Talk:The Harvard Crimson

RfC on categories

CONSENSUS FOR B:

There is a clear consensus that:

• For purposes of Wikipedia categorization of persons who were editors or members of these publications, this and related page topics should be named as:

• B. "Harvard Advocate alumni"; "Harvard Crimson alumni"; "Harvard Lampoon alumni"?

Summary of arguments:

Supporters of A preferred using "people" to be consistent with other newspaper categories such as Category:Los Angeles Times people, Category:The Washington Post people, and Category:The Denver Post people.

Supporters of B countered that inconsistency would result regardless of which name was used:

1. If Category:The Harvard Advocate people were used, there would be inconsistency with the parent category Category:Harvard University alumni.
2. If Category:Harvard Advocate alumni were used, there would be inconsistency with other newspapers' categories.

Supporters of B said that since inconsistency is inevitable, it is preferable to be consistent with the closest categories in the category tree.

To counter the point that "alumni" would be inconsistent with other newspapers' categories, they distinguished the Harvard publications from the other publications mentioned by noting that the Harvard publications are student publications. Supporters of B noted that all editors or members of The Harvard Advocate, The Harvard Crimson, and The Harvard Lampoon are alumni of the university.

Both positions A and B are defensible but there is a clear community support for B.

Implementation of the close:

SMcCandlish noted that categories renames happen at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion (CfD), so an RfC on this talk page may be the wrong forum. There are several options available to implement this close. One option is to just immediately rename the categories per this RfC. Another option is to start a CfD to go through the formal process.

Which option to choose is up to the RfC participants. I cannot counsel which is the better approach.

Cunard (talk) 01:48, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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For purposes of Wikipedia categorization of persons who were editors or members of these publications, should this and related page topics be named as:

A. "The Harvard Advocate people"; "The Harvard Crimson people"; "The Harvard Lampoon people"

or

B. "Harvard Advocate alumni"; "Harvard Crimson alumni"; "Harvard Lampoon alumni"?

I explain the background leading to this RfC below, in the Discussion section. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:09, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Survey

• B. Frankly, this is a no-brainer: the options in A, although the status quo for these categories, sound downright silly. Although the publication names begin with "The", we don't need to say "The" all the time. We would not say: "James Reston was a The New York Times columnist." And 100% of the persons in the three categories are Harvard (or Radcliffe) alumni, which is more precise than just saying "people". (Per [1], [2], [3], and [4], the word "alumni" can be applied to persons who were previously members of organizations, and not just of the educational institution itself.) And renaming the categories this way would make them consistent with all the other members of their parent category – Category:Harvard University alumni – where we already have, for example, Category:Hasty Pudding alumni. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:09, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
• B I am one of a the people who agree completely with Tryptofish's arguments. EEng 02:35, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

And I am one of a the people who thank you. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:01, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

• B - Per Tryptofish's arguments. I see no compelling reason to add "The" to the beginning. Meatsgains (talk) 03:44, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
• B The the is not required. Brevity is to be praised. This Sparta. (Summoned by bot) L3X1 Become a New Page Patroller! (distænt write) 15:03, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
• B Invited by the bot. North8000 (talk) 13:01, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
• C, "staff". These publication are not educational institutions, so no one is an alumnus of any of them. It's true that "people" makes little sense here. In regular prose, use whatever makes the most sense in the specific context, e.g. "former staff members of the Harvard Lampoon", "was an editor of The Harvard Crimson from 2001 to 2003", "While attending Harvard University, she was a student journalist for The Harvard Advocate", etc.. PS: This is the wrong venue; category renames are done at WP:CFD. If a CfD recently closed with no consensus, it can sometimes lead to calls of WP:FORUMSHOP if you rapidly re-open essentially the same discussion on another page. Waiting a few months is typical.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:10, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Two things: "Staff" is generally understood to be paid employees, not student members (and I have already explained the usage of the word "alumni"). Second, I strongly resent what you said about forum shopping. That's offensive, and nonsense. It would be forum shopping if I wanted to change one outcome to another. Here, I am trying to get from no outcome to a consensus outcome. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:58, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough on "staff". On FS, I'm not making any accusation, I'm warning that perception sometimes bends that way, having learned this the hard way. Re-raising issues after some time has passed seems to work better.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:30, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

• Because the B supporters above make sense (and A creates an awkward syntax). Randy Kryn (talk) 14:42, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
• B per Randy Kryn. (Summoned by bot) Chris Troutman (talk) 04:37, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
• A (summoned by bot) as SMcCandlish noted, these are not educational institutions so no one can be an alumnus of The Harvard Crimson, etc. That said, I prefer "people" to "staff" as a non-scientific, non-representative, random survey of categories I just undertook seems to find that that's the typical syntax for newspaper staff already in-use (e.g. The Denver Post people, The Washington Post people, The Seattle Times people, etc.). While I agree that is not ideal, it's even less ideal to have non-standardized syntax and the categories used by Harvard publications should mirror those of other publications; Harvard doesn't need to break the mold on this. Chetsford (talk) 04:35, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

  I can buy that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:30, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

  Are both of you also endorsing the use of "The" in option A? I also want to point out, as I already said above, that per [5], [6], [7], and [8], it most certainly is correct to use the word "alumni" in this situation. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:20, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Only speaking for myself, I am. I do note the definitions of alumni you provided. However, I'd still prefer we stick with "people". I have yet to see a compelling argument why The Harvard Crimson needs a special and unique syntax different from that used for all other newspapers on WP (e.g. "The Los Angeles Times people", "The Washington Post people", "The Denver Post people", etc. Chetsford (talk) 16:50, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification! I'm going to comment on the positives and negatives of that in the discussion section below. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:26, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

I've opened this RfC following a "no-consensus" discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 December 30#Harvard student publications, in order to get participation by more editors than would be found at a relisted CfD discussion. The existing categories are Category:The Harvard Advocate people, Category:The Harvard Crimson people, and Category:Harvard Lampoon people. (About the absence of "The" in the Lampoon category, our page and the publication name are actually The Harvard Lampoon, so the existing category names are not consistent.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:09, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

In the survey section, editors are discussing the relative merits of "people" versus "alumni", in the particular context of consistent naming of categories. Although I personally favor "alumni", I want to point out some things about the category tree. It's true that a large majority of categories about persons who work or have worked on periodicals use "people" in the category name: Category:Los Angeles Times people, Category:Playboy people, and on and on. The latter has the subcategory Category:Playboy Playmates, something that I hope has no counterpart here! So "people" makes some sense for Playboy, because not everyone was an editor-type. None of those categories, however, are about student publications. But there's another side of this coin. The primary parent category of the categories we are discussing here is Category:Harvard University alumni. And that is proper: all members of the three categories here are indeed alumni of that university. And every other category within that parent category is named with "alumni". Every one: these three are currently the only exceptions. So we have a kind of lose-lose situation here: no matter whether we go with "people" or "alumni", we are going to be at odds with the names of some other categories. Thus, "people" should not be regarded as the sole way to get consistent naming. I can see arguments either way, but my preference is to go with the closest categories within the category tree: alumni. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:44, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

"The" vs "Not The"

Our current article Harvard Crimson (sans "the" in the title) is about Harvard's intercollegiate athletic teams while The Harvard Crimson is about the newspaper. Ergo, if we drop "The" aren't we implicating that the categorized individuals are alumnae of Harvard's tennis or lacrosse teams, and not its student newspaper? Chetsford (talk) 18:53, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

In my experience, athletes describe themselves as alumni of the specific teams/sports they were on, rather than of the athletic program as a whole, and nobody at Harvard regards "the" as the way to distinguish between sports and the newspaper. It's more an artifact of Wikipedia's naming conventions: they can't both be "the" and they can't both be without "the", without needing further disambiguation. And ironically, the correct name of the Lampoon is The Harvard Lampoon, with "the", but the category is Category:Harvard Lampoon people, without. In any case, "The Harvard Crimson people", as a phrase, sounds jarringly like "the American people", where "American" is not a magazine name, or "the little green people" for that matter. I think that there is a trend in the survey section so far, of editors not liking "the". --Tryptofish (talk) 19:03, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

"nobody at Harvard regards "the" as the way to distinguish between sports and the newspaper" - I'm guessing the audience for these articles may not be limited to people at Harvard? Chetsford (talk) 20:01, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm facepalming myself for wording it that way. Well, more to the point, I'm pretty sure that our readers do not come here thinking about "the" either. If one were to ask anyone from the general public: "what is the difference between Harvard Crimson and The Harvard Crimson?" I'm pretty sure the reaction would be incredulity. Consequently, I don't think we would be helping any readers doing it that way. On the other hand, I can easily see readers wondering: "what are the Harvard Crimson people? Are there also Harvard chartreuse people?" --Tryptofish (talk) 20:16, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

CfD notification

There is a discussion that has bearing on these categories at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 January 2#Bunch of journal/magazine people categories. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:00, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Run entirely by undergraduates in lede misleading

The statement in the lede that it is run entirely by undergraduates is misleading (not to mention basically unbelieveable, which is why I kept reading), especially considering later the article states that there are several non-student employees. And don't try and play some linguistic gymnastics with "run" to justify this....

2001:569:BCD5:8600:18F4:5683:B74D:599C (talk) 08:00, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Ownership and finance

I am missing a paragraph on ownership & financing. How is it payed for? Is there professional staff? DePiep (talk) 19:16, 10 April 2023 (UTC)