College Buildings
So what is everyone's view point on college buildings? I know that student unions, libraries, auditoriums, and similar buildings are valid portal candidates, but what about academic halls, administrative buildings, and residence halls? Just how do these fit in the portal criteria? Or do they not fit at all? And do you require a description as a condition of approval. Because as far as I can tell, if the nomination is just the building's name (ex "Wood Hall"), then it is just a generic building.
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Needs more history and character to be considered a valid portal. Just any random building shouldn't get approved (shouldn't not that sometimes it still will).
This is a good AMA question because while not all buildings on a campus would fit educational criteria I think a lot would. Not sure it's ever been brought up to be clarified.
A little metal placard screwed to a rock can qualify as a POI if it is in honour of a sufficiently famous or even just locally-historic individual. That is but one threshold we can apply in other situations, and a building is so much more culturally important than a mere rock.
Also the educational aspect. Also the mind units all gathering.
Just please don't submit an outhouse. Unless it's been magnificently painted.
Read the description of the building to determine the educational value which is in the high quality portal criteria. Academic buildings holding classes have educational value. Most also have educational displays signs etc in them.
Administrative buildings tend to hold a lot of different things. Read description. Is there student post office there or something else? Smaller classrooms for educational value?
Residence halls usually need an interesting history and usually don't have it. I have seen it but not too often. It's no more exciting than an apartment building if it doesn't have an interesting history.
It revolves the description unless obvious like library or chapel.
I'm not opposed to being pretty generous with college buildings, but there are few types of submissions I hate more than college buildings with no meaningful description. C'mon, at least tell me some details about what it is and why I should care.
And, yeah, those I usually mark as "generic building", even if they are important academic buildings (which I'd have no way of knowing absent extensive googling that I'm not inclined to do if the submitter can't be bothered to spend a moment to write a decent description.)
I pretty much approve any college building. If I can identify the building (name on it, sign in front, etc). Pretty much all university named buildings are used to hold classes or named after a prominent donor/philanthropist.
Huh, that influenced my view on the buildings a bit. I was always iffy about them, but yeah, if they're named after someone important to the school, and they have classrooms for educating and enlightening students, that does make for a good portal.
I think what we really need from the submitters is a good description. It really is up to them to show it has educational value or an interesting history either of the building itself or the donor of the building. What I tend to see is as people get away from athletic or academic buildings the description ends up being not as good and usually just reads something like so and so gave us money so we named a building after him. If you give details as to what this donor did other than give money then you will probably get submissions to pass. It's like parks where so and so gave us a little bit of money so we named a memorial bench after him.
The problem with that, is the character limits now imposed.
Every building, even the parking garages and dormitories at my local campus are portals. I don't really think that should be the case, but the precedent was set well before OPR .
Presumably under directives for "moar portals! MOAR PORTALS!" from Hanke, making it a prescient president precedent.
Disagree with you somewhat. A general description suffices, and it doesn't need to be a history lesson over the person it's named after. Buildings on campus with signs/namesakes are all significant or they would either have a generic sign (like MAINTENANCE) or nothing.
Walk through a random downtown area, look up and there will be plenty of named buildings. Descriptions are key.
Thanks for all the comments. So it is safe to assume the possition that if there is no description or the description doesn't indicate why the building is significant beyond just being a building on a college/university campus, it should be rejected.
It's up the submitter to show it qualifies. Usually through function or history.
Most might actually make it through if submitters would read the dedication plaque for history if the they can't make a good argument for function. Still highly recommend taking the picture of the outside of the building with name in view though.
Also, it wouldn't **** reviewers if the streetview is obviously off to google college name and map to verify location.
One of the reasons behind my question was that I reviewed a series of nominations from Radford University that were just the signs out in front of the buildings. Almost none of the nominations included a description beyond just repeating the building's name and the supporting statement only stated that it should meet portal guidelines.
Those may have a higher than normal failure. When all the submitter had to do on at least half of them is state classroom building which denotes educational purpose. I prefer something along the line of houses history department etc but a bare minimum of effort in submission goes along way.
You're being difficult for nothing. There's a big difference between random buildings throughout town and buildings on a college campus that you darn well know are being used for classes. If you want the history lesson get on Google
No. Not all buildings on campus hold classes. If other reviewers besides myself are rejecting them mostly for being a generic building then it would be in the best interest of a submitter to write a good description that clearly ties it to a qualifying criteria.
I personally submitted a house listed on the national historic registry. I thought if the reviewers had a question they would just google it or notice the giant museum sign in streetview. Nope. I needed to be very explicit in my next description when I resubmitted it. After that I would write the description for any building I was submitting prior after researching it.
Again you keep comparing apples to oranges. We are talking about buildings on college campus. They either hold classes or were built in the name of a prominent Community member and are used for Student Services of some sort, otherwise in general, they don't have a person's name on there. A historic home is a completely different animal considering that we are supposed to reject any houses that may be single-family residences
If every building is that qualifying then clear descriptions shouldn't be difficult.
More than anything else, I am trying to relay to submitters is that the reviewers don't go digging to find a reason to approve something.
I just had a building on a university that was simply named "Health Center" with a description about how it is the campus health clinic. To me, this is no diffrent than any other health clinic, so I rejected it as "generic business". Its great to see a university provide healthcare services to their student body, but just because it is on campus does not automatically mean it is portal worthy.
@TheFarix that is one of the few campus buildings I would probably 1*.
I've seen lots of buildings on campuses that could have been anything. Does a random administration or maintenance building count? What about dorms -- many of those are extremely generic. And just because a building is named after a rich donor doesn't mean it's at all significant. Please just write a description; it will get you much further.