Wikipedia talk:Schools/Archive 10

message: ::Note: I moved this from within the above section to a new section for discussion.
* A couple of thoughts on the above. I believe it is worth distinguishing the practicality of allowing articles to be created on schools from the practicality of creating a bot to generate stub articles. The former is, in my opinion, to be encouraged. The latter probably should not be (though the line is hard to draw). We should also distinguish between "verifiability" and "fully cited". If we presume that the existence and basic facts about any school could easily be verified, that is enough to keep an article, even if the original contributor hasn't actually done so. Providing sources falls under the process of article improvement, not article deletion. Deleting an article is NOT the proper way to deal with poor editing. Deletion is for articles that could never be improved to meet WP standards. That leaves us a choice between the following:
===Choices===
:# All schools are notable and should have articles generated about them as soon as possible.
:# All schools are notable enough for articles and therefore articles submitted about schools should be improved, not deleted. 
:# All schools are notable enough for articles, but until those articles are improved beyond stub status, with cited sources, the article should redirect to the school district and any information merged there.
:# Many schools are notable enough for articles, but they must meet some minimum criteria, backed up by verifiable sources, in order to have a separate article. Otherwise they should be redirected to a section in an article on their school district or community.
:# Many schools are notable enough for inclusion, but only notable schools with well-written encyclopedic entries should have their own articles. Otherwise they should be redirected to a section in an article on their school district or community.
:# Grade schools (by which I mean grades K-12) are only notable enough for their own articles if they can demonstrate true notability in and of themselves (not by association with famous graduates or events, but through their own institutional achievements and history). Most schools should not even exist as a redirect unless something more than their existence is explained in another article, such as one on their school district or community.
===Comments===
:Of these, I would count myself as supporting either the second or third option. Only the last option calls for going through the deletion process, and is, in my view, rather extreme given the usual comparisons to articles on Pokemon, reality show contestants, sitcom episodes, etc. --Dystopos 23:31, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I more tend to be toward 6, at the very least (though remove "grade" from "schools", it is nowhere near universally accepted that all high schools are notable either.) I guess that shows the nature of the divide here... Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 07:42, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would support a policy based on either the fourth or fifth option. What is a grade school? Dahliarose 09:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I just looked that up, it appears that it's sometimes used to mean all pre-college schooling, but it's also frequently used to refer only to elementary schools. (That's the only way I'd ever heard it to date!) Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 10:02, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm using grade school to mean K-12 (I added a parenthetical note above). --Dystopos 18:28, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Combine 2 and 3, i'd support that. I would also support 4 and maybe 5 if somthing was deed to them about not deleting them but rather improving them. KeepOnTruckin Complain to me | my work here 23:09, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Well, since 4 seems about the center, why not do that, with redirects provided to a parent locality until/unless sourcing is established? Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 09:13, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's fine by me. I think again we need to strive for international clarity. I presume school districts only exist in America. In the UK we have local education authorities but I don't think there are any UK articles about individual LEAs. Schools would normally be mentioned in an article on the town or village in which the school resides. There are again no UK articles about "communities". A grade school seems to be the American word for primary school but as far as I can establish K-12 seems to cover both primary and secondary education. I full support number 6 if it refers to primary schools. Dahliarose 09:36, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Regarding internationalization, I wouldn't presume to have an entirely new class of articles created merely to handle redirects from former school stubs. I am using the terms "district" and "community" in the loosest possible sense, to refer to whatever article would likely contain information about a number of related schools. This could also be an association, denomination, village, town, zone, county, parish, shire, canton, prefect, ward, league, etc. --Dystopos 13:56, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a good point.  There should be no need to create that many new articles -- only in cases where the locality articles are already lengthy and well-developed, such that splitting would be preferable to adding new content.  Phrasing is tricky, though.  Maybe use "community" and footnote something to the effect of your last sentence.  In general, I think a more specific article (school district) should be preferred as a target to a more general one (town), in cases where both articles exist. Shimeru 07:15, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Some options

message: :Of these, I would count myself as supporting either the second or third option. Only the last option calls for going through the deletion process, and is, in my view, rather extreme given the usual comparisons to articles on Pokemon, reality show contestants, sitcom episodes, etc. --Dystopos 23:31, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I more tend to be toward 6, at the very least (though remove "grade" from "schools", it is nowhere near universally accepted that all high schools are notable either.) I guess that shows the nature of the divide here... Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 07:42, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would support a policy based on either the fourth or fifth option. What is a grade school? Dahliarose 09:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I just looked that up, it appears that it's sometimes used to mean all pre-college schooling, but it's also frequently used to refer only to elementary schools. (That's the only way I'd ever heard it to date!) Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 10:02, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm using grade school to mean K-12 (I added a parenthetical note above). --Dystopos 18:28, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Combine 2 and 3, i'd support that. I would also support 4 and maybe 5 if somthing was deed to them about not deleting them but rather improving them. KeepOnTruckin Complain to me | my work here 23:09, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Well, since 4 seems about the center, why not do that, with redirects provided to a parent locality until/unless sourcing is established? Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 09:13, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's fine by me. I think again we need to strive for international clarity. I presume school districts only exist in America. In the UK we have local education authorities but I don't think there are any UK articles about individual LEAs. Schools would normally be mentioned in an article on the town or village in which the school resides. There are again no UK articles about "communities". A grade school seems to be the American word for primary school but as far as I can establish K-12 seems to cover both primary and secondary education. I full support number 6 if it refers to primary schools. Dahliarose 09:36, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Regarding internationalization, I wouldn't presume to have an entirely new class of articles created merely to handle redirects from former school stubs. I am using the terms "district" and "community" in the loosest possible sense, to refer to whatever article would likely contain information about a number of related schools. This could also be an association, denomination, village, town, zone, county, parish, shire, canton, prefect, ward, league, etc. --Dystopos 13:56, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a good point.  There should be no need to create that many new articles -- only in cases where the locality articles are already lengthy and well-developed, such that splitting would be preferable to adding new content.  Phrasing is tricky, though.  Maybe use "community" and footnote something to the effect of your last sentence.  In general, I think a more specific article (school district) should be preferred as a target to a more general one (town), in cases where both articles exist. Shimeru 07:15, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: * One obvious omission from the current notability criteria (as far as I know) is eminent alumni.  This should be rectified.  If an important person merits a biography in Who's Who or multiple internet articles (or even Wikipedia?) which states they were educated at school X, then that school becomes notable.  Apart from anything else, their Wiki biography should have a hyperlink to the school - obviously impossible if the school article itself is suppressed! Hyperman 42 22:17, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * Hyper, I'm pretty inclusion minded (I think), but this opens the door to notability for parents, employers, etc who are thus related to a notable person.  There are some precedents such as an author being notable if one of his books is notable, but the work of an author is exclusively his, where the alumni of a school are the result of several schools and other experiences.  I still say that each subject can only be notable if there is enough acceptable source material to write a sufficient article. --Kevin Murray 22:32, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *I would tend to disagree to the "notable alumni" criterion as well. Because John Doe, who is now a superstar, worked at a local restaurant while a teenager, does not make that restaurant notable. Similarly, having stepped foot in a given school doesn't mean that school is notable. Notability doesn't "rub off" or transfer. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 05:20, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * Perhaps not automatically, but I think people have grown to accept that if George Washington slept somewhere, that it's worth having a plaque to tout it, even though his stop may have been necessitated by convenience (or fiction) rather than by a judicious survey of all possibly noteworthy inns. I think you're correct to say that it is not an automatic transfer of notability, though one would mention notable alumni in an article. I would also say that it is feasible that if, say, a Nobel winner spoke glowingly about the extraordinary climate of her high school science laboratory, that the endorsement would carry some weight toward notability even though the subsequent 30 years of research made a more verifiable impact on her achievement. --06:02, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *So, put a plaque in the inn, or the lab. Just don't put it here, WP:NOT a memorial. At most, that merits a couple lines in the chemist's article. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 07:22, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *I'm sure that there are some alumni of a school whose future success (and Wikipedia notability) is utterly unconnected to their attendance at the school. Yet for most alumni -- especially athletes, actors, politicians, comedians, Nobel Prize recipients, etc., at the high school and college level -- their attendance and participation in school activities was an integral factor in shaping their future notability and are inherently interconnected. I would say that this is near automatic at the high school  and college level, while requiring greater documentation below that. As such, the attendance of notables at the school would be a strong indication of notability for the school itself. Alansohn 17:45, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *I'm sure that for most notable people, their parents were also a defining and shaping factor in their lives, probably in most cases much more so then a high school. That doesn't mean we need articles on them. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 02:18, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *I don't think that this is the time to have a nature vs. nurture debate, and I certainly agree that parents play a major role in shaping their children. Schools are designated by society to have the role of molding children in many of the aspects that may confer notability to an individual, in many cases in academic and athletic areas where most parents are unable to provide the same guidance and instruction as most schools can and do. A parent who is notable for shaping their child's notability is exceptional, and would probably only be signicant if the parent did so for two or more children. An excellent example of a notable parent would be Richard Williams (tennis), whose notability is directly related to his being father of tennis professionals Serena and Venus. For a majority of notables, again especially athletes, actors, politicians, comedians, Nobel Prize recipients, etc., at the high school and college level, it is hard to argue that the school played no role whatsoever in shaping their future notability, and far easier to argue that it had an integral role, despite any parental contribution form either genetic or developmental input. On top of its inherent claim of notability as a school, a single notable alumnus should tip the scales of notability for a school article. Just as with Richard Williams, a school that has done so for two or more notables has an extremely strong claim of notablity. Alansohn 03:23, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Additional notability criterion - alumni

message: It seems that over the course of discussing all of the options preferences can get diluted in the minutia and efforts to compromise.  I suggest that each of us briefly restate a summary of our objectives.
* Kevin Murray: I am most concerned about instruction creep.
::* My fist preference is to delete this guideline as superfluous to PNC (primary notability criterion), and make this text an essay
::* My second preference would be to merge the most basic guideline into Organizations with detail in an essay
::* My third preference is to offer a simple and concise guideline with detail in an essay
::: --Kevin Murray 00:16, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *PNC is the primary notability criterion, basically meaning, all other considerations aside, either enough independent sources are there, or not, and that's the final determining factor. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 14:31, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Clarification of positions

message: Reading through the several sections above, it appears that no consensus will be reached on including this as a guideline, and the proposal should be considered to be rejected by the WP community. --Kevin Murray 23:35, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *Looks about right to me. We need less subguidelines to WP:N, not more. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 02:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Evaluating consensus

message: "A rejected page is any proposal for which consensus support is not present, regardless of whether there's active discussion or not. Consensus need not be fully opposed; if consensus is neutral on the issue and unlikely to improve, the proposal is likewise rejected. Making small changes will not change this fact, nor will repetitive arguments. Generally it is wiser to rewrite a rejected proposal from scratch and start in a different direction."
--Kevin Murray 07:03, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I turned off the Werdnabot code, leaving the end discussion here is a good idea. (And Radiant, I think we need one of those...) Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 16:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: This proposal has been Rejected per [[Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines]]