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I took the liberty of truncating the names to make the template smaller. I considered reducing all the names to their commonly used abbreviations . . . but for some of the schools this would be non-informative to the general public. I tired to use the least amount of information that still uniquely identified the school. If its not clear, perhaps we should expand as appropriate. User:Hopping ^T 17:26, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I do prefer the abbreviations to the previous version with full names. For the most part, the current abbreviations are good. I'm going to make a few changes that will hopefully be more clear without taking up too much additional space. The general rules I'm using are:

1. name of school without university/college
2. only include COM/SOM if the remaining name of school is a location and not distinctive of the school (Des Moines requires COM, Michigan State does not)
3. if multiple schools have the same name (branches), include location at the end

These criteria should make each school link unique, without any abbreviations unknown to the general public (like PCOM and AZCOM). The only downside is that the way some school names are written here might not be seen anywhere else. --scottalter 18:23, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I generally agree with all points. One additional criteria I was using was the "common name" of the school. For example, despite the official name, "AT University - Missouri" is almost universally referred to as simply "Kirksville." Probably because it is the original D.O. school, and in the location where osteopathic medicine was founded. The town itself is almost synonymous with osteopathic medicine. I'd like to acknowledge these common names, yet I recognize to do so would make our rules here inconsistently applied, a worthy effort. Thoughts?User:Hopping ^T 23:47, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, "AT Still Kirksville" works very well, solves both problems. User:Hopping ^T 23:48, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Do you think the regional groups are appropriate? I just kind of made them up. I wasn't really sure where to put Pikeville? Midwest or south? Or North Texas - south or plains? User:Hopping ^T 05:01, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I like having some type of groupings - 28 links one after another is a bit excessive (though commonly done with colleges: ((Colleges and universities in metropolitan Boston)), ((Colleges and universities in metropolitan Philadelphia)), ((NYC Colleges)), etc). I have no issue with the current arrangement. But how about grouping by private/public? This could be more useful than grouping by rough location. --scottalter 05:56, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's a thought. Another would by groups of when they were founded . . . 1900-1950, 1950-1970, etc. User:Hopping ^T 06:16, 13 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]