Talk:Summer Science Program

Expanding the article

We must expand this article!! --BorisFromStockdale 20:13, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I take it that you have attended this program? I will be attending this program this upcoming summer; it sounds fun. However, I'm concerned over the fact that the article is simply a copy of the information on the SSP website.Mipchunk 06:27, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I was a SSP reject last year (was a sophomore), and went early entrance so I'm ineligible for application this year. So sadly, I do not know much information that's outside of the website. Simfish 04:47, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Sources

We really need to add sources to the article. I suspect it has been largely written by SSP alumni based on personal knowledge. While all of the information looks correct based on my own personal knowledge, we should be able to do better.--(SSP'77)RichardMathews (talk) 20:30, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Many of the sources we now have are in the Notable Alumni table. Sources in the "Name" column relate to showing that the person was an alumnus. While many of these sources refer to information self-published by SSP, I think that is better than no source at all. Sources in the "Noted for" column demonstrate the person's notability.

As for the text portion of the article, there are currently six separate sources; and only one is material originally published by SSP. These are really good sources such as Sky & Telescope magazine, National Academies Press, and other independent publications. Some of these sources have extensive information, and we could certainly improve this article merely by noting which sentences are backed up by which sources. That should leave relatively little material that is not backed up by sources. --RichardMathews (talk) 10:45, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

I added a ((news release)) tag to the article because it still needs much work. The article reads like a promotional brochure for the program. The overly choppy/bulleted claim-ref-claim-ref adds to this problem. Even the top image has a promotional tag built in and is a deletion candidate (it does not seem to be their current logo and has no ((Non-free logo)) rational for its use). The article does not meet WP:MOSBEGIN, first sentence and even first paragraph give little understanding of what this article is about (hands on astronomy summer camp?). The second paragraph is promotional fluff, not a summary. Some of the summary should be broken out into a (much needed) "description" section. Much of the history should be moved to "description" as well. History needs a prose makeover into coherent paragraphs. 16:53, 9 February 2012 (UTC)~

I have an incredibly busy three-day weekend coming up, so I'll come back to this next week.

In the mean time, I would like to make a disclosure about a potential conflict of interest. As I have noted before, I am an alumnus of the program. I am a donor. I volunteer for the program in many capacities. My work on this article is in no way an official act for the program, and my work here is not under direction from the program. I have been active in editing a large number of Wikipedia articles on a wide variety of topics, and I believe I approach this with a balanced view. My first edits to this article (over six years ago) came before I was doing much volunteering for the program. This just happens to be a topic I know a lot about. I want the best encyclopedia article. I have no desire for this to be an ad.

I do agree that the article could use better organization. I don't agree that it sounds promotional, but I'll take your concerns seriously and see what I can do next week. The tone of the article is comparable to the tone of the most detailed source, the article from Sky & Telescope magazine.

For example, you state that the first sentence, calling this "an intense summer program for intellectually gifted high school students" does not give understanding about what this is about. I feel that this gives a much greater understanding than "hands on astronomy summer camp." This is an intense academic program, not a fun camp.

I do think it is fair to compare SSP to the elite colleges it prepares students to enter. I don't think you can understand SSP without seeing its purpose as being preparation for such colleges. I don't feel that it is promotional that these WP pages have these statements in a lead paragraph:

Despite its small size, 31 Caltech alumni and faculty have won the Nobel Prize and 66 have won the National Medal of Science or Technology.

— Caltech page

77 Nobel laureates, 52 National Medal of Science recipients, and 38 MacArthur Fellows are currently or have previously been affiliated with the university.

— MIT page

More than 50 Stanford faculty, staff, and alumni have won the Nobel Prize and Stanford has the largest number of Turing award winners for a single institution. Stanford faculty and alumni have founded many prominent technology companies including Cisco Systems, Google, Hewlett-Packard, LinkedIn, Rambus, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, Varian Associates, and Yahoo!.

— Stanford page

These are factual statements that get at the essence of what these institutions are about. The purpose of these statement and the comparable ones in the SSP article are not for promotion.--RichardMathews (talk) 07:59, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I do not understand why there is a deletion consideration on this page. There appear to be a few sources on the general explanation of the program and many sources on the accomplishments of alumni. --rcorty

There certainly is nothing newsworthy described in this article -- no recent or upcoming event -- so it would make no sense to move this to WikiNews. It hasn't been marked as spam, so nobody is saying it should be up for speedy deletion. I don't see any indication that anyone but Fountains of Bryn Mawr thinks it is overly promotional, but it could use cleanup. I made some changes tonight, and I'll come back to look over other possibilities in the next week.--RichardMathews (talk) 09:09, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

There seems to be a little miss-understanding re: what a Wikipedia article is. The article should describe the program....concisely. Half of this article is a list alumni accomplishments, that does nothing to describe the topic and comes off (in my mind) as the type resume padding you see in a promotional piece. Wikipedia is not a directory of alumni. List are supposed to be "lists of related articles (links)", if they do not have an article they are not notable in Wikipedia. The tag itself seems to describe the problem re: the article has a very promotional tone. If there is any debate as to what should be in this article .... feel free to point out the reliable secondary source that says X and Y. If we can't find reliable secondary sources it points to a problem.... the article is poorly covered in secondary sources (something that has to exist to even be in Wikipedia). I don't think at the moment the article is a candidate for deletion, just pointing out some obvious "fluffy-ness" to the tone. 21:30, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Fountains. Your reorganization was quite nice. It was much like what I was thinking of doing, so we really are not far apart in our thoughts on this article. I have fixed a number of grammatical problems that were introduced.

There is just one item left out that I guess you think is promotional, while I see it as informational. This is the discussion of colleges that alumni attend. The National Academies thought this was important to bring up. It ties in very much with Caltech's motivation for creating the program and the program's mission to help students "realize their individual potentials in the sciences and other professions." Can we find a way to discuss this that will not sound to you like its purpose is to make anyone look good? The most recent text had been:

All students go on to college, and most alumni eventually matriculate at Caltech, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley and Ivy League schools. Many later earn advanced degrees and positions of leadership in their chosen careers.

In 1991, the National Academies' Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications observed that "All participants go on to college. About 37 percent of the pre-1985 graduates are now working in science and medicine, and 34 percent in engineering, mathematics, and computer science (including the founder of Lotus Development Corporation)."

And finally, can we now get rid of the news release tag? --RichardMathews (talk) 10:18, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the cleanup. The article text was already there, just re-arranged per MOS and WP:TONE. I think it looks good, there are a few changes it could use but we can lose the tag. The first quote line doesn't convey much information and its just a little WP:WEASEL. The second quote line would fit in the article - "In 1991, the National Academies' Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications observed that......etc".... it is limited to an observation by a source attributed "in text". The thing I think should be avoided is inferring cause and effect based different referenced items (actually that is Wikipedia policy - WP:OR). There are allot of sources here but all you can draw from them is "Advanced students go to college and do well". Lumping them together does not gives us the synthesis "certain programs make students advanced". Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 22:38, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

List cleanup

Cleanup re: list of "Notable alumni" to fit WP:LIST: added list intro/deflist, definition "Notable" means they merit articles, Word "Notable" not normally in list titles, tables are discouraged, and "Noted for" is a redundant column (notability is already enumerated in the entries article). Some have no reference showing they were in the program (one fixed, others should be added to the bio article of the person in question). Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 20:14, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

One of the most common complaints about Notable Alumni lists on WP is that there is not adequate evidence of notability. The deleted list was very good in that regard. I think it is a shame to lose that, though I agree that the list became overwhelming as it grew.

It is wrong to make the inclusion of people on the list be determined solely by whether they have a WP page. The issue should be whether the people meet WP:Notability (people), not whether articles have already been created for them. For example, the proposed WP:Notable Alumni policy had suggested that people should be included as notable if "the reason they don't have an article is because, although it would qualify under WP:BIO, the article simply hasn't been created yet." (while that never became policy, it is a concise statement that is supported by existing policy).

Furthermore, for lists of people, the requirement for notability is reduced by WP:LISTPEOPLE. People notable for a single event can be included, based on the importance of the event and the relevance to the subject article (SSP). Citations were provided that meet that requirement (until you deleted them).

I think these considerations could certainly be considered to be applicable to Ken Ouchi, developer of RAID storage. A Google search for Ouchi and RAID gets a quarter of a million hits, and while all do not relate to Ken Ouchi, it is clear he is someone very well known in the trade, who is notable for an industry-creating invention. I really am surprised that an article never has been written about him. Franklin Antonio and many of the others you deleted are others who I would wonder why nobody ever created a page for them.

They meet the Notability requirement that "he or she has been the subject of multiple published secondary sources which are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject." If you are going to remove someone from the list whose notability had been explained before you deleted it, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that that individual does not meet that requirement. It is nowhere close to sufficient to just say they don't have a WP page.

And for those known for a single thing such as the head of a physics/astronomy department of a major university, the clear relevance to SSP makes them notable for the purpose of this list.

--RichardMathews (talk) 02:43, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Not to be lazy but WP:BURDEN is exactly the opposite, the burden is on the editor who wants to include something (someone) to prove they should be included. There is no way to find the cutoff of who to include/who not to include in a list like this unless it is by notability. Wikipedia clearly defines notability (in fact its policy). So asking that they have an article is perfectly reasonable since the person in question has passed the WP:NN process (it keeps the decision from being arbitrary, its passed many editors). If you think someone is being missed it is perfectly reasonable to red-link them into the list or even add a stub article with the references. There are lots of editors out there who will put in there two cents about notability. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 04:19, 16 February 2012 (UTC)