Template talk:Infobox University/Archive 2

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Comma after state/province in location

I don't know how to do the programming for this, but there needs to be a way to put a comma after the state or province when one is listed. Something like

if {state} or {province}
{city}, {state}{province}, {country};
else
{city}, {country};

See what I'm going for? --Omaryak 20:45, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I think I may have just done such a thing. It runs as {city}[, {state}{province}], {country}, but the []'d portion only appears if the state or province is specified. Unless I'm missing a rather odd style convention, I think this fixes the superflous commas. You still need a city and country, no doubt about that, but the province and state are quite optional. Kevin_b_er 06:56, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Number of university residents

I really feel that the number of residents on campus should be added to the template. It is increasingly important and noteworthy how many residents live on campuses, since many college students are looking for a comprehensive experience. While most articles note residency somewhere within, it would be easy and referential to include such a statistic in the infobox. What is the consensus? --Noetic Sage 18:22, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Are you talking about the number of students that live in housing controlled by that university? Kevin_b_er 19:07, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
I wouldn't be opposed to this addition. It's useful information and seems suitable for the infobox. VegaDark 02:15, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree that it's useful but it's not always an easy number to find. We can certainly infer a range for US institutions from the Carnegie Size and Setting classification, though. --ElKevbo 02:19, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
As Kevin_b_er, I have no idea exactly what this is supposed to mean. People who live on land or in housing directly owned/controlled by the university? Who live in housing controlled by institutions or organisations in various ways affiliated with the university? Who live within a small university town containing an large university integrated into but still dominating its urban environment? There is no reason to use the infobox for data which needs to be qualified and is not easily applied to all or most institutions. Infoboxes are already overused. This type of information may be valuable but should go in the main text. up+land 04:41, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, in the most basic of terms, NoeticSage may be refering to students living in dormitory. But if the information is difficult to properly describe the meaning of, esspecially given the wide variety of possibilities that Uppland put up, may want to just leave this out of the infobox. There's already quite a few miscellaneous tidbits in it anyways. Kevin_b_er 14:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
There are some further problems because the notion of "accomodation controlled by the university" isn't clear cut either. A lot of universities within cities tend to have the accomodation in a different location from teaching facilities rather than everyone on a single campus. Throw in privatisation of halls, some complicated arrangements between universities and private landlords, plus halls of residence (or equivalent) that are occupied by students from more than one insitution and the whole things descends into statistical chaos where any rigid definition would not reflect how students on the ground feel. Timrollpickering 18:33, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Agreed on all points. I'm a university administrator with previous experience in housing and all of your points are valid and problematic for those of us in higher ed. Personally, this is even one area that I think NCES hasn't nailed down (not even close!) in their data and they're usually very reliable and consistent with their numbers and definitions. And of course it gets even more messy when you consider the different cultures and practices of different countries.
In the end, I am confident that we could nail down a pretty good definition for our purposes but since that definition would not be in wide use the number(s) would be unavailable most of the time. It's a good thought but from practical and professional experience I just don't think it would ever work.
Again, for US institutions the Carnegie Size & Setting classification would help meet some of the perceived need to state this figure. But that doesn't help much for non-US institutions. --ElKevbo 19:58, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it is difficult to determine the exact number of residents and for the reasons you all pointed out, it is difficult to know what is a resident of the university, but I think including the number of people that live in campus-owned housing would be a pretty easy number to get. You call their Residence Life department and inquire, "How many students live on campus" and that's it. -- Noetic Sage 02:53, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that would be clear and what exactly is meant to be derived from the figure itself? The concept of the "comprehensive experience" seems odd as this isn't something that can be easily determined purely on the basis of how many students live on campus. For that matter it's equally not always clear just what "on campus" means.
To take my own current institution (Queen Mary, University of London) we have a) several sites; b) some medical students living in Mile End campus accomodation despite the School of Medicine & Dentistry being in Whitechapel and the City; c) a postgraduate hall of residence that is physically not on the Mile End campus but very close to it; d) a very high proportion (by UK standards) of local students who live with parents (arguably as much a part of this "comprehensive experience"); e) some private halls of residence in the vicinty (ditto); f) a lot of local landlords with accomodation within walking distance of the urban campus (ditto); and g) a good public transport system that allows easy access from quite a number of locations. (And until recently h) halls of residence on a site that was five tube stations, two fare zones and three London boroughs away from the Mile End campus.)
Now QMUL is admittedly an urban university with an untypically high level of local students. But to take my BA/MA institution (University of Kent) the Canterbury campus (and it's not the only site) is at the edge of the city and there is a lot of private accomodation near it - indeed quite a lot followed the establishment of the university. Whilst this isn't always enough and the university has in recent decades had to build more on campus accomodation (some of which is further from the teaching part of the campus than significant amount of private accomodation) there is still a large student contingent living around the campus in private houses who are just as much a part of university life as those in the self-catering village. And that's without even mentioning the Medway campus (which I have no experience of).
Even a raw figure like "numbers of students renting from the Accomodation Office" (if you can work out the problems of private halls and universities renting from private landlords) really reflects so many local factors (location of the university, available land, ease of obtaining private accomodation) as to render it meaningless. Anything "on campus" is even messier because of multiple sites and because some university accomodation is technically outside the nominal campus boundaries but physically very close. Keep this sort of information for the article itself, where such figures can be put in a meaningful context. Timrollpickering 03:03, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
I understand your concerns with the idea. Simply put, "residents" would be considered all those students that live in university-owned housing. Not land that the university owns and leases to private landlords or students that live across the street from the university, but students who pay the university to live in the university's housing. -- Noetic Sage 18:27, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
And how is a simple figure such as that of any importance to the "comprehensive experience" you were talking about above? up+land 18:52, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Students increasingly look for communities within the university environment that will provide for a more rich experience, and resident populations are the largest of these. By displaying the number of residents that live on campus one can get a feel for what kind of community the university has. Largely residential schools will have, most likely, a more tight night community where you see the same people every day. Other, more commuter-based schools won't have that as much. Sure, the numbers may not be 100% accurate just as on many university pages the number of undergrates is rounded to the nearest thousand. I think number of residents is important because at largely urban schools where community may be an issue, knowing that the school has a significant (or insignificant) number of residents will affect how the school is perceived. I don't see why adding the number of the residents to the infobox is any less useful than adding the number of staff members, which is already included. Plus, with Residence Life being a major facet of Student Affairs, administrators and staff are increasingly curious about resident counts.-- Noetic Sage 19:28, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
First, I'd be curious for supporting evidence for some of your assertions, particularly (a) "Students increasingly look for communities," (b) "resident populations are the largest of these [communities]", and (c) "administrators and staff are increasingly curious about resident counts." Please understand that I am not being belligerent; I am a higher ed researcher and I know of little evidence that provides good support for those assertions and I would be genuinely pleased if you could expand my selection of resources. Your third assertion is indirectly supported by the Carnegie Classification discussed below but further evidence would be welcome.
Second, I assert that you are likely approaching this from a very US-centric POV. That is not always helpful or useful in Wikipedia as we strive to write for an international audience.
Finally, I renew my call that we consider incorporating, for US institutions, the new Carnegie Classifications. In particular, the size and setting classification classifies institutions based on their size (FTE enrollment) and setting (percentage of undergraduates in "institutionally-managed housing"). --ElKevbo 19:54, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
I've missed this earlier but to respond to Noetic Sage:
"residents" would be considered all those students that live in university-owned housing... students who pay the university to live in the university's housing
Well my immediate thought is have you ever heard of the privatisation of halls of residences? (And I don't mean "land the university owns and leases to private landlords" but rather when universities sell off the halls of residences to a private company to run and manage.) Two universities of about the same age, the same sort of campus, similar student numbers etc... could easily give wildly differing results where the variable is government policy/university financial management.
I think ElKevbo has summed up the points well. Timrollpickering 01:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
To respond to everything, I think that the problems encountered when getting an accurate total of residents are no different than the problems encountered when totaling the number of students or undergraduates. Do you include international students that are studying abroad there? Do you include part-time students? What about staff members that are taking classes? What about students that are taking classes that count for their undergrad major and master's (some schools let you take master's classes as an undergrad so you can get your master's and baccalaureate in 5 years) - are they undergrads or postgrads? We could get accurate counts of residents. In fact, most university fact-books report number of on-campus residents. I understand that schools could report wildly different results, but the same is the case with number of students. What if a school has a number of campuses. Kansas State and Kansas State-Salina are different campuses yet part of the same institution. Do they report conjoined numbers or are they separate? The National Residence Hall Honorary reports # of residents as well, and this comes directly from the university's housing office.
As far as research, there are plenty articles that have done studies concluding that living on campus has a major impact on the student experience. Universities have been building new residence halls on every campus, worried about retaining students - living on campus has a huge impact on retention. I suggest looking at the research of Gary Pike, Alexander Astin, Chickering, Pascarella, Terenzini, etc. I think putting the number of residents in the infobox is just as important as putting the number of staff members or graduate students. US World & News reports the percentage of students living on campus for schools around the country. If they are doing it then I think Wikipedia should be a leader in reporting this data as well.
I think we should move forward with this. --Noetic Sage 20:01, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Well in terms of the student numbers there's often a clear defined source, usually based on enrollments and status. Here in the UK the Higher Education Statistics Agency has clear definitions and receives formal returns, so the numbers are clearcut, but also the data is useful.
In the case of "campus resident population" this is a lot messier and I suspect this is an issue that varies from country to country. The "stereotypical" undergraduate experience in the UK involves students on a three year course living one year in university accomodation (which is sometimes on campus and sometimes not) and the other years in private accomodation with other students - remember that in the UK almost all university students are legally adults. (See The Young Ones for probably the best known comedy about this.) Often university towns have parts that are very studentified, usually within walking/drunken crawling distance of the campus, which are to all practical purposes as much a part of the university community as the area actually owned by the university. By and large when universities here consider whether or not to build more on campus accomodation they're usually approaching this from the perspective of "is there enough affordable accomodation for all our students around the university" and not "do students want to live on campus all the time". There are also towns with multiple universities where a lot of accomodation is shared and technically run through a separate body (e.g. the [federal] University of London Inter-collegiate halls which are within spitting distance of umpteen colleges). Consequently universities of a similar age, with similar sized student bodies, attendance in campus bars/clubs and so forth etc... often have wildly differing numbers of "students living in university owned accomodation on campus" but the National Student Survey may return very similar results. Plus you haven't really addressed the issue that many universities have accomodation that isn't on the campus at all. The town/gown divide is not a solid barrier and the student community is not easily summed up by raw numbers of those just renting from the university. I really don't see including the numbers (where determinable) as offering anything more than the info in itself which is not inherently interesting in itself. Timrollpickering 21:03, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Carnegie now classifies using percentage of residents that live on campus, manifesting its importance in higher education. It uses data collected nationally from College Board and IPEDS. We have the data, I don't see any reason why we shouldn't include it in the templates. -- Noetic Sage 21:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Needs a fightsong parameter

I believe this template should include a fightsong= parameter. for instance "Fightsong=Hail to Old OSU". Most if not all universities have a fight song, and most have Wikipedia pages on them. I've made the addition as I don't feel this is a controversial edit. VegaDark 01:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps most US universities - I think these are almost unknown outside North America. However, the general concensus seems to have been to allow region-specific parameters in the interests of making the template useful for comparisons between universities in one country, as well as between universities in different countries, so this is probably valid to include. Anyone disagree? TSP 17:35, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I had that in mind as I wasn't sure about use outside the US. I figure it's an optional parameter so universities that don't have one can simply leave it blank, no harm done. VegaDark 18:29, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Small Color Samples

Thoughts on adding small color boxes to actually display the school colors? An example: Pennsylvania State University Athletics. Thanks, GChriss <always listening><c> 14:04, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree. --Bobak 18:39, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

"Faculty" parameter

What IS this parameter for? It links to Faculty (university)... which explains that the term has two entirely different meanings in a university context, and in no way clarifies which is meant here. The singular suggests that it is meant in the sense of "academic staff"; if this is the case, can we replace it with a term (like "academic staff") which has meaning internationally? "Faculty", as far as I'm aware, is never used like this outside North America. TSP 14:22, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

The optional "faculty" parameter is for North American universities. You are free to use staff= instead. --Usgnus 14:28, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
"Where varieties of English differ over a certain word or phrase, try to find an alternative that is common to both." - Manual of Style. Even our articles on North American topics should, where possible, be written in a way that makes sense outside North America. The only reason I can think of for keeping "faculty" would be if "academic staff" similarly isn't understandable in some varieties of English, but it seems like a pretty obvious term to me. TSP 14:42, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I changed the link to Faculty. That should be clear enough. --Usgnus 15:25, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
It's an improvement, and means that confused people at least have a way to find out what the unfamiliar term means; but it's better if readers don't have to click through to another page to understand terms used, and the Manual of Style seems clear that terms only understood in one variety of English should be avoided if there is an alternative that is understood in all varieties of English. Would there actually be a problem with changing the label on "Staff" to "Academic staff" and losing "Faculty"? Having different parameters with identical uses to allow for different national varieties of English seems rather contrary to the point of having templates in the first place. TSP 15:30, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
So what about non-teaching staff? In his 2004 Association for the Study Higher Education (ASHE) address, Dr. John Braxton makes a compelling argument that non-teaching staff are becoming increasingly important. Several decades of research is also clear in telling us that a substantial part of what traditional students learn in college occurs outside of the classroom and outside the tradtional purvue of faculty. --ElKevbo 16:10, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
You two (TSP and ElKevbo) hint at the other problem, that Usngus's notion of using "staff" and "faculty" as synonyms, intending that only one or the other be used, is flawed because in North American usage, at least, "staff" is a much broader term than "faculty". Gene Nygaard 16:27, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Furthermore, "faculty" is sometimes treated as a subset of "staff", and sometimes they are treated as mutually exclusive sets. Gene Nygaard 16:35, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. I don't know if the terminology is changing but there are also some (such as Braxton) who argue that European institutions are moving closer to the American model of higher education with its large numbers of non-teaching professional staff. This is driven by standardization (i.e the Bolgna Declaration), global competition, the increasing importance of technology in educational institutions, and the (perceived) movement towards a "learner-centered" philosophy which displaces the faculty from the center of the institution and replaces them with the student. --ElKevbo 16:37, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

It's probably best to avoid this terminology all together, and whatever it is changed to, it is quite clear that somebody needs to go through every article using this template, and make sure that those using this parameter are using it in whatever way is decided to be the intent. See University of Kragujevac for one example using the "faculties" meaning. Gene Nygaard 16:21, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes - though I think that the purpose of 'Faculty' has always been for the US usage, so "Faculty" remains correct and the University of Kragujevac entry is wrong while the parameter remains. This is a perfect example of why the term should be avoided in an encyclopedia with an international audience and editorship, however.
Possibly we need another column for 'total staff' alongside the 'academic staff'; but at least it seems clear that both "Staff" and "Faculty" are ambiguous almost to the point of uselessness. TSP 16:45, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
The faculty parameter should stay, if it doesn't make sense outside North America then as said above use the staff parameter. Frankly, faculty is the ONLY thing that I can see making sense for North American universities, this is what all universities here use. Saying "academic staff" vs. "non-academic staff" is still confusing. Are both janiors and researchers that don't teach included in non-academic staff? VegaDark 22:59, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
A researcher would be academic staff, I'd think - "In North American English, the word "faculty" has also come to be used as a collective noun for the academic staff of a university: senior teachers, lecturers, and/or researchers" - Faculty (university). They wouldn't be "teaching staff", so if "teaching staff" is what is meant by "faculty" we could use that instead.
Part of the problem is that, as a non-North American, "faculty" (in this sense, as opposed to the older sense of "a division of a university") has pretty much no meaning to me, which gives me problems in proposing alternatives.
"if it doesn't make sense outside North America then as said above use the staff parameter" - but the problem is that our readers of articles about North American universities aren't necessarily in North America; which is why Wikipedia's Manual of Style says to find an alternative that is understood internationally if at all possible, rather than using terms which are understood only in one regional variety of English, even in articles which relate to that region. TSP 14:21, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
In America (and I suspect Canada, too) it would completely depend on the institution, particularly its collective bargaining agreement(s), as to whether or not a researcher would be a member of the faculty. In some places researchers are contracted staff whereas at other places there are separate tenure faculty tracks for teaching and research faculty. It would also likely depend on the nature of the research and precisely who is employing the researcher.
It seems to me that "teaching staff" might be the best compromise. I would add the caveat that most (all?) American institutions will include all of their teaching staff in their "faculty" statistics except graduate students. Thus while teaching staff might be the best compromise it is indeed a compromise and will like not be 100% accurate. --ElKevbo 15:26, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm fairly sure Graduate assistants (TA's) are included in the statistics for faculty at my college. VegaDark 19:00, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Why don't we just leave it? As the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. --Ttownfeen 00:47, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
It is broke. 'Faculty' has a completely different meaning outside North American English, so isn't really meaningful to many non-North American speakers of English. Wikipedia articles are meant, wherever possible, to be comprehensible to speakers of all varieties of English; which is why the Manual of Style says that, wherever possible, we should use a term which is meaningful worldwide. TSP 11:13, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
It's been some months and there hasn't been any real development on this. As a bold solution how about merging both fields into "academic staff" which seems to be the only term with a meaning that everyone understands and finds useful? Timrollpickering 13:32, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Merge Infobox School3

Ok aside from like 3 Highschools this template is used for colleges and universities and besides that there is already an infobox for High Schools.

Plain and simple it really seams that this screws up the uniformity of an encyclopedia and not only that it appears as though it is a waist. --MJHankel 22:35, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Oppose for reasons mentioned above. If we are clumping all schools (parochial, secondary, post-secondary, elementary, etc) together then it makes articles much more generic than we at WikiProject:University would like. The structure of universities is far different from secondary schools and I strongly believe we should have a different template to reflect this. -- Noetic Sage 18:22, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Support – ↑what you said makes no sense. the original proposer noted that only 3 high schools Infobox School3. Therefore, those 3 high schools need to be edited to use the high school infobox instead, and then we can combine Infobox School3 and Infobox University into one. Problem solved. —lensovet–talk – 07:00, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
What template should I use for high schools? --BenWhitey 04:39, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Template:High School Infobox. There are also many articles using Template:Infobox School. --ElKevbo 04:51, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Non UG/PG students

Some institutions have students who aren't undergraduates or postgraduates - for instance the University of Derby has over 10,000 (c40%) further education students. See also the most recent HESA stats for UK universities (which I've been using to source stats on several pages).

Would an optional "further education" field be workable? Or is there a more generic term that covers this? At the moment some of the numbers don't add up. Timrollpickering 12:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I've added an "Other students" field to cover everyone who isn't an undergraduate or postgraduate. See University of Derby for a case in practice. Timrollpickering 02:09, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Undergraduate/Postgraduate/Other students fields

These need to all be abbreviated - look the University of Derby to see how they're displaying.

Would "undergrad", "postgrad" and "other" (it displays immediately after the other student numbers) be meaningful? Timrollpickering 00:44, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Image size

I am not pleased with the recent unilateral decision to change the image parameter and change the image size of all articles using this template. Some of the images simply look horrible when forced to a size larger than their originally-intended size. Some examples:

Can someone please explain to me why these changes have been made and where the discussion to change so many articles was held? --ElKevbo 05:19, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Most of the images are larger than the default value. For the rare exceptions, the parameter image_size = XXXpx can be specified to avoid stretching, I have fixed the four examples above. The change was made to prevent irregular default image sizes from creating excessively wide infoboxes. —freak(talk) 05:37, Dec. 31, 2006 (UTC)
Okay. I'm sure there are other affected articles as I grabbed the first ones I could find so we'll need to look through all of them. Sigh...the burden of editing templates, eh? No good deed goes unpunished? :)
In addition, is the documentation up-to-date with the changes you made? It doesn't appear so to me but I'm not intimately familiar with template coding and such. --ElKevbo 05:44, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I think "native" names should not be the same sized font as the main name, the latter which is usually the common English name (this assumes of course they are different). Take for instance National University of Ireland, "Ollscoil na hÉireann" should be in a different font, perhaps the same size and type as the latin "Universitas Hiberniae Nationalis". Ultimately this is the English wiki and common names should be used in the most prominant fonts. Using the same size and type of font for two different names is confusing to say the least. Djegan 01:34, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Usage: images and photos

Recent adjustments to this template prompt me to ask for comments on proper usage. I would like to know how you guys think the image_name and logo parameters should be used. Usage varies between articles, and since there are still a number of boxes awaiting clean-up following the image-sizing problem (see discussion above), there is an opportunity to standardise at the same time.

Specifically, I'd like to know which of the three options below you prefer. The way I see it, there are three possible picture elements which might be common to all boxes using this template:

  • the college's corporate logo
  • a heraldic shield, achievement or seal
  • a photograph of the college, or a signature buiding on the campus

Some articles have some or none of these at the moment. The documentation above is unhelpful in guiding editors who wish to create or flesh out this box on institutions' pages.

Example 1: logo, then heraldry

Poppleton University
logo of Poppleton University
logo of Poppleton University
Latin: Universitas Popplensis
Motto Education, education, education
Established 1984
Vice-Chancellor Dave Spart
Students 10,000
Location Poppleton
Website http://www.poppleton.ac.uk
Arms of Poppleton University

As used by Durham, Birkbeck, Loughborough.

Key points:

  • Institution's current brand logo has pride of place at top right of an article: this provides at-a-glance recognition. The logo is the most recognisable of the three possible elements; i.e., even if a reader does not know what the building or shield looks like, the logo will be recognisable, because Universities, like all corporate organisations, are in the habit of branding all of their stuff.
  • This looks strange when an institution's logo is just a glorified wordmark - the name appears at the top of the infobox, followed immediately by... the name, in a fancy font.

Example 2: heraldry, then logo

Poppleton University
Arms of Poppleton University
Arms of Poppleton University
Latin: Universitas Popplensis
Motto Education, education, education
Established 1984
Vice-Chancellor Dave Spart
Students 10,000
Location Poppleton
Website http://www.poppleton.ac.uk
logo of Poppleton University

As used by Cornell, Reading, Nottingham.

Key points:

  • This configuration appears to me to be the most common usage (especially for US colleges). I speculate that this is because heraldic bits and bobs tend to appeal to editors who wish to lend their college an air of authority and age. From a NPOV, however, this configuration is useful, because the vast majority of institutions have an official seal or heraldic achievement, whether assumed or, in the UK, granted by Her Majesty's kings of arms. Since university logos are often stylised representations of their arms/shields/crests, this option could be the easiest standardisation available.
  • This option would seem to use the logo element in the way it was designed to be used.

Example 3: photo, then heraldry

Poppleton University
Poppleton Hall, ancient seat of learning
Poppleton Hall, ancient seat of learning
Latin: Universitas Popplensis
Motto Education, education, education
Established 1984
Vice-Chancellor Dave Spart
Students 10,000
Location Poppleton
Website http://www.poppleton.ac.uk
Arms of Poppleton University

No examples of this exist (that I could find), but this option is worth considering. There are some institutions which use a photo as the main image and the logo at the foot of the box: Leeds, Plymouth; most Oxford (but not Cambridge) colleges also use a photo at the top.

Key points:

  • This option is the most free available. Campuses can be photographed and released under a free licence, and in the UK at least, arms can be drawn from scratch and released freely. A logo, on the other hand, is always a copyrighted design, which we may include under fair use only.
  • This option would seem to use image_name and its associated elements in the way they were designed to be used.

Discussion

There are, of course, other variations in use, including 'wordmark' images in the name parameter and putting more than one photo/drawing at the top or bottom. These all seem to bend the 'rules' of this infobox. My personal preference is for 1 or 2. I had a discussion with User:Freakofnurture which prompted this: Freakofnurture seemed to be of the opinion that option 3 is preferable, with a view to eventually excluding logos and other fair-use material in the box absolutely (I hope I have not misrepresented his views here!). - mholland 01:16, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Queen Mary, University of London

Image:Qmul.JPG
Motto Coniunctis Viribus
With United Powers
Location London, United Kingdom
Website http://www.qmul.ac.uk/
center|QMUL Crest
There may be some variants that could be useful. Queen Mary has recently had the box go through several changes and currently has the following (shown in abridged form):
Originally the info box had the "Q" and name at either end (I can't remember which way round) with the (old) heraldry elsewhere in the article. When the heraldry was added to the box at the top it was suggested on the talk page that this is counter intuitive as it's not used a great deal in day to day purposes. I switched things to the current arrangement to incroporate all three.
Where the university logo is the name in glorified type maybe use that in the name field, as with QMUL? There's something that feels odd about making the heraldry the top image when at many institutions it's not something in wide use.
Then we have the problems of coats of arms and seals in circulation. The University of Kent currently has the logo (which is used on pretty much everything) at the top, the coat of arms at the bottom (from personal recollection I've only seen these on the graduation certificates and ceremony brochures) and the seal (not currently on the article but viewable in the background of the official website) isn't used at all. Some of the other institutions are using coats of arms (or just shields), others the seals and at some the logo either incorporates the coat of arms/shield or the seal. I'm not sure one size can fit all since it's could result in some institutions having their effective logo (on an element of it) displayed first thing whilst others will have something that even most students, graduates and staff will stop in amazement.
I'm not sure that pictures are a good idea except perhaps for where they display the logo which otherwise isn't available (see Cranfield University for an example). For a lot of institutions there's no one single place that would be immediately regarded at the university (for instance what is it for the Open University?!), whilst for many any arbitary determinant would fall flat and many different people will have their own ideas as to what the core building of an institution is (at Kent the only likely buildings are either the library or Canterbury Cathedral - where Canterbury campus graduations take place and which is on the cover of the nearest to the official history - but the latter isn't actually part of the university; at Queen Mary nobody would use the library or the building where graduations take place to illustrate the institution but instead the Queens' [sic] Building that mainly contains the college administration; at the University of East London there are two separate campuses).
My preference would be first for 1 with flexibility to combine the institution name and logo where it otherwise duplicates information, followed reluctantly with 2 (where the heraldry is the logo can be dealt with under 1) and then very much not 3. Timrollpickering 13:21, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
P.S. I also don't think whe should be bound too much by the current name and placing of the fields. A number of problems have developed over time with the infobox because it started from a country specific basis and nothing in higher education is uniform. Timrollpickering 13:27, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
P.P.S. A good number of university articles (mainly US from what I've seen) are using the "logo" field to display the logo for the sports teams. Timrollpickering 20:27, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh dear, I was hoping to find a standard for this problem and it's surprising that there's still nothing... ...in British Columbia, there's actually different implementations for different universities within the province! UBC has used the logo on top, but UVic, UNBC, RRU and BCIT have all used the coat of arms. Now, with SFU introducing a new logo and dropping its coat of arms for most identification, it has also moved into the logo column. I personally prefer the logo solution, mainly because a logo is easy to find for all universities and they are prominently used. It is difficult to find coats of arms for some universities: for example, the best resolution version for York University is a 125 by 194 pixels version at [1], which pales in comparison to other coats of arms available. Kelvinc 21:14, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
You missed an update to the Image:Yorkucrest.png, which was based on the vector version of the same crest found here. I could have made an SVG of the logo, however, that is not necessary, nor desirable since it is under copyright, which is why it is a 160×258 PNG.+mwtoews 01:48, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I see. Nonetheless, I find it generally more difficult to find coats than logos, especially when it is not clear whether a coat has been granted. A logo can be simply copied from a web page (since they are for fair use and low-res anyways), but in cases like BCIT I think someone had to go out of his/her way to dig up that coat of arms. Kelvinc 02:11, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
That's not necessarily a problem. In the absence of a fixed consensus at least, this template is flexible enough to accommodate universities with arms/logo or both. If this debate really were to take off, I'd advocate a guideline of sufficient flexibility to allow for universities without one or other graphic element in their visual identity. I went and had a look through the boxes on universities and colleges in British Columbia. To be honest, the only "infobox offender" I found was College of the Rockies, which wasn't using this template at all. All the other boxes looked fine to me. — mholland 04:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Making better use of WikiProject Universities

WikiProject Universities has been rather sluggish for some time and I'm currently trying to find ways to boost the project. Can anyone who's interested help at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities? Timrollpickering 11:18, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Font size

I am changing the font size down to 120 percent if that is ok with you guys —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RCSIRCSIRCSI (talk • contribs) 16:56, 26 January 2007 (UTC).

In fact we could reduce it down more if need be, large fonts with long names on two lines looks pane untidy. Djegan 23:39, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Not very fond of italics for {{{native_name}}} either, bit inconsistant with {{{name}}} directly above, a non-bold font instead? Djegan 23:41, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
You'll need to take the native_name out of the box header to unbold it. I'm the guilty one who italicised it in the first place - I think it needs to be distinct from the English name, otherwise it looks a bit confusing. I wouldn't support making the heading any smaller than it already is: in a world of ever-increasing monitor resolution, it seems crazy to me that we make the default size of stuff so small. Bear in mind that this text is the infobox's header; bear in mind also that the box is only 20em wide (and shouldn't be forced much wider than that), so there are always going to be some institutions whose names wrap: this seems perfectly normal to me, and shrinking the text won't alleviate that 'problem'.
If there is consensus for smaller text, I would recommend that it be separated from the content with an <hr /> at least. Cheers. — mholland 00:35, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Added tagline filed

Hi,
I've added a tagline field to the template, as I've come to the sad realization that Canadian Universities are adding taglines to their logos, and branding themselves. Examples include York University's "Redefine the possible", and Simon Fraser University's "Thinking of the world". These are associated with the logo/brand, so I've put it below the Motto. Certainly, this is not a required field. I hope no-one objects to this addition.+mwtoews 05:56, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Moved documentation

It's now at Template:Infobox University/doc. +mwtoews 06:09, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

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