Talk:University of Nottingham

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Peer review University of Nottingham has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.
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.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
Former FA This article is a former featured article candidate. Please view its sub-page to see why the nomination did not succeed. For older candidates, please check the Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations.
University of Nottingham was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: February 20, 2008

Contents

[edit] Userbox

I have created a userbox for any other notts students and/or graduates. Heres what it looks like:

UON This user studies or studied at the
University of Nottingham

To add it to your user page use {{subst:User:Modest Genius/Template:User Notts Uni}}.

Given the current controversies over userboxes I've left it within my namespace for now, this may or may not get moved at some point. Enjoy. Modest Genius 20:40, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


I have created other userboxes with the new logo:
{{User:Quastar/Userboxes/User Notts}}
Notts This user studies or studied at the
University of Nottingham
{{User:Quastar/Userboxes/User UNMC}}
This user studies or studied at the
University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus
{{User:Quastar/Userboxes/User UNNC}}
UNNC This user studies or studied at the
University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China

This new userboxes will also correctly list your user page according to the alphabetical order in the Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: University of Nottingham page.

- quastar 17:24, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Grr. Why was this moved to Nottingham University? Its name is the University of Nottingham - Khendon 12:22 Sep 30, 2002 (UTC)

Wasn't there some controversy about them accepting funding from something dodgy? What was that about? Mark Richards 22:43, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Why that connection to Malaysia? Just a lucky meeting or is there a sinister plan among British unis to share the world a la Treaty of Tordesillas?

Funding into something dodgy? I think that would be the tobacco - £3.8 million from British American Tobacco in 2001, for an International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility. Average Earthman 18:20, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've added a bit about that in the facts. Anyone got any ideas what more I could write about the Uni? --80.1.241.104 20:23, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The Campus Fourteen is the local pub crawl, isn't it?. You can write about other not-so-academical aspects.

[edit] AUT greylisting

The article doesn't actuallly explain why the uni fell out with the AUT. --Ebz 22:49, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Refused to negotiate with the union over pay. Average Earthman 18:52, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Figures

Does anyone know the endowment for the university? It seems like it recieves around £100 million in research grants but what about its own development fund? I know it's pretty substantial since alumni giving is over £1 million. Also, what is the true number of enrolled students? Thanks for any feedback. ArchonMeld 04:26, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I took out some information about changes to bar closures and the like as there is no source for this, does anyone have this information?zeroRPM

[edit] Couple of changes

I have moved the pic of the downs to the bottom of the page as it was causeing a gap to appear between paragraphs. I have also included the name 'London University' in the info box so people reailise that it was a university prior to 1948.

[edit] University ratings

(I'm posting this to all articles on UK universities as so far discussion hasn't really taken off on Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities.)

There needs to be a broader convention about which university rankings to include in articles. Currently it seems most pages are listing primarily those that show the institution at its best (or worst in a few cases). See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities#University ratings. Timrollpickering 23:20, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Campus 14

I swear there used to be a Campus 14 article on here, what happened to it? It was quite a large article as I recall.Spanky Deluxe 01:33, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

There did indeed, it appears it was speedy deleted in December (see [1]). Perhaps worth speaking to the admin in question or running a DRV? If I remember correctly it WAS quite substantial, which would be a bit strange to be speedied Modest Genius talk 21:28, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, yes I tend to agree here. A substantial article has been replaced by a one-liner. Does seem a bit strange. Lan3y 23:08, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

This may be due to university officials who did not like the bar crawl to be publicised - the page had routes between halls and rules of drinking and so may have been thought to encourage it. clearly a case of censorship. 128.243.220.22 22:05, 17 May 2007 (UTC)claire128.243.220.22 22:05, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dropped 'The' in name

I haven't found a source explicitly saying so, but every official source shows the name of the institution as The University of Nottingham, including the "The". This may seem like a minor point, but I have had personal experience of people getting somewhat annoyed about this in other contexts (esp journal publications). Was this intentional / due to some stupid guideline / a mistake? Modest Genius talk 21:32, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Dropping the definite article is deliberate and it is per this policy. The test case, as it were, for the rule as it applies to Universities, is (The) Ohio State University - that article is currently with the mediation cabal and the arguments are probably all rehearsed at the case page. The guideline only applies to page names, though. I have bolded the "the" in the aritcle intro and (experimentally) added it to the infobox. What do you think? — mholland 22:08, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_%28definite_and_indefinite_articles_at_beginning_of_name%29 specifically allows the use of The in the case of 'official names', but disallows it in the case of universities. However, there is a caveat:
"On the other hand, some universities religiously refer to themselves as "... The University of X..." even in running text. If such usage is prevalent on university press releases and press kits, contact information, "about" pages, and internal department websites, and it is reasonably common in external sources (try a Google search), then it is more appropriate to name the Wikipedia article The University of X. For example"
which I think definitely applies in this case. Of course, that's only a guideline and WP:IAR suggests we can ignore it at will. Thanks for the quick response (And edit) Modest Genius talk 23:17, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Daughter articles

This article has quite a large number of forks (more than most other British Universities). Some of these are of borderline notability, but giving those the benefit of the doubt for the moment, would anyone oppose a consolidation of some of the branches of this article along the following lines?

→ Campuses of the University of Nottingham
→ Student societies of the University of Nottingham

There are other schemes which might be suggested for consolidation here. There is a current proposal to merge Impact (student magazine) into University of Nottingham Students' Union. I think Jabberwocky (writing magazine) should probably merge in there too. Any thoughts? — mholland (talk) 16:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I would support merging the various campus and magazine articles. The society articles are all valid A7s and I'd delete them myself if this wasn't my own university. Merging them all would be the beginnings of an unmanagable list. – Steel 18:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I would support merging the magazine articles as above, but am concerned that a super-article about all of the campuses could become a bit unwieldy. Also there might be a tendency to cut out information which would be left in were each campus to retain its own page. It could be an idea to construct it in a temporary page to see if it is indeed feasible though. Lan3y 22:35, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
The existing text of all of the campus articles put together is less than 20kB. Unlike the student societies, the campuses are a stable, clearly-definable set: I don't think there is a chance of an article becoming 'unwieldy'. There shouldn't be a tendency to cut out information: you'd be within your rights to defend material that meets policy, whether on a single page or otherwise. The opposite may also be the case: keeping those campus articles separate attracts cruft.
I have prodded the societies articles, per Steel359's concerns - they are of varying standards, and not speedying them will give editors an opportunity to prove any notability which I may have missed. — mholland (talk) 18:56, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Sounds reasonable. – Steel 20:45, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Prods for Nottingham University Gliding Club and Nottingham University Society of Change Ringers have been contested. I have not moved for a deletion discussion of the Gliding Club article - an anon has argued in favour of its notability here. The Society of Change Ringers I have taken to AfD; the discussion may be found at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nottingham University Society of Change Ringers. — mholland (talk) 15:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed merge of campus articles

I have proposed that the following articles be merged together into Campuses of the University of Nottingham.

The international campuses (Malaysia, Ningbo, China) have, I think, a greater claim to separate articles. Any opinions? — mholland (talk) 14:29, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

In the absence of any opposition, I have performed the above merge. — mholland (talk) 19:50, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA failed

this article needs further work to make GA status

  • The whole article is badly lacking in sources
  • The lead should be used to summarise content introduced in the main body
  • The parts about the current chancellor, VC and the rankings of hte univeristy need to be dealt with in the main body, and at the moment the lead is mostly focused on the rankings and heads aspects
  • The lead at the moment only has current events and very little history
  • The dates need to use a consistent formatting style. At the moment it is quite irregular ibn terms of date linking
  • History section has no sources. It is also recentist with about 70% of the history coming from the 20% most recent years and likely could be generally expanded
  • The coat of arms should probably have its own section
  • The campus section also has a lack of references in most places
  • The pub appears to be distinctly non notable
  • Single sentence paragraphs need to be expanded or merged.
  • What is offered by the Overseas campuses. What is the status of hte outposts in those places?
  • Other departments need to be expanded otherwise the MEd school has undue weight
  • Admin strucutre needs sources
  • We need more information about sponsorship and funding, commercial partnerships and the like.
  • The student union for mine seems definitely undue weight. The other thing is that there are no possible sources for most of these things except for the union themselves, and student unions have a very poor honesty record
  • The controversises section should be put in their own history and research policy sections, as they would avoid the standalone controversy sections and their POv complications
  • There should be more information on undergraduate and postgraduate courses and facilities, a lot of detail is missing in this article. You should check WP:GA and look at other university GAs here

Best regards, Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Do We Want a Good Nottingham Article?

I edited the whole article yesterday in an attempt to bring it up to "good article status;" but someone restored the old article, which is generally not of good scholarship and was criticized by the peer reviewers and other people. However, I understand the restorer's point. Omnis7 (talk) 14:28, 6 June 2008 (UTC).

I reverted the changes as I thought that in general they made the article a worse place. Sections should never be just see this page, they should at least include summaries. Campus 14 being removed is just plain WRONG - a quick google search turns up plenty of matches, and having watched people on campus14 go around campus every week for the past 4 years, it's a major part of student culture. It actually used to have its own article, and I'm pretty certain it still redirects here. I admit the article needs work, and I know that simply uploading photos doesn't generally help, but I feel that we need to make sure we don't just remove everything which doesn't conform simply because a GA reviewer says so. -mattbuck (Talk) 15:21, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

For those who attended Nottingham, friends of Nottingham, or who care about good articles in general, let's suggest ways to improve this article. Nottingham's reputation should be equalled by the quality of the article here on Wikipedia.

My suggestions on improving the article are the following:

The article needs to be organised properly:

  • Sources must be included to verify all information in the article.
  • The introduction should not contain rankings or enrollment figures; these data can be placed in their own section in the article. A basic description of the type of university should be done, omitting subjective terms such as "leading university" or a "top university." We are not here to promote Nottingham.
  • The history should contain sources verifying information.
  • The organization section should be moved up the page for continued logical flow of the article and include references to the current chancellor.
  • The campus section should either have no summaries or a small summary on the campuses, so not to detract from the articles created for describing the campuses in detail.
  • A section called academics should be created to describe the divisions of the university, latest rankings, research.
  • A section should be added to describe enrollment figures and student life; in this section, a small summary or no summary of students' union, as an article already exists describing it.
  • The notable alumni section should be the last item discussed in the article.

Omnis7 (talk) 17:34, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree with pretty much all of that, though IMO there should ALWAYS be summaries of main articles. -mattbuck (Talk) 18:58, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Mattbuck, I will not begin to edit the article until I read what people have to say; however, we should not wait indefinitely for people's suggestions. I will consider your suggestion and include brief summaries describing the main articles Omnis7 (talk) 00:27, 7 June 2008 (UTC).

Go ahead, and my apologies for reverting rashly earlier. -mattbuck (Talk) 02:02, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hich Yezza Case

I added a comment to the controversies section regarding the recent Hicham Yezza case. Unfortunately i know very little about this so feel free to add whatever you know. --Thebeca (talk) 19:51, 7 June 2008 (UTC)