Talk:List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni

Referencing alumni

Howcome most of the alumni on this page aren't referenced? Ideally, should they be? I'm looking at other schools to see how they're formatting alumni because I'm trying to work on the RIT alumni list. --Dan Leveille^TALK 21:54, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

half life

I love how Gordon Freeman is on here —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.230.72.241 (talk) 14:26, 24 March 2008 (UTC) And I love how I'm taking it down andyzweb (talk) 22:54, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

7 PHDs

I seem to remember reading an article in the late 1980s or early 1990s about a (Chinese?) immigrant who earned 7 PHDs from MIT in 7 years, or something ridiculously extraordinary like that. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Ikilled007 (talk) 12:35, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Major reorganization needed

This article needs to be restructured to make it more readable and usable. Currently, it is organized into mutually-exclusive career categories. Unfortunately (or fortunately) many MIT alums have diverse interests, careers, and accomplishments, and don't fit neatly into a single professional category. Also, it is difficult to search or browse what effectively is a large database of notable alumni.

The existing Wikitables offer a taste of what is possible. Besides offering a template for input of standardized info (Name, Degree(s), Degree Year(s), Notability, Notes), the most important feature is the option of sorting by column. This allows sorting and searching by field of study, by year, etc., an exercise which can reveal interesting and surprising patterns and trends.

To extend the usefulness of the Wikitables, I suggest adding columns for "Field(s) of Interest", "Prize(s) Awarded", and "Position(s) Held" making them searchable and sortable. To facilitate searchability and sortability, should we split Name into Surname and First Name, and Degree into Degree Level and Degree Field?

There is a danger of making the table too wide, and therefore awkward to use. For example, I would omit Date of Birth and Date of Death, since both can be obtained by clicking on the link to a biographical article. We should think about which attributes are of most interest to readers, and which are most useful or interesting to compare.

By the way, the MIT Alumni Association defines eligibility for membership as follows:

The following persons are Alumni/ae Members of the Association:

All persons who have received a degree from the Institute; and All persons who have been registered as students in a degree-granting program at the Institute for (i) at least one full term in any undergraduate class which has already graduated; or (ii) for at least two full terms as graduate students.

I suggest adopting the above criteria for this article. For example, although Steve Russell had a long-standing association with MIT and is a notable person, he is not an MIT alumnus; neither are many other notable MIT people, such as Charles Vest, former President of MIT. By contrast, MIT dropout Henry Kloss certainly is a notable MIT alumnus. Perhaps, there ought to be a separate article for notable MIT affiliates who are not alumni, but that's a different topic

In addition to the existing separate Wikitables for Nobel Prize awardees and Astronaut alumni, it might be useful to add tables for MacArthur Fellows and possibly Turing Award, Pritzker Architecture Prize, and other professional prize winners. Or perhaps an improved main alumni listing table might render the supplemental tables superfluous?

A major disadvantage of Wikitables is that they can be a pain to edit and update (Help:Table). But editors should remember to put Readers First (WP:RF). Perhaps somebody can suggest a template or other technique to ease the editorial work.

As a side note, we should adopt the Wikipedia style recommendations (MOS:ABBR) regarding abbreviation of academic degree designations (e.g. MBA, not M.B.A.; MArch, not M.Arch.; PhD, not Ph.D.) and academic departments (e.g. EECS, not E.E.C.S.). See also WP:CREDENTIAL and WP:UBX/EDUCATION for more details.

Last but not least, we should look at how other Wikipedia alumni lists are organized, to glean for good ideas. I will do this when I have time. Any pointers to particularly good examples of alumni listings? Reify-tech (talk) 17:49, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

References

Fictional Characters

Please don't add fictional characters from Half Life (or anywhere else) to this article. A more appropriate place for MIT-related fictional characters is MIT in popular culture.Reify-tech (talk) 13:10, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposed note to editors

Various names are being added to the list without supporting evidence, including possible vanity and joke additions. To improve article quality and make it easier for other editors to verify notability, I propose adding the following text (or something like it) near the beginning of the article, as an editors-only visible set of standards for new additions:

<!-- If you are ADDING any names to this listing of MIT alumni, they must be NOTABLE --> <!-- A Wikilink to an accepted Wikipedia biographical article is sufficient (and preferable), or a footnoted list of third-party refereed publications, patents, and other recognized works --> <!-- To establish an MIT alumnus/alumna relationship, please list the degree(s) earned or years of attendance if no degree was awarded --> <!-- Existing entries will gradually be audited against the MIT Alumni Association database (Infinite Connection) or other sources, for earlier alums --> <!-- NEW entries must be documented, or they may be removed immediately --> <!-- Also, please use the official MIT abbreviations SB, SM, MEng, PhD, etc. without periods, in accordance with [[MoS#Abbreviations]] -->

None of this text will be visible to readers of the article itself; only Wikipedia editors about to modify the "source code" for the article will see the above text. Any comments or suggestions? Reify-tech (talk) 02:41, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Hearing no objections, I have decided to Be Bold, and have added the proposed notes near the beginning of the article. I hope this will make it easier for editors to verify new entries in the future. Reify-tech (talk) 21:42, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Why is Lynn Conway not here?

She was an MIT student, she dropped out, though http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Retrospective1.html <-- proof — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.162.36.154 (talk) 04:07, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

External links modified

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Removed Paul J. Schlise

I have removed Paul J. Schlise, because multiple searches of the MIT Infinite Connection alumni website show no connection. He might have taken a course or two at MIT, but it appears he is not qualified to be listed as an alumnus. Reify-tech (talk) 17:11, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Multiple entries for Katie Bouman

There's one under Business and entrepreneurship, and two under Science and technology. I get that there could be one entry in each category, but shouldn't we merge the two entries in Science and technology? ThunderRedStar (talk) 01:48, 1 November 2022 (UTC)