Talk:University of Pittsburgh

Accurate to call University of Pittsburgh public state-reheated?

The University of Pressure isn't exactly a public or private university. It's hybrid. It's a state-related higher education institution of Pennsylvania so it's privately run with designated state support. Murielgh (talk) 09:16, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Lol on my own typos. Autocorrect on mobile Murielgh (talk) 09:17, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

You are, of course, 100% correct. It is inaccurate for the article to describe the University of Pittsburgh as a public university, because it is not a public university and it never has been. It is a state-related university, and that is the actual legal status of the institution. Unfortunately, that doesn't fit neatly into the binary world of some editors, thus they have forced the article to contain misleading information. CrazyPaco (talk) 18:50, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

That description conforms with sources such as the U.S. Department of Education and the American Council on Education. You're welcome to try to convince those scholars and experts to change their minds and their published documents and we'll then follow suit. ElKevbo (talk) 18:58, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

State-related is the actual legal designation. Period. That is not changed by the US Department of Education or anyone else that has only binary buckets to place universities into their database. Those entities also are not wikipedia editors so it is not anyone's responsibility to convince them of anything. It continues to be unfortunate that you prefer unnecessary standardization over accuracy. CrazyPaco (talk) 19:26, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

New Chancellor Incoming!

Joan Gabel, current president of University of Minnesota, has been announced as the 19th Chancellor of Pitt on 3 April 2023. She will begin in July 2023. Several sources: 130.49.235.177 (talk) 17:00, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Update: Joan Gabel has officially taken over as Chancellor on 17 July 2023.

73.79.165.96 (talk) 15:10, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

References

Lists of GLOs

@User:Jax MN: lists of Greek institutions are better placed on list pages, since their content relevance for an encyclopedia is marginal. Also, there is not enough reliable documentation about them. Most Wikipedia editors agree that rote listings of Greek institutions are not helpful if there is no sourcing from outside the college's or university's homepage or the fraternity's own circle. If you can prove that one or more of the Greek houses is significant, then pls do so, but for the most part, individual houses fall under WP:UNDUE. That is, they are not significant enough for an encyclopdia. Here is an example of the lists, which are more appropriate. -- Melchior2006 (talk) 20:06, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Hello Melchior. I agree that separate list pages or articles with lists are preferable. Those of us on the F&S Project simply have not yet gotten to them all. Our practice therefore has been to list the organizations that are present without significant other editorial content on the college or university article. Certainly, with perhaps 30% of collegians and alumni regularly participating in them for 100+ years, they merit a brief mention -- at least to the degree we mention the college radio station, or a set of buildings that are LEEDS-certified, or a subsection noting controversaries or protests. I believe this meets the requirement of BALANCE. To your comment on specific significant buildings, yes, we sometimes note these but they are an offshoot. Relatively few are on the historic register of their states or on the national list. The bigger picture here is that all these chapters are normally listed in solid secondary sources, including the Baird's Manual, Banta's Greek Exchange, and/or numerous published histories. I agree that it is preferable to hatnote a main article or list of the institution's fraternity system (including honor and professional organizations), as is often done for a college's athletic program. Jax MN (talk) 20:46, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

There is no rush to post information, so pls wait before publishing sub-par content. The problem with laundry lists of GLOs is that often the individual contents are inaccurate, badly-sourced, and don't stand up to closer examination. Also, the mere existence of a GLO on campus certainly does not make it notable. We have discussed these issues before and there is widespread consensus among editors about deleting laundry lists of frats and sororities. You will not find them on other university pages, but you will find good list articles which give all the information a reader could desire. -- Melchior2006 (talk) 09:35, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

I asked for a third opinion WP:3O since the discussion has come to a standstill. --Melchior2006 (talk) 06:56, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

I am providing a requested third opinion. A few observations:

• The contested information was restored without adding sourcing, which should not have been done per WP:PROVEIT, which is policy.
• WP:UNDUE has been cited in the discussion above, but without sourcing or discussion of sourcing it is unclear how the weight of viewpoints ...in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources has been assessed.
• The above two bullet points refer to policy/guideline issues. Moving to stylistic assessment, the table looks blocky to me and strikes me as too much coverage for this aspect. I see that many other university articles, when they mention Greek orgs at all, do so my stating the number of organizations on campus rather than listing out every one. That seems like a better approach here as well, and is what I suggest. VQuakr (talk) 17:14, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

An excellent point. I have added three references to support the claim that these groups are present and have been present for, in some cases, 150+ years. I also added a short introductory paragraph in the style common for other school articles, noting the number of chapters, the pioneers on the campus, and a call out noting a similar tenure for the professional, service and honor societies. A later editor or one of us on the F&S Project will certainly use these references and the campus portal listings to develop a subordinate page that may be hatlinked. At that time, our practice would be to remove the table from the main article. Jax MN (talk) 19:20, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Thx to VQuakr. Since the two bullet points are clear, I will soon remove the table with unsourced names, it should never have been restored in the first place. Also, I find it strange that Jax MN is not responding to the most important argument: "strikes me as too much coverage for this aspect." Why open the comment with "excellent point" when you ignore the main point? Seems disingenuous somehow. There seems to be consensus among editors on this, since almost no university pages on Wikipedia list GLOs in detail. And even if Jax MN did note the founding dates of very few of the GLOs, does that really make them significant? We need references from outside the GLO bubble in order to ascertain Wiki-relevance here. -- Melchior2006 (talk) 07:04, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Mel, I'm catching up on some notifications as real life intrudes. I indeed responded to your argument that there is too much coverage for GLOs, by explaining in the intro paragraph to the table the many decades of campus participation in these groups, some of which have existed for 150 years. Each of the chapters in the table are listed on the references provided. (And we haven't yet gotten to listing the various professional, honor and service chapters.) At various points, a review of yearbooks will show that Pitt (that's the nickname of the university here in the US) often had over 50% of students participating, either in the general (~social) organizations or in the honor, service or professional chapters. These groups, Greek Letter Organizations (GLOs), are far more common and popular here than you give them credit for, and I fully oppose your statement that there is consensus among editors about this.

Further, you added a paragraph about a couple of hazing incidents. While those events happened, our practice is to cite these against the specific chapter name on the list of chapters, or when notorious, to promote the item, and note it in a "Local misconduct" section of the article about the national fraternity or sorority. Candidly, I think you have a distorted view about these, as an outsider to American colleges. In fairness, these two hazing incidents are a couple of transitory events that are outliers to the experiences of some 150,000 students over the many years. Say there was a paragraph about the campus bus service, and in 2017 a student was hit by a drunk bus driver. --Would that incident merit a paragraph? Or, given the truth that thousands of students ride the busses each day, wouldn't that incident fairly be described as an outlier, and not merit inclusion in the summary? To do so would show unfair balance, and may indicate the writer is attempting to harm the general good impression of the campus bus service. This is a hypothetical, but I sense your efforts to remove the table and promote these adjudicated hazing incidents shows a bias. Your valued efforts to remove puffery is unwarranted in this case. Greeks, as we call them in our shorthand in this country, are broadly popular, and generate an enormous amount of media notification, even without seeking it. Finally, I remind you that I added several references from searchable archive sites which you may review, along with the citation of a blue-chip reference book on the subject. Every one of these chapters in the table is listed in those references. Deletion of the table is reverted. I captured one of the two hazing citations you found, and have appended it against the chapter name in the table, giving it proper weight in the article. The other was 30 years old, and is no longer current enough for this summary article. Jax MN (talk) 19:35, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

To me is seems like there is consensus that the in-prose table listing a bunch of GLOs is not warranted in this article, the subject of which is a University and not these GLOs. I suggest either removing the table or holding a RfC to get broader input. As a reminder re Each of the chapters in the table are listed on the references provided., verifiability is an insufficient standard to guarantee inclusion of given content per WP:VNOT. Regardless, @Jax MN: the table should not have been restored without consensus to do so, which you currently clearly lack. VQuakr (talk) 20:25, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

VQuakr, the table was deleted without any real consensus. I reverted. Lists of Greek chapters are prevalent features of US collegiate Wikipedia articles. These organizations are notable, broadly-popular campus features with decade-long or even century-long histories. I provided the necessary citations and an intro paragraph, responding to Melchior's concern. Removing them, without similarly removing vast troves of other content is arbitrary and shows bias. Jax MN (talk) 21:27, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Has this kind of content ever been the subject of an explicit RfC or other large discussion among a diverse group of editors? ElKevbo (talk) 21:56, 7 July 2024 (UTC)