Talk:University of South Florida Polytechnic

Article or redirect? A history

@Cuchullain: @Suzannadanna: I'm going to copy here discussions from all 3 talk pages, so that anyone wanting to discuss further can see what's been said. I have some sympathy with the argument that "anyone wanting to read about our Alma Mater gets to an article about a later, unrelated, institution", given the evident unhappiness about the changes, see in this source.

So: Background (which I didn't spot at first) There had been two separate articles University of South Florida Polytechnic and Florida Polytechnic University, and the articles were merged in 2012. A new stub was recently created over the redirect from USFP to FPU, and I found it, improved it, then discovered the history ... "Now read on...". PamD 12:17, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Conversation copied here from Cuchullain's talk page:

University of South Florida Polytechnic

Hallo, while stub-sorting I came across this stub and did some tidying up of it, made a couple of links etc, retargetted a redirect, AGFing. Only at the end did I find that the stub over-wrote a redirect created in Sept 2012 when you moved the article to merge page histories. This new stub presumably splits what you then merged. I've left it as is, but if you feel strongly that it all ought to go back then I'll try to unpick my handiwork. See my contribs in last few minutes for the various changes I've made. Naturally I know nothing at all about the academic politics of Florida - just a drive-by stub-sorter trying to improve a badly-written stub! PamD 19:39, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

PamD: The article has a bit of a convoluted history as it was in a flux state before the move. I believe it was originally titled University of South Florida Lakeland (now a redirect to Florida Polytechnic University), then University of South Florida Polytechnic, and after the formation of FPU, it went back and forth between remaining a standalone article, and redirecting to the FPU article. As they were really two articles talking about the same thing, I merged them.

I don't personally see any benefit to keeping a separate stub on USF Polytechnic. For one thing, it was actually called "University of South Florida Lakeland" for the vast majority of its existence as a USF branch campus, from 1988 to 2008. It didn't have a separate campus from the local community college until after that. Since then, the USF branch campus as a legal entity has been dissolved, but the "new" university is its continuation. And, the Florida Polytechnic article already covers the history better than the stub does. If it's all the same to you, I think there should only be one article.--Cúchullain ^t/c 20:04, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

OK, I'll try and unpick it. These things happen. PamD 20:06, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, no worries. Looks like it's on me; I should have caught that someone re-stubbed the redirect a few days ago, which just reopened the can of worms. Thanks for being attentive.--Cúchullain ^t/c 20:09, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

I think I've got it all sorted, and hope the new editor won't be upset - as you can see, I've pointed her to you if she wants to discuss it any further! PamD 20:29, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll be available if the editor has any questions.--Cúchullain ^t/c 20:31, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Conversation copied here from Suzannadanna's talk page

USF Poly etc

Hallo Suzannadanna and welcome to Wikipedia. I found the article you started on University of South Florida Polytechnic and did quite a bit of work to tidy it up, make links, etc - see this version - before looking at the page history and realising that a long-established editor (and administrator) Cuchullain had actually merged an article with that title into Florida Polytechnic University in 2012. I discussed it on his talk page and he still thinks that just the one article is preferable - see User_talk:Cuchullain#University_of_South_Florida_Polytechnic - so I'm afraid I've undone your work, as well as mine, and reverted to the "redirect" which leads to the article at Florida Polytechnic University. I also made a redirect from USF Poly, which didn't previously exist. It can often be better, when two topics are very closely or complicatedly related, to keep all the information in one article rather than splitting it across two partly-overlapping ones, as long as we provide redirects from every title anyone might want to use to find the information.

If you think that the article doesn't make clear enough the history of the various names and institutions, please edit it, carefully and with references, to make it clearer. If you disagree with Cuchullan, please argue about it on his talk page: as I said there, " Naturally I know nothing at all about the academic politics of Florida - just a drive-by stub-sorter trying to improve a badly-written stub!" (Sorry, it wasn't all that badly-written, but needed a bit of help - links, and so on).

Sorry that your first shot at editing has come undone like this, and I hope you can find some other topics on which to edit more successfully. There's a lot to learn about editing Wikipedia, but it's an interesting journey. Happy Editing! PamD 20:22, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Conversation copied here from PamD's talk page

University of South Florida Polytechnic edits

Hi Pam,

I started on a clean up on that page, because the previous page incorrectly pointed to Florida Polytechnic University. University of South Florida began in 1954 and started University of South Florida Lakeland in the 1980s. I became a student of the school right after it became University of South Florida Polytechnic (that happened in 2008, I started at the school in 2009).

Our local state representative, JD. Alexander, decided that becoming a separate campus of USF with its own accreditation was not enough (mind you, USF is a Research 1 institution in the US, nothing to sneeze at!) and went nuts on starting a whole new STEM university. Long story short, a whole new university (Florida Polytechnic University) was started and University of South Florida Polytechnic was dissolved. The schools are NOT affiliated with each other in any way.

In fact, Florida Polytechnic right now may not receive the accreditation that JD Alexander promised they would this year. The South Atlantic Conference, an accrediting body headed by Belle Wheelan, refuses to grant this important status until the school meets the criteria established when it was formed. Meanwhile, if University of South Florida Polytechnic still existed, it would have been accredited 4 years ago!

It is a huge bone of contention for USFP students that all social media sites put the logo of the school that killed their school up when we list our alma mater. We have never been FPU students.

How do I get this resolved? I can cite about 50 articles in the Wikipedia page if I need to. FPU's buildings were designed by Santiago Calatrava to be USF Polytechnic, and the site donated to USF for use for their Lakeland Campus, but no, the schools are in no way affiliated with each other.

4.35.211.210 (talk) 21:19, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

@Suzannadanna: (and @Cuchullain: for info) Please see my detailed comments at User talk:Suzannadanna and in particular my statement there: If you disagree with Cuchullan, please argue about it on his talk page. And please also note that if you have registered an editor name it is better to use it consistently: by editing here from an IP address but saying "I started ...", you reveal the probable link between your IP address and your editor name, which is generally thought to be unwise. PamD 07:24, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

@PamD: (and @Cuchullain: for info) My apologies, I am new to this and didn't know the protocols. Heck, it took 20 minutes to find out exactly how to respond . I don't mean to be argumentative. 70.127.26.3 (talk) 10:42, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

New discussion ... below this heading (please don't amend the above copied sections)

PamD and Suzannadanna, I think the main problem with the last attempt to create a separate article is that it left the whole thing as a bit of a mess. For one thing, the redirects at University of South Florida Lakeland, the branch's name for the majority of its existence, were left pointing to Florida Polytechnic University even after the article was recreated. That's pretty confusing to readers. Additionally, there's the fact that the recreated article featured less cited information on the history of USF Polytechnic than the history section of the FPU article. It was more or less a fork with less content than the main article.
Clearly the whole situation with the dissolution of the USF branch and the creation of Florida Polytechnic has caused some pretty strong emotions. But for our purposes here, we need to ask ourselves what's the best way to present the key information for readers. I think readers will be much better served with one decent article than two of inconsistent quality. Most sources discussing the history of the two institutions will discuss both, which is natural, as the "new" independent school emerged from the USF branch; it's even using the campus that was being built for the old one.
If we do decide to create a separate article for the USF branch, we've got to be very sure that redirects and incoming links are all going to the right place, that the content is solid and well cited, and that both articles are navigable from one another.--Cúchullain ^t/c 13:01, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Cuchullain -Good point. I will work offline on consolidating a more thorough history that addresses the entireTYof USF Lakeland AND Polytechnic. When it is complete, I'll bring it here. 4.35.211.210 (talk) 13:47, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Sounds good. Keep in mind that any additions and changes need to be cited to reliable sources, and written from a neutral point of view. I can help with citation formatting and general cleanup, but I'm afraid I won't have the time to do an overhaul.--Cúchullain ^t/c 13:52, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Logo

If the logo is/was the official logo of the university, then it's not an editor's "Own work", and needs to be treated here as a logo, in copyright terms. If it's "own work", then it's not the official logo. (Is there some official document, findable in an archive file - either web original, pdf or even paper - from which the official logo can be copied? That would be the best solution). PamD 12:33, 6 July 2016 (UTC)