Talk:Medical University of South Carolina

January 2023 edit warring

hennsonsc has begun an edit war to add or change information in this article. This includes:

• Adding the chair of the board of trustees and the university's street address in the infobox. This information is trivial and unnecessary; this is an encyclopedia article, not a school directory or university webpage.
• Changing the lede to describe this institution as a "research university". This institution is [https://carnegieclassifications.acenet.edu/lookup/view_institution.php?unit_id=218335 classified as a "Special Focus Four-Year: Research Institution" in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, the standard classifier of U.S. colleges and universities among both scholars and Wikipedia editors. If this were a research university, it would be classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" or "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity."

@Hennsonsc:, please revert these edits unless a new consensus is established. You cannot simply revert your new, preferred edits into an article over the objections of other editors. Bold, revert, discuss is the typical way to address disagreements; inserting additional reversions of your own while the issues are being discussed or in lieu of discussion is edit warring which is not acceptable. ElKevbo (talk) 19:37, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

The recommended infobox template for a university is Infobox University, which references the following in it's documentation:

• Chair should be used to identify the chair of the institution. I'm not sure why utilizing the recommended infobox would be trivial or unnecessary.
• Address is relevant as Google pulls information to their knowledge panels based off the correct information being present on Wikipedia. We don't have the address listed, so this page isn't matching with the MUSC knowledge panel.
• Carnegie deems the Medical University of South Carolina a research institution, in the same fashion as it does University of California, San Francisco. I've noticed you edited that page, but did not remove research university from their infobox, but insist on removing it from MUSC. Can you clarify what your designation is as it doesn't seem to be standard across your applications in alignment with Carnegie?

hennsonsc (talk) 20:14, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

We are not required or obligated to use every parameter in the infobox. Please tell us why readers must know the name of the institution's "chair" (as distinct from its president and senior academic officer).

We're not responsible for what Google foolishly chooses to do and not do; if they want an institution's street address, it would be much easier to pull it from IPEDS. This is an encyclopedia article, not a directory or phone book entry. (An older version of the template or a commonly used set of text for adding it to an article specifically noted that the "address" parameter was controversial; I don't know what that was removed as it remains true...)

Good catch with UCSF! I've edited the infobox and lede of that article to reflect that institution's classification. ElKevbo (talk) 00:48, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

One could just as easily argue why one would need to know the president or provost as well. It depends on the perspective of the seeker of the information as to why they would need to know either.

I never said we were responsible for what Google "foolishly" chose to do. If Wikipedia shouldn't have addresses, Wikipedia shouldn't have any page with an address available. Additionally, it shouldn't provide geolocations either. However, you and I both know it has been a longstanding practice. I'm not sure why you expect someone to justify why an address for an organization shouldn't be presented, but you act with authority as if you don't have to justify removing it. What purpose does not presenting it serve to anyone? If you personally don't find it relevant but it is relevant to the subject, why are you removing it?

You’re in academia. Why do you deem research institutions not research? It’s truly the core at what research institutes do.

hennsonsc (talk) 01:37, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

If you opened a discussion at WT:UNI or Template talk:Infobox university recommending that the provost parameter be removed, I would support that motion. But the high visibility of college and university presidents makes it highly unlikely that a proposal to omit that person from this article's infobox or nearly any other would be unlikely to succeed. In any case, you still haven't answered the fundamental question that I've asked several times already: Why is it essential for readers to immediately know this information?

As far as I can tell, the address parameter is very rarely used for US colleges and universities. It seems to primarily be used in the rare circumstances where the institution only occupies a single address but I don't know if it's used even in all of those instances. We tend to avoid directory-like information in Wikipedia articles with the general view that it's not information appropriate for an encyclopedia article.

In my experience both in (US) academia and Wikipedia, the phrase "research institute" or "research institution" is not often used especially when something more specific is available. In this case, "medical school" is completely appropriate as many (most? all?) medical schools do indeed conduct research. If this specific organization conducts an unusually high amount of research or is otherwise notable for its research, that should be discussed in the article with perhaps a brief summary included in the lede if appropriate and helpful for readers. ElKevbo (talk) 04:20, 2 January 2023 (UTC)