Talk:Monroe College

Listing of news articles

It's completely inappropriate to simply list news articles about this subject in a "In The News" section. This is an encyclopedia article, not a promotional document or adjunct to the college's website. ElKevbo (talk) 16:19, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Hello, ElKevbo, and thank you for your comment. The "In the News" section on Monroe College's Wikipedia page provides users with links to third-party publications and articles that include mention of the school. Other higher education Wikipedia pages also have "in the media" or "in pop culture" sections that allow viewers of the page to see where and how the school has been covered by outside news sources; they offer a neutral point of view because they are not written by anyone that is affiliated with the school. krrose (talk) 17 June 2014 — Preceding undated comment added 19:04, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

If those articles have useful information that is essential for readers to have if they are to understand this college, please incorporate the information into the article. Simply listing the articles is lazy and inappropriate in an encyclopedia article.

(Incidentally, many of the "In pop culture" sections of Wikipedia articles are very poor examples to follow. WP:UNIGUIDE and WP:IPC both have some good advice on this topic.) ElKevbo (talk) 19:18, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your input, however, we are comfortable with our approach. Krrose (talk) 2:11, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

That's too bad because this is an encyclopedia article in a collaborative project, not something owned and controlled by this college. ElKevbo (talk) 16:15, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Response to third opinion request:

I am responding to a third opinion request for this page. I have made no previous edits on Monroe College and have no known association with the editors involved in this discussion. The third opinion process is informal and I have no special powers or authority apart from being a fresh pair of eyes.

That list is blatantly promotional, as is much else in this article, which reads more like a brochure than an encyclopedia article and needs severe cleanup. That other articles have such sections is irrelevant: "other cr*p exists" is no reason to add more. @Krrose: "Thank you for your input, however, we are comfortable with our approach." is an unacceptable posture of ownership. The article belongs to Wikipedia, not you, and the contribution of other editors is part of building the encyclopedia, not of giving "input" for your consideration. Be warned that you have been edit warring and that you run the risk of being blocked if you continue reinserting this stuff or blocking other cleanup of the article, the more so since conflict of interest is obvious in this article. @ElKevbo: if the list is reinserted yet again, I recommend not removing it yet again. ANEW would be a better way, wouldn't it? Stfg (talk) 17:05, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Objective Third Party, @ElKevbo: Given our collective intention of carrying out WIkipedia's mission of developing educational content for users, our only interest is to provide clear, objective information for public viewing of all entries, and want to ensure Monroe College's page does the same. We will incorporate the useful and objective third party news articles into other parts of the page as earlier suggested by ElKevbo. Krrose (talk) 17:42, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I think that using the sources to add relevant, appropriate information to this article is the way to go.

Incidentally, do you have a connection to this college? ElKevbo (talk) 19:23, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Promotional U.S. News references deleted

" You will not find it in, say, the U.S. News list of 1,400 colleges. You will not find its average SAT scores listed on its Web site or anywhere else (they're not required for admission), nor will you find lists of publications by the scholars on its faculty." http://nymag.com/news/business/bigmoney/58307/ New York Magazine article

24.213.177.78 (talk) 13:37, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Athletics section needs to be edited to be compatible with reality

The promotional sentences throughout the Athletics section need to be deleted or edited.

"But the whole thrust of the promotion of schools like Monroe-down to its bragging about a "division one" baseball team (that's Division I in the junior college league, not the NCAA, though you wouldn't know it from Monroe's ads) is to obscure the distinctions between a Monroe and traditional nonprofit schools dedicated to higher education. This they do quite successfully: If CNN can't tell the difference, it's not a surprise that young entering students can't, either." http://nymag.com/news/business/bigmoney/58307/index1.html

There is no reason to have such LONG sentences and TEN subsections(!) about Monroe's athletics. 24.213.177.78 (talk) 13:37, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Conflict of interest editing

Given the long history of persistent (apparently) WP:COI editing here, I have started a thread at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#Monroe College. Meanwhile, I'd like to remind all and any editors with a personal or professional connection to the school that they are strongly discouraged from editing the article directly, but are of course welcome to suggest improvements here, on this talk page. It goes without saying that such suggestions are very unlikely to be implemented unless supported by independent reliable sources. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 15:27, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers:

Hello: I'm wondering why certain information was deleted from this page, since a lot of it was supported by third party links and sources. For instance, the rankings of Monroe came from outside publications, such as U.S. News & World Report & Washington Monthly magazine. Also, a significant amount of content was taken out of the academic section, where all of the degrees the school offers were listed. I would welcome speaking with you to better understand why information was removed. Many thanks. Krrose (talk) 15:56, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, Krrose, there were 129 references in the last version I reverted. 44 of those were to the school's own website, and another 12 or so to a press release hosted on prweb.com. There was (and is) no citation of either U.S. News & World Report or Washington Monthly magazine. The content was hopelessly promotional and wholly unencyclopaedic in tone - typical, in fact, of the sort of content written by those who are too closely connected to the topic of the article to write neutrally. May I suggest that you read WP:RS, WP:NPOV and WP:COI with some care? You might also find WP:UNIV useful.

That said, if you wish to suggest improvements to the article here, please feel free to do so. You can attract the attention of other editors either by clicking where it says "click here" in the lowest yellow box above, or by including {{Request edit}} (exactly like that, curly brackets and all) in your request. In general, a request is likely to receive attention if it takes a form something like "please change the sentence [text] to read [new text] because [reason] ([reference to reliable source which supports the requested change])". Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:37, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Many thanks, Justlettersandnumbers. I appreciate you taking the time to explain. I would like to suggest a few edits.

Please change the sentence ["The college offers Associate and Bachelor's degrees in accounting, business, information technology, health services, law enforcement and cookery, and, through King Graduate School, graduate programs"] to ["The college offers Associate and Bachelor's degrees in accounting, business, information technology, health services, nursing, law enforcement, early childhood education, hospitality management and culinary arts. The college also offers Master's degrees in Criminal Justice, Business Administration and Public Health through its King Graduate School."] You can verify these facts here.

 Done The link was broken, so I didn't add it, however I did not find the list provided unreasonably long and a brief mention of some of the programs available seems appropriate, even if a primary source is needed in this case. CorporateM (Talk) 20:30, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm not happy about this edit, CorporateM. I'm afraid I don't think we can take the school's word for what it does (see below about Monroe, for example). The link provided leads to something called New York Soccer College. This is a vocational school; they teach people (apparently very successfully) to be nurses, pre-school teachers, hotel staff, cooks, policemen; calling those things "health services", "early childhood education", "hospitality management", "culinary arts", "law enforcement" is just so much WP:PUFFERY. Let's use plain straight English without too many poncy words. I invite you to undo the edit you made. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:26, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Additionally, under Academics, please add the sentence ["In 2014, "U.S. News & World Report" ranked Monroe College number one in the regional university category for exceeding predicted graduation rates. Monroe's 2012 actual six-year graduation rate was 65 percent, compared to the predicted rate of 27 percent calculated by the publication. Additionally, Monroe College's online bachelor's degree program and online bachelor's degree program for veterans have been ranked among the best in the nation by "U.S. News & World Report". "Washington Monthly" Magazine has also ranked Monroe among the top 100 Master's Universities in the nation."] You can verify these rankings here, here and here.

I wonder if someone more familiar with academia articles might respond to this one, as there are a large number of rankings, not all of them significant, and I would be cautious adding something like this unless I could verify the ranking being added was representative and not cherry-picked among other lower rankings. CorporateM (Talk) 20:30, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Good call here, CorporateM. This college does not appear on listings of the top institutions in the country. While the last statement may be technically true, it is so because "Master's University" has a very specific definition which effectively excludes most high-quality universities. I looked into this, decided that explaining all that in the article was WP:UNDUE, but forgot to come here and say so – for which I apologise, Krrose. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:26, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

@user:Justlettersandnumbers Do you know off-hand what are the most credible college rankings? Personally I went to a local public university and never did the research into it. WP:ORGAWARDS might also offer good criterion for selecting which to include, using sources that are independent of the rankings themselves. At-a-glance, this page looks like it could use more attention. It's interesting because most college pages are puff pieces written by students or staff and filled with primary sources. On this one, a third of the page is regarding a lawsuit. It doesn't look (again at-a-glance) to be entirely fair to them. However, there have been cases where that was my reflex and some research into the source material revealed it wasn't negative enough. CorporateM (Talk) 23:13, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I was thinking of lists like this or this. There are world-wide ones too: this, this and this are all reputable, I think. This page and the article history between them should give you most of the history here. I put the "undue" tag on the criticism section; if you feel it is excessive feel free to prune a bit. It's practically the only referenced stuff in the page. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:53, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I have about an hour of availability right now. I'll spend some time on it and see what I come up with. CorporateM (Talk) 17:28, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Please also remove the sentence ["The college is named after James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States"] since this is factually inaccurate and does not include a citation.

Thank you for using the talk page to request edits, that is a great help. I (or someone else) will look at the first two requests as soon as possible. I have declined the third one, as what you say appears to be at variance with the published facts. The school's own website had a long section on Monroe, headed "Why the college bears his name"; has the school changed its mind? This article in the Bronx Times also confirms what our article says; I'll add it as a reference in a moment. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 15:57, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Resources

@user:Krrose Would you be able to provide resources upon request? Just as an example, the first hit that came up in a Google Books search (I find books are almost always better sources than media) is this listing, which has some of good infobox-type data but Google Books only has the 2009 version of the book, whereas it says it's updated each year.

When I brought Credit Suisse up to the "Good Article" rank, their PR staff provided images, books, corrections and other resources and I found it to be a good method of collaboration, much like you would support independent journalists, not try to write their articles for them. CorporateM (Talk) 17:39, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Notes

• Need to find a 2013 edition of the book "Peterson's Colleges in New York"
• Is "The College Blue Book" reliable? My local university library database suggests it has some content for us
• I wonder if you could provide a high-quality logo image as a PNG file on a transparent background so we can remove the white box around it in the infobox.

Lawsuit

@user:Justlettersandnumbers how's that? The sources seem to lean heavily against the plaintiff (the student) and are basically making fun of her (except for New York Magazine, which seems to identify itself as a fringe view, but had a lot of good critical information I added to the academics section).

Stuff like this comment she said: “They’re supposed to say, ‘I got this student, her attendance is good, her GPA is all right — can you interview this person?’ They’re not doing that,” she said.

That's a pretty dumb thing to say. I think us repeating it is embarrassing to her and not necessary for us to inform readers of the situation. I also didn't think it was necessary to call her by name, rather than just "an alumni" for BLP considerations. Our objectives as an encyclopedia trump privacy and humiliation concerns, but in this case it seemed pretty easy to avoid humiliating her while also serving the needs of our readers.

I've also gotten started adding mundane, sourced information. CorporateM (Talk) 18:37, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Recent edits

@Justlettersandnumbers: This just popped up on my watchlist and I'm glad you reverted the recent edits. I didn't look at them closely enough to see that the edit-summary did not represent the actual edits. However, a small nit, I think this section looked ok to me. My understanding is that US News is considered one of the most significant and credible providers of academic ratings. The demographics of graduates seems to be one of those de-facto data-points for colleges. CorporateM (Talk) 19:59, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment, CorporateM. That section contained three paragraphs; the first was (I believe) written by me, and sourced to Peterson's; I didn't remove it. I did remove the second, sourced to a "Q and A with Marc Jerome" in Black Star News; I can't see how that could possibly be considered a reliable source by our standards, but remain fully open to discussion. The third is simply not supported by the source cited, the U.S. News & World Report page on the college. What that page does say is that "Monroe College's ranking in the 2015 edition of Best Colleges is Regional Universities (North), Tier 2". What that appears to mean in practice is that it is not ranked – after the first 135 or so colleges (up to page 12 of the rankings), the remaining colleges are simply listed in alphabetical order. Monroe appears on page 15. I'd have no objection to that being included in the article if you think it appropriate; I agree that the source can be taken as mostly reliable, though some content is clearly just reprinted from college handouts. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:25, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. I didn't realize the source didn't actually support the article-text. Must be one of those sneaky COI situations. Thanks for being more thorough than I was! I agree completely now that I have more context. CorporateM (Talk) 21:28, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

It's nice to learnt about a lot. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 221.120.98.219 (talk) 03:51, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

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