Talk:University of Georgia College of Engineering

Copyright problem removed

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://www.engr.uga.edu/history/our-story/. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)

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Conflict of interest

At least one major contributor to this article appears to have a close personal or professional connection to the topic, and thus to have a conflict of interest. Conflict-of-interest editors are strongly discouraged from editing the article directly, but are always welcome to propose changes on the talk page (i.e., here). You can attract the attention of other editors by putting {{request edit}} (exactly so, with the curly parentheses) at the beginning of your request, or by clicking the link on the lowest yellow notice above. Requests that are not supported by independent reliable sources are unlikely to be accepted.

Please also note that our Terms of Use state that "you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation." An editor who contributes as part of his or her paid employment is required to disclose that fact. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:13, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Request edit on 7 May 2018

Hello. My name is Mike Wooten and I'm the communications director for the University of Georgia College of Engineering. Recently, I stumbled across a Wikipedia page created for the College some time ago that included very little information. I tried to update the page, not realizing that I was violating your standards by doing so. All of the information I provided was factual, primarily a listing of schools within the college, degrees offered, enrollment figures, etc. When possible, I provided a source for verification. Additionally, I included a brief history of the college based on the work of former University of Georgia history professor Shane Hamilton, who worked with the college to research its history. This section was copied from a website operated by the College of Engineering but it was flagged as violating copyright standards (although it was produced expressly for the College of Engineering and is not published anywhere else.)

Being new to editing Wikipedia pages, I am a little flustered by some of the flags placed on the page. I'm not sure why, for example, the alerts now appearing at the top of the page are necessary.

These alerts do not appear on the University of Alabama College of Engineering page, for example:

Why would the University of Alabama College of Engineering meet Wikipedia "notability guidelines" while the University of Georgia College of Engineering does not?

As another example, the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science () primarily relies on internal source attribution for its history section and other information. I fail to see the difference in what I was trying to accomplish.

If someone can provide detailed guidance on how to best improve our page, I will be more than happy to submit the information here using the "request edit" tag. I look forward to your response. Thank you.

Mwooten86 (talk) 13:29, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

References

Reply 24-MAY-2018

Looking at the posts above the edit request, the editor who placed the templates noted what needed to be done. It looks like you would need to make a disclosure here on the talk page (the particulars are in the post above under the 'Conflict of interest' heading) and the references provided with your request would need to be from independent reliable sources. Maybe Justlettersandnumbers can add to this, anything additional they feel is needed to fix the templates that hasn't been mentioned? Thanks! .spintendo  15:11, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

In response to your question about how the two other engineering school articles are treated differently, there are a couple of differences I've noticed between them which might explain why.

1. One of those articles, University of Alabama College of Engineering is classified as a separate article, but because of its bare-bones nature, it functions essentially like LISTS do, which are types of articles with minimal referencing requirements. Because the information found in lists in generally Wiki-linked elsewhere, there is reduced reason to have references on the page of the list. As you can see, the information provided in the Alabama article does indeed link elsewhere, to articles which are not related to the school. It's my belief that the minimal amount of information placed in it, coupled with the fact that the information that is placed there is wiki-linked to non-school related articles, is one of the reasons why that article does not have maintenance templates such as yours.
2. The other article you mentioned, University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science, does have a bit more than just a list. However, that particular school was founded in 1836, thus the information available for it to display is more established and therefore more notable than your college, which opened in 2012. Indeed, the other college I mentioned in the first point is just as old, with 1837 and 1909 being listed as its dates of first instruction. Despite being just as old, that college has minimal information about it on that page, thus no maintenance templates.

I hope this helps to answer your question, perhaps other editors could add to my explanation if there is anything I've missed. .spintendo  17:44, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Spintendo – I'm not sure that there's anything very useful I can add to what you've said here. Mwooten86, the idea that someone can with impunity post copyright material published by his/her employer is a fairly common one. That is not allowed here. We have a mechanism for releasing content under a suitable licence – see the "donating copyrighted materials" link in the first section above. However, I might as well say right away that content released in that way is only very rarely used in Wikipedia – the purpose of an institutional or corporate website is to promote, whereas the purpose of Wikipedia is to inform, and text written for one purpose is hardly ever suitable for the other.

If there are errors or omissions of verifiable fact in the page you are always welcome to request changes here on this page – I placed the "Conflict of interest" section above to tell you how to go about that. The article, such as it is, is based almost entirely on the website of the school. Wikipedia content, on the other hand, is built on independent reliable sources, so the affiliated sources need to be removed and independent sources added to replace them. Until there is a sufficient number of independent sources with substantial in-depth coverage of the school, its notability is not established. What has happened in other articles does not affect what needs to happen to this one. This encyclopaedia is a very ambitious work-in-progress, and we have to accept that it is, and will continue to be, imperfect in parts; those imperfections are never a justification for allowing similar imperfections in other parts of the project. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:13, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Further to the above, I should clarify that by "notability" I really mean "notability independent of the University of Georgia"; if this is just a department of that university then a case could be made for merging any sourced content here into that page. I note, for example, that Peterson's, which I believe to be at least moderately reliable and independent as a source, does not list this college as a separate entity. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:00, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

UGA College of Engineering

Thank you for your thorough responses. While I understand Wikipedia's position, I don't completely agree. Particularly in reference to the University of Alabama College of Engineering page, where the primary difference appears to be the fact that it was founded as a college earlier. The history entry for the UGA College of Engineering (deleted earlier for copyright violations) demonstrated that engineering has been taught at UGA since the early 1800's and outlined the unique history of the discipline at UGA (its early growth, its consolidation with the Georgia Institute of Technology during the Great Depression, and its "rebirth" and exponential growth since its re-establishment as a college). Furthermore, several engineering faculty members were instrumental in the growth of the University of Georgia as a whole as well as railroads and highways across the southern U.S. In any event, I am not challenging your decisions but I would request that the page be returned to its state prior to my attempted edits and that the page flags be removed. Barring this possibility, could I request that the page be removed from Wikipedia? Thank you for your consideration. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mwooten86 (talk • contribs) 17:39, 29 May 2018 (UTC)