Wikipedia talk:Notability (schools)/Archive 4

message: Moved from up the page.
* Can we start by topping and tailing the debate? What articles do everyone want and what articles do nobody want? Top: Can we go lower than universities? High schools? Bottom: x is a y-type of school in z? Nursery or preschool? Lower? Higher? This might help to clarify what we're talking about here and home in on the contention. Perhaps I'm missing something and these are already clarified somewhere. --Celestianpower háblame 21:41, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Top and tail 

message: An aggregate sample across many many schools shows that we are sampling the population correctly, and that foo percent of people actually want schools kept.
*This would be a strong result, and I would be willing to stop saying "delete" on school AfDs.  I would discourage others from creating nominations.  I would still want to discuss merging stubs and sub-stubs. - brenneman(t)(c) 06:26, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possibility 1 - schools are in 

message: The aggregate sample shows that the overall rate of people who want schools kept is less than foo, but more than (1 - foo).  This would require that there existed a group who deviated from the norm slightly, either in the way that they voted or in the frequency.
*I would stop saying "delete" on school AfDs and begin saying "merge".  I would not discourage others from creating nominations.brenneman(t)(c) 06:26, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possibility 2 - up in the air 

message: The aggregate sample shows that the overall rate of people who want schools kept is less than (1 - foo).  This would require that there existed a group who deviated from the norm strongly.
*I would attempt to present this information and hope that some reasonable discussion could take place. brenneman(t)(c) 06:26, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possibility 3 - freeped 

message: Sampling using afd is inevitably skewed, but I'm not sure where this examination of the sampling population is supposed to lead us.  If there exists a subpopulation that strongly wishes to keep a class of articles, then there can never be a general consensus to delete such articles.
I do not oppose--will never oppose--the nomination of articles for deletion, whatever the subject.  I'm in absolutely no doubt that school deletion nominations have been vastly and overwhelmingly good faith attempts to improve the encyclopedia.
As a matter of practical advice, I'd continue to advise editors considering such nominations to make a realistic examination of the likely outcome of their nomination, taking into account all factors.  An hour or so spent by the prospective nominator attempting to improve the article, perform a merge or redirect, or whatever, could save many man-hours of effort to no avail in a deletion debate. --Tony SidawayTalk 11:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The point I'm asking people to consider is that, whatever view they have, it may not be representative of a wider consensus, and that self-selection bias may be screwing things up.  For myself, if I saw real empirical evidence that my opinion was off base, I'd be willing to stop self-selecting.  The phrase "then there can never be a general consensus" implies a very un-wiki-like attitude on the part of this supposed group.  It would imply that, even if made aware that they were gumming up the works, they wouldn't stop.  This would be tantamount to disruption, to gaming the system.  Surely we wouldn't support that?  brenneman(t)(c) 11:56, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway]]'s view

message: I've noticed that there seems to be a lot of support for treating middle schools different from elementary schools. I'd like to open this up for discussion: why make a distinction? Are they really that different?
Here's an example from my own school days: in my town, the elementary school used to be grades K-6, and the middle school was grades 7-8. Later, the split was changed to K-4 and 5-8. Does this mean that the elementary school was actually providing 2 years of encyclopedic middle-school level schooling in the past and deserved its own article? Honestly, as far as I'm concerned there's no difference between middle school and elementary school except for the building you go to, and that at least for us, middle school was the first time we had school intramural sports. The real change was between middle and high school. I propose that we treat elementary and middle schools the same. Any thoughts on this? flowersofnight (talk) 11:01, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the problem is that they are not the same everywhere.  I'd be happy to agree with that, though, for practicality's sake (and note, that the suggestion doesn't suggest deleting or keeping anything, just treating elementary and middle schools the same in whatever decision is made)  Proto t c 11:23, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I treat all schools the same: inclusion if notable, deletion if not. Why should our standards for schools be any different than they are for people? Denni☯ 01:15, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

text: *Seconded. - brenneman(t)(c) 01:23, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

text: *I agree, but the hordes of non-notable schools surviving AFD indicate that the system has broken down and special consideration is being given to schools. Given that, I'd at least like to see some modicum of consistency in whatever standard is applied. (sadly I think the notion of treating schools just like any other article is a lost cause given the current makeup of AFD voters) Unfortunately I've been unsuccessful in determining exactly what criteria people apply to a non-notable school to deem it worthy of inclusion. I seem to be met with strong resistance when I bring it up. flowersofnight (talk) 02:31, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The criteria is simply, it's a school so the article must be allowed to exist.  Vegaswikian 03:11, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If that's your point of view, I respect it. But no one has been able to explain to me exactly which articles are eligible for "must be allowed to exist" status, which are not, and why. Can you? Are schools and towns the only types of articles that merit auto-inclusion? Or are there others? flowersofnight (talk) 03:42, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: For the record, that is not his view, he is being snide and facetious by trying to imply that school inclusionists have no criteria other than the mere existence of a school. Vegaswikian is well known as one "who routinely nominates and/or votes to delete school articles." The argument is more subtle and complex than that. See Wikipedia:Schools/Arguments#Keep for starters.--Nicodemus75 09:21, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well no, it's not. I have lost count of the number of times I have seen the argument "Schools are inherently notable" being used to support a "keep" vote. I have yet to see a single argument presented by a hard-line inclusionist which states anything more than "All schools must be kept. " The inclusionist argument is utterly lacking in subtlety. Denni☯ 18:59, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Middle schools vs. elementary schools 

message: Redirects do not work with categories. Large existing categories such as :Category:High_schools_in_California, :Category:Middle_schools_in_California and :Category:Elementary schools in California would be disrupted if schools are merged into towns or school districts. Categories are preferable since they allow users to pick a school, by knowing the approximate article name (but not typing it exactly). They needn't know which district it's in, or even if it has a district.
*I don't know for sure if we want the various school categories to include every single school with Wikipedia coverage. If we look at :Category:1960 births, it does not include every single person who was born in 1960, nor does it include every person born in 1960 which is mentioned in another article. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:37, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Existing categories disrupted

message: Some town articles are huge, such as Calgary, Alberta and schools would be lost in the noise.
: I'm still learning about this issue, but is a possible solution to have a schools article that is referred to in the Calgary, Alberta article? I note that San Francisco, California has Culture of San Francisco, California, List of famous San Franciscans, List of San Francisco Municipal Railway lines, Maps of San Francisco, California, and even List of television shows set in San Francisco. Having Schools of San Francisco, Calfornia would seem quite reasonable. --William Pietri 22:16, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd bet that any towns that have large articles already have, or should have, an article on education or on the major school district so this should not be an issue.  Vegaswikian
*In the case of the town article already being huge, the schools could be covered in a school district article for that town. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:38, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Town articles already too large

message: In Calgary (mentioned by Rob above) the largest district has 200 schools, which means it would be horrible if somebody ever listed them all in one article.  These are not as easy to maintain as separate school articles that effectively split the work of maintenance. Nobody will update all the schools in a large district, but they might update one, or a few of interest.
*Would it really be so horrible? We already have some perfectly fine articles that list 100+ things. flowersofnight (talk) 22:02, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Some school districts are huge

message: There will be a barrier for the growth of school articles since editors will just maintain schools in the merged state and feel less inclined to expand beyond the limits of the list or table format.  For instance, adding notable alumni for one school, in a list of many schools is very hard. Novice users, particularly, are intimidated by huge district articles listing many schools, and are unlikely to add relevant information about their school. Also, when a separate school article is necessitated, a novice is unlikely to know how to undo a redirect. A vicious circle is created: the merge prevents expansion, and the lack of expansion is used to justify the merge. Micro stubs, however, will be noticed by a novice user and grow organically.
*School articles are not likely to expand in any case. It is my experience that only about half the articles ever progress much beyound where they were at creation. I see a massive push on to create school stubs, but no similar push to improve those which already exist. Denni☯ 19:07, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: School article are less likely to expand

message: School districts often cross municipal boundaries and municipal boundaries often cross school districts. For example, Rob mentions above that he "I live inside the physical boundries of four school districts (each of the four contain the entire city-proper, and 3 include additional area)."
*This is only an issue if we are trying to categorize each physical location into a unique school district, and assign each school district to a unique town. To my knowledge I don't think this is the case. Each school only belongs to one district, am I correct? That gives us a place to merge. If we make a higher level article like "Education in (city A)", we can still link that district there, with perhaps an explanatory note that the district also extends into City B. "Education in City B" can link to the same district as well.flowersofnight (talk) 22:53, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Municipal and school districts are distinct

message: Most people have no bloody idea which school district (where even applicable) their schools was in, but they certainly do know the name of it.
*Redirects are cheap. There's nothing stopping us from having a redirect from the school name to the school district, or even disambig pages linking "John P. Smith School" to the various districts that contain a school by that name. flowersofnight (talk) 22:51, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: School districts are obscure

message: The existence of private schools is problematic since they cannot be merged into a school district article.
*They can be merged geographically instead - say, "Private schools of Anytown, USA" (or by county, state, whichever we decide is most appropriate). As I mentioned earlier, an idea might be to have a "Education in (state/county)" page which lists all school districts and private schools. There are ways to fit private schools in if we use a little ingenuity. flowersofnight (talk) 22:49, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Private schools

message: I note with interest the proposals above for a temporary agree-to-disagree voting pact, and personally would be exicited to back anything that could make this less acrimonious. But there seems to be a lot of discussion around the proposals, so I am making this space available to sort out the kind of pact a large number of people would agree to. --William Pietri 21:31, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal for proposal for voting pact 

message: Here are some things that seemed like potential elements:
# a statement of the problem - e.g., "the undersigned feel that the discussion over which schools to include is..."
# an acknowledgement of principles - perhaps by reference to WP:FAITH, WP:CON, WP:CIVIL, etc.
# linking all school AfDs to the pact - to help draw people into the consensus
# an agreement to a temporary standard - whatever temporary standard would gain mass appeal
# agreement that this does not prove consensus - except a consensus that the most important thing is working together
# agreement that this does not establish precedent - so that this really stops the clock
# a time limit - e.g., 15 days, 30 days, hopefully w/a renewal procedure.
# agreement not to AfD - signatories will refrain from AfDing schools that meet the temporary standard
# a place to track schools that would have gone up for AfD - as a similar clock-stopping measure 
# a close-on-sight policy - so that any AfD meets the temporary standard is preemptively closed to forestall debate
# a description of what comes next e.g., that during the cooling-off period energies normally directed into AfD will be instead directed toward finding a permanent policy
# agreement to encourage civility from your "side" - It's easier to hear suggestions on tone and style from somebody you agree with on the issues. Perhaps we can take advantage of that.
For the record, I'm just trying to collect ideas, so please don't take my mention of these as endorsements. Feel free to add in additional items above. For discussion of the elements, see the next subsection. For discussion about which elements you think would make the best voting pact, see the section after that.  Hopefully once we've all talked about what we like, someone can put together a voting pact that will get wide support from people on all sides of this. --William Pietri 21:31, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Potential Proposal Elements 

message: You've heard this from me before, but we already have all the guidelines we need to deal with this. An article has to contain verifiable material and it must not contain original research ("The phrase "original research" in this context refers to untested theories; data, statements, concepts and ideas that have not been published in a reputable publication", and it should not contain raw source data. Articles that are sub-stubs can be merged into higher order articles and redirected until they get large enough for a full length article to make sense. If we enforced these rules, I don't believe that we would have any practical problems.
All objections to this that I have heard before stem from a misreading of the policies we have ("Q. Doesn't this mean I can have an article about me eating a sausage, because I can verify it" A. No, because it is your original research. Q. Doesn't this mean I can have an article about every building on my block, since I can verify it on the map?" A. No, copying down lists of things from a map is just reproducing source data, if it belongs anywhere, it's a wikisource.)
Application of these rules would result in a couple of practical benefits: We would not have to make a decision about what is important for our readers. The availability of third party verifiable sources would make that decision automatic. The question of whether to include an elementary school as an article in its own right would be resolved by whether or not there was sufficient verifiable information available to write a non-stub article. If there is, then it stays, if not, it gets redirected and merged to the next layer up in the article hierarchy (yes, we can argue about what that is, but it's a simpler problem, I think!). We then end up with a rigorously sourced and verified article, contextualized in a series about related things, and we don't have to decide for people what is important and what is not. Anyone not wanting to read about that elementary school just has to not look it up! Trollderella 20:19, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I'm glad that we agree broadly on the nature of material that we do want, re the stubs, I was not aware of anyone opposing merging of stubs that fail to flourish - they can always be split out again if and when there becomes enough material to write a full article on the school. I am not sure that all schools would only have microstubs, there would be many schools that have something verifiable to say about them that is not simply reproducing source material or representing promotional material, and many that probably would not. For those that do not, redirecting a merging seems a good solution. If many people oppose this though, I fail to see the harm in a lot of school stubs, so long as what is in them is verifiable and factual, and they are placed within some kind of article structure that makes navigation possible. After all, the only people who find them will be the ones who go looking. Trollderella 04:38, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree 100%. - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] (W) AfD? 16:20, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

text: I appreciate your concern on the search engine thing, but actually, if you type in 'Louisville', you get just that. I don't think it's a real issue. Trollderella 04:20, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: This is not about schools. If we followed the rules we have already, we would not have a problem