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Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of universities in India/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was not promoted by Giants2008 22:17, 4 November 2011 [1].

List of universities in India edit

List of universities in India (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Muhandes (talk) 14:56, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured list because I think it is comprehensive list and it fulfills the other criteria (to the best of my limited knowledge as first time nominator). I also think a featured list will be a good starting point for more efforts in improving the state on articles on the higher education system in India.

The list is a comprehensive list of universities in India, along with key information (location, formation year, type and specialization). The higher education system in India is quite complicated and therefore a lot effort had to be put by several members of Wikipedia:WikiProject Education in India to reach consensus on inclusion criteria and then create such a huge comprehensive list. Lucky for us, sources for the criteria of inclusion were readily available. Not all entries have articles, but all entries have at least one inclusion source and another source for additional information about the institute. A summary table at the top helped in verifying the correctness and comprehensiveness of the list. Due to technical problems about 200 additional source (individual entries in the UGC deemed university database) had to be omitted. This is my first nomination and I hope it goes well. Best regards to all. --Muhandes (talk) 14:56, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You shouldn't start the list of the "This is a list of....", as it's WP:MOS issue.
  – HonorTheKing (talk) 22:27, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Forgot to remove that sentence. Done. --Muhandes (talk) 22:34, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from The Rambling Man (talk) 15:20, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Quick comments
  • A lead image would be nice.
  • Summary table sorting is all wrong for me. e.g. the Total row moves up and down, Autonomous col sorts four ways etc.
  • Don't use spaced hyphens, use en-dashes per WP:DASH.
  • Avoid all caps in reference titles.
  • Refs 310 to 377 seem to be missing publisher name.
  • Ditto 392 to 412.
  • Avoid overcapitalisation, e.g. "Distance Education" -> "Distance education"
  • Sortable tables need to have items that are linked linked every time because depending on how the table is sorted, the linked item may not appear first unless they're all linked.
  • You do realize we spent two days removing these links because of an overlinking claim? I will relink it, but I want to make sure I am not going to have to unlink again because another reviewer doesn't like it. --Muhandes (talk) 21:12, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, of course I didn't realise that, but it should be simple to "undo" your two days of edits relatively quickly. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:52, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm afraid I don't see how it can be undone so quickly. Nevertheless, if this is the standard way of doing things, I'll go and relink it all manually. --Muhandes (talk) 23:22, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, if you unlinked them, you can "undo" those edits via the history page. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:28, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Doesn't work after so many edits were made since then. Anyway, I'm halfway through. --Muhandes (talk) 12:33, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Done. --Muhandes (talk) 20:49, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fixed. The remaining links work well for me, I'm not sure why the tool reports them. --Muhandes (talk) 20:49, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Haven't reviewed much beyond that lot. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:27, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback, all should be done. --Muhandes (talk) 20:49, 30 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from Giants2008 (27 and counting) 16:30, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comments –
  • "State universities are run by the State government of each of the States of India". Don't see why either of the last two "States" needs capitalization, as it isn't a proper noun or part of an official name.
  • "around 170 of which receiving Central/UGC assistance." Either needs to be "are receiving" or "receive".
  • In Deemed university, you don't need a second fully spelled out version of the UGC. Once the abbreviation has been established earlier, it's fine to just use that going forward. Oh, and what is the USG?
  • "most of these which are also recognized by...". More readable version would be "most of which are also recognized by...".
  • In the Summary table, all of the Universities in the headers should be de-capitalized. Also watch for capitalization issues in some of the photo captions; I see a little over-capitalization at times.
  • Done, quite a number of them indeed--Muhandes (talk) 19:49, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Chandigarh: "In Chandigarh there are one state university and one deemed university." In this case, "are" should be "is" since these are both singular elements. There's no category with more than one university. Same goes for Mizoram and Puducherry.
  • Commas would be useful after "five private universities" in Haryana and "11 private universities" in "Himachal Pradesh". Same goes for "six state universities" in Jammu and Kashmir.
  • Jammu and Kashmir: "due to delays in the appointment of Vice-Chancellor." Could use "a" after "of".
  • More good spots for commas: After "two deemed universities" in Kerala, "23 state universities" and "15 private universities" in Uttar Pradesh, "six private universities" in Uttarakhand.
  • Madhya Pradesh: "and an addition agricultural university." "addition" → "additional"?
  • Period needed at end of Manipur intro?
  • Try to make sure the formatting of dates is consistent in the references. I see some that have dates fully spelled out, and some in the YYYY-MM-DD format. Either is acceptable, but consistency should be strived for within a list, or article for that matter.
  • I thought YYYY-MM-DD was the preferred format for archivedate so I used that, but as you say otherwise I replaced all of those with fully spelled out dates. I used AWB to verify all 676 dates now used the same format.--Muhandes (talk) 19:49, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Many references remain without publishers and access dates. I'd normally provide a full list, but there are over 600 cites here and that would be a large amount of work for me, as it would be for them to be fixed. Still, it's important to provide this type of information in references.
  • I checked all 633 referenced for access dates. For publishers, I made my best effort to make sure either the publisher is listed explicitly, or the website of the institute is listed under the work field, which is the case for most sources. Let me know if you think this is insufficient.--Muhandes (talk) 19:49, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would say that if the publisher name happens to be given in the title, it should still be listed separately in the citation. The only refs I see without listed publishers now are 96–97, 466, and 472. Not a lot when you consider how many cites there are. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 16:30, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for finding those, corrected. --Muhandes (talk) 19:43, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I see some references with elements presented as all capital letters. Even if given that way in the references themselves, they shouldn't be in that way in the article.
  • I corrected the ones I could find. Some references may look like all caps where they are in fact the names or abbreviation of the institute e.g. "About SPA", "History of TERI University". Let me know if these should also be corrected.--Muhandes (talk) 19:49, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • In cases of official names and abbreviations, it's fine to leave them the way they are. I still see a couple of INDIAs in all caps, in references 31 and 78. Scanned through the others quickly and didn't see any other occurances. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 16:30, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Found a third one, corrected all three. --Muhandes (talk) 19:43, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Giants2008 (27 and counting) 18:36, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks for the feedback, all should be done. --Muhandes (talk) 19:49, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • And again, thanks for the meticulous look at references. Should all be done. --Muhandes (talk) 19:43, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from The Rambling Man (talk) 18:27, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comments - technical issues
  • Not sure why you're using that HTML to force the positioning of the text and especially to set some to central justification while others are left in the same column. Then, the totals are all centrally justified despite what the rest of the column is like. Looks odd. Finally, why is the grand total in that odd larger text?
  • I assume the first comment is about the word "None" which was centrally justified. I completely removed the word "None" itself since in the current version of the table it seems redundant (it's an empty cell, there is no need to spell it out). The totals row was centrally aligned since this is the default for header rows. I agree it is more aesthetic to use the same alignment as the rest of the column so I forced it to the left. Having the last column centrally aligned still looks more aesthetic to me so I left it, but I'm not adamant about it, so let me know if you think it looks odd. I thought the grand total needed some emphasis, but as you find it odd I changed to normal text.--Muhandes (talk) 21:45, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tables should use row and col spans as suggested at MOS:DTT.
  • I assume you mean row and col scopes, MOS:DTT doesn't mention the word "span". I added row and col scopes.--Muhandes (talk) 21:45, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please also check that ✩ is accessible, i.e. recognised and spoken by screen-readers.
  • I have no idea how to do this. I therefore replaced it with a hash symbol. --Muhandes (talk) 21:45, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • You've used the Madras image twice.
  • Strange template at the bottom.
  • That was the {{Asia topic}} navbox tripping the post-expand include size limit. I removed it until I find out how to avoid that. --Muhandes (talk) 21:45, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Rambling Man (talk) 15:32, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Should all be addressed. Thanks again for the feedback. --Muhandes (talk) 21:45, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • Re: Tamil Nadu
    • "St. Peter's Institute of Higher Education and Research", their website (ref [513]) gives the name as "St. Peter's University"
  • Both names are correct. If you look at their banner you will see both names mentioned. As a rule, the article follows UGC lists, unless an institute has changed its name since the list was published. In this case, as the institute still uses this name, I thought it was more appropriate. If we have evidence that the name no longer applies we should change it.--Muhandes (talk) 11:27, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The reference you have used is titled "St. Peter's University", their contact us page also lists it as such; the chancellor's page says the "..Under Section 3 of the UGC, Act 1956 from 2008-09 onwards in the name and style of St.Peter's University." —SpacemanSpiff
    • I understand that this is a list of universities, but if IIT/IIM are included, then Institute of Math Sciences, IGCAR etc which fall under the DAE ought to be included as they are also authroized by UGC to award PhDs. Or at least it has to be mentioned that these kind of institutions are not included. (I'm guessing this will be the case for other states too). I found this on the UGC, which states that IMSc falls under the Homi Bhabha National Institute, I can't figure out how this works because as far as I have been able to find out IMSc is the one awarding the PhDs and not HBNI, but this would mean that mention of one or the other with a footnote is required.
  • I appreciate that you have an opinion about whether a certain institute should be listed or not. Our practice was to resolve such questions by consensus. You can see in the talk page and in the archive that we had quite a number of discussions about whether to include a specific institute or group of institutes or not, e.g. we discussed NISER, Agriculture Universities as a group, Serampore and more, and the current state of the list represents that consensus. If you think we missed a certain institute I think the right place to discuss this is the talk page. --Muhandes (talk) 11:27, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Then the inclusion/exclusion criteria has to be more clearly defined in the introduction. While talk page discussions are effective, the criteria needs to be on the main page itself and in this case given that DAE runs many such institutes, it is imperative to discuss them on the main list when other autonomous institutes are discussed. Also, as I've shown in the link above, UGC considers IMSc and IGCAR (among others) to be constituent institutes that are part of the Deemed University status of HBNI. If talk page consensus is not to include such institutes, then that needs to be explained on the main page.—SpacemanSpiff
  • Clarification:I've used DAE run institutes as an example, there are similar autonomous institutes under Ministry of Health that come to mind (possibly others too). So clarification on all these would be required, especially since some autonomous institutes are included in the listing. —SpacemanSpiff 14:31, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • To clarify the inclusion criteria issue I added two notes to the lead. First, I clarified that when the UGC grants "deemed university" status to an institute which covers other institutes in the grant, only the major institute is listed. This covers IMSc, IGCAR and many more. Second, I added a note clarifying that affiliated institutes are not listed. This covers NISER and many other institutes. For the specific case of DAE I added a section to the talk page to demonstrate how each and every DAE institute is addressed. As you can see, they are all covered by the inclusion criteria now clarified in the lead. I believe these criteria should be enough for other cases as well. --Muhandes (talk) 15:10, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am also a contributor to the article. The inclusion criteria that we adopted for autonomous institutes was its equivalence to a university. So any autonomous institute which is a constituent of another Institutes/University or is affiliated to a university/deemed university was not included in the list. Therefore IMSc, NISER were not listed and IITs, IIMs and IISERs were listed. I suppose clarification added by Muhandes to the lead will be sufficient for a reader to understand the scope. - abhi (talk) 05:55, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • "#" takes us to a separate article, it would be preferred to have a note below the table like with the † and link the note to the other article.
  • General comment: I'm a bit concerned about the scope of the list -- the geographic area covered (and therefore number of listings) is too high and poses difficulties (as a reader). Given that each state has a different system of governance for universities, it will be very beneficial to understand those, but a lede for every state is not possible in this list. e.g. Tamil Nadu changed from the public universities from general universities by region to subject universities (which keep changing to by region vs not) and so on. This kind of information adds to the value of the information provided within the individual lists and is missing.
  • IMHO this is a concern. The lists are currently divided by state, indicating that the state is some obvious form of demarcation but does not provide sufficient context for that. The intro sentence states "...which are supported by the Government of India and the state governments." and the list goes on to divvy up by states, but the context of the support mentioned within the first sentence is completely missing for states -- the lede does a good job on explaining the same context with respect to those supported by the Government of India.—SpacemanSpiff 12:43, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I see your point, though I don't necessarily agree. I believe a large table with the state as a column will resolve this concern, but I'm not sure our readers are better served this way (it is also less maintainable, though maintainability can be achieved by dividing alphabetically). I still think a better solution would be to keep the dividing by state and add a "see also" that directs to the article on the higher education system in that state, which are in the making as we speak. I think adding large discussions on the education system of each state to a list which already borders on the limits of size is impractical. I'd appreciate the opinion of other reviewers on whether they think this is a big concern, and whether to keep the current table for each state or move to one large table (alternatively, divided alphabetically). --Muhandes (talk) 08:47, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Division by state is simply as per the geographical location rather than the support by central government or state government. The actual support for universities will not be straight forward to express in this list as a single university can be receiving support from UGC, multiple departments of state and central govt, other organizations, etc. So IMHO how each of those universities is supported is beyond the scope of this article. - abhi (talk) 06:14, 15 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from HonorTheKing (talk) 23:21, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
See Help:Table, You should add !scope=row to each list there, with the header be !scope="col". also so it won't bold each list add "plainrowheaders" to the wikitable style. and with "+" describe each list. You could use List of colleges and universities in Alabama as what im refering above.

Overall its a good list and sources and once the above will be added I will support this.
  – HonorTheKing (talk) 00:27, 23 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Thanks for the feedback and for your support. --Muhandes (talk) 18:50, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Well done, good list, but just need to fix the ALT texting, with descriptions of the buldings look that are in the picture, and without the wikilinking in them.
      – HonorTheKing (talk) 23:21, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I removed the wikilinks from the alt text. --Muhandes (talk) 10:13, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: the main thing I noticed is that in the citations, the publisher/work is noted as just the url when it should be the name of the site itself. For example, I have no idea what baddiuniv.ac.in. means, but I know what Baddi University of Emerging Sciences and Technology is. I'm not sure if this is considered an MoS issue or just an opinion thing; if it's the former than i may have to oppose until it's fixed, if it's the latter than I won't worry about it. Wizardman Operation Big Bear 15:15, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I must say I am not certain. Issues with lack of publisher field were raised above by Giants2008 and they seemed to be happy enough with either the website or the explicit publisher. Nevertheless, for all sources which are not clearly primary ones (source from the university website with information about the university) I added the publisher field. Please let me know if this is sufficient. --Muhandes (talk) 16:36, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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