Talk:University of KwaZulu-Natal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A mortarboard This article is part of WikiProject Universities, an attempt to standardise coverage of universities and colleges. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this notice, or visit the project page, where you can join the project or contribute to the discussion.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.

Contents

[edit] Merger of pages

The proposal that the page for the University of Durban-Westville (UDW) be merged with the pages for the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) is ill founded. Although UDW no longer exists, and merged with the also defunct University of Natal to form UKZN, UDW also had its own independent (not to mention interesting) history, and merits its own entry.168.209.97.34 20:52, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

UDW is now a part of UKZN and, in the interests of unifying the universities involved, it should be included as part of the UKZN with the view to redressing wrongs of the past. We should look into the future! --John Taylor 11:50, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

The past is what it is, right or wrong. UDW should be remembered for its diverse history. No harm in providing links to UKZN both ways. sandman

Funny the old UN page has been merged into the UKZN page.. Typical ..

I do think that both UDW and UN should have separate articles. Both were separate universities, and considered to be separate legal entities. Even for the sake of cross referencing, this is important: Alumni of the separate unversities should be listed under the universities they graduated from. This isn't about inequality, this is about fact. -Kieran 19:35, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, I've been bold and reconstituted the University of Natal page. I've sorted out the alumni list, too: Only one of the alumni graduated from UKZN, the rest from UDW or UN. All three articles still need a lot of work, but I do think they should be separate. -Kieran 20:28, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyvio...

The whole article isn't a copyright infringement (as far as I can tell), but the description of the campuses come straight off the university's material. Mikker (...) 22:19, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Viva UDW Viva! The length of the UDW page does not justify UDW, we need more detailed articles, whos going to be the first! May UDW values outlive the capitalistic/elitist mindset of ex-UND totalitarians who are currently trying their best to kill of the remaining UDW culture! (Previous unsigned comment by anonymous user on IP 198.54.202.250)

It seems the clock tower photo by User:Elefuntboy was removed along with the copyvio material. As the photo is GFDL, I've restored it. -Kieran 10:35, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tone: marketese.

Most of the article reads like its been written by a marketing department, from the Asmal quote in the lead, the 2nd sentence of the history, all of "Vision, Mission, Principles and Core Values", "Choice of Campuses", the ALL CAPS section about Ginwala, ... It may be best to start from scratch. -- Jeandré, 2007-11-16t13:34z

[This is marketing fluff, not a Wiki article] Jeandre is clearly correct. An attempt at a wiki article, produced over some time by various users and with citations etc, has simply been replaced by waffle from the UKZN marketing Dept. This is vandalism. I strongly suggest that we return to the original article that was replaced, wholesale, by user 'UKZN', and then people can work on that, adding citations, challenging material that does not appear to be NPOV etc. But this whole sale replacement of an attempt, however flawed, at a collaboratively written wiki article with marketing waffle is clearly unacceptable. -- Wendy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by W.naidu (talk • contribs) 15:30, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
[Yes, an encyclopaedia artice has indeed been replaced by p.r.] I am in full agreement that this page has been vandalised with corporate p.r. It must be reverted and challenges to the original version must be placed inside that article and justified with citations. Likewise any unjustifiable claims in the original article must be challenged and, if not then proven, removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bjorn Martiz (talk • contribs) 2007-11-17t19:07:31z

[edit] Reliable sources.

I've taken the article back to an old version, and removed most of the text since very little was referenced, a lot of the references did not say what it was supposed to reference, and some of the references weren't reliable sources. Please read Wikipedia's rules no verifiability and reliable sources, and make sure all future edits to the article adhere. -- Jeandré, 2007-11-18t20:05z

[edit] OK, Timeout, please

I suppose I saw this coming, but it is a bit mad.

  1. Ukzn, please stop deleting large chunks of content. This is generally considered to be vandalism and will quite likely end up with your account blocked.
  2. W.naidu, please keep the scandal stuff encyclopaedic, in the appropriate sections and well referenced. Certainly, mention of the various controversies belongs in the article. However, since this is contentious and controversial, everything has to be meticulously cited, and kept neutral. It would also not be good for the article as a whole to end up being an article on the scandals.
  3. Jeandré, please chill out on your removal of big chunks of content. Yes, we do need to get a lot of citations, but it is far better, for things which are not particularly controversial (such as the alumni lists or the section on the structure of the university), to use {{Fact}} tags, but try to keep the information in until someone has a chance to verify or refute it. Your last edit broke the formatting on the alumni list, although admittedly there are people and sections missing from it still, which I will try to restore, carefully, now.

-Kieran 21:21, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


OK, after reading through some of the university article guidelines, I think Jeandré's approach is probably right. I will be working to include the kinds of information that really ought to be included in this kind of an article, with references. -Kieran 21:59, 2 December 2007 (UTC)