Talk:Eli Whitney Students Program

Merge to Yale College?

First, I removed the {{notability}} from the article, since the coverage in the New York Times is sufficient for the general notability guidelines. I agree that additional independent sources would be useful to the article.

That said, my concern is whether this should really be a stand-alone article, or whether it should be merged into Yale College. Since there's a section on residential colleges at the YC article, it would also make sense to mention this program, which parallels the colleges. It would also beef up a short article at YC—a medium-sized article would take the place of two short ones. This title would remain as a pointer to the section there.

Accordingly, I'm formally proposing a merge. Please comment here. —C.Fred (talk) 22:39, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help with this page. There are two main points of contention which I would like to discuss here: 'independent' sources and a tentative page merger. Regarding the supposed independence of sources, there really is none at the absolute level. Are we to fool ourselves for a moment that the NYT or WSJ are truly independent, that being a publicly-traded, for-profit newspaper doesn't to some degree (no matter how remote) color integrity? Of course it would be ludicrous to posit that these venerable syndicates do not do quality reporting, at least as we are accustomed to in the mainstream. But there are most certainly conflicts of interest arising frequently in such places and they do indeed affect the product. Likewise, is the Yale Daily News really a part of Yale University? Technically the answer is yes, the YDN is not a truly independent news outlet. However, the YDN and Yale University deliberately disconnect themselves for the sake of preserving freedom of speech. At Yale, upholding free speech is perhaps one of the university's most (even thee most) sacred tenets. As a result, the YDN reports daily on topics which have the potential to harm Yale's reputation. It is the oldest diurnal college newspaper in the country and is a springboard for the careers of many future editors and journalists at NYT and the WSJ. So overall its a slippery slope for you and other editors to impose demands upon contributors requiring "independent" sources when the term has an ambivalent connotation. Yes, there are some more articles out there from outside Yale (I will shortly be adding a citation from the WSJ) that can add further quality. But for now we must be content with the fact that the program is small, has little outside coverage, but nonetheless remains an important facet of Yale (just as it has been for 25 years). As editors and contributers it should not be our position to try and change this reality. So I'd ask that editors question whether some of this speaks to the unfortunate dark side of Wikipedia: small/obscure topic bias. When there are few articles and few collaborators on a topic one is tempted in an open-source forum to treat it with disdain in favor of topics that allow for larger collaboration. But as I said before, collaboration is not necessarily truth and Wikipedia needs to be self-critical in that regard.

On the issue of merger, I think this may be a bad idea. First, the EWSP is a distinct program in Yale College and as such it merits its own page in which key characteristics and facts can be appropriately enumerated. Tying it into a larger Yale College article takes away from this distinction (as well as a need to disseminate new information on Wikipedia about this program-info. that has been missing for too long). That said I would not be opposed to a merger at a significantly later date, after further input from others and after greater exposure of the page as a stand-alone piece. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Milkbaba (talk • contribs) 23:48, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not going to get involved in a notability discussion about this one, but I want to mention that whatever the epistemology of news reporting, the basic criteria is whether or not it's notable. To show notability a reliable source (of which the NY times counts in this context, of course) needs to demonstrate its notability. That means more than a mere mention.

Thank you for that discussion above, but if the debate continues that's not what people are going to find persuasive. I would focus instead on the arguments in WP:N if this debate continues. Shadowjams (talk) 01:59, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I in turn do not find your discussion of notability very persuasive in the context of this article, though I do see it having some validity in general. We should keep in mind (as the Wikipedia article on notability does) that the issue of notability, much like the issue of independent media, is very controversial. Considering that first and foremost notability depends on reliable secondary source material, the EWSP page has satisfied the definition for such, since all of the cited articles in the page (including the YDN) exercise very strong editorial control over content. I believe that the page also merits stand-alone status. I'm actually more concerned that Yale College page editors and collaborators will object harshly to the merger. Since the YC page is much more established and experiences much higher rates of collaboration, I feel that many will see it as a 'vandalization' or intrusion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Milkbaba (talk • contribs) 02:39, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

There certainly hasn't been a rush of editors from the YC page this evening; there is a {{mergefrom}} tag on that page to alert them to the pending merge. —C.Fred (talk) 03:19, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

In response to Shadowjams comment that notability of a subject in a source must be "more than a mere mention", half of the NYT article refers specifically to the Eli Whitney Students Program (referred to in the article as the 'degree-granting program'), including the difference between it and Yale's non-degree program. The article also notes the increased admissions standards for the program. So for editors to continue and threaten deletion of the EWSP page over notability is not based on sound logic nor is it justifiable. Regarding merger, I propose removing the merge tag on both EWSP and YC pages if after some time (a week or so) there is little or no support for it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Milkbaba (talk • contribs) 20:14, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Conversely, there is little or no opposition to the move. Rather than remove the merge tag, if there's no more participation by the 9th, I'll probably make a request for a third opinion. Since I'm not convinced that the article should be deleted, a second AfD isn't the appropriate venue. —C.Fred (talk) 22:04, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

For the record, there was a prior AfD that resulted in a delete outcome. IMO, the article changed enough that I did not think this incarnation was bound to the outcome of that AfD. —C.Fred (talk) 17:35, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

• Neutral on a merge. Sorry to be so ineffectual but I don't have strong feelings either way about the merge. I support the third opinion option though. Perhaps comments from others will sway me one way or the other. But I do think that there should be a few more eyes on the issue before removing the proposal. Shadowjams (talk) 01:01, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

• Support for a merge. Found this through the RfC page. After reading the main topic page, it strikes me a being more suitable as a section of the Yale topic than a topic of its own. It's not a separate school, it's not notable in its own right, and it seems destined to be a stub article unless it is merged with Yale. Over there, it is interesting and notable information about the school. MarkNau (talk) 18:47, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree about the need for other opinions, Shadowjams. After looking through the RfC and 3O instructions, I've opted to make a request for comment. —C.Fred (talk) 17:41, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

RfC: Should article be merged?

Should the Eli Whitney Students Program continue to have its own article, or should this admissions program be merged into the Yale College article? —C.Fred (talk) 17:39, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

As I have stated my position several times before, I will briefly reiterate my stance once more: I am unambiguously opposed to a merger with Yale College. I have previously enumerated my reasons in greater detail. Since there is little editorial consensus or debate either way on this issue, I propose removing the merger tag on the Eli Whitney Students Program page. Of course we could call for another third opinion, but I think that would throw this issue into unnecessary arbitration. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Milkbaba (talk • contribs) 19:43, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

• At this point, I've gone ahead and removed the merge request. However, I will be reconsidering the fate of this article, including whether there's enough for it to stand alone, or whether a second AfD is in order. —C.Fred (talk) 19:49, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

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