that whatever is consensus should be applied consistently and without prejudice, so it's frustrating we can't find one. My suggestion would be if someone could get some uninvolved senior editors here to bring some context from the rest of the encyclopedia, which might help force a consensus? I'm not sure it won't just bring more arguments? Anyway thanks for you thoughts! Shadowssettle_(talk) 20:47, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

I will not agree to an omission of very well sourced, pertinent information from the lede of articles simply because some editors dislike it. If we have a problem with editors using low quality sources or no sources at all then we can certainly tighten up and enforce our standards; it would also be helpful if we could clarify those standards and provide good (and bad) examples.

A dedicated noticeboard will not work; this project is way too small to support that. It would be better to rely on the existing noticeboards once we have a firm consensus.

We need to develop one or more solid proposals that we can take to the larger community through an RfC to determine if this project-wide consensus. I'd be happy to help draft something that represents my opinion and recommendations. ElKevbo (talk) 21:35, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

@ElKevbo: As I've stated repeatedly, I would be very interested in you doing a draft guideline/essay on a new project policy.

It's easy to dismiss others concerns as simply them not liking it; but that is not their point (if it were then it would be sensible to dismiss the view) and their concerns are valid: should this information be in the lead. That's a very different point to whether it should be in the article, and keeping to unarguable hard facts in the lead seems like a sensible way to avoid this issue.

At the same time, I can easily see the point that these institutions do have strong reputations, and avoiding that could seem incomplete, and attempts to put it there through other facts could also allow boosterism in the cherry picking of which facts are in the lead. Further, why should we force the reader to read between the lines by making them infer the reputation, shouldn't we just state it if it is a crucial and widely respected part of a particular institution's character? So yes, your points are well taken.

I think it would be more productive rather than continue to dismiss others' concerns, to instead discuss them in a more constructive manner. Despite my continued view that these sort of words should be avoided in the lead, I am happy to form a consensus where reputation information in the lead is restricted to academic sources as you've been suggesting.

It would be great to see a draft! However, I hope you realise that such final guideline will probably have other editors who might disagree on the details, so it may not end up being exactly your proposals.

I am glad you agree that it's important to have well-defined guidelines with a clear explanation; this is quite an important step to avoiding the current problems. Any further points of contention could be discussed once we have a draft to debate over. Thanks for offering to spend the time writing the draft! Shadowssettle_(talk) 09:01, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

To answer the question "Further, why should we force the reader to read between the lines by making them infer the reputation, shouldn't we just state it if it is a crucial and widely respected part of a particular institution's character" – because that is what Wikipedia's Manual of Style cautions us to do at WP:PUFFERY. We shouldn't forget in this debate that editor consensus at the page or project level cannot override Wikipedia policy. Robminchin (talk) 04:29, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

To clarify, I am not opposed to the inclusion of "very well sourced, pertinent information", but such information must be presented in a way that is not WP:PUFFERY. For example (and following the example of Bob Dylan given at WP:PUFFERY, rather than saying "The history and influence of the University of Oxford has made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world" (as it says currently, with references to THE rankings), we could say "A cluster analysis of British universities in 2015 found that Oxford (along with Cambridge) 'emerge[d] as an elite tier'" (with a reference to Bolivar 2015). Other high-quality references, similarly framed, could also be included, but I think it is important that we avoid saying a university is "prestigious", "elite", etc., in the editorial voice and confine such statements to direct quotes. I also think we should make it clear that references to the prestige of a group to which a university belongs (Ivy League, Russell Group, etc.) may be made (in similar conditions to the above) in the article on that group but should not be included in articles on universities that are members of that group. Robminchin (talk) 23:00, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

• Checking in. Hi all – I just skimmed over some of the more recent conversation, although this thread and the one below are still ridiculously sprawled. Once those of you most involved manage to agree on some kind of standard/guideline to put forward for a more formal !vote, it'd be helpful to get pinged. Regarding some of the recent discussion, I see a lot of emphasis being placed on restricting the types of sources that can be used to determine reputation. While I very much agree that we need to disallow lower-quality or booster-esque sources, I'm concerned that we may throw out the baby with the bathwater and that this may have adverse consequences particularly for smaller and more specialized schools (e.g. Wellesley, Julliard) that have academic reputations in their domains equalling or surpassing those of large schools but haven't had dozens of books written about them to scour for citations the way large schools have. I will not support any standard that would force us to remove the clearly-warranted characterizations of reputation for those sorts of schools. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:45, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

I just looked at the lead for Wellesley College and there is nothing objectionable there. The lead for Juilliard School contains WP:PEACOCK terms and WP:WEASEL words and should be re-worded whatever is decided on guidelines here. In general, however, if the reputations of the smaller colleges are not as widely known and written about (which is true), then they are objectively less notable than those of the larger universities. If there aren't academic studies on their reputation, then any characterisation of their reputation is based on non-expert opinion and cannot be "clearly-warranted". Limiting mentions of reputation to a description of what has been found in comparative studies in peer-reviewed literature (which would be the gold standard) or even to a description of what is said in authoritative academic works might imply that articles that mention reputation based on a WP:SYNTHESIS of articles in newspapers such as Juilliard have to be changed, but these articles should be changed anyway. Robminchin (talk) 16:54, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Follow up follow up

Hi, it seems this has kind of stalled, despite agreement on at least the point that there should be a consistent guideline to stop current issues, and the seeming approach of some kind of consensus to discuss. @ElKevbo: You said you were interested in drafting a guideline, can I ask if you're still interested in/currently undertaking this. I understand you might be WP:BUSY, so if you're no longer interested/able, it might be good for us to begin a discussion-led proposal instead. Shadowssettle_(talk) 07:57, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I'll try to make time to work on this tonight. I've been extremely busy and distracted lately - this is a helluva time to work in a university teaching center as nearly everyone is asking us for help at the same time! - but this will be a good way to spend time on a different kind of interesting and meaningful problem. ElKevbo (talk) 18:53, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

No rush, I was just wondering if you were interested still; it'd be a shame for all of this to have been for naught, so if you weren't interested I'd ^{(the horror)} have given it a shot by doing a starting draft. Shadowssettle_(talk) 20:17, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Draft RfC created

@Shadowssettle, Robminchin, Sdkb, Madcoverboy, XXeducationexpertXX, EEng, Edwardx, Mikecurry1, and Hippeus: I have drafted an RfC at User:ElKevbo/sandbox; please edit it or discuss it in Talk if you think something needs to be changed especially if the draft doesn't accurately reflect your opinion. I had to make a lot of compromises and omit a lot of nuance to keep it short enough for other editors to want to read (but the entire discussion is included as a link). ElKevbo (talk) 00:11, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

@Fortunafavetfortibus101 and Drevolt: You have also indicated a specific interest in this topic so we'd welcome your participation. Please note that at this point we're trying to write a concise summary of the discussion and viable options that the rest of the Wikipedia community can discuss so we can determine if there is any project-wide consensus on this topic. Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 00:19, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Looks like a great start. The policies section should include WP:PUFFERY and WP:NPOV, which apply whatever we choose here. I would prefer to make it explicit in options two and three that the presentation of well-sourced content must still be consistent with these, but that isn't strictly necessary. Robminchin (talk) 01:35, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Done. ElKevbo (talk) 13:56, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Is a separate question needed on whether it is every appropriate for "prestigious" (or synonyms) to be used in the editorial voice, i.e. "Unnamed Academy is one of America's elite universities" rather than "multiple sources identify Unnamed Academy as one of America's elite universities"? Robminchin (talk) 01:46, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't know but I hope that the discussion would let us know if the issue is clear or if this needs to be explicitly raised. ElKevbo (talk) 13:56, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

ElKevbo, thank you for taking the initiative to make the draft and for pinging us. I added a link to NPOV and tweaked the third option a bit to even out the lengths, but overall it looks good. I think general reputation, prestige, or relative ranking(s) is a pretty fair way of summarizing what we're talking about, but we should be careful when titling pages or sharing invites to the RfC. I think "general reputation" or "academic reputation" is a much better way to describe the question, and I will object if the more loaded term "prestige" is used alone in its stead. Regards, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 09:28, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Agreed; this goes far beyond "prestige." ElKevbo (talk) 13:59, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

@ElKevbo: Thanks for the work! I've not really participated in non-move-related RfCs so I'm wondering how this gets expanded: should the proposals be beefed up here and possibly split up, should "ammendments" be added here and voted on simultaneously, or should we decide on a direction and then work out the finer details. For example, I would prefer P1, but P2 seems like a reasonable compromise, so I would be more interested in what P2 really means...

For example, it would seem to me that some of the more contentious issues for P2 "pro-exclusion" (I don't talk for Robminchin, but their previous points suggested they saw this as a problem) people is what level of academic sourcing is required to make P2 stringent:

• When does a comment about prestige become worthy of the lead. If a paper says off-hand "prestigious institutions like UC Santa Barbara" I doubt that's sufficient, but where is the line?

I would propose we draw the line at it being the primary topic, however I would prefer a more experienced view

• When does a comment relate to a university enough? If a paper says "UK universities are prestigious across the world" I think we can all agree that shouldn't allow BPP to claim prestige, but this gets far more murky for a paper an increasing scale of places to groups. Should a paper on Russel Group prestige be sufficient for the individual institutions if their relative prestige is not individually analysed?

I would propose we only allow articles on group prestige to be notable enough for the lead if the institution has significant coverage in the piece. Equivalently, this could be done by excluding group prestige and seeing it as individual coverage as covered by the first point.

• Which papers are academic/trustworthy enough?

Differences in these details could lead to strong differences in support for proposals, so it's something we might want to address how to address. Other than that, good job! I was wondering if this discussion, or at least a laying out of the arguments, should be moved to the RfC in some form to ensure the same points aren't reiterated. Shadowssettle_(talk) 12:09, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Those are all good questions! I am skeptical that we can make the draft RfC much longer and more detailed to address them all while still making it accessible to other editors who aren't immersed in this topic already. I've tried to provide some direction with the language used in some of the possible responses (e.g., "very high quality sources," "studied by scholars and written about by journalists who focus specifically on this topic"). I know that's not very satisfying but does it make sense? ElKevbo (talk) 14:03, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

@ElKevbo: Sorry for the delay in responding, but just wanted to say that this looks really good to me so far. Thank you for drafting this. I'm a bit busy in real life at the moment, but I can try to give more substantive feedback and contribute in the near future if needed. Drevolt (talk) 07:02, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

If there are no significant objections, I will open the RfC in a few days. In preparation, I am adding a new section to the draft listing the venues where notifications will be posted; feel free to make suggestions and ask questions. ElKevbo (talk) 21:11, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

@Shadowssettle, Robminchin, Sdkb, Madcoverboy, XXeducationexpertXX, EEng, Edwardx, Mikecurry1, Hippeus, Fortunafavetfortibus101, and Drevolt: I have opened the RfC at the bottom of this Talk page and posted a brief, neutral request for participation at the following locations: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Higher education, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools, Wikipedia Talk:Manual of Style/Lead section, Wikipedia Talk:Manual of Style/Words to watch, Wikipedia Talk:Neutral point of view.

How you participate in the discussion is, of course, up to you. However, I collegially and respectfully request and recommend that we keep our comments very brief and minimal so other editors who have not yet participated will feel welcome to bring some new viewpoints to the discussion; most of us have already said quite a bit on this topic and it's all still here in this Talk page for others to review.

Thanks for all of your help with this! ElKevbo (talk) 04:04, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

It is with all due modesty, yet without fear of contradiction, that I say that my comment is about as brief and minimal as they come. EEng 04:12, 24 May 2020 (UTC)