Talk:Bowdoin College

Is there reason the men's ice hockey team isn't mentioned at all? Not to It seems odd that a sport which has shown considerable success in the past is left out altogether.AKMAdam (talk) 09:04, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Ciogmmsn, presumably the same editor who previously edited this article without an account or not logged in (e.g., this edit), insists that this article's infobox include the college's zip code and its radio station. No rationale or explanation has been provided.

The documentation for this template indicates that the postal code is optional. In fact, this field is rarely (if ever) used in articles about U.S. colleges and universities. There is an apparent consensus among most editors of these articles that this information is not important enough for readers to merit inclusion in the infobox. This particular article has had this template since at least January 11, 2006 - over 15 years - and unless I'm mistaken the article has never included the zip code in the infobox.

There is no parameter in the infobox for radio station; this has been added using one of the free parameters. That in itself argues against the inclusion of this information in the infobox; at a minimum, we can clearly say that there is no consensus to include it in many articles. I am opposed to including it in this article and nearly all other articles - there may be rare exceptions, I suppose - because the information simply is not among the most important summary information that readers need to immediately know about the college.

Ciogmmsn, I welcome your explanation and discussion! ElKevbo (talk) 23:41, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi ElKevbo,

I get your point about the zip code, but I wonder, then, why is it included in the template in the first place? Many fields are optional- does that mean they are not worth having? If it is so widely agreed that the zip code isn't a relevant piece of knowledge, can we update the template with its removal?

Second, there is no parameter in the infobox for newspapers- does this mean we shouldn't include it? I see a campus radio station as equally crucial as a campus newspaper, so why should one have precedence (and be included)?

I'm adding the radio station back unless there is a wide consensus that it should be removed, at which point I'd recommend a reconsideration of the newspaper's inclusion in the infobox. Ciogmmsn (talk) 18:50, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Your question of "Why is the zip code included in this infobox if we rarely if ever use it?" is a valid one. This would be the best place to ask that question. I would support a suggestion that this parameter be removed from the template altogether.

With regard to the student newspaper, I do think that it's reasonable to believe that the lack of a parameter for that information indicates an implicit consensus against its inclusion. I don't know why it was added to several articles a year or two ago by one editor; you would have to ask that editor. I don't have a particularly strong objection to its inclusion but I do think an explicit discussion about it would have been helpful. But editors are encouraged to be bold in editing articles so they were within their rights to add the information as no one has objected or raised questions.

I have objected to the edit that you have made, however, so the correct response is for you to discuss the edit here in Talk instead of edit warring to add it to the article above my objections. Please revert your edit until we have completed our discussion and reached a consensus. ElKevbo (talk) 02:39, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

There is a dispute about including a gallery of selected former students in the main university article.

(List of Bowdoin College people is a stand-alone article where photo inclusion is not disputed)

This has been discussed previously:

• Here, with a rough consensus to NOT include a gallery (@Sbmeirow: initiated the discussion).
• Here, with a rough consensus to NOT include a gallery.

WP:IG is a policy regarding this.

Your input is welcome. Magnolia677 (talk) 15:41, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

A representative photo of a particularly famous alum (maybe Pierce) would be fine, but let's follow precedent and not have a full gallery. Sdkb ^talk 19:34, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Picking "most famous" is subjective. Most readers have never heard of Pierce, but they know Zohran Mamdani, also an alum. Because this article is about a school, and not about the famous people who attended, I'm hoping to gain a consensus to include "famous photos" only on stand-alone alumni lists. Magnolia677 (talk) 19:48, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Agree, a school article is suppose to be primarily about the school, not the students that attended it, though a photo of the founder of the school would be fine, or an admin that was at the school for numerous years and made a significant impact on the school. Photos of students really belong in alumni / people articles, because those types of articles are primarily about students and faculty, per the title of those types of articles. Community (city) articles have similar issues, where city articles are primarily about the city, not the people that live there. Also, Wikipedia is not a photo album. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 22:03, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm broadly aligned with that, and chose to have no photos in the "Noted alumni and faculty" section of the college FA I wrote. Still, for somewhere like Occidental College with a clear most famous alum (Obama in that case), I think it'd be justifiable to have a single pic.

Every image choice on any topic is subjective, so I don't buy that argument — per MOS:IMAGE the most we need is for it to be representative. Also, I don't think it's a particularly bold/subjective stand to say that a president counts as a more famous alum than a mayor — the only argument for Mamdani over Pierce would be one underpinned by WP:RECENTISM, which is not something I'd expect most experienced editors to fall for. Sdkb ^talk 22:47, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

• WP is text based, supplemented by images. It is not a picture encyclopedia and this is reflected in WP:IG. If we have an article, List of Bowdoin College people, the section Notable alumni is primarily a repository for a hat note to direct the reader to that list article. Also, the captions to the images are not exempt from WP:VER but are unverified - that they are alumni etc. Cinderella157 (talk) 02:22, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

  Concur. The gallery should be removed. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:56, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

This issue is arising in multiple articles about colleges and universities so I recommend a more general RfC at WT:UNI to see if there is or can be a broad consensus on this general issue. ElKevbo (talk) 03:44, 7 November 2025 (UTC)