Wikipedia talk:Schools/Defunct

message: I have been making a huge effort to compromise (I even voted keep for some one liners), discuss ideas and generally try to help this discussion along.  Hipocrite's original plan, stated near the beginning of this long discussion, seemed like a good compromise. Yet those most active in school Afd's (the keep voters) refused to come to the table, or came without any intention of looking for a compromise. This still seems to be the case. The keep cabal are their own worst enemy. If the keepers wish to waste ALL their time on keeping every little school in the world that is their problem.  If they cannot see they will not stem the tide of school Afd's without a STRONG and UNIFIED compromise solution then that is their problem.
I have tried to make school districts and design layouts that might be useful for a merge compromise.  I have tried to encourage people that schools without context is no more useful than google since wikipedia should be more than google. Neither of these efforts seem to be getting even a hint of positive feedback from the so called hardliners. Finally, the latest incidents and accusations of BAD FAITH resulting from votes in the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Birchview Elementary School (Plymouth, Minnesota) are just ridiculous.
I have no further interest in the school debate it is obviously a lost cause.  I want to congratulate Man in Black and Rob (Thiver) for making this discussion very interesting and informed. However, I reserve the right to vote delete on really bad school articles, certainly I will no longer be willing to do research (create school district pages and find relevant town articles etc.) to merge mediocre school articles or expand them. I even reserve the right to nominate schools for Afd if they are as bad as the Birchview Elementary School article. Why, you may ask?  Its simple, the only way a bad school article will get cleaned up is if it goes to Afd.  Prior to Afd they will sit for months with no one editing them.
Wasting time on schools is a fools game.  There are thousands of more IMPORTANT articles that need attention.
I'm sorry for this negative attitude which was aprtically inspired by comments from Pete Hurd (above) as well as the following essay I found at User:Freakofnurture/Wikipedia is NOT Classmates.com.
The essay reminded me of what schools articles should be and sums up my frustrations perfectly.  David D. (Talk) 17:26, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I remain at the table. I do not trust in the good faith of the other parties at the table, as demonstrated by their continual delete votes and their continuous nominations of either perfectly good redirects or stub articles. The proposal I wanted to sign on to does not require me to stop voting keep on on school articles, as merge and redirects are keeps, not deletes this was the CLEAR consensus, and does not require - and in fact is slowed - by the use of AFD. Every nomination for AFD, or vote Delete on AFD is an example of an individual not abiding by the formative proposal above. No, the biggest enemy to any sort of consensus are rogue admins like George who threaten to ignore votes on AFD that they disagree with. Hipocrite - «Talk» 21:10, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Whoa! Are you accusing me of bad faith!?  I revert vandalism to Natural selection by an anon IP, check the IPs contributions and find reverted edits to a high school and that atrocious article.   The article was exceptionally bad, and smelled very hoaxy, it was created and solely edited by an anon IP with a dodgy history.  AfD is totally approriate.  Imagine you came across an article like that, not about a school, but a hoaxy looking unverifyable book of poetry with a paisley cover, no listed publisher and a glowing "takes readers to a magical place" review.  You would not go looking to see if there is some special rule exempting poetry books, or paisley related articles, from all other WP standards, or searching for some special set of pseudo-deletion rules pertaining only to that category.  As someone who is regularly invited to contribute to "real" encylopedias let me say this, that I find this movement to document all schools in the USA to be really silly.  That there is a refusal to accept any standard of notability or quality for elementrary schools suggests to me that some editors care far more about their elementary schools than they do about Wikipedia.  What you want is your own little ghetto for school articles, where your hobby topic is exempt from the standards that apply to all the other topics on Wikipedia.  I really hope you don't post a notice on the AfD page requiring everyone treat your hobby interest with a special set of gloves and exceptional rules.  All the NN bands, vanity bio posters, bloggers etc will want their own standards too, and I just can't imagine it leading to much satisfaction.  Next time I come across a really sub-standard school article, I'm just going to ignore it.  I'll save my efforts for the parts of Wikipedia where the resource of usable information is being presented to readers who are actually looking for it. Pete.Hurd 01:01, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Secondly, school article in need of clean-up can be listed at Schoolwatch. Hipocrite - «Talk» 21:21, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: (repost after edit conflict with hipocrite) I just found out from Kappa that there is a clean up list on school watch.  There are ZERO articles on that list!  Hipocrite, I think you are one of the good guys and are trying to make an honest effort in compromising.  Why don't you (schoolwatch participants) start screening through the new schools and move the dogs into the clean up list. At present, it really does look like you all just sit back and wait for the Afd's.  This stinks of entrapment since you then complain about how many schools are listed for Afd.  I will promise you that from now on if i come across a crap school i will list it on your clean up list. If you could persuade others to do the same it might give people a chance to sort out what the criteria would be for a merge/redirect vs keep the article decision.  I would propose that articles that are not cleaned up in a certain time frame (say three months) are fair game for deletion.  Just out of interest why has no one mentioned the clean up list before??  Why don't you (schoolwatch) use it?  As I said above, reaching this compromise is taking far too long.  i just don't have the time or interest to persue this any more.  I wish you luck in getting this sorted out. David D. (Talk) 21:24, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The schoolwatch cleanup list is mentioned prominently on the WP:SCH page (Rules of Thumb, #2). I don't have the technical prowess that the people who somehow scope out all the new substubs for AFD do. That's why they should be putting things on the cleanup list. I hope your break from this foul dispute clears your head some. Have a good one. Hipocrite - «Talk» 21:35, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: But someone does have the technical prowess since there is (or was) the new school list. I think you clean up list needs to be more prominently displayed.  I had not noticed the link and clearly NO ONE is using it. May be it should be on the Afd nomination page.  Many of the Afd's are by people who do not know about the school debate.  As more new users come in you'll get more Afd's.  Thats what happens when the bar for inclusion is set so low.  For this reason the schoolwatch team needs to be proactive in advertising their goals.  I assume the goal is no AFD send it all to the clean up list.  Why have I not heard this before.  certainly those less familiar with the deabte will have no clue. David D. (Talk) 21:44, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A good point. I'll endeavor to advertise that more prominently. Your thoughts on the rogue admin threatening to disregard votes that don't engage in meaningless debate about specific articles on AFD? Hipocrite - «Talk» 21:50, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Rogue admins are always a bad thing. I have not seen specific examples of George since i don't usually watch the closing ceremony.  Any specific examples? I'm sure if it is as you say i would not endorse it at all. David D. (Talk) 23:27, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hipocrite - «Talk» 23:30, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

text: *A closing admins has not only the right but the duty to examine all arguments and put aside those which do not adress the article in question.  For example, I do not believe that there exists a closure who would count "Keep, nominator shagged my sister" as a valid recomendation.  Similarly, "Delete, a magician stole my pants once and I hate them all" would be discounted in an AfD on James Randi.  Geogre is quite right here, despite the fact that I have similarly linked arguments before.  I shall go forth and sin no more.  brenneman(t)(c) 23:56, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikipedia is NOT Classmates.com

message: Why not just use XD instead of AfD?  If the articles don't get cleaned up while in :Category:XD, then they can go to AfD and be deleted without the normal battles.  This allows those who want to improve the articles a chance before someone puts it on AfD.  Right now XD is small, so it should be easy to watch.  Less work then putting the article on Afd so there is a good reason for users to use XD.  Vegaswikian 00:22, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Might not be a bad idea. Because this debate is starting to seem fruitless due to stonewalling on both sides.Gateman1997 00:51, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Both sides? - brenneman(t)(c) 01:11, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. Adminstrators on your side are threatening to ignore votes from people on my side if we don't engage in pointless debate on AFD pages, and you're supporting that view. Of course, "D NN" is just fine for an AFD nomination, for some McMahon preschool, right? Look at the reception I got just today and yesterday to see why people on my side (we've "won" on AFD) aren't all that interested in  being harrangued here when we can just keep "winning" there. Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:30, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  XD vs. Afd 

message: I'm starting to think this has all been in vain. Based on the latest school AFDs only those people discussing here have taken ANY of this to heart and even those that are here haven't been applying to proposal to their votes on any AFDs that are coming up. I applaud those that tried to bring both sides to the table but it's just not going to work unless we get broader support from both sides.Gateman1997 19:08, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: How does keeping all schools fail to meet WP:NPOV ("number" above)? In addition, I think that most of the inclusionist camp wants to keep all verified schools in Wikipedia. I've certainly voted delete on non-verifiable schools.Turnstep 15:12, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I repeat for the benefit of those that may have missed it: ... despite the fact that most of the resultant articles will fail to meet ...  Unfortunately, many of the keepers tend to have an "interesting" definition of verifiability.  Apparently if they've found some trace of a suggestion somewhere that the school might exist, it's verified.  Forget for a moment that the verifiability policy applies to the information rather than the subject itself. Chris talk back 17:48, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Have we made any progress?

message: I just saw my first article on a class room in a school, Davis_High_School_German_4_Class.  Would this get deleted on Afd? I would hope so but I'm really not sure.  Slippery slope?  David D. (Talk) 00:08, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That would be deleted with no votes for keep. If you were trying to make a WP:POINT you went a LITTLE too far down into obscurity. A preschool would have been a better point maker.Gateman1997 00:25, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No I'm not trying to make a point at all.  I was just amused by the fact that someone had written an article on a class room.David D. (Talk) 01:15, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge out class rooms?  Could it happen?

message: But seriously. To get everyone to the table we need to stop the AFD nominations it is the only way to get started on a serious discussion regarding criteria for merge/redirect, keep or delete criteria.
One success of an Afd nomination is that a school article normally gets cleaned up quite quickly.  I have been experimenting moving schools that would otherwise get an Afd nomination on the the schoolwatch cleanup page.  I think this is a viable option to stop Afd nominations but at the same time ensuring these article do get improved. 
I created a template template:schoolzone that i have tagged many new school micro/stubs that might have otherwise appeared in Afd over the last few days. See below
I then transfered those schools into the cleanup list at schoolwatch, they also get listed in :Category:School articles actively undergoing construction. Myself, Kappa and Hipocrite have already got to work trying to improve those articles.
The advantage of using a tag like this is that once a school has been tagged it should not get re-tagged for Afd.  i hope that for a while people can use this tag in lieu of an AFD or speedy tag as a show of good faith. THEN we can start talking about details instead of arguing in Afd. Sorry I went ahead and did this without discussion but I hope this bold move might get us moving along in the right direction again. I hope that this might be a transient solution to bring EVERYONE to the table.  If others can think of an improvement in this idea or have better idea why not throw them out now. David D. (Talk) 01:10, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: A proposal to slow/stop the AFD nominations

message: One thing that I think is a big problem with school articles is the creation of school articles with titles that really should be disambiguation pages instead. There are the obvious school names that already are disambiguation pages (e.g. George Washington High School), but I keep running across school names that I would have guessed were probably unique, but weren't. What needs to be done is ALWAYS check school article names against a good internet resource for duplicate or similar names. I've been using Public School Review, because it seems to be fairly thorough, but there may be better resources that I haven't found yet. As an example of what I think should be done, I just turned the Jordan High School article (which was a redirect to David Starr Jordan High School) into a disambiguation page. BlankVerse 15:10, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambiguation of school names 

message: I've removed this category.  The very concept of notability is very controversial, and never so controversial when it comes to schools.  Such category tags on this discussion page can only inflame matters. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 04:02, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[:Category:Subject-specific notability criteria]]

message: According to the centralized discussion list, there is supposedly a straw poll going on here. What happened to it? I can't find it. --Metropolitan90 16:54, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Straw poll? 

message: *Culler Middle School  Currently a microstub and merge candidate.
*Dawes Middle School Currently a microstub and merge candidate.
*Goodrich Middle School Keep candidate although could be expanded.
*North Star Middle School Currently a microstub and merge candidate.
*Park Middle School (Lincoln, NE)  Currently a microstub and merge candidate.
*Pound Middle School Currently a microstub and merge candidate.
*Scott Middle School Currently a microstub and merge candidate.
*Irving Middle School nominated for AFD. Currently a microstub and merge candidate.
*Lefler Middle School nominated for AFD. Currently a microstub and merge candidate.
*Lux Middle School nominated for AFD. Currently a microstub and merge candidate.
*Mickle Middle School nominated for AFD. Currently a microstub and merge candidate.
*Lincoln High School (Lincoln, NE)  Keep candidate although could be expanded.
*Lincoln East High School Currently a stub and merge candidate.
*Lincoln Northeast High School Currently a stub and merge candidate.
*Lincoln North Star High School Currently a stub and merge candidate.
*Lincoln Southeast High School Good school article definite keep.
*Lincoln Southwest High School Good school article definite keep.
What does the above mean??
Regarding the current proposal being discussed on the talk pages at WP:SCH. A Keep or Merge vote is being touted as a compromise that might get us out of school AFD hell. Presently people create school articles containing neutral, verifiable information and it is impossible to delete them, even though many have a desire to do so. Rather than striving for an impossible consensus to delete any given school article, it is preferable, and takes much less energy, to merge the text of the article into an article about a suitable habitation or administrative unit: a city, county or state, or a school district, either a local education authority or other school system.  This should be done while taking care not to delete the information contained in the article. 
How would this compromise work? One solution is to tag new school articles that are considered candidates for merging with a template such as the following, template:schoolzone, to warn those unfamiliar with the process from tagging it for AFD. This will also serve as a holding category and bring to attention schools that need to be merged or expanded.
Merging is appropriate if the school article is both below three sentences and lacks any sort of illustration, boxed info-template or picture. If the article is merged, the current location should be replaced by a redirect, and the edit history maintained for future use. 
We now have an good chance to test this proposal since User:Bp28 has just created the school district page Lincoln Public Schools including new pages for all the middle schools and high schools in the district.  Already four of the middle schools have been tagged for deletion by User:Luigi30. Do we really have the energy for 11 middle school AFD's? I have tagged the remaining schools with the schoolzone template in the hope it will prevent the others reaching AFD.
Above is a list of the schools and a description their current state.
Let's see how these grow over the next week and then discuss which ones if any are merge candidates after that period of time.  This will be a useful exercise for several reasons:
#It will help convince those who wish to delete such articles that given a chance they will grow if less time is spent arguing in AFD.
#It will help determine what form a merge candidate will take.
#It will also help us reach a consensus of the type of school article that is worthy of being kept without merging.
I urge everyone here to participate in this project as an exercise in good faith. David D. (Talk) 00:46, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Special collaboration

message: When did this start happening? Fairmeadow School is now listed as a member of it's district as a category?Gateman1997 21:26, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It can be listed in both the article and as a category. This way, if a user is on the article of another school in the district and they want to know which other schools are in it, they just have to look at the category. Nifty feature :-) JHMM13 (T | C)   16:31, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You should rephrase that to "if a user is on the article of another school in the district and they want to know which other schools in it have a wikipedia article, they just have to look at the category.".  This is one of the advantages of lists since a school can be on a list even if there is no article. David D. (Talk) 16:35, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Absolutely, good point. Categories can only be populated if an article exists on the subject. If that person wishes to look through the list of schools in that district, he can consult the list, make his own list, or simply make his own article without any prior list-assistance. JHMM13 (T | C)   23:24, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: School District Categories

message: This has been around since November 18th. I removed all the vandalism and now all that's left is one sentence. Now I understand why schools get put at AfD so often. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 03:56, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Greensboro Day School]]

message: As deletionist admins are now ignoring keep votes that are merely a link to the keep arguments page, I have removed the majoirty of the comity guidelines from the main page. These guidelines, while fine for delete votes, will cause keep votes to be disregarded. Bad faith? I can't assume it! Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:16, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: * Is that a good idea? After all, there are users who are claiming that if no school article is being deleted then therefore none should be deleted. Or, putting it in other words, there are uses who claim that if no action is being taken then it is precedent and no action should be taken, independent of the article's notability or encyclopedic value. That isn't good. --Mecanismo | Talk 09:59, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *It's a good idea to defuse the problem.  But you are right that this argument is being put.  It would, of course, be equally easy to put together a cabal to prevent deletion of spam, with the rallying cry all businesses are inherently notable! and keep all valid businesses.  Unfortunately dogma is incompatible with consensus. - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] AfD? 21:32, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed bad reccomendations 

message: * The debate on school articles is getting a bit long and, frankly, getting nowhere. The problem is, as I see it, that there are people who want to include articles on every single school which ever existed and there are people who only want to keep the schools which are undoubtedly and unquestioably notable. I believe that the only solution to this problem is that the community agrees with a few basic guidelines which may serve as foundations to support other more refined and specific guidelines, i.e., set up a sane starting point from where to start with.
To start with, I propose two objective principles that define a notable highschool. They are:
:* The school had at least one unquestionably notable person as alumnus/alumna (example.
:* The school attained unquestionable and verifiable historic notability throughout it's existence (Columbine High School).
I believe that everyone agrees with these two guidelines. They have the advantage of not requiring absurd metrics as the number of lines proposal and it is easy to verify the notability of the schools being analyzed. After setting these guidelines as basis, then the community can discuss other more specific details on what schools should/should not be listed and the cleaning process can retain the sane approach which it is currently lacking. --Mecanismo | Talk 14:12, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Keep all schools - this debate is over. No valid school has been deleted for ages. Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:56, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: * If the debate is over, how come there is still a lot of discussion and not a single objective guideline which gathers the consensus of everyone? I believe it is safe to say that the subject is far from over and for a very good reason. --Mecanismo | Talk 16:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

text: * As I stated in my proposal, it isn't aimed to be a end-all proposal. It serves as a foundation to the discussion and a common ground for everyone to start with. About highschool notability, it is easy to see that there are highschools whose notability is limited to the region they are located and outside of that, they are as not-notable as they can get. Those schools are completely void of encyclopedic value. An encyclopedia should be a means to convey relevant information and not a yellow-pages about schools around the world. --Mecanismo | Talk 16:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: *I don't really see how it can act as a foundation for the discussion when it really has no bearing on the questions of interest. We all agree that notable schools should be kept, but its not clear how we take this and arrive at more general proposals that can gain consensus. To be useful, a proposal has to suggest a way to resolve the dispute; you've just restated things we clearly agree on without proposing a way for us to resolve the dispute at issue. Christopher Parham (talk) 17:12, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

text: *Wikipedia:Schools/Arguments#keep Hipocrite - «Talk» 17:22, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: * I believe that we should define a basis to discuss the highschool article epidemic which is afflicting wikipedia. One of my proposals is to define basic guidelines that any user can use as a starting point to define the notability of one school. I gave two suggestions (school history and notable ex-alumni) but more suggestions are more than welcome. What guidelines do you suggest? --Mecanismo | Talk 00:25, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: * There is no epidemic. Hipocrite - «Talk» 03:14, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

text: *I contend the statement that both of these points are things we agree on.  For a start, notable alumni, no matter how notable they may be, do not make the school notable.  Ultimately, the it seems the root cause of this whole problem is a confusion between the collective and individual senses of "schools", i.e. the difference between "all schools" and "each and every school".  Yes, schools should be written about and represented, but in line with the usual Wikipedia practice of comparing subjects with others in their category, not each and every school is notable enough for inclusion (and let's keep this point on schools only).  In exactly the same way that we do not include every person, every company, every band, every charity or every anything else, we should not include every school.  Chris talk back 17:12, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: * First of all, that "satanic" comment was a bit out of line. For the sake of argument it would be best if we kept away from that line of debate because, as it is easy to understand, it is a quick path to flamebaiting and trolling. About the subject, it is natural tendency to assume bad faith when a user sees the user's little pet project or the article on the user's highschool with a AFD tag. After all, if the user invested time in that article and/or if the user went to that school, the user may really believe that the school is indeed notable. The thing is, sometimes it simply isn't and sometimes the school is just plain not interesting, not notable and completely void of any encyclopedic value. So, although the author sees the AFD tag as an action done in bad faith, that doesn't mean that it was really an action done in bad faith and even that the article doesn't deserve to be deleted. Yet, the authors who mindlessly "gang up" against any AFD vote of any school article and mindlessly vote against the deletion because they have to "fight the highschool articles deletion" still do so, completely independent of merit and of any fundamented reasoning made by them. So, as I said before, the "school articles aren't deleted anyway" argument is plain nonsense when one knows what is going on on the AFD votes. --Mecanismo | Talk 09:56, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: * WP:AGF is still a guideline here. I suggest you follow it. Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:16, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Application of Wikipedia:Verifiability is an objective guideline: any school which has been written about in a credible source is ok, any that has not should be deleted. redstucco 09:36, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

text: *I think that's what people were trying to do, but since if there is no consensus the default is to keep, and since there is a group of editors who will vote keep on all schools regardless, it doesn't work that way. - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] AfD? 18:48, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Instead of obsessing about the fight between deletionists and inclusionist why don't you make constructive comments about how to improve the quality of wikipedia? I sometimes wonder if you just wish to have a perpetual war so you can continue the good old fight instead of make a serious effort to improve things? For example, how do you propose we should educate new users about not nominating school articles for AFD? How do you propose we should educate new users on how to write a good school article? David D. (Talk) 08:23, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Defining objective guidelines for the definition of keeping/deleting of school articles 

message: So we are now getting Sunday Schools appearing.  For example see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/West Seattle Christian School.  And consensus seems to be to keep.  Going a little far I thinks. Nfitz 06:19, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What about Sunday Schools 

message: See for example this deletion section:. This is getting bloody ridiculous. JoshuaZ 01:32, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Without concensus, this will continue.  The easiest fix would be to improve the school notability criteria.  However in this group, that suggestion is dead on arrival.  Vegaswikian 01:39, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Has anyone discussed a minimal size maybe? The obvious notability is something like at least X number of students or newsworthy for some reason. Quick and easy to apply. I went to a school that had about 10 kids or so per a class and it seems like it would get an entry under these conditions. This is at the same time while we are throwing out the bios of real academics if they dont have enough published papers. groan. JoshuaZ 01:42, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Size has limited meaning.  The National Sport School is one of the more notable schools in Canada (going by notable students/alum), and it has only 122 students (a tenth the norm in the area).  Also, a lot of the more unique, innovative schools, that are historical "firsts of" (old history, new history making ones) are small.  You have to be small to be innovative.  Big schools are less able to go off on wild tagents, or radical new learning approaches. --Rob 02:23, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  And those will show up on news sources and be newsworthy. But random elementary schools are simply not encyclopedic. JoshuaZ 02:26, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually, its in small elementaries, that some of the greatest innovation, and trend-settings occurs, especially in charter schools, or other special-purpose schools.  Also, most schools get news coverage (though local).  Also, Dixon, which you cited, isn't a random typical school.  It's a fairly interesting one, for having a French immersion program (obviously there are a lot of immersion program in Canada, but its still in the minority, and interesting for this fact).  --Rob 02:52, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, but many of the keep votes occured even before that came up. And trend-setting early in a trend is really not relevant for other wikipedia purposes. For example, with websites, we only consider a website notable after it becomes popular/well known, not before. And our policies for people are similar. Why should schools be different? JoshuaZ 03:12, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Maybe the minimun criteria could be expanded to require entries for Notable alumni, References and noteworthy milestones in History.  Articles could be created without these, and truly notable schools would still standout and be accepted as a valid article.  Maybe more attention should be paid to the suggeted structure for new articles.  How many AfD articles meet the references criteria?  Vegaswikian 03:22, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

text: It may also be worth trying some no-content-loss merges, it's my impression that these have at least some degree of success in consolidating pages, if that is what you desire. I think that so long as no material is lost, most people would be okay with it, but there may be stronger opposition to this than I am aware of. Christopher Parham (talk) 02:30, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Merges was a good approach at compromise, but few have tooken the time to do any decent merges.  The opposition comes when somebody randomly puts a redirect to another page, without doing any research or thought.  I've seen people merge to a talk page, merge to a state list, and even suggest merging to a country (bizarre, but true).  --Rob 02:52, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: One of my points has been that having links to schools in district or local articles is a cause for may of the delete/merge issues.  If district articles were built as a table that included a place to gather facts, many of the AfD issues would simply vanish.  Vegaswikian 03:13, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I like this solution. JoshuaZ 03:15, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Tables are not an especially attractive solution as they are quite complex for new users to edit -- the markup is a bit confusing. Plus they encourage only adding the sort of telephone-book information that I think is what most people don't like about these articles. The unique bits of information that make schools notable are not easy to place in a tabular format. Just having a section header for each school on the district page is the best solution, and this makes it easy to break things out when the sections are substantial enough. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:25, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  This needs to be revised now. 

message: Ok, I have attempted to make a new version of the notability guidelines for schools after looking at the above discussions. I have stolen liberally from the above. Here it goes:
If a school article is verifiable and meets one or more of the following criteria, it should be kept:
# The school has had At least 1500 students for at least 10 years. 
# The school has at least 3 notable alumni/ae. 
# The school is old. Note that this a relative measure, a school that is 80 in an area that has only had people for 100 years fits this criterion better than an 80 year old school in London. In general this criterion should be interpreted in an inclusive fashion.
# It has one or more interwiki links (that is another version already exists in another language)
# The school has one or more famous persons attended immediately prior to embarking on a notable career, as in the case of prep-to-pro athletes. 
# The school has a paid faculty currently includes, or formerly included, one or more famous persons. 
# The school in some way, remarkably differs from other schools in its geographical area (defies the summary description given in Education in SOMEPLACE) 
# The school was/is at any time during its history, the focus of major media attention, due to a notable event, such as a school shooting or other tragedy, criminal indictment of a faculty member, controversial school policies spawning a notable court decision (such that we have an article for the legal case A v. B). 
# The school has/had team or delegation took first prize in a notable athletic or academic championship, of some kind, during some year, at a national level. 
# If the above fail, the burden becomes notability with a presumption for merging and deletion. 
If it meets none of these criteria, but is still verifiable, it should be merged into the appropriate district (or other higher-level article such as city or education in that city or region, if private), preserving all relevant content, and be redirected.
===Comments===
Note that this removes the "three lines" criterion and the "PD/GFDL/free pictures" criterion.
1. I could see the numbers changing in 1, and they should in any case be considered guidlines (so a school that had
1200 students for 15 years would also count for example). I could definitely see 1500 being substantially reduced.  2. Note that for alumn the condition is only notable, not famous. Ok, feel free to tear this proposal apart now. JoshuaZ 20:51, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This idea won't work.  We're not going to go over the thousands of existing articles, and start deleting them (point #10).  Also, much of your wording is far to subjective.  Nobody is going to agree on when something "remarkably differs" from other schools.  Verifiable real schools, by precedent are kept, much like municipalities, and there's no reason to revisit this.  Ideas for improving quality are needed, but this does nothing to accomplish that.  You're saying some schools should be deleted regardless of the level of quality of the article content.  Also, note that point #10 about deletion, contradicts the last sentence, which calls for merging (not deletion) when criteria isn't satisified.  Note the words "preserving all relevant content".  How do mesh "preserving all relevant content" with "presumption for deletion". --Rob 21:16, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  (edit conflict with below) Dystopos clarified the poor wording on my part about merger and deletion. And yes, articles should sometimes be deleted regardless of quality (classic example being vanity articles). I agree that some of the wording is subjective. However, most of it is not, and in any event WP:CORP and WP:BIO have strong subjective elements as well. Sometimes the best guidlines has some subjectivity. As for the complaint about 1000s of articles, we don't need to do a systematic review, just let articles come to the deletion review at they may. And if a large number of articles risking deletion is an argument for not changing a criterion then one should never change any criteria for anything, which seems a bit odd. JoshuaZ 21:23, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Do you have any specific conditions that you think should be added or criteria above that should be less strict? JoshuaZ 21:24, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Actually, as far as I can tell this won't delete any article, merely merge and redirect them. And as far as I know, there is no substantial opposition to merges that do not lose content (that is, most of them will not be reverted). There's no real need for this proposal -- if what you want to do is merge the articles, do so. Thoughtful merges are unlikely to be reversed. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:30, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, among other issues, I'd like it that when very minor schoolsd o get put up for deletion, we have a general response of "merge" rather than keep. JoshuaZ 23:46, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't really see how that would be useful -- the content can already be effectively merged no matter what people respond at AFD. Just wait till the discussion closes and then carry out the merge. If there's strong oppposition to performing such merges, then we can deal with that, but to my knowledge no such opposition exists. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:57, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, yes, but I'm not going to be around for every single school AfD, so I'd rather get a consensus about merging them, and I also strongly dislike merging after an AfD has a consensus of keep. That seems to not be in the spirit of consensus. JoshuaZ 02:57, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The point is that nobody is objecting to the merges, therefore a presumed consensus already exists. Re: your second point, AFD is not oriented around the question of how content should be organized, so I don't think you should be afraid to edit articles that have been kept at AFD. If someone disagrees, they can always undo it. As someone who has always voted "Keep" on schools, I think that people who want to merge article should simply go ahead and do so; haggling over a complex set of standards, on which consensus is very unlikely to occur, is not a useful way to spend time. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:36, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

text: If you're worried about opposotion to a merge, and don't wish to act unilaterally, just put a  tag, and see if anybody objects.  If nobody objects, go ahead and merge.  If there's major opposition, then pick another one of the many thousands of school articles to do instead (and you can come back to the controversial ones, when you've done the non-controversial ones). --Rob 03:42, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Groan, I guess part of the issue is that I would prefer this not to be a one man campaign. JoshuaZ 03:48, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually, the  tag would get other editors who actually edit, to be involved.  In the later part of 2005, a majority of participants said they supported a merge proposal.  Almost none of those people who supported the proposal actually helped in any decent merges (they would blindly vote "merge" in AFD, then do nothing).  Also, surely, it makes more sense to carry through with the least-contested and simple merge candidates first, and leave controversial ones till later.  Even if your proposal got unanimous support here, it wouldn't result in a single extra merger, if nobody takes the time to do any proper ones.  --Rob 05:18, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Ok, consider this matter dropped until further notice. I'll start putting on tags and merging the lesss controversial ones and see what happens. JoshuaZ 05:36, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed new critera. 

message: Note that this removes the "three lines" criterion and the "PD/GFDL/free pictures" criterion.
1. I could see the numbers changing in 1, and they should in any case be considered guidlines (so a school that had
1200 students for 15 years would also count for example). I could definitely see 1500 being substantially reduced.  2. Note that for alumn the condition is only notable, not famous. Ok, feel free to tear this proposal apart now. JoshuaZ 20:51, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This idea won't work.  We're not going to go over the thousands of existing articles, and start deleting them (point #10).  Also, much of your wording is far to subjective.  Nobody is going to agree on when something "remarkably differs" from other schools.  Verifiable real schools, by precedent are kept, much like municipalities, and there's no reason to revisit this.  Ideas for improving quality are needed, but this does nothing to accomplish that.  You're saying some schools should be deleted regardless of the level of quality of the article content.  Also, note that point #10 about deletion, contradicts the last sentence, which calls for merging (not deletion) when criteria isn't satisified.  Note the words "preserving all relevant content".  How do mesh "preserving all relevant content" with "presumption for deletion". --Rob 21:16, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  (edit conflict with below) Dystopos clarified the poor wording on my part about merger and deletion. And yes, articles should sometimes be deleted regardless of quality (classic example being vanity articles). I agree that some of the wording is subjective. However, most of it is not, and in any event WP:CORP and WP:BIO have strong subjective elements as well. Sometimes the best guidlines has some subjectivity. As for the complaint about 1000s of articles, we don't need to do a systematic review, just let articles come to the deletion review at they may. And if a large number of articles risking deletion is an argument for not changing a criterion then one should never change any criteria for anything, which seems a bit odd. JoshuaZ 21:23, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Do you have any specific conditions that you think should be added or criteria above that should be less strict? JoshuaZ 21:24, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Actually, as far as I can tell this won't delete any article, merely merge and redirect them. And as far as I know, there is no substantial opposition to merges that do not lose content (that is, most of them will not be reverted). There's no real need for this proposal -- if what you want to do is merge the articles, do so. Thoughtful merges are unlikely to be reversed. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:30, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, among other issues, I'd like it that when very minor schoolsd o get put up for deletion, we have a general response of "merge" rather than keep. JoshuaZ 23:46, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't really see how that would be useful -- the content can already be effectively merged no matter what people respond at AFD. Just wait till the discussion closes and then carry out the merge. If there's strong oppposition to performing such merges, then we can deal with that, but to my knowledge no such opposition exists. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:57, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, yes, but I'm not going to be around for every single school AfD, so I'd rather get a consensus about merging them, and I also strongly dislike merging after an AfD has a consensus of keep. That seems to not be in the spirit of consensus. JoshuaZ 02:57, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The point is that nobody is objecting to the merges, therefore a presumed consensus already exists. Re: your second point, AFD is not oriented around the question of how content should be organized, so I don't think you should be afraid to edit articles that have been kept at AFD. If someone disagrees, they can always undo it. As someone who has always voted "Keep" on schools, I think that people who want to merge article should simply go ahead and do so; haggling over a complex set of standards, on which consensus is very unlikely to occur, is not a useful way to spend time. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:36, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

text: If you're worried about opposotion to a merge, and don't wish to act unilaterally, just put a  tag, and see if anybody objects.  If nobody objects, go ahead and merge.  If there's major opposition, then pick another one of the many thousands of school articles to do instead (and you can come back to the controversial ones, when you've done the non-controversial ones). --Rob 03:42, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Groan, I guess part of the issue is that I would prefer this not to be a one man campaign. JoshuaZ 03:48, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually, the  tag would get other editors who actually edit, to be involved.  In the later part of 2005, a majority of participants said they supported a merge proposal.  Almost none of those people who supported the proposal actually helped in any decent merges (they would blindly vote "merge" in AFD, then do nothing).  Also, surely, it makes more sense to carry through with the least-contested and simple merge candidates first, and leave controversial ones till later.  Even if your proposal got unanimous support here, it wouldn't result in a single extra merger, if nobody takes the time to do any proper ones.  --Rob 05:18, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Ok, consider this matter dropped until further notice. I'll start putting on tags and merging the lesss controversial ones and see what happens. JoshuaZ 05:36, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: Alright, I have protected this page at the m:wrong version so that Grace and Rob can work out their differences on this talkpage, instead of playing ping-pong. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:41, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I shouldn't have re-reverted again (I should have left it to others).  If/when its unprotected, I will not re-re-revert.  I think any discussion of what the wording should be now, should be done with other editors (e.g. not me).  --Rob 08:00, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protected 

message: The notability section of this proposal needs to be expanded.  To be a useful policy, this should spell out some guidelines for criteria a school should meet in order to be kept.  There would be many such criteria, such as one that one a top award for having the top academic performance in its state or province, one that had (for example) 3 or more notable alumni, one that was involved in a school shooting, etc.  As a result, we should make our wording clear that our list is not exhaustive.  Suggestions for what things we should list? Johntex\talk 04:00, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The overall proposal may be lengthy, but it doesn't include any criteria for notability.  The notability section here is just "some believe this...others believe that..."  I think it needs to provide some concrete guidelines in order to be of any use. Johntex\talk 04:46, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Expansion of notability section

message: I'm marking this as rejected policy. Schools aren't deleted for a variety of reasons differing from person to person (so you don't have the unified standards you tend to see in a guideline or policy), and merges are generally handled in an ad-hoc way. Plus, people are still fighting over this wholly pointless page, and linking to the Arguments page, which should have been deleted ages ago.
I'm going to point WP:SCH to Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools, which, right at the top, includes more useful advice on making a school article not a useless substub than this page ever has or ever will.
If someone would like to make some notability standards for schools (heaven help the poor bastard), feel free to make a new, separate page without the baggage of this one. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 06:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think changing the redirect may be a bad idea, as it retroactively changes the meaning/context of somebody's archived comments, such as "Do something per WP:SCH".  So, I think WP:SCH should be left pointing here (I would sooner deleted the shortcut, then change its meaning).  --Rob 06:29, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I was going to put a dab notice at the top of the school project page, for exactly that reason. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 06:32, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, ok.  As long its clear to the reader, I'm fine with it.  --Rob 06:34, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm done fiddling. If you want to change anything or revert, feel free. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 06:39, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Time to retire this