Template talk:Infobox university/Archive 16

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Placement of academic affiliations

For most colleges/universities, the academic affiliations seems to be a list of acronyms that won't be all that helpful to readers, yet it's placed very high up in the infobox (except for when the plain "affiliations" parameter is used instead, in which case it's placed just above the sporting affiliations, it seems). Should we move it to be closer to the bottom, rather than near the top? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 22:30, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

I think we first need to see if there is any agreement by what we mean by "academic affiliations" and what criteria should be used to determine which ones are important enough to warrant inclusion in the infobox. In many articles about U.S. colleges and universities, there appear to be relatively minor organizations included in many infoboxes. ElKevbo (talk) 22:45, 26 July 2020 (UTC)
ElKevbo, looking at some of the FAs, I agree, although I'm not sure that there are often that many important affiliations to include. For Georgetown University, we have AJCU ACCU 568 Group CUMU CUWMA NAICU ORAU. For Dartmouth College, we have
. I'm not really seeing anything essential in those. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 09:12, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
Maybe we should take another step backward and clarify the essential purpose of this parameter. What critical information about the institution do we think needs to be conveyed to readers by listing some organizations or groups with which the institution is affiliated? What exemplars can we provide editors to help them understand the purpose and intended use of this parameter?
My initial thoughts are that we should limit this parameter to those organizations that describe essential, identifying characteristics of the institution. This also seems to be related to the selectivity of the organization. If the organization allows any institution to join then membership in it doesn't seem to convey very much information about the institution.
In the U.S. context, the AAU is a great example of an affiliation that should be included in this parameter for the 63 research universities that are members. It's an exclusive membership that is highly sought after and frequently used as a identifying characteristic by members and non-members alike (my current institution is certainly not alone in frequently using AAU membership when creating comparison or aspiration groups in various benchmarking activities). The CCCU is another example of a organization that should pass muster as it also has defining characteristics and expectations of its members that limit its membership and makes it meaningful. On the other side of the coin, I don't think that ACE or AAC&U should be included; their membership is open to nearly all U.S. colleges and universities so it doesn't seem like readers learn anything about the institution by including these organizations in the infobox.
Finally, we should give more thought to the organizations that are common to many (U.S.) institutions e.g., athletic conferences, accreditation bodies, and systems. We are inconsistent in how we include or even if we include these in the infobox; we come closest to consistency with athletic conferences as that is usually included in the "athletics" parameter but the other two are very scattershot. We should consider addressing what should be done with these organizations given how common they are in U.S. colleges and universities including a determination about whether they should be included in this parameter or if new parameters should be created. ElKevbo (talk) 17:55, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
Certainly peer groups like AAU or the UK's Russell Group are important. Similarly international peer groups such as the Matariki Network (as in the example of Dartmouth, above), or various European groups, and regional peer groups (like SES in the UK). UArctic I'm less certain about, or things like the 568 Group, but both of these do say something about the institution and its priorities. Whether generally open associations are considered important may vary nationally – membership in the Association of Commonwealth Universities and in Universities UK (or Guild HE) would both be things that I would expect to be listed on British university pages and does give information about where universities place themselves in the market. Robminchin (talk) 01:49, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
It seems most UK articles use just "affiliations". This seems to be used for everything from major formal groupings to ill-defined informal associations (e.g. Golden triangle (universities) and all manner of collaborations (King's College London appears to list all the institution's with which they offer joint degrees).
I would suggest that "affiliation" means, in plain English, an organisation to which the institution belongs, and this should be limited on the institution's top page to institutional-level affiliations. It should not include partners on joint degrees, joint ventures (although the joint venture would be affiliated to the parent institutions), research collaborations, informal groupings, subject-level affiliations (e.g. AACSB) except on a page for the relevant school/department. This would, for example, cut down the current 17 affiliations at King's College to a more manageable 8. Robminchin (talk) 23:57, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Keep an eye on Iowa State University to see how this kind of discussion plays out in practice. An editor recently added several organizations to that university's infobox and I'm challenging those additions using the logic I lay out above. (It's also interesting to note that this particular university includes membership in a couple of organizations - Association of American Universities and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities - in its own description of its mission and vision.) ElKevbo (talk) 14:43, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

@ElKevbo and Robminchin: Okay, so the Iowa discussion seems to have petered out, so what's the next step here? It occurs to me that there are a finite enough number of academic affiliation groups that it would probably be possible for someone roughly familiar with them (so not me) to go through and designate which ones are important vs. which are not, and we could then put it forward as a proposal for WikiProject Higher Education and codify the result at WP:UNIGUIDE or the like. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:44, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
For Uniguide, it would need to be a statement of principles rather than a list – each country would need to have is own list. Possibly something like:
"Academic affiliations should include major international, national and regional groupings of which the institution is a member. This should normally be limited to ten or less, and should not include subject-specific groups, research institutes in which the institution is a partner, or partner universities. Less important affiliations should be omitted in preference to creating a long list in the infobox. If the institution is part of a university system or a federal or collegiate university this should be given under 'parent' rather than as an affiliation." Robminchin (talk) 02:22, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
I agree. I would also add something about the affiliations needing to have long-lasting, widespread impact on the institution and its institutional priorities or resources. Additionally, some specific examples - positive and negative - would be helpful for editors.
I also agree that systems or parent organizations don't belong in this parameter. However, I'm not convinced that system membership is well characterized as a "parent" organization. As much as I hate to further add to this bloated infobox, I think a "system" parameter would be better.
Similarly, I think that accreditors don't belong in this parameter. An "accreditors" parameter would also be helpful as a way to ensure these critical organizations and relationships are included in the infobox but not confused with other kinds of affiliations. We'd want to think about this and collect more information (e.g., does this only include institution-level accreditors, should the idea be expanded to include governmental licensing and approval, would this work well in an international project describing largely national or local organizations) so setting this aside for now would be fine with me. ElKevbo (talk) 03:32, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
Those all sound good points. I specified 'parent' as, looking around (e.g. University of California Berkeley) this seems to be the place other than affiliations where it is put, but adding other labels would allow different spotting to be explained better.
Institutional accreditation that needs to be mentioned is a fairly US thing. In most places quality assurance is a government function, so the concept of a choice of accreditors or even being unaccredited doesn't exist. This could certainly be included.
What the UK does have which could be considered a form of affiliation is degree validation. Providers with limited or no degree awarding powers have degrees they can't award themselves validated by a university (sometimes more than one). E.g., Wrexham Glyndŵr University has taught degree awarding powers but offers research degrees validated by the University of Chester, while the Cambridge Theological Federation doesn't have degree awarding powers but offers degrees validated by Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge and Durham. A 'validation' label might be useful for this in a similar way to an accreditation label. Robminchin (talk) 05:07, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Position of university logos

Hey! Is their any reason why the logos of universities and institutions is at the bottom of the infobox, and not at the top as per the majority of infoboxes? ItsPugle (please ping on reply) 03:36, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

@ItsPugle: Often the university's coat of arms or seal is put at the top. If it doesn't have one of these, editors often put the logo at the top. There was a discussion about this earlier this year – see #Universities without a seal/coat of arms above. Robminchin (talk) 04:04, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
@Robminchin: If common usage is to put the logo in the {{Infobox university|image}} parameter, wouldn't it just be better to move the {{Infobox university|logo}} parameter to just above the image? That then matches templates like {{Infobox government agency}}, {{Infobox website}}, and {{Infobox company}}. ItsPugle (please ping on reply) 04:24, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
@ItsPugle: Common usage is to put the coat of arms or seal in the image parameter and the logo in the logo parameter. There was a discussion about rearranging the images last year (see Template talk:Infobox university/Archive 14#Move logo above image which ended with no change. Infobox government agency actually has the seal above the logo, while neither companies nor websites normally have both a coat of arms/seal and a logo so aren't really comparable. Robminchin (talk) 04:51, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
@Robminchin: Sorry, I was a bit confusing there. I mean, in my experience with this infobox, image is used for images of campuses more than coats of arms etc, but having a look at some of the pages where this template is used, it seems like they normally are used for coats of arms. In which case, wouldn't it be better to rename that parameter to seal (which is what {{Infobox government agency}} uses), and then move the logo parameter up to just below it? As it is right now, I would think that it's pretty sensical to move the logo up since that's what image/media universities are most likely to use as branding. A number of logos also have coats of arms imbedded in them (Australian National University, Washington State University etc)., so this would also cover those circumstances. ItsPugle (please ping on reply) 07:21, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
@ItsPugle: It might have made sense to name the parameter 'seal' or 'coat of arms' when the infobox was created, but unless 'image' was aliased to it this would break a lot of pages now, and if image was aliased the change wouldn't have any effect. The documentation and example are pretty clear on what is supposed to be used there. Robminchin (talk) 21:18, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
@Robminchin: what about moving logo up to the beginning as per the other templates? ItsPugle (please ping on reply) 09:42, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
@ItsPugle: As I mentioned, this was discussed last year. It is certainly the normal practice if there isn't a coat of arms or seal (or if, for whatever reason, one isn't used on the Wikipedia page), but having both together doesn't look good. The only infobox that does combine two visual identities in this way is the government agencies one, which often doesn't look great. Robminchin (talk) 23:08, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Universities without a seal/coat of arms

Hi everyone. I'm not sure if this has been addressed or not, but a clarification would be great. When using this infobox in a university article with no seal or coat of arms, should we place the logo at the image field (top) or logo field (bottom). I saw a lot of university articles (new universities especially, such as KAIST and Hong Kong Polytechnic University), place a same/similar logo at the top and bottom. Any guidelines or rules? Thanks. –Wefk423 (talk) 11:44, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

In my experience, many articles about U.S. institutions have institutional logos or wordmarks at the top of the infobox. In some cases, that is accompanied by a different version of that image - often one is vertically-oriented and the other is horizontal - at the bottom of the infobox. A minority of the articles have one or two photographs in the infobox, frequently of the entrance to the campus or a distinctive building.
If we're using an image under fair use, it's a problem (by our policies) to use that image multiple times for the same purpose in the same article e.g., including the same logo in the infobox at the top and bottom. That's also unnecessary and unhelpful for readers. ElKevbo (talk) 14:57, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
There's no reason to use the same image twice, but it's not uncommon in older universities for the lower logo to be based on or incorporate the upper seal: see for example University of Oxford and University of Cambridge. The treatment at Hong Kong Polytechnic University is very similar, while that at KAIST just reverses this. Both seem to work well to me. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 15:35, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
Standard practice that I've seen is to put the logo at the top if there is no seal or coat of arms. The same image should not be repeated, as others have said, particularly if it is under copyright. Robminchin (talk) 22:17, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
A late but similar question: By what logic should the seal by used in an infobox? In most cases, the seal of a university is limited to a very specific usage, usually with an implication that the document in question has been officially approved by college leadership. It's doubtful any institution's president has approved a seal for use on Wikipedia. What are everyone's thoughts? --Midnightdreary (talk) 18:55, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
Midnightdreary, I don't think anyone is going to assume that using a seal on WP means the college has signed off on it; it's clear we're just documenting what it is. WP:AVOIDBRAND only goes so far. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 05:01, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
I'm not sure if you've ever worked at a university or college, but most employees aren't even allowed to use seals. It's not equivalent to a brand or logo. --Midnightdreary (talk) 13:34, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
What these institutions allow employees to do or not do is not relevant for us. What is relevant, in my opinion, is the fact that the official, formal seal is not recognizable to most people for most institutions in the United States; these images simply are not useful for identification purposes because they are usually only used in very specific, infrequent situations. ElKevbo (talk) 14:31, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
Removing the seal would open up the intriguing possibility of there being room for a potential photo in the infobox. I'm not sure about recognizability, though. If we remove it from the infobox, I don't think there's anywhere else in the page we could put it, and it does seem like encyclopedic information. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 16:17, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
I wouldn't lose any sleep if we removed seals from the articles of most U.S. colleges and universities; they don't add much for readers because the seals are so rarely used and almost never used by themselves without any other text identifying the institution. But it is also fair to point out that using the seal in the infobox has the advantage of being very clear and straight forward; it rarely requires any discussion or decision-making on the part of editors. ElKevbo (talk) 16:53, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

(←) ElKevbo brings up a better point than mine. Other than, say, Harvard with its iconic seal, I do believe that most university personnel aren't even aware of their seal. Because of its rare usage, I don't see the encyclopedic value. One might also argue its inclusion is putting undue weight on something that is esoteric and irrelevant to most users. I see, also, a trend now of institutional pages utilizing that first image parameter in the infobox to show how photogenic their physical location is. --Midnightdreary (talk) 17:41, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

We're not here to help institutions "show how photogenic their physical location is." I dread the discussions and edit wars that would result if we were to allow photographs in the infobox. ElKevbo (talk) 17:56, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
I'm sorry, you may have taken my jocular comment a bit too literally. But I would note that the project already "allows" photographs in the infobox, and it the parameter says nothing against it, and it is already being used as such. --Midnightdreary (talk) 20:02, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
The coats of arms and seals have a few significant advantages over most other images: (a) they're almost always easily identifiable by editors without any guesswork and (b) they rarely, if ever, change. If we migrate away from these images, we'll be in for a long slog to identify the most appropriate images for many institutions and we'll have to be updating them regularly as institutions undergo new marketing campaigns and create new or updated logos and wordmarks. ElKevbo (talk) 01:41, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
I think the claim that coat of arms are "almost always easily identifiable... without any guesswork" is rather unsupported. Without looking at the URL or searching it, would you be able to tell what university uses this coat of arms? I'd probably say not. And institution logos don't change that often in reality - they might go through a refresh once every decade maybe, but that's normally slight changes like fonts and doesn't require immediate updating, and any larger updates will naturally be caught from editors related to the subject. Anyways, I don't particularly think that "it would need changing" is a really appropriate point here, especially since if a logo is used already, it's going to need updating regardless of its position. ItsPugle (please ping on reply) 02:43, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
@ItsPugle: Yes, I do think that. Seals and coats of arms are taken quite seriously by most institutions so they're included in their official policies and style guide and they're also often registered with the government. ElKevbo (talk) 03:04, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
@ElKevbo: That doesn't mean that they're the most commonly used or most familiar branding, though. As you can see in my comment below to Robminchin, their formality actually means that they're used very sparingly and have very little exposure to the general public. ItsPugle (please ping on reply) 03:07, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
Yes, we're in agreement on that. ElKevbo (talk) 03:19, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
Also, it's quite possible that the place people are most likely to encounter university visual identities is on degree certificates, which normally use seals or coats of arms. I'm not persuaded that the logo they're using on their letterhead this year is significantly more commonly encountered than the seal they've been using on their certificates for a hundred years. Robminchin (talk) 02:19, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
Suggesting universities change logos every year is a bit of an overstatement don't you think? Not to mention that we aren't writing articles just for people that have already gotten degrees. Certificates, like degrees, are private material - they're not used as predominantly as institution logos etc, and every single university website or platform that I've visited uses their logo to brand themselves, not their coat of arms. You can even see this on university branding guidelines: the University of Queensland reserves the coat of arms for limited special uses just for legal documents, Washington State University reserves their seal for only the "most formal communications", and calling their logo "a widely recognized graphic symbol of Washington State University", QUT declares that it's "the only logo to be used to represent the university", OSU limits use of the seal to only the president and board offices, instead always using the logo as branding etc. Do you have any evidence that seals and coats of arms are more commonly used and recognised by the general public? ItsPugle (please ping on reply) 02:43, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm pointing out that we don't know which is more commonly recognised, not claiming that they are definitely more recognised, in response to your claim that logos are more widely recognised. You are attempting to shift the burden of proof, from which I presume, until evidence to the contrary is presented, that you cannot back up your claim. Robminchin (talk) 07:38, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
@Robminchin: I'm sorry, but I don't think that you can realistically make the argument that university coat of arms are used more than logos. From a random sample I took of 10 articles that include {{Infobox university}}, I went to their institutions websites' and had a look at their general branding presence. All of them, without fail, exclusively used their logo on their websites and social media. The only special case that I found was The College of New Jersey, which includes their coat of arms in their logo. I'm not trying to deflect the onus on me to provide evidence, but at the same time, I would think that a bit of common sense would be applicable here - to me, there is no reasonable suggestion that a university would go to the effort to create a logo, only to then use a formal coat of arms for their branding.
I can understand if you struggle to trust the randomness of the sample I took (literally just hyper-scrolling down the list and randomly clicking ones every couple seconds), so if you would like to propose any other possible methodology which you think is more verifiably independent (such as a third-party tool) to assess which is the most common, I'm happy to spend the time to execute that.
For your records, my sample included:
  1. KTH Royal Institute of Technology
  2. Rose–Hulman Institute of Technology
  3. The College of New Jersey
  4. Tampere University of Technology
  5. RWTH Aachen University
  6. University of Akureyri
  7. North Dakota State University
  8. University of Louisville
  9. Freed–Hardeman University
  10. University of Massachusetts Boston

ItsPugle (please ping on reply) 12:55, 3 October 2020 (UTC)
@ItsPugle: Nobody has claimed that the universities don't use their logos on their branding. They put them on their website (although see below) and on their signage around campus. But on transcripts, which are seen by people hiring graduates all the time, and on degree certificates, which quite a few people hang on their office walls, it's the coat of arms or seal that appears. As most people don't spend their lives visiting university campuses or surfing university websites, it is entirely reasonable to speculate that their exposure to university branding could come in the form of formal documents issued by the university that are marked with the formal seal or coat of arms. It is thus not possible to simply go from "this is the branding used on the university's website" to "this is what most people will see" without any other evidence.
Looking at the list you have there, four of the institutions (KTH, Tampere, RWTH Aachen and Freed-Hardeman) have only the logo in the infobox, given in the top image, presumably because they don't have a seal or coat of arms. Two of the institutions (Tampere and Louisville) use completely different logos from those given on Wikipedia, while UMass Boston and Freed-Hardeman use different wordmarks as the principle visual identity on their webpages although the logos given on Wikipedia do still seem to be in use. So in only six cases out of ten does the visual identity given on Wikipedia as the logo match the principle visual identity used on the institution's website. Robminchin (talk) 22:45, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
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