Talk:University of Sussex

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject Universities, an attempt to standardise coverage of Universities and colleges. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this notice, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.

Contents 1 Error 2 Alumni 3 IDS 4 LGBT and other socs 5 Stripping of main article 6 ISSN->OCLC for undergraduate prospectus 7 University ratings 8 Restructure

[edit] Error

The World University Rankings, compiled by researchers for the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) and published in November 2004, put Sussex ninth in the UK, 17th in Europe and 58th in the world. The latest Times ranking puts Sussex 37th in the UK, a move of 2 places from the year before.

There seems to be an error in calculation here. Either the move was 28 places or the previous "position in the UK" listed was not ninth. Won't correct it since I don't know for sure. --Impaciente 21:41, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

The Times rankings are not the same as the world rankings, which specifically take into account academic history, number of Nobel winners etc. The Times rankings are basically only for current teaching and research excellence. Being 37th in the Times rankings and 9th in the world rankings is not therefore inconsistent, since they measure radically different criteria. 81.157.183.220 20:27, 18 December 2005 (UTC)badger patrol

[edit] Alumni

This list is very misleading. Harry Kroto is NOT an alumni of Sussex, since he took his degrees at Sheffield. He may have once worked at Sussex, but this is not the same thing and he shouldn't be in this catagory (unless he took an additional degree (e.g. DSc., MSc.) at Sussex?). I suspect this may be true of some of the other 'alumnae'. If so, the list should be comprehensively revised.

It's also getting rather long. It could be moved to its own page, or (my preference) pruned somewhat. I intend no offence to anybody, but for example, there is a journalist with a small regional newspaper, and a musician who doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry (their link is to their own external site). It's even possible that some of those listed are "vanity" links. Rather than delete people arbitrarily, I wonder if we could come up with some criteria for justifying inclusion? – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 17:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC) (Alumni, not listed, not jealous ;)

[edit] IDS

I miss a paragraph about the Institute of Development Studies. Hans Singer should also be mentioned among the notable current and former staff.

[edit] LGBT and other socs

The list of Student Union Societies seems very short. I've added the LGBT; perhaps a list should be obtained from the union website [1] and the article recompiled to match it. - Michael Howarth, Acting CoChair / Male Welfare Officer, Sussex LGBT --81.96.182.163 14:12, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Either that, or if the list exists on the union website, it could be removed from here altogether. It's likely to change each year anyway and I'm not at all sure it needs to be in this article. Compare with other Universities. – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 16:21, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Well some of the main ones should be listed, as they won't change from year-to-year. (For example, the LGBT is always here; we don't just suddenly vanish, unsurprisingly for a city such as Brighton!) However, I may be biased due to my role in this regard, so I shan't edit. And nice to bump into you Mike, nearly a year later than when you posted! --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 05:46, 18 March 2007 (UTC) Communications Officer, Sussex LGBT

I agree that the list is quite small. I'm sort of against including a list of student societies at all, on the basis that most are non-notable, some are non-verifiable, and all are targets for vanity-enlargement by students (who must surely be overrepresented as a demographic among Wikipedia editors). Would anyone object to this list's replacement by a well-formed paragraph about notable societies/teams and a link to a list elsewhere? See University of Cambridge#Sports and other extracurricular activities for the sort of thing I mean. — mholland 06:27, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stripping of main article

I find the stripping out of parts of the main article a bit odd. Especially Previous organisation of the University of Sussex which is a fundamental part of the unusual academic history of the institution, and also doesn't really merit a WP article of its own. It's a shame such major changes weren't discussed on this talk page. I propose to move the history of the structure back in, but thought it would be worth opening the discussion here first. I'd welcome hearing from the person making the changes so that my revert doesn't seem argumentative ;-) At the least, though, the work should be done with a little more care. The "previous organisation" article missed out the bibliographic reference which that section once had (but retained a broken link to it) and also didn't have clear context from its opening sentence, nor any link back to the main article, nor categories. – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 14:34, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I concur that some of the stripping does not make sense. I was recently part of the movement that put the Sports and Clubs at the University of Sussex subarticle back into the main article. By and large, the stripped subarticles probalby belong in the main article as sections. —C.Fred (talk) 15:39, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ISSN->OCLC for undergraduate prospectus

This page was showing up in the Category:Articles with invalid ISSNs. Invalid just means that the check digit fails. Unfortunately it appears that University of Sussex really DID assign an invalid ISSN to its prospectus. You can see the same ISSN in the records of the Oxford University library for this publication. Because Wikipedia is an important information resource, it is important that we not perpetuate invalid identifiers, even in cases where their respective publishers might not have corrected them. Since OCLC is an alternate identifier that can be used by WP readers to look up library entries, and since OCLC DOES find this publication, I went ahead and did the replacement. Please discuss here if you disagree with this approach. Otherwise, I'm afraid this page will stay forever in the 'Invalid ISSN' category and annoy future maintainers. EdJohnston 19:31, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

• This is excellent (IMO), and I was working on trying to fix this at the very moment when I noticed your fix. Hope you and others don't mind, but I implemented the same ISSN->OCLC on the article Previous_organisation_of_the_University_of_Sussex that may be merged here. BTW, I think merging is a good idea, but defer to you on the topic as this article content is not something I usually pay attention to. I only found it because of the ISSN issue ... Regards, Keesiewonder 19:46, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] University ratings

(I'm posting this to all articles on UK universities as so far discussion hasn't really taken off on Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities.)

There needs to be a broader convention about which university rankings to include in articles. Currently it seems most pages are listing primarily those that show the institution at its best (or worst in a few cases). See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Universities#University ratings. Timrollpickering 23:33, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Restructure

Just complete a large restructuring of the article to make adhere to the university Wikiproject. I will be coming back to check this article, and hopefully bring it up to scratch. History on the university is very slim, so if anyone can find anymore information it would be a bonus. ---Adasta- 17:53, 10 March 2007 (UTC)