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Template-protected edit request on 7 August 2016

Change the academic_affiliation = to academic_affiliations =. Often times, universities have multiple affiliations (see University of Minnesota as an example), not just one.

Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 00:45, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

@Corkythehornetfan: What do you propose for |affiliation= and |religious_affiliation=? — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 03:03, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

The effective diff you request is probably Special:Diff/726471878/733337754. (Note that |affiliations= is already alias to sports affiliations) — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 03:19, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

@Andy M. Wang: Thanks. |affiliation= can already be displayed as "affiliation" or "|affiliations=" (see University of Notre Dame). As for the religion one, I can't think of any that are affiliated with two religions so I think that on is O.K. If there are, then we could make this change to that field as well. Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 04:36, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

This wouldn't be a change of |academic_affiliation= to |academic_affiliations=, but rather the parsing of the latter as well, and pluralizing the visible label when it is used. The code for this can easily be adapted from the |affiliations= code, if people want that done.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:32, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: See my suggestion above. Would your approach be different? — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 03:20, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Actually, someone[s] has/have made a mess of it, now that I look at the code in detail:

| label14    = Affiliation
| data14     = {{{affiliation|}}}
...
| label55    = {{#if:{{{sporting_affiliations|}}}|{{longitem|Sporting affiliations}}|Affiliations}}
| data55     = {{#if:{{{sporting_affiliations|}}}|{{{sporting_affiliations}}}|{{{affiliations|}}}}}

This makes no sense at all; |affiliations= is being treated as a variant of |sporting_affiliations= not of |affiliation=, and there is no |sporting_affiliation=. There exist both |religious_affiliation= and |academic_affiliation=, but no plural version of either. So, this template has clearly been randomly modified in "too many cooks" fashion for too long to have much rhyme or reason any longer.

What I would do is give each of these things both a singular and plural form, keep them together, and use a simple #if at each of them to change the displayed header to plural form if the plural parameter is given, and also add an error check to detect the use of both the singular and plural variant at the same time, in case someone somehow thinks they are not mutually exclusive. The |sporting_affiliations= parameter was clearly tacked on later, and is documented out of order with the other parameters, but it makes sense to have this specific parameter. What affiliations could need to be documented in the infobox that are not one of academic, sporting, or religious? If we are certain there are some, then it should be |other_affiliation= and |other_affiliations=, with |affiliation= and |affiliations= as aliases of these, and those short versions deprecated (as ambiguous) by simply no longer listing them in the documentation. It's just confusing to have an |affiliation= and |affiliations= parameter pair at all when there are other parameters for specific affiliation types. Over time, any |affiliation= that really should be classified as academic, sporting, or religious (which is probably all of them) would be migrated to one of the more specific parameters. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:35, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
PS: Oh, and I'm fine with not having a plural |religious_affiliations= per above observation that the case would be unlikely to arise.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:41, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

There are 11k articles using |affiliations, unless I've fubared the regex. --Izno (talk) 12:16, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Yeah I noticed the param conflict as well. The conflict happened with Special:Diff/641113720. The cleanest mitigation is probably making new tracking categories for the params and using a bot to update the 11K (?) instances, and updating the param aliasing. This is a long-term task beyond the scope of this edit request. In the meantime, I answered the immediate param alias request which shouldn't be controversial. I may personally get to resolving the param naming issue if I have time and get to it. Ping if there are any issues, thanks — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 14:42, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Income parameter

Could we change the "budget" parameter to both "income" and "expenditure"? Absolutelypuremilk (talk) 20:13, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Proposed addition: Hymn.

I propose that hymn be added as a parameter. If there is to be a link to "Hymn" on the left side, it should be to School song.Naraht (talk)

This seems like the sort of parameter that is unlikely to be widely used. I don't think most schools have hymns. If you want to add it for a particular school, just use |free_label. Esrever ^(klaT) 21:38, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm in the process of working through the pages that use Infobox University and between Hymn, song and school song (and the ones that I removed before I decided there are just a *lot* of them), there are at least three dozen (so more than zipcode, for example).Naraht (talk) 13:23, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

"Hymn", "song", and "school song" are all different things, so why would you separate out hymn for inclusion? I also don't think zipcode should be a parameter, but it's included as part of the address-related fields (which were argued about extensively above). Esrever ^(klaT) 14:37, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

How do you feel they are different? (and I just picked zipcode as being one the least used one at https://tools.wmflabs.org/bambots/TemplateParam.php?wiki=enwiki&template=Infobox+university) and I know about the free and free_label.Naraht (talk) 16:28, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

"Hymn" has a religious connotation. Esrever ^(klaT) 16:42, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Granted. School Song or simply song would be more general.Naraht (talk) 19:59, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Proposed Field Addition: Vice-provost

I have just noticed that a university in Toronto has this office. Is it reasonable to allow for it? SewerCat (talk) 18:39, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

@SewerCat: The vice provost is the same as the assistant provost. They are not the actual provost (vice president) of that institution. Stanford University also uses the Vice Provost title for their assistant provost. What's the university's name? I'd like to take a look just to make sure it is the same for the institution as others. For this infobox, we should only include the Vice Presidents in the infobox, which can be too much of a clutter sometimes IMO. With that, I'd oppose this addition. Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 19:27, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

It's University of Guelph-Humber. I can understand the need to avoid clutter. However, I don't think it's for us to misrepresent these institutions. And then, there's a remedy which now occurs to me! The school infobox has a principal field plus a principal1, a principal2, and so on. It also has accompanying principal1_note, principal2_note, etc (or some such names) so that these fields can be labelled differently. This approach would accommodate differently named offices in a university. SewerCat (talk) 19:37, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

I am opposed to including even Vice Presidents in the infobox. I draw the line at the most senior administrator (e.g., president, chancellor, vice chancellor) and perhaps the chief academic officer (e.g., provost). Anything else is unnecessary in the infobox. ElKevbo (talk) 19:49, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

I usually (at least here lately) just include the president and provost, those two are the most important. As for the University of Guelph-Humber article, SewerCat, is this a regional campus between the two higher education schools? If so, it looks like the Vice-Provost is the head of the campus and therefore you would just need to insert the following into the infobox:

|head_label = Vice-Provost

|head = John Walsh

Hope that helps! Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 01:44, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

@Corkythehornetfan: Very helpful indeed. Thank you! SewerCat (talk) 17:09, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Quick question about syntax

I am creating a new template and would like the template's documentation to not have the "edit source" button next to each section when the documentation is transcluded to the template page, just as Infobox university's documentation when transcluded onto the template page does not have those buttons. Does anyone know how I can make this happen? Ergo Sum 17:34, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Solved. Ergo Sum 17:17, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Adding 9 custom free-data fields at top/middle/bottom

Because users want to show more major special custom data, I am adding 9 more custom free-data parameters for the upper, middle and bottom of the infobox. When similar custom label/data pairs have been added into other infoboxes, a common problem has been bunching all extra labels together in awkward areas, and so instead the custom fields here are split into 3 groups, at top, middle and bottom:

• top_free_label, top_free (after Motto)
• top_free_label1, top_free1
• top_free_label2, top_free2
• free_label1, free1 (after "free=")
• free_label2, free2 (3rd middle custom)
• sports_free_label, sports_free (above: website)
• sports_free_label1, sports_free1
• sports_free_label2, sports_free2
• sports_free_label3, sports_free3 (4th bottom custom)

Along with the prior lone "free_label=" at "free=" there will be a total of 10 custom label/data pairs for other mottos, game yell slogans, fight songs, other affiliations, or satellite campuses, etc. Also, any of those 10 custom lines could contain short notes to clarify unusual data, or link more footnotes. By limiting the extra fields to just 10, then the intent is to allow more major list items, but not encourage further wp:data hoarding, such as dozens of related events, or scores of notable people, where extra detailed text instead should be outside the infobox or in related pages. Are there any other issues about adding these custom data lines into the infobox? -Wikid77 (talk) 08:39/08:47, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@Wikid77: Haven't had the opportunity of exercising this yet; it looks very helpul. SewerCat (talk) 14:49, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

• DONE. After no objections for 2 weeks, I have updated this Template:Infobox_university (and /doc page for TemplateData) to implement those 9 new custom free parameters, as noted above. If any problems, I can revert the update and try again later. Thanks. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:18, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Error in documentation

It currently just says "{{Infobox" under blank syntax. This needs correcting to "{{Infobox university". Gaia Octavia Agrippa ^Talk 23:32, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

(I changed the title of this section and added the "Edit fully-protected" template to get an administrator's attention. ElKevbo (talk) 14:33, 17 August 2017 (UTC))

Not done: {{edit template-protected}} is usually not required for edits to the documentation, categories, or interlanguage links of templates using a documentation subpage. Use the 'edit' link at the top of the green "Template documentation" box to edit the documentation subpage. — JJMC89 (T·C) 18:32, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

• Comment – My apologizes. I apparently removed it by accident when I made some edits a couple of months ago. It's been re-added. Corkythehornetfan (ping me) 19:07, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Request for Comment (RFC)

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.

---

Should there be a fixed image size for logos on university infoboxes? If so, what would the ideal image size be? Eden5 (talk) 03:10, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

• Support a fixed image size for logos to avert petty edit warring on university articles. I think 175px would be an "ideal" image size since it is, in my opinion, neither ginormous (as 200px) nor puny (as 150px, [1], [2]). I know this is a fairly trivial topic to discuss, but it's disruptive AND annoying when users edit war over this all the time. There is no consensus for an appropriate logo size, but I think there ought to be. Eden5 (talk) 03:10, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

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.

Request to add high use tag

It would be nice to add the high-use tag even though editing is locked

so editors could readily see why the template is locked for editing. Blainster (talk) 22:06, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Country flags

I would like to add this in front of the "country" parameter:

< ! - - { {Flagright | Country name here! } } - - >

It looks nice to have the country flag in every university infobox.Brainist (talk) 14:24, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Unlikely, I'm afraid - Wikipedia's Manual of Style specifically says not to do this. See WP:INFOBOXFLAG TSP (talk) 14:43, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 14 November 2017

Please undo the recent change of default size for the image to postage-stamp size, and set it back to what it was before, user thumbnail preference. Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:44, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Pinging Corkythehornetfan whose change that was. Cabayi (talk) 12:35, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

I changed it simply because a majority of the universities using this infobox have a logo in this field and we have at least one user (RaphaelQS) who thought that we were "branding for the university" with the default size at 200px and has been changing it to 150px. There were a couple of more who agreed with RaphaelQS and I got tired of fighting them so I changed the default to 150px. Furthermore, there was "no consensus" that I could find so I went ahead and made the bold edit. This is why we have the |image_size= field. I won't change it back, but if others feel differently, then they can go ahead and revert it, but I expect a discussion on it by the person who reverts it or Justlettersandnumbers. Corky ^{Buzz by the Hornet's Nest} 18:02, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

I reverted the change. if you want to scale down the image, you should use |image_upright= and not a fixed pixel value. Frietjes (talk) 20:31, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Listing multiple cities

Where do you list the cities, when a university has branches in multiple cities and in different states and/or countries, those sites sometimes not being campuses as well? According to this listing (external link) there are over 300 of what they call 'branch campuses'. That list doesn't include branches that are in different cities within one country. I'd think there are many more of those. And, like I said, often branches are not campuses, but just the university education and/or research buildings. Each country their own culture, right? So, perhaps it would be appropriate for the infobox to add branches, as well as main site? Is there anyone who can do this? --OSeveno (talk) 10:33, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

University of Illinois system uses a list in |location=. Frietjes (talk) 14:19, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Should there be a parameter for academic term (semester, trimester, quarter, block, etc)?

Should there be a parameter for academic term (semester, trimester, quarter, block, etc)? I think academic term, academic calendar, or academic year should be included. --50.64.2.22 (talk) 05:00, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Chairman link

Can we fix the link in the parameters of Chair (official) to Chairman?--Tærkast (Discuss) 20:48, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Is this an appropriate parameter for this template at all? ElKevbo (talk) 22:35, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:42, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 22 January 2018

Can a predecessor parameter with the option to change this to predecessors please be added to this template. A consensus shouldn't really be required for this as there are universities around the world that were established from a merger of two or more predecessor universities. The parameter is optional and would only be used for those applicable. It would be ideal to situate this just after type and before established (similar to Infobox company). Can this be done? Steven (Editor) (talk) 15:29, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Not done for now: @Steven (Editor): While the edit in question may prove to be uncontroversial, it nonetheless requires consensus. Once a few days have elapsed, you are welcome to reopen this request. In the meantime, you can request comments by posting RfCs at the relevant wikiprojects. Also, in order to clarify what request you want executed, can you please make the edit in this template's sandbox? If you need some help with the technical implementation, I can point you in the right direction. Ergo Sum 17:30, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Approved by and Accredited by

I think the two tabs is missing.

• Approved by(&ID) - Authority which gives approval for institution (Government Authority) with ID.
• Accredited by(&courses) - Courses accredited by Authorities.

This tabs if added after or before Affiliated tab will helful in Categorisation. -jinoytommanjaly (talk) 18:15, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Why does this need to be included in the infobox (instead of the article's body)? How would it handle accreditations that are currently suspended or threatened in some way (e.g., probation, "on notice")? And why does your proposal tie courses to accreditation and not either institutions or specific degree programs? ElKevbo (talk) 23:03, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Courses in a country will be approved by a agency. For example in india it is All India Council of Technical Education. And an ID is provided to each college. If this is added to Infobox it's easy to verify the information provided in Article is true. jinoytommanjaly (talk) 14:06, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

New parameter for Acceptance Rate

Can we get a new parameter for "Acceptance rate"? Perhaps it should be specified as "Acceptance rate" but either way it's a commonly searched for statistic across most universities.

This is what I'd suggest:

• Parameter Description: Acceptance rate
• Parameter Code: acceptancerate
• Description: The acceptance rate of the university, as a percentage. E.g.,
  8.7% (Undergrad, 2018)
• Type: Line
• Status: Optional

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Chsh (talk • contribs) 17:42, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit template-protected}} template. — JJMC89 (T·C) 19:53, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Incoming president (or other people)

I've recently seen a few articles where editors inserted "<name> (incoming)" into the "President" field of this template; this was inserted alongside the incumbent so there were two names, the current officeholder and the future officeholder e.g., [3], [4]. I removed the incoming person from the template as it seems to be trying to cram too much information into this (already bloated) template. But I'm checking in here to see what others think. ElKevbo (talk) 17:38, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I favor only the incumbent be listed in the infobox. The incoming president/chancellor can/should be listed in the body of the article. Corky 23:04, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

I think this pretty clearly falls under WP:CRYSTALBALL. Though a new president may have been named, that person might, for example, get run over by a bus and not actually end up being the new president. Esrever ^(klaT) 23:34, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

What is the merit of including former names?

Can someone please explain to me why "Former names" are included in this infobox? It seems like we're trying to squeeze too much non-essential information into the infobox. This particular bit of information seems like it's much better left for the "History" section or, in some (but not all) cases, the lede. ElKevbo (talk) 05:31, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi ElKevbo. I would say it's useful to include "Former names", as links to the former names can be redirected to the present name of the institution (or whatever is the chosen name for the WP article). Generally the former names would be in the article text eg as you say in a History section-the "former names" parameter provides a place in the infobox where it can be summarized. A redirected user can then quickly see why they have been redirected to the page they're seeing, rather than have to scroll down to the History section or wherever. Ideally the "Former names" would be bolded in the article body, to ease recognition of the reason for redirection, but this is not always done. "Former names" then provides a kind of insurance, a backup, a double whammy if you will. In practice I think there are no set protocols eg Auckland University does not have it's Former name Auckland University College in the infobox, yet Princeton University and Harvard do... DadaNeem (talk) 01:57, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

And I would argue that it should be included in the opening sentence, rather than just in the History section or in the infobox at all. If someone is wondering why he or she was redirected to the Princeton article from the College of New Jersey page or whatever, that becomes most clear when the article begins with, "Princeton University (founded as College of New Jersey in 1993) is a..." Esrever ^(klaT) 13:49, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I would add that some institutions are associated with notable people or historical events under their previous names as compared with their current ones. Former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson graduated from Southwest Texas State Teachers College and, if he were to come back from the dead, would not recognize the school's current name, Texas State University. The 1966 NCAA University Division Basketball Championship Game featured a Texas Western College team who broke the tournament's color barrier by playing and winning with an all-African American starting lineup against a University of Kentucky team starting only white players. The game inspired the 2006 movie Glory Road in which the racial conflict of the era of desegregation is part of the backdrop. The school is now the University of Texas at El Paso, a name that in no way resembles the school's former moniker at that time in its history. Fortguy (talk) 06:46, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

The challenge that I see with this is that listing all of the former names in the infobox or the lede, especially the very first sentence, makes the infobox or lead sentence so long as to be unwieldy or unreadable. I can't quickly find any of the truly ridiculous examples at the moment but here are a few infoboxes that are certainly significantly lengthened by the many former names included in them: Loyola Marymount University, Louisiana Tech University, Georgia Southern University. Perhaps we can ameliorate this issue a bit by moving the former names down in the infobox so the truly important features are closer to the top and seen first? ElKevbo (talk) 15:53, 26 April 2018 (UTC)