Talk:Imperial College Business School/Archives/2020

Article neutrality dispute

Hi! I have started this talk page discussion to form a consensus over the current edit dispute. You'll notice that in WP:Content Removal it says WP:BOLD, explained edits are sensible until it's clear a dispute has arisen, hence my attempt to solve this quickly by providing further explanation. I have posted this discussion to WT:HED to bring in other project editors so this doesn't become a two-person back-and-forth, and a broader community consensus can be reached.

For full disclosure, it would be helpful if you could disclose any WP:COIs you may have with the business school. I am currently a student at Imperial, as is stated on my COI declaration on my user page, however, the standard across any university WikiProject is such that it seems students and alumni are the most frequent and consistent contributors (explaination)

So, the reason I have not tried to make smaller edits to the article's content is that there are major issues with WP:PUFFERY et al. throughout the piece, so any smaller edit wouldn't have solved the underlying issue. I am going to go through the changes I made one by one, so I can understand where exactly the disagreement is.

NPOV edits

The underlying point here is that this article should not be a pamphlet or prospectus. Just because it's something the school has stated about itself, really doesn't mean it should be included.

Lead

• The intro currently uses "global" repeatedly. Yes, here is an argument that its highly international faculty could justify it, it becomes an issue on two fronts. Does it help any more than saying its 90% international, and two, where is the line drawn? If some local paper classifies it as global, does that make any business school global? It's a very positive word that doesn't add much to the piece. However, as it is part of business school classifications (international could be a better alternative, which hasn't been abused by marketers in the sector as much) I will happily admit that there is grounds for keeping it, preferably if an independent source can be found.

However, as has been noted it shows up repeatedly, which does come across as an attempt at reinforcement? Also, why on earth is it linked.

• The span of the alumni network is promotional. Sure it may be true, but there are no independent sources for this, and it's not something which should be stated in an article intro. It's comes across as an attempt to sell the school, and is not present in good university articles.

• A promotional mission statement is generally non-ecyclopædic. "The Imperial College Business School's mission is to develop the world's future leaders of business and society"

• There are sentences like "Global business leaders, the social sector, and government leadership often partner with the business school" which come straight from the corporate relations site of the school. Clearly promotional, although it may be able to be reworded into something helpful, especially if news etc. sources can be found.

• Much of the rest of the intro is either rankings of the college (not school), which should not be here at all, or student survey rankings, which if they should be here should not be in the lead.

Rankings

Many of those rankings are duplicates of each other, individual rankings of each course from the same underlying rankings table is either some form of WP:SYNTH or overextrapolation. More importantly, it's not necessary. I have extracted the relevant rankings into a shorter paragraph to avoid repetition.

Style

Some of the edits are part of an attempt to normalise the article's style. Whilst they do not bear directly on the POV issue, the current style emphasises a lot, which in itself appears to not be neutral.

History

See also: Imperial College London § History, and History of Imperial College London

Wow, that's a lot of headings! Normally headings cover entire sections of prose, not individual paragraphs. Either more cited information should be added, or these sections should be at least merged. To be honest, the history section is short enough it doesn't really need subsections at all, however broader sections would not be inappropriate.

Rankings

Wikipedia articles should generally be WP:PROSE, and it is standard for prose to be used for rankings sections. There may be examples from articles with less coverage where there isn't, but if you look at good articles you'll find they also use prose for this section. Also, the covering of individual courses is strange and unnecessary (and quite prospectus-y)  

Shadowssettle_(talk) 09:17, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Of course, I want to value the thought to remove puffery and appreciate that. I actually appreciate your idea to edit for puffery and neutrality, and have no issue in this. The reason for the revert, was simply that lots of content was erased. It is important to disentangle the content from the puffery to understand why I think the content is there and was contributed over time by editors - instead of erasing large sections of content. WP:IMPROVEDONTREMOVE WP:Content Removal Perhaps we can go through content point by point, and disentangle the useful content from the puffery as I actually have no issues with that idea to remove puffery, and actually appreciate that. I am okay with content removal too, but it needs sufficient explanation and discussion for consensus.

• The intro currently uses "global" repeatedly. Yes, here is an argument that its highly international faculty could justify it, it becomes an issue on two fronts. Does it help any more than saying its 90% international, and two, where is the line drawn? If some local paper classifies it as global, does that make any business school global? It's a very positive word that doesn't add much to the piece. However, as it is part of business school classifications (international could be a better alternative, which hasn't been abused by marketers in the sector as much) I will happily admit that there is grounds for keeping it, preferably if an independent source can be found.

• The span of the alumni network is promotional. Sure it may be true, but there are no independent sources for this, and it's not something which should be stated in an article intro. It's comes across as an attempt to sell the school, and is not present in good university articles.

I understand that this could appear as puffery to use global repeatedly. Global definitely does not need to be used repeatedly as suggested, but should be emphasized that this business school is a compass type:global/international. Maybe one source is this: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/business-school/about-us/global-initiatives/

As described in wiki's article describing Business School's 4 characteristics according to Kaplan - compass: this is a business school which teaches and emphasizes global business for its compass. I think that was the point of the international faculty and student body was to help explain the international context of the business school - students and faculty are primarily international. So it was viewed as a definitional use rather than meant for puffery. Perhaps use both words global and international, rather than just global throughout. The word global is also used on the wiki's Business School page to describe the difference between different compass focus of a business school and does not need to be viewed as puffery.

I can see that the span of the alumni network could appear promotional too. I think the span of the alumni network geographically was also referring to the international compass point too about the the graduate business school. I thought the information was useful as some people join business school and want most connections made in their native country of the Uk and do not want connections based primarily abroad. If after understanding the global compass of the school, you prefer to remove this content, maybe you can substitute the content for something that describes the business school from Imperial's global initiatives page (with an npov) to emphasize the international compass focus, which is useful wiki business school content.

• There are sentences like "Global business leaders, the social sector, and government leadership often partner with the business school" which come straight from the corporate relations site of the school. Clearly promotional, although it may be able to be reworded into something helpful, especially if news etc. sources can be found.

Yes, I can see what you are saying that this may sound promotional. Perhaps as you were suggesting this can be reworded into something helpful? please do find a way to improve this sentence though. This is also what the business school does and was therefore on the main about us page for the school. Yes, many sources can be found. For example: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/business-school/corporate-relations/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/business-school/blogs/students/my-experience-world-economic-forum-davos/ I do not see a problem with the word leadership in the sentence personally, as that is essentially what school's of business are about. Also this is a graduate school of business, so students have 5-10 years of experience before entering the business school, so it may not be that much of a promotional statement because that is what mba program's expose people too during their program: talks and collaborations from FTSE 100 business leaders, etc. The school also has partnerships with many global leaders in business and police and social and non profit sectors.

• The rankings. Many business school wiki's have rankings listed in various ways London Business School. I do not see the point of erasing all the rankings, but they can be synthesized if there are too many (ex: synthesizing student survey rankings from the intro.) The sentence about the underlying university ranking is found in several articles on business schools about the underlying school - which the business school is a part of, so I do not see a need to remove that sentence. I think the main issue you had was with the ranking sections below which was rewritten to exclude some courses. I am not sure I understood your issue with that rankings section for individual courses? I am not understanding how having rankings for different courses, such as marketing vs. entrepreneurship vs. finance is puffery, as they are different programs just as like civil engineering is different than electrical engineering. Is it possible to inform me of why the section on the bottom on rankings is puffery so we can make it more neutral in format. I did not see the need for a paragraph, but hopefully we can improve that section. Perhaps we can use what you had in your paragraph and include the underlying university ranking that the businesss school is a part of for Imperial College London. I am not sure what to do about the courses part? I am not sure the underlying issue in displaying courses. Perhaps that can be discussed or you can give it another go at an edit?

• please do delete the history headings content.

• In terms of style, I also do like an npov style without puffery. Therefore your suggestions were very encouraged. I just was trying to maintain the content from being erased.

• I erased the costs of the program as that seemed like it made it like a pamphlet.

COI: I do not work for the university so do not have COI's. I prefer to keep wiki editors lives private.

Also btw check out many business school wiki pages are similar in promotion and this page is far less than others by comparison: Check out London business school, Warwick business school, or IESE for example. They have very similar statements to these above as this is the nature of business school, but far more excessive.

London Business School: LBS is widely considered to be one of the world's best business schools and its motto is "To have a profound impact on the way the world does business".[3][4][5]

(first part may be promotional as one of the world's best business school's, I do not have a problem with the motto personally being used)

Warwick Business School: It is one of the most prestigious and highly selective business schools in the world.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

(clearly promotional statement)

Due to the school's historical international outlook its alumni hold leadership positions in corporate, governmental and academic institutions around the globe.[8][9]

(I do not have a problem with this statement as it is related to the alumni network careers, but the tone is off as it could be more about alumni leadership positions internationally than repeating international and globe in the same sentence; also the word historically international outlook does not need to be there.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.174.147.202 (talk) 01:50, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

If "global" is to be used as a description of the school, this needs to be linked to a third party reference classifying it as such and put in the context of the Kaplan Compass. It does not belong in the lead but further down in the article where sufficient space can be given to contextualise it properly (and present the test of the Kaplan classification for the school). As currently presented, it simply looks like meaningless puffery, particularly as it is unreferenced and linked to world rather than the description of types of business school.

That other business school articles are bad is WP:Other stuff exists. The point of this discussion is to write the best article here, not to excuse its failings by pointing at where other articles are bad!

The current rankings in the lead are (explicitly) cherry-picking "MBA strengths". Rankings, particularly in the lead, should be either those of IC as a whole or of the business school, not of the sub-factors in which it is particularly strong.

Overall, this article could be dramatically improved, as Shadowssettle says, by cutting back on the puffery. For example, "Imperial College Business School is recognised as a leading research institution in business and management." – Wikipedia should present the facts and let readers draw their own conclusions, not tell them what conclusions they should be drawing. Robminchin (talk) 17:07, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Strongly agree – this isn't even a AfD but well you just got voted for Shadowssettle_(talk) 17:30, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi there, thank you for engaging constructively! My responses to the various points you've brought up:

• Other business schools pages are worse – Completely agree, but let's break this down further
  • although stating it is prestigious isn't so much a problem in the current climate (see Oxon Cantab) I personally think it's silly. However, current consensus across Wikipedia is that if it is present in enough independent sources, it's not too bad
  • The LBS article is dreadful, from the random bolding to the cruft, and could well do with some clean-up!
  • The WBS article has many of the same problems as this one, but to a small extent (is the building info there trying to sell it??)
  • Saying other bad things are bad doesn't mean more things should be bad
• Information should be kept – In general, no. Information that is well sourced should be kept, and other information should be challenged and removed. Information that is clear WP:BOOSTER shouldn't generally be kept, and marketing resources and good sources. However, good sources that can back neutrally-worded claims with similar information could be productive. For example, "most connections made in their native country of the Uk" implies a desire to sell the school to a certain audience. This is not the point, and if it should be there it probably should be further down, perhaps a community or alumni section.
• The rankings related to different departments – Rewritten in prose all of the sourced rankings there should be kept, as I believe they were (I might've missed one). What should not be kept is the splitting it up into different topics, when exactly the same ranking is used multiple times. This is not helpful.

I will try and integrate what has been agreed upon, and will wait for further consensus before editing much more. Shadowssettle_(talk) 17:30, 10 April 2020 (UTC)