Wikipedia talk:Notability (schools)/Archive 6

message: The core of this proposal is requirement #1, which makes no value judgements about the quality of a school. All schools are notable, as long as there's non-trivial published works that could be used to write an article (as opposed to a stub or a substub). Clearly, if a school is important to its community, then out of that community will have arisen non-trivial works.
This article is based heavily on WP:CORP, as well as the other ratified notability standards, and I've intentionally veered away from including any subjective standards, as, generally, anything that meets a subjective standard will also meet the objective standard of "non-trivial published works on the subject." - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 14:41, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That is basically a good core, although I think we need to thresh out exactly what counts as a non-trivial published work. I'm in favor of excluding anything written or published by the school itself, its students, faculty, staff, or administrators, unless the work itself is notable. If the author is notable, that's already covered under #6. Vectro 03:11, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reasoning

message: I'm going to make a couple tweaks. It's all well-worded and good in its current form, but I think a couple of adjustments might be mentioned in the "subject of nontrivial coverage" section. In principle with its root in WP:CORP, however, I think the basis for this proposed standard has a solid foundation. Perhaps one even allowing for consensus or compromise, but I suppose we'll burn that bridge when we come to it. --Kuzaar-T-C- 14:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Note: by my above comment it may be better in its current wording. I'll think about it some more. :) --Kuzaar-T-C- 14:45, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Would it be appropriate to explicitly exclude coverage by the local community, or would that be implied in the citation of WP:RS? --Kuzaar-T-C- 14:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If it's a reliable source, it's a reliable source. This is aimed at dealing with unexpandable stubs, not articles referenced to reliable sources. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 15:02, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's what I had supposed. I like the proposal in its current format. I think that the consolidation of the numerous unexpandable school stub articles will be a welcome change, and hopefully more widely acceptable to the community. --Kuzaar-T-C- 15:09, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: My Opinion

message: Many (probably most) schools get considerable local press coverage for events such as fairs and fetes, retirements of long-serving teachers, groundbreaking for new buildings and so on, which do not amount to sources for material in the article.  What do we do about that? Just zis Guy you know? 15:16, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That was originally the concern that I had raised above. I have always held the position that because a subject is notable in a community or limited group does not imply that it is notable to the world at large, and to a degree this still concerns me. If an elementary school is, as you said, breaking ground and it gets a front-page spot in the village ledger, would it still be appropriate for its own article, as per AMIB above, or is its unquestionably shaky claim to notability sufficient in the context of this proposal? --Kuzaar-T-C- 15:24, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Is that village ledger a reliable source, though? Local papers (as opposed to major papers) often don't qualify for WP:RS. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 15:26, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why would world-wide notability somehow be required?  Many people around the world may not care about schools in the community where I live, but to people in a community who want to look up one of their schools, it is notable. --Stephane Charette 18:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It may be the case that something is important locally, but in asserting that there should not be a good standard to hold notability to, you place the encyclopedia on a very slippery slope. How many people does something have to be noteworthy to in order to have a claim to an article? Five? A hundred? Questions like this are what make it necessary for Wikipedia to have standards, more or less, of notability within the scope of the article's field. For example, a chemist who isolates a compound that cures some minor sickness may not be notable in the "world at large" but is almost certainly notable within his field of study, and has almost certainly been the subject of multiple nontrivial published reliable sources. So, it may be that I misspoke; that instead of "worldwide notability" it should be "fieldwide notability" that I should have said. Hope this clears things up. --Kuzaar-T-C- 18:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That is fine.  In the scope of a region, or a school board, the "fieldwide notability" is the school board or the city where the school is located.  That means a Canadian school doesn't have to be on the 6 o'clock news in the U.S. for it to be "notable", and thus can be included.  --Stephane Charette 19:00, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree. That would be akin to saying that because the town council awards me the pie-baking contest championship title, I am notable. In other words, it is no claim to notability at all. Recognition would have to come from a much more important source than local to have a claim to notability. If it were the National Culinary Institute or some other well-known and itself-notable body, my Pie Champion title would (possibly) bestow notability. --Kuzaar-T-C- 19:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A Canadian school doesn't have to be on the 6 o'clock news in the US to be notable, but any event that doesn't merit mention on the local CBC or provincial network station probably isn't going to be notable. (This is speaking from experience; CTV-Saskatoon covers some pretty inane stuff.) - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 05:32, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

text: If a village ledger isn't notable, how about a more major newspaper like Louisville's Courier-Journal? While it's not on the order of USA Today or the New York Times, it is still a fairly wide-read paper, especially in Louisville, KY, and the surrounding hundred miles or so. It will often do a piece on a new school when one is built (generally about the first day of school), even if it is an otherwise podunk elementary school somewhere in the county that wouldn't even get a back-page mention otherwise. --Carl (talk|contribs) 00:25, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Events

message: In its current form, almost all school stub articles that we have (we in this case being Wikipedia:WikiProject Education in Canada) will get instantly deleted because of the strict inclusionary criteria, which I will quote here:
# The school, or events surrounding the school, have been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the school itself.
# The school is a post-secondary school.
# The school has stood for at least 100 years.
#*(You don't need too many fingers to count the number of schools in North America which have been open for 100 years!)
# The school is also a private business, and meets the requirements of WP:CORP.
# The article is about a school district.
#*(School districts are not schools, they're businesses or arms of governments, so including this criteria unecessarily makes the inclusion criteria look longer.)
If I look at the work we've been doing by following links such as Whatlinkshere:Infobox Education in Canada, somewhere between 500 to 700 of these articles all of sudden qualify for immediate deletion.  Now the project has recently (in the past week) been accused of things like "flooding", and "schoolcruft", but regardless of individual views on the topic of the usefullness of stubs, WP:EiC has been doing some great work in taking stubs that people outside of WP:EiC create and turning them into full articles.  See this quote from today on an ongoing AfD:
: I am most impressed by the level of structure, organization and thought demonstrated by the WP:EiC initiative and its team members, which makes it clear to me that the promise of expanding these into yet more productive and useful articles is eminently justifiable. I would like to suggest that other areas (perhaps organized by state in the US) would greatly benefit from the methodolgy developed as part of WP:EiC, and I will certainly take advantage of these concepts in expanding the scope of WP:NJ, which has craeted articles for most New Jersey school districts and a significant percentage of the state's high schools. Bravo WP:EiC! Alansohn 15:09, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Note, to the first editor in this section, that the guidelines that you have quoted are not all required to be met. If read carefully, you would have noticed that any one of those being true, as it says, implies notability and a place for the article of the subject in question. --Kuzaar-T-C- 19:25, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: One of the benefits of the guideline as proposed is that many of the legitimate, non-stub articles currently being 'ed or nominated for deletion can be speedily kept. --Usgnus 19:46, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Nothing in the proposal as I read it said any articles had to be deleted.  It would appear to encourage a merge of some stubish articles of questionable notability.  Vegaswikian 21:03, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

text: The fact that you even suggest that someone should go create a parallel wiki and allow communities to update articles on schools proves the point that there is nothing wrong with having school articles.  I still don't understand why a subset of editors are against articles on schools!  We have articles on many things (from a structural point of view) that regularly affect our lives, such as bridges, roads, and various other buildings, and no fight being organized to go delete bridge articles, go delete highway articles, etc...  (I'm also a member of WP:BRIDGE, so I've seen a fair share of microstubs).  If you don't want to read school articles, then stop reading them!  But at the same time, don't deny contributing editors the opportunity to create and expand on articles that interest them.  This page is an effort to set guidelines on school articles; many of us believe that we can and should support having articles on every thing of value to all communitites, and the part where we get to contribute is through school articles.  --Stéphane Charette 08:55, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In my opinion, adding "minutiae" serves only a small number of readers, but deleting it serves no one. Advantage: minutiae. Furthermore, schools are vastly more important than entire classes of minutiae preserved on Wikipedia, such as individual episodes of television sitcoms or moves favored by particular professional wrestlers. Advantage: Schools. This debate grows tiresome. Our time would be much better spent expanding content in the areas we each have the ability and interest. --Dystopos 17:20, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  School articles to be deleted 

message: This would be counted from the date of establishment or founding, correct? If a school was founded in 1854, but switched buildings in 1935, would it still qualify? --Usgnus 19:30, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would think so. 70+ years standing is a fairly strong claim to notability by any means. --Kuzaar-T-C- 19:36, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What if that same school moved into a new building in 1997? --Usgnus 19:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a harder question and involves a certain amount of distinction, but I think that the easy method to solve that issue is, if there has been a continuous line of administration and the school is under the same name (and has only changed buildings), then yes, the school itself is over 100 years old. And likely has been the primary subject of nontrivial coverage. --Kuzaar-T-C- 19:55, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For further distinction on this, it reminds me a little of a philosophical question I encountered my first day in my Philosophy 101 class in college, in which the professor described a boat whose matter was replaced plank by plank and nail by nail over the years until it contained none of the original matter, and called into question the distinction between the idea of a boat and the material of the boat. Also the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, if you haven't read it. :) --Kuzaar-T-C- 20:01, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

text: As long as the building and current name can show a continuination from the origional it should be OK.  Schools do change name and buildings.  As long as the history goes back 100 years why should we quible over the building or name having been changed? Vegaswikian 21:06, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The school has stood for at least 100 years. 

message: I don't think this should be one of the points in the numbered list. It can be part of the text explaining that this guideline does not apply to school districts. --Usgnus 19:32, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As AMIB explained in the top section of this page, this proposal was created to try to work toward a solution for the mass-creation of articles that are basically less than stubs. I think that the exception for school districts is okay on there to prevent confusion about the intent of the proposed policy. --Kuzaar-T-C- 19:36, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's pretty clear that a school district is not a school. It's just really weird to read "A school is notable if... the article is about a school district". --Usgnus 19:52, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That line was basically just to specify that school districts may claim notability even if all schools within them cannot. Of course, since high schools are notable as secondary institutions of learning, it's almost a given, but being explicit in guidelines never hurts. --Kuzaar-T-C- 19:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Then it is not needed since I believe that there is consensus for school district articles being included.  Vegaswikian 21:08, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The article is about a school district. 

message: Do we care at all about alumni? What if a school has X number of alumni with non-stub WP articles? --Usgnus 19:35, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think that having had a person attend the school makes for a claim to notability, no, unless that alumnus subsequently attracts media or other reliable source attention toward the school itself. --Kuzaar-T-C- 19:37, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

text: It's not a matter of pure alumni counting; if the school is important to the alumnus, then there's going to be a non-trivial work with the alumnus talking about the school. By adhering to #1, we keep out silliness like the elementary schools of famous people (who often won't even much remember elementary school), while still keeping schools with a substantive link to a famous person. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 04:13, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alumni 

message: This is somewhat obvious, but I'd like it if the criteria for adding a notability tag only referred to non-substub pages. One-liner school articles probably should just be merged/redirected into a school district article. They can always be split off again following sufficient organic growth. Thanks. — RJH (talk) 19:18, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Schools that don't meet the criteria 

message: I have removed the bullet point that is an attempt to exclude technical schools and community colleges, etc. from notability. Many techincal schools and community colleges are *not* corporations or companies and are state-run/owned institutions making the reference to WP:CORP irrelevant. Beyond that, "community college" has a different meaning in different parts of the world, in some areas a "community college" is larger or indeed more prestigious than a "university". I also fear the elitist systemic bias against educational institutions which do not educate as "universities". Technical/vocational post-secondary facilities are no less worthy of an article on intrinsic basis than "universities". I have no doubt my change to this "proposal" will be reverted or "folded" by its original authors.--Nicodemus75 20:43, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are many more tertiary colleges than there are universisties. Technical colleges are functionally indistinguishable from secondary schools, in this country at least. Just zis Guy you know? 21:00, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In North America, community or technical colleges are, based on my experience anyway, more prestigious than high schools, but less so than universities.  JYolkowski // talk 21:48, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Post-secondary schools

message: I would like people to stop saying that stubs can/should/could/etc be merged into the school district or school board articles.  It doesn't work, and your suggestion simply proves you've never worked on a school article.  Want to know why?  It has been tried.  The best example I can give right now is Peel District School Board.  This is discussed (briefly) in the discussion between AMIB and myself on my talk page, but if you don't believe me, go check out the article in question.  Not only is it borderline unmaintainable, but it an eyesore (though better than what was previously there).  In my opinion, it looks more like one of those lists or directories much more than an article with a navigation bar and an infobox.
:My experience is that it does work.  Take a look at Independent Schools Association of the Southwest.  This isn't a board per se, but it is a logical grouping of schools.  About 15 months ago when we last had this debate, I turned this stub into a list/description of all of the schools in the organisation, and merged a few schools into it.  Looking at it now, people actually have added school information to that article.  Also, the schools in ISAS that do have separate articles tend to, with one exception that I'm going to take care of momentarily, have really good articles.  There has been no proliferation of tiny unmaintainable school stubs for ISAS schools.  P.S.  I think that Peel District School Board looks really good.  JYolkowski // talk 20:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, I see.  But would you say the ISAS article was written as an article to list schools versus an article on a school board?  I've been replying to AfD merge requests that suggest we merge 1 or 2 specific schools articles into the school board.  When you're dealing with a relatively fleshed out school board article like TDSB or Waterloo Catholic District School Board, this destroys the article.  In those cases, especially when a series of articles on the school has been written and can be navigated to individually, it doesn't make sense to merge 1 stub.  --Stephane Charette 21:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A while back i messed around with creating School District pages as holding tanks for school stubs. One, Howard County Public Schools, has grown quite well since I was last involved in March from this to its current format. Another, the Lincoln_Public_Schools, holds all the information from several middle school stubbs that were created. I think this works relatively well. Even for large school districts it can work well especially if the school feeder hierarchy can be visualised, as in the Elgin Area School District U46 school district.  While there are cons to these pages i think that at this stage of wikipedia it represents the best compromise. Despite them being like directories, in some instances they can actually hold a lot of useful information that you do not find in a yellow pages.  i do note that none of these pages has really evolved from the perspective of the school board itself, but the contextual information for all the schools with information of the respective towns, as well as links from the towns back to these pages overide those problem, in my view. David D. (Talk) 06:41, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: In regards to trying to merge school articles into school districts

message: I realize that AMIB has just posted a comment seeming to indicate he's no longer interested in this proposal (edit summary: "fuck it"), but I would like to see what we can do now that everyone has been forced into this position.
However, prior to doing more, I'd personally like to read up on the guidelines that other projects have adopted.  There have been several linked in various comments above.  My thoughts at this point would be to read through them and cherry-pick from the work that has already been done by various group on Wikipedia.
Reading material for tonight include:
* WP:MUSIC -- This page gives some rough guidelines which we might use to decide if a musical topic is notable.
* WP:CORP -- This page gives some rough guidelines which Wikipedia editors use to decide if a company, corporation or other economic entity should have an article on Wikipedia.
* WP:BIO -- it is the opinion of many Wikipedians that these criteria are a fair test of whether a person has sufficient external notice to ensure that they can be covered from a neutral point of view based on verifiable information from reliable sources, without straying into original research (all of which are formal policies)
Anyone else have further helpful reading material?  Thanks.  --Stephane Charette 00:54, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Speaking of WP:CORP, you may find it interesting to read the page history from before this was moved into Wikipedia: space. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 00:57, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Where do I get that?  --Stephane Charette 00:59, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, got it.  Wikipedia:Schools/Defunct and Wikipedia talk:Schools/Defunct.  --Stephane Charette 01:06, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I mean the fact that this proposal began life as a cut and paste of WP:CORP, which I adapted to apply to schools before I moved it to this name. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 02:03, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Has anyone found a guideline or policy on communitity factilities; sports facilities, hospitals, schools, cemeteries, and airports - it would seem to me that similar rules would apply to all these. Wakemp 02:00, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems to me a set of guidelines related to WP:CORP would be best. I support the guidelines at the top of this article. I've just been doing some New Page patrolling, there are an insane number of school stubs being created at the moment, and I think we really need a set of agreed-upon guidelines soon Lurker talk 14:44, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

text: WP:CORP doesn't really apply in the same way to public bodies and facilities, I found proposals for WP:ORG which could be expanded to schools, churches, etc but they don't really want to go there and WP:HOTELS which seem to be going down the same track. I guess my question is are their Guidelines for other public facilities (hospitals, airports, churchs, stadiums), if not - why not? By broadening the discussion away from 'just schools' it may be more likely to get a useful result. Wakemp 23:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: All of the guidelines/proposals mentioned accept the fact that not everything is going to be notable or encylopedic.  With schools, that is the crux of the problem.  Some editors do not consider any school to lack notability. Hence any proposal to identify objective criteria is not acceptacle to some editors.  Vegaswikian 07:37, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree. Given its use on AFD notability is a likely to be an inflammatory term; we could better describe these criteria as requirements for a free-standing article rather than notability requirements. Specifically the proposal should emphasize that these criteria are related to the organization of information and that the inclusion of information is not being challenged. Christopher Parham (talk) 13:40, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Disagree, I never got the sense that the 'all schools are notable' is the default standard of most people, it certainly isn't mine. But you give me an all or nothing kind of choice and I am forced into that position because it is used as the primary argument in every AfD on the subject. There seems to be many areas of content that do not use the standard of notability and attempts to apply that subjective standard in a guideline fails far more often than it suceeds. Wakemp 15:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Continuing, and suggested reading 

message: To me a key element that makes schools below the collegiate level notable is their extracurricular activities. I'd like to see this captured in some manner in the criteria. For example:
* The school participates in the highest level of the state, province or regional competitions in at least three extracurricular activities. These can include, for example, sports teams, band competitions, cheerleading competitions, engineering contests, and so forth. In addition, the school has won at least two regional championships or one national championship in any of these activities.
By highest level I mean, for example, "Class A" high school football leagues. Would this make sense? Or is it already covered by item (3) in part (1)? Thanks. — RJH (talk) 14:29, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think awards for extracurricular activities are sufficiently different from awards for teaching to merit a separate entry in the guidelines. I think adding something like the above suggestion is a good idea Lurker talk 14:47, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It may be a little premature, but I've added it to the criteria. Please comment on it Lurker talk 14:51, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. I think the combination of news stories and extracurricular achievements can make this sufficiently inclusive that most properly-developed, big-city high schools will make the cut. So that will bring it closer to the typical AfD consensus, and hopefully make the discussions therein less contentious. — RJH (talk) 17:01, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extracurricular activities 

message: I've added a further criteria for school articles that are part of a series grouping together school from a school district or school board.  The 1-sentence stubs we're trying to eliminate are not part of a series of related articles, they are stand-alone stubs.  By adding this criteria, it will allow school projects like WP:EiC to work on or focus on articles that compromise an area, without fear of having those articles deleted as we're working on them.  --Stephane Charette 18:18, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The more I think about it, the more I believe that this would seriously satisfy anyone who is working on school articles.  I don't mind when badly-written lone school articles are deleted, and have abstained from voting several times in the last few months since I've joined Wikipedia when such articles came up for deletion.  What I'd like to save, is when an editor like myself picks a region, a province, a state, or a specific school board to improve, and as the various articles get improved and reworked, they come up for deletion.  This has happened twice now to BC schools since I joined WP:EiC.  Can we work on this part of the proposal to somehow make it work for both school editors and those who really want a way to delete sub stubs without turning it into a battle every time? --Stephane Charette 18:22, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My problem with the most recent addition to the proposal is that it allows for unexpandable stubs. Perhaps more correctly would be to say that my complaint is in regards to schools whose stubs will be expandable when something notable happens to them. I can appreciate wanting information to be kept. However, I think that even in consideration of your above reasons for opposing merges, that the way it would turn out (without merges) is with a tiny smattering of unexpandable information on a handful of schools spread over an abnormally large number of articles, instead of in one article that has an acceptable level of content. A Wiki project's utility lies in being able to divide units of information into easily digestible pieces, but taking it to such an extreme level in which you have little more than an entry gleaned from a survey is unconscionable toward interested users of that information. --Kuzaar-T-C- 19:41, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How does anyone know if a stub about a school is unexpandable? Not all newspapers and journals are online. --Usgnus 19:47, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The argument about unexpandable stub can stop now.  No need to keep up the myth.  Take a look at what happened yesterday between the "unexpandable stub" (previous version), and how AMIB and myself in a short time turned it into a very workable school stub article, seen here:  Delhi Public School (Ontario).   Stop thinking in terms of "no-way-is-every-school-somehow-expandable" and instead start thinking about we get a proposal together that will allow us to work on school articles yet at the same time allow sub stubs and discarded orphaned school articles to be deleted easily.  In my opinion, if a school article has editors working on it as part of a series of articles, then the same transformation that happend yesterday with Delhi Public School can be allowed to happen for schools that are part of a chain of related articles.  This is the work I'm trying to protect.  --Stephane Charette 20:34, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you arguing that all school district should have a template to give the individual school stubs context? Similar to the one used in the example you cite for the  Delhi Public School (Ontario) that is in the Grand_Erie_District_School_Board? David D. (Talk) 07:45, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a fine example of an expandable stub. It's also an anecdote, and by no means is the norm for other school articles. If it were, there would be no need for this proposal. --Kuzaar-T-C- 17:44, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  On series of related articles 

message: I've always felt that merging tiny school stubs into a parent (district, board, etc.) article is a good way of dealing with them, and I've felt that this was a reasonable, widely-held compromise position.  I've seen some discussion above that would seem to indicate that this position is not as widely-held as I might believe.  So, I'd like to have a little straw poll here to get a feel for what the people discussing this proposal think.  Like all straw polls, this is completely non-binding and is just to get a feel for how much support or opposition there is to the statements, and as a means of starting discussion.  P.S.  Feel free to reword the statements if you can get them to sound better.  TIA, JYolkowski // talk 22:07, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In that case, couldn't we simply create an article titled something like "List of schools in the Waterloo Catholic District," with a summary section and link in the WCDSB article?  That's what I would expect people to do.  -- Visviva 04:53, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Good point.  I've updated question #2 to reflect that.  Looking beyond the straw poll, this may be a useful insight, and that possibly people aren't disagreeing with merging per se, but with the suggested targets.  JYolkowski // talk 22:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Straw poll on merging 

message: From an organizational unit point of view School Boards may be the parent articles of schools but from a practical point of view I think the real parent is the City, Town, or Community. This leads to a problem we had with classifying School districts. In urban areas where a school district is diectly associated with a single municipality or county it may not be a big deal. In rural areas where a SD spans 6-10 communities it is more likely to have people looking for information about the community, than the school district. If I was given the either/or choice there I would suggest the school information be merged with the community not the (SD)organization because that is more likely to be how people would look for it in an encylopedia. Wakemp 22:48, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point.  I've updated question #2 to reflect that.  Looking beyond the straw poll, this may be a useful insight, and that possibly people aren't disagreeing with merging per se, but with the suggested targets.  JYolkowski // talk 22:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments on Merging Proposal 

message: I took a quick look at the latest version of the proposal. #6 ("The school article is part of a series of similarly-maintained articles related to a specific school board or school district") seems to overtly encourage the creation of multiple demographic stubs.
Less seriously. #7, #8, and #10 could really use some examples, similar to the examples on WP:CORP. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 05:53, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Took a quick look 

message: Do we have any evidence for this biased opening statement?  In areas with higher levels of urbanisation (eg, Europe, Australia, etc) the presence of a school in a "community" passes without a blip to most people.  Because there is another school within two kilometers, and another three within five. - brenneman {L} 11:38, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Schools are "frequently" important to their communities 

message: I've thought about the addition I made to this proposal and I felt that it might make more sense if it were generalised to other places of local interest, like masts, railway stations, and the like.  So, I've created Wikipedia:Places of local interest.  If you're interested, please edit it or comment on it.  Thanks, JYolkowski // talk 14:55, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Places of local interest]] 

message: If Wikipedia is to become the sum of all human knowledge, articles on school districts should always be kept seperate from articles about school districts, school board, or cities. I think Dystopos said it best: A look at the types of articles that have repeatedly survived VfD should make this conversation completely moot. You can not possibly argue that an actual educational institution with a history, a building, a faculty, and a body of students is less important than a fictional planet with a few mentions in a Star Wars expanded universe novel or the 16th episode of season two of NBC sitcom Will & Grace, a intentional spoonerism used in a Nintendo 64 game for comic effect, or pop singer Mandaryna's cover of Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name". Please. We're wasting our breath.
Schools directly impact the lives of thousands of people, even if they're only around for 10 years or so. Schools have a much greater impact than the examples above, or a town in Alaska with 21 residents. Any place that hundreds or thousands of people lived in for years would have an article here and no one would object. All schools are notable enough to be included. All this policy would do is give an excuse for a large number of articles to be deleted. --Daniel Olsen 05:24, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Surely you realise that an emotive plea like that adds exactly zero to this ongoing discusion?  Clearly there exist a number of reasonable people here who disagree with you.  Either you're willing to work with them in finding a solution that all are equally unhappy with, or not.  And if you're going to parrot exactly what someone else says, please just use a diff next time, there's a letter shortage. - brenneman {L} 05:45, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry, but I fail to see how your reply helps the discussion either. Forgive me for trying to add my two cents, I'll leave you all to find your unhappy solution. --Daniel Olsen 18:53, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Where does the deleted part come into it? David D. (Talk) 05:45, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The sum of all human knowledge 

message: I am 100% for a proposal like this. Just as an example, Miami dade schools seems to think that every school, including elementary ones, are notable for an article. That's just absurd. Most of the school articles I see seem to have a NPOV slant and are used as blogs/ads for the schools themselves. It's like a school having their own website, and it gives them publicity, even if the school is usually not notable in a nationwide sense. I don't want to hear the arguments that "WP is the sum of all human knowledge", that's just a tagline, not an excuse to create mindless crap articles about everything that has ever existed. Who cares is someone put a lot of work into an article? If it isn't notable, it should be removed, post-haste. The amount of work someone puts into an article should not be related to weather it should be there in the first place. And just because thousands of articles may be put up for deletion is no reason to not have guidelines for this sort of thing. We should do whatever it takes, even if it's a bit massive, to make this place more relevant and reliable. I hope that this proposal takes place in the very near future. Renosecond 22:55, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Something needs to be done

message: There have been hundreds of failed attempts to delete articles about schools and there is no need to waste any more time on this matter. It is far too late to go through another round of denunciations of the de facto consensus. Piccadilly 01:51, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Nothing needs to be done

message: For the reasons that I stated at Template talk:Los Angeles USD, Template: has been nominated for deletion. The template is already huge and ugly. Imagine it populated with all 1,035 LAUSD schools. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. BlankVerse 20:35, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  TfD nomination of Template:{{ucfirst:Los Angeles USD}} 

message: What I thought was a clarification has been reverted which leaves me confused. So when we say alumni do we really mean an alumnus? If we mean two(which IMO makes far more sense both as a standard and as a reading of what we currently have) then the phrase "multiple alumni" is stricter. JoshuaZ 03:00, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I suppose this goes to the question of whether this guideline is demanding fully complete articles, from the first draft, or will permit stubs to grow later.  Often information is found in pieces, and gathered from multiple places, by multiple people.  If you delete an article with one alum, nobody will see the article, to add the second one.  --Rob 04:03, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  This is often a problem with guidelines in general where a prong has a number greater than 1 involved in part of it (this comes up especially as an issue for WP:CORP, WP:BIO and WP:PROF). I think most editors understand that if there is a fraction of a criterion satisifed they should either let the article lie for a while or actively see if they can finish the prong. In any event, if we mean alumnus or alumna we should say so. JoshuaZ 04:07, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Almuni v. "multiple alumni" 

message: A firm guideline must be put in place to prevent diploma mills from spamming wikipedia (example of one that was deleted:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Regent International University). As it reads now, postsecondary schools that are for profit must meet WP:CORP. But it is not easy to determine whether a school is for profit, especially none-US schools it is difficult(example: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Trinity School of Apologetics & Theology). However, it is easy, using online databases to tell if it is accredited, was accredited, or is a canidate for accreditation. 
*I propose it is changed to: All postsecondary schools that had, have, or are canidates for accreditation should be included. Those that are not accredited must meet WP:CORP.
:This means all legitmate schools public and private, in the past or near future will be included. Those that lack proof of academic rigor are based on notability standards. That is, schools of questionable WP:V are rightfully left out. So institutes like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/International Institute of Management are treated per notability. 
This is basically how things are treated now, but not how the guideline reads on the proposed policy.Arbusto 06:36, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree and would like to see this text placed in the guideline. This has been here for over a month and I don't see any objections. Does silence give consent in this case? --JaimeLesMaths (talk!edits) 00:23, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No objections because Failed Consensus. You can't wait for people to drop off the discussion because there is no progress of any kind -- then validate your POV. Thanks; sorry if a bit harsh.--Ling.Nut 17:17, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, that completely was not what I was doing - I just came to this discussion yesterday via an AfD. I see now that the proposal has been rejected; does that mean we start again from square one? We really do need a guideline on this issue. --JaimeLesMaths (talk!edits) 20:44, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unaccredited post secondary