Talk:Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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	Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been listed as a good article under the good-article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a review.
Article Milestones Date Process Result January 22, 2005 Featured article candidate Not promoted May 10, 2006 Good article nominee Listed December 16, 2006 Peer review Reviewed January 14, 2007 Featured article candidate Not promoted Current Status: Good article

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	To-do list for Massachusetts Institute of Technology:	edit  · history  · watch  · refresh
Here are some tasks you can do: Copyedit: Standardize citation formats Cleanup: Spaces between ref links and punctuation-are they all gone? Update: add ISBN numbers to {{cite}}s NPOV: resolve NPOV problems in Jan 2005 FA attempt

Because of their length, the previous discussions on this page have been archived. If further archiving is needed, see Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page. Anville 18:12, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Previous discussions:

• Archive 1 (20 Oct 2001 to 10 Nov 2004): MIT alumni who died in September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, MIT's suicide rate, "Boston Tech", "parking garage" simile, Accuracy, "Psycho-cybernetics", Generalizations, Building 20: stick with cleaned-up quotation?, "Rivalry" with Harvard, Alleged school cheer, Affirmative Action against asian students, "coed"?, MIT v. the Humanities, Maxwell Griffith, The Gadget Maker, Peacock words, vanity, POV, Brass rats, taking a drink from a firehose, Nabokov, MIT in popular culture, "Tech is Hell", Grading system and hours, Material buttressing claims of academic excellence, Tempted, but resisting..., Songs that mention MIT

• Archive 2 (November 2004 to December 2005): Many discussions on rankings and boosterism

• Archive 3 (January to March 2007): Boosterism, random topics

Contents 1 Unsourced material 2 Request for Feedback 3 Yikes! Wildly exaggerated research accomplishments 4 McCormick Hall 5 NPOV of crosslinking 6 Schools and Colleges 7 MIT Article community 8 Rankings in lead 9 MIT undergraduate acceptance rates 10 Article length

[edit] Unsourced material

"Drinking from a fire hose" is now sourced.

(often expanded with the explanatory "you get hosed and your parents get soaked") or "academic boot camp."

There's no source for "you get hosed and your parents get soaked" and I wonder whether this has ever been in wide use or is just a joking backward folk-etymology. "Academic boot camp" sounds plausible but I'd like to see a source. I had the impression that these characterizations were supposed to be less true now than in the past, but perhaps that's just MIT administration propaganda?

I've certainly heard "you get hosed and your parents get soaked". MIT is definitely still a firehose. -- Beland 23:45, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request for Feedback

I had posted a Requests for feedback earlier in the month for comments on length and boosterism. This is in anticipation of my proposed request for a peer review on December 1. Please go read the comments and make changes. Madcoverboy 15:34, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Yikes! Wildly exaggerated research accomplishments

The syllogistic reasoning in this section seems to be:

• person A had some connection of some kind with MIT
• person A was involved, perhaps with others, in important work in field B, at some time before, during, or after the MIT connection
• ERGO
• MIT has invented, substantially developed, or is well known for research in field B.

"In electronics, transistors, magnetic core memory, radar, single electron transistors, and inertial guidance controls were invented or substantially developed by MIT researchers."

Transistors? WTF? They were developed at Bell Labs. Shockley was never an "MIT researcher." I may be wrong but I don't associate MIT particularly closely with the development of solid-state electronics. That is, the development of the devices themselves (as opposed to the application of the devices e.g. in the TX-2 computer...) (I removed this).

"Claude E. Shannon developed much of modern information theory and digital circuit design theory." Well, he did develop information theory almost single-handedly. It's a curious example of an extremely important and substantial body of work that sprung full-grown like Athena from one person's brain, but has had relatively little added to it by anyone else. But digital circuit theory? He is responsible for making the connection between digital circuits and Boolean algebra, but he surely did not develop "much of" modern digital circuit design theory. (I fixed this).

The more I look at this section, the more problems I see.

Some of the claims are technically true because of the weasel-worded phrase "invented or substantially developed," but, gee. Magnetic core memory had two important inventors; it seems to me to be quite misleading to connect it with Jay Forrester (coincident-current) but omit An Wang (rewrite-after-read cycle). And quite a lot of magnetic core development happened after Whirlwind outside of MIT.

Radar? Again, technically true because of that weaselly phrase "invented or substantially developed," since the radiation lab made important contributions to the wartime development of radar, but, gee, they wouldn't have gotten too far without the cavity magnetron developed at the University of Birmingham. It's like saying Cal Tech "invented or substantially developed" jet propulsion.

I don't have time to look through this now, but it looks very, very loose and sloppy to me, with all sorts of, yes, important connections being puffed up to look far more important than they are. Tim Berners Lee established the W3C at MIT in 1994? Well, yeah, OK, but he invented the Web at CERN, not at MIT.

Hoo hah: "MIT biologists have also been recognized for their discoveries and advances in ... protein synthesis" links to Har Gobind Khorana. But he didn't go to MIT until after he won the Nobel Prize. He was at the Enzyme Institute at the University of Wisconsin when he received it, but I think the work for which he received the prize was actually done at Vancouver. Not sure, but certainly not MIT.

The computer science stuff doesn't look bad but that's probably just because I don't know enough about computer science. "MIT faculty and researchers made fundamental contributions to cybernetics, artificial intelligence, computer languages, and public-key cryptography." Cybernetics? Well, since Norbert Wiener literally wrote the book (and almost nobody else in academics used the word subsequently, check. Artificial intelligence? Check (SAIL being separate but equal?).

Wait... Computer languages... hmmm... not so sure. "Made fundamental contributions," yeah, OK, LISP (Scheme) and COMIT in particular, but I'm not sure "computer languages R MIT." What come to mind as really fundamental contributions in computer languages? COBOL, FORTRAN, LISP, ALGOL, PASCAL, C, I think.

Public-key cryptography? Uh-oh. Here we go again. Only the "R" in "RSA" has a strong MIT connection. And did he do the work there? Not sure, couldn't find out quickly. And weren't Diffie and Hellman the real originators? Hmmm... looks like Diffie was working for industry... can't tell quickly about Hellman. I think "fundamental contributions to public-key cryptography" is another example of something literally true but exaggerated.

Anyone want to help figuring out what to do with this? I'm tempted to slap fact tags on everything in this section from start to finish, since many of them don't check out or aren't what they seem, and you can't tell which are which by looking at them.

I'm going to come back to this when I've cooled down, but I'm really beginning to think the only way to fix this section is blow it away and start fresh, insisting on clear relationships being shown to MIT.

The section should describe only fields in which it can be shown that MIT has a demonstrable strength as an institution. A. R. Gurney may be on the faculty, but that doesn't in itself warrant saying that MIT has made accomplishments in drama. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:32, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

• • I will respond to these criticisms as I am the original author as well as only person who has ever really edited this section. My intent in this section was to delineate specific and notable accomplishments of people with a substantial MIT affiliation. My sources were some of the information in the article before, wiki lists like Nobel Laureates or MacArthur fellows, the MIT firsts page, and the MIT admissions page. While MIT has many notable accomplishments worth mentioning, the university featured articles I used as models (Cornell, Duke, UMichigan) for editing this page described research with either too much depth (a whole paragraph on Cornell and the Mars Lander) or not at all (UMichigan cites contributions with no link/cite to say what it is nor who is responsible for them). Thus, this section represents my attempt to convey both the breadth of accomplishments while keeping it concise and organized. My redirect-linking style is intended to connect the listed concept to a specific person's contributions, not to represent that the concept/technology was wholly developed at MIT. To that extent, while I understand how it is misleading in a way, it is also a means of establishing a direct relationship to MIT while avoiding a torrent of cites. Your criticism that the section includes a number of weasel words is likewise well-founded, but these are artifacts of my own attempts to summarize and list the various topics and should be removed/edited. The section is far from perfect and could certainly be toned up, however, although I don't know how making a clean break would necessarily improve the section.Madcoverboy 07:30, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] McCormick Hall

Right now the article states that: "Female students, however, remained a tiny minority (numbered in dozens) prior to the completion of the first women's dormitory, McCormick Hall, in 1964."

This is incorrect. McCormick Hall was finished in January of 68. The hall is made up of two towers and it is likely that the first tower was completed in 1964 and that is where that date came from. I only know this because my mother was a freshman in 67-68 and I didn't want to change it based on just that. Does anyone have a source that could be cited to justify the change? I know it's minor thing but, well, I'm a sucker for dates. Redtizzy 20:05, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV of crosslinking

There may be possible NPOV and Weasel word issues with the new text I've added about controversies regarding Japan. Specifically, crosslinking "scapegoat" for "accused" and "business cycle" for "struggling" — but I believe I can make cases for either of these should anyone have a problem. I only bring it up now to allay any concerns that it is an act of vandalism or sloppy editing. More broadly, does anyone have an issue of the extent of crosslinking (linking to an article with greater contextual specificity, say Late 1980s recession instead of recession but nevertheless having the link appear as recession) in the article) currently in the article, especially in the research accomplishments? Madcoverboy 03:01, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Schools and Colleges

Why isn't there a complete organized listing for all of the schools and their respective departments. Different ones are hinted at in the text, but I see nothing that formally introduces all of them. Am I missing something here? Hanjabba 21:42, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

• They were removed per concerns (WP:NOT) that they didn't contribute meaningfully to the article, interrupted the flow of text, and served only as a mirror. I disagree with many of these points, but really, I'm not going to fight tooth-and-nail for them.Madcoverboy 23:19, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
• While I'm far from being a expert on Wiki policy, it seems like leaving out information as basic as this is like writing an article about the US and leaving out a listing of all the states. The article would just be too imcomplete to be considered adequate. In addition, every university article that I've looked at has a school and/or department breakdown.

Hanjabba 18:15, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

• They are easily accessible from a subarticle; this article is already too long to put it back here. -- Beland 00:47, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] MIT Article community

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

On a bitter aside, I was asked to review Ohio Wesleyan University for FA-status and found it to be an exercise in futility as me and one or two other editors found it completely unreadable, devoid of meaning, and cited to excess, yet it was just promoted today to FA-status largely based on support from (what I perceive to be) affiliated fanboy/sockpuppets and unaffiliated editors who contributed in a significant capacity. I guess I'm just envious that they have a viable community contributing there that was able to ride roughshod over legitimate concerns, whereas there is basically no community here at the MIT page. I still objectively believe MIT's article to be of a far higher quality than many FAs, I think too many editors suffer from prestigious-institution guilt or envy, depending upon which side of the aisle they sit. Basically, I'm tired of working by myself — this article has broken me like it has broken several other editors before me. I've directed my editing energies elsewhere (United States technological and industrial history and History of MIT) for now but I will still be around to revert vandals. Things that still need to get done around here:

• Standardize cite formatting and expand cites as there are still many statements in need of a cite.
• Re-do Research accomplishments into a coherent narrative, rather than a list of feats in sentence form.
• Reference external links so that they're not inline.
• Expand/fix student activities as it's just (no pun intended) a hack right now.
• Expand the affiliated sub/sister pages (History of MIT (this one I will still work on), Architecture of MIT, Student life and culture at MIT)

Good luck and good hunting. I'll be around if this page ever lightens back up. Madcoverboy 23:19, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rankings in lead

Please keep all rankings confined to the "Rankings" section. It is inappropriate to put a ranking in the lead, especially the second sentance, when the fact is only repeated later and other facts demonstrate MIT's excellence. MIT is widely acknowledged to be "elite", "prestigious", "exclusive", "the best in x" -- the fact that other schools brand themselves as the "MIT of England," the "MIT of India," etc. is a testamant to that. Adding a ranking by a newspaper does nothing to convey encylopaedic knowledge other than one organization's POV assertion that "MIT is a better or worse than these other schools." Despite the non-NPOV of rankings, they inevitably crop back up into university articles, so a reasonable compromise is to keep them confined to one section. An obsession with rankings belies an underlying lack of confidence in the strength of one's own programs on their own merits. Madcoverboy 21:43, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] MIT undergraduate acceptance rates

I am tempted to revert the newly added table "MIT Undergraduate Acceptance Rates" on the basis that it seems to be Soapboxing about how it is more difficult for a man to get into MIT than a woman. Admissions in the context of affirmative action vs. meritocracy and such is a touchy subject and broaching the topic with this ostensibly irrefutable data demeans its inherent complexities (the chart doesn't reveal that more men apply and are admitted in greater numbers). I suspect that breaking admissions numbers down by race/ethnicity would reveal similar disparities between "underrepresented minorities" and whites/asians/indians. Moreover, I don't know what the chart adds in the context of this section. However, I don't want to be accused of white-washing the page as this is a topic that should certainly be discussed either on this page or used as an example elsewhere. Madcoverboy 06:54, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it's rather interesting, actually. It seems pretty neutral to me; both sides in the affirmative action debate could read something into it. -- Beland 00:47, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I reverted the POV & original research edits made by IP 148.87.1.172 (registered to Oracle). This is the same IP that created the list about differing male/female admits. Given the anonymous user's previous history of vandalism (on other pages) and repeated attempts to revise topics only relating to women at MIT, it seems more and more to be soapboxing. If you have an axe to grind, wikipedia is not the place for it.Madcoverboy 19:16, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article length

This article is currently 76K, which is about twice as long as it should be. I would recommending moving some material out to subarticles:

• "Challenges and controversies" could be chopped by a paragraph or two by moving recent but minor events to the subarticle.
• Cut the "Campus" section in half
• Combine parts of the "Academics" and "Faculty and research" sections and spin off a "Research at MIT" subarticle?
• Cut "Student life and culture" by about 2/3rds
• Cut the "Notable alumni" section down to 1 paragraph

-- Beland 00:47, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

• • This topic of article size comes up often. I would point out that other university FAs are similarly large: Cornell 83kb, Ohio Wesleyan 81kb, Duke 75kb, IIT 58kb, UMichigan 55kb, Michigan State 54kb. While I understand the motivation to limit article size on the grounds that long articles become unreadable/indigestible, parceling content into subarticles to meet a (now) arbitrary cap leads to a similar predicament. I don't see how some of the sections could sustain the severe cuts you recommend without losing some meaning (relative to topics one would expect to see in an article providing an overview of MIT). However, there is certainly some fat, lists, and cruft that can be trimmed from some sections. I'm making a pass now to trim down Campus, Student life, and Alumni -- let me know what you think. Madcoverboy 02:33, 4 April 2007 (UTC)