Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Archive 10

message: Following a discussion at WT:NC(S), a new proposal has been created for naming conventions applying purely to United States school articles, in a attempt to more easily gain consensus for adoption. Some input from the community at WT:NC(USS) would be great. Camaron1 | Chris 17:27, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (U.S. schools)]] 

message: I recently found Template:U.S. School when going through the stub school articles. Is this template really necessary? « FMF » 23:01, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It may not be absolutely necessary, but it is only one of many different templates which provide relevant information about the various types of schools associated with the project. If there is a better template, please feel free to migrate the pages which use this template to another more prevalent template. Adam McCormick 23:32, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  U.S. School template 

message: I have created the page Training school and I should welcome more content, please. It would be useful if the articles of relevant schools could also be linked. TerriersFan 00:35, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have added a corresponding Training schools in England category. ~ Scribble Monkey (talk) 17:32, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Training school 

message: Camaron1 | Chris mentions above "a WikiProject Schools guideline like WP:SCH#WNTI". I looked at that one. Although on the face of it it seems to have some authority, I noticed that in   this edit Ohconfucius added to the things which the guideline says shouldn't be in school articles "Lists of extra-curricular activities available in any school". I can't think of any such activities, and I also can't find any discussion of adding this item before the edit was made. I haven't gone back into the history of the page to look at the whole development of the guideline, but I'm left wondering, can a guideline like this be amended by anyone who happens by? If so, does it have any authority? Xn4 03:49, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It does not have any real authority, it is only to provide guidance in what should/should not be included in school articles. What is in there should have the consensus of WikiProject Schools members, if any doesn't, then I think we should think about making some changes. Camaron1 | Chris 08:40, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm a little gobsmacked. The guideline says firmly "School articles should specifically not include..." People seem to rely on it, and there's nothing there to say it has no real authority. Does anyone mind if I take out "Lists of extra-curricular activities available in any school"? - as I said above, I don't think there are any such activities. Also, I disagree with "Lists of subjects that would be taught in any school", as I see no objection to an outline of the school's curriculum, and that might well include subjects taught in most schools. (I doubt that there are any "subjects that would be taught in any school"). When it comes to "Lists of teachers", I can't see any objection to a list of heads and/or a list of notable teachers. Some schools, for instance, have quite a number who are notable enough to have Wikipedia articles in their own right. So I don't agree with that, though I could support "Lists of all teachers". Xn4 23:13, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You need to consider the wider audience if you ever want any proposed guideline accepted. If you don't exclude those items, there may be a consensus of outside editors who will consider the lists as non encyclopedic under WP:NOT or other guiding principals. Vegaswikian 23:35, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: With all due respect, Vegaswikian, are you saying that all extra-curricular activities should be excluded from articles? If so, that's not what the present guideline (as written by OhConfucius) says, and I'd find it helpful to see some reasoning for that. If you're suggesting that even lists of notable teachers are non-encyclopedic under WP:NOT, then I don't see anything there which supports that. If a school curriculum can be included in an article, provided that the more usual subjects are left out of it, then I'm puzzled. In any event, can someone perhaps say which are the "extra-curricular activities available in any school" and which are the "subjects that would be taught in any school"? Xn4 03:53, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

text: Thanks for your reply. Anyone who reads WP:SCH#WNTI will see it reads very like a rule aiming to ban certain content from school articles, so it seems that impression needs taking out of it? Looking at some detail, it says "School articles should specifically not include Lists of teachers." I think you're agreeing (when you say "the guideline might need to be re-worded") that that's too categorical? In your post above what follows "The guideline is saying..." doesn't seem to me to be a reading of it. For instance, English doesn't strike me as a "subject which would be taught in any school". And when we come to the "extra-curricular activities available in any school", I'm afraid I still can't think of any. Regards, Xn4 03:38, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The list was originally started after an earlier discussion on this talk page. However, there doesn't seem to have been any subsequent discussion to justify the inclusion of these additional items so I've now removed them. The subjects taught and the extracurricular activities will vary from school to school and from country to country so I don't quite understand the reason for including these two items. I've also added the word 'current' to the section on teachers. Lists of notable teachers can sometimes be justified but I believe what we were trying to avoid was a complete list of all the current staff at the school, which is impossible to maintain and which is in any case more appropriate in a directory than an encyclopaedia. It does state at the top of the page that these are recommendations and editors are not obliged to follow them. Dahliarose 16:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

text:  What is trying to be avoided here is generally uninformative lists - and subjects and extra-curricular activities do apply here as well. The above is a interpretation of the spirit of WNTI, not a reading of it. Most schools with articles on Wikipedia are general schools, so stating a list saying they teach the central subjects <<place native language here>>, maths, science is usually uninformative - these do not generally vary worldwide. General schools often give similar extra-curricular activities as well, such as some form of PE, so again simple lists are uninformative. What is better is mentions of subjects, extra-curricular activities, if notable teachers, in prose with a bit of context to a individual school - not banning them from school articles. I agree with the changes made to this section, and I have made clear what this section is saying overall. Camaron1 | Chris 17:48, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Many thanks, all. I'm a lot happier with this guideline now. Xn4 02:16, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

text: The problem is the format rather than the content. I agree that lists of subjects taught in a school and lists of extra-curricular activities with no prose content are uninformative to the reader. I personally think it's preferable to leave the contents of the lists intact, at least for the schools in non-English-speaking countries, to allow the potential for expansion. I agree that the list of extra-curricular activities in the Anglican High School article which OhConfucius deleted was perhaps somewhat excessive. However, the solution is to expand the list rather than delete the entire contents. The list included such activities as Wu Shu, Chinese Drama, and Chinese Orchestra, hardly activities offered in every school in the world, let alone in Singapore. (Does anyone even know what Wu Shu is?)  Similarly Hai Sing Catholic School previously included in its list of subjects Basic Chinese, Basic Malay and Basic Tamil. I don't know what subjects are taught in schools in Singapore but this seems to me to be basic core content for a school article and should not have been removed. Common sense should indeed prevail. Dahliarose 10:31, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I generally agree with Dahliarose that the format is more the problem, not the content. I think it is best to just encourage people to convert lists into prose and add more detail and context. There is in fact specific tags available for this - such as  and . Camaron1 | Chris 19:14, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have always found that the fundamental definition of what a school is comes from the ECA's that it has, regardless of how common they are. I don't think that any person describing a High school in West Texas would fail to talk about football as the most notable thing about the school. There are similar followings for almost any activity you'd care to mention. The issue seems to be that for those of us who read vast numbers of School articles, we see how much of them are similar and we say "Oh that's on every article I read, it should be removed" but we don't seem to realize that the rest of the worlds interaction with these articles is tangential. they may read one or two of the articles, and none of the rest. As such, any notable piece of information including activities and curricula are of vital importance to these articles, and I think removing them is short-sighted. These lists can be grown into full-fledged sections, and I don't think anyone would argue that a good article shouldn't cover them. Adam McCormick 22:38, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

text: * When we see lists in wikipedia, we are never likely to know that it is genuinely exhaustive or in tiny or excessive detail. That is perhaps why WP:LAUNDRY states "often of minutiae". Thus, without arguing semantics, any long bullet pointed list would be considered a laundry list. I'm all for turning sterile laundry lists into prose. But it isn't simply down to format: what is unacceptable as a list would still be unacceptable if all one has done is to merely replace the formatting '*' with a comma in the articles. It still should still be meaningful prose; about why football is special in a particular school, or that 60% of students at the school take GCSE Latin unlike other schools, or how many inter-school tournaments the school swimming team has won, or that it has won the under 16 archery championship nine times. I have seen school articles which mention the main curriculum subjects or sporting achievements, but go on to say "other subjects/activities include... and go into a whole paragraph exhaustively listing same without any attempt at being selective or by attempting to group these into categories (e.g. "and martial arts such as taekwondo and kendo"). That is what I find objectionable and feel diminishes wikipedia's value. The fact that a school has a comic-book club is worth zilch if all the members do is sit around and read comics, but quite different if it is a breeding ground for writers and illustrators (as attested by alumni). I am not insisting that there be no mention of activities or curriculum items. Far from it, it is true that a school is the sum of these parts, and I hope editors would make their case for each activity within the article. Ohconfucius 01:25, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: With all due respect, I can't agree that "any long bullet pointed list would be considered a laundry list" - that doesn't fit the description at WP:LAUNDRY and is a reductio ad absurdum. The whole point of the title 'laundry list' is that the content has no encyclopaedic value, like a list of someone's laundry. A list containing valuable information, however long, can't be treated as a 'laundry list'. The obvious exception to the claim that a laundry list is "any long bullet pointed list" is a long list of notable alumni, which many school articles have, but there are all kinds of others, such as lists of heads. The real issue with long lists which contain valuable information is that they shouldn't be left to clutter up the main page, so they often need to be moved to a separate article called List of..., such as List of Old Wykehamists or List of headmasters at Eton College. Xn4 20:02, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. I see no reason for instance why the list of subjects and extra-curricular activities should have been removed from the article on Cedar Girls' Secondary School. The deleted content was in fact one of the few things which actually told the reader anything about the school. The subjects taught and the extra-curricular activities do at least give you some sense of the ethos of the school. The content which should have been deleted was all the boring stuff about the school uniform and the school song. We don't need to know that "The school's PE shirt is yellow with a collar" but we do need to know about the school's curriculum. The best solution is, as Camaron suggested, to add the prose tag. Dahliarose 20:31, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Development of WikiProject Schools guidelines

message: I've just created this, similar to other middle school entries, and it's been immediately tagged for deletion. Any suggestions as how to fix this? --Bachcell 05:59, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately, Middle Schools are not considered inherently notable so for the page to survive you need to establish notability. A couple of references have been added but these need incorporating into the article. You could also include this. Do a Google search and find athletics championship wins, notable alumni, academic achievements, ... HTH TerriersFan 16:00, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Nelsen Middle School]] 

message: I was just wanting WikiProject Schools thoughts on this issue. Could you please comment on that particular talk page in question, Thank you. Twenty Years 09:57, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There's some quite detailed advice in the guideline at WikiProjectSchools - Separate alumni page, though from the thread above under the header Development of WikiProject Schools guidelines it seems it doesn't have the force of a rule. I've drawn attention to it on the page linked by Twenty Years. Xn4 02:19, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Issue with alumni lists 

message: There have been a number of essays created which are relevant to school articles, these include Wikipedia:Schoolcruft and Wikipedia:Cruftcruft, and I have now created another one called Wikipedia:Potential, not just current state. It is written for general articles - but many of its concepts apply to school articles, and many of the ideas expressed in it have originated from contributers to this project. Feel free to add to it, and if necessary leave comments on the talk page. Camaron1 | Chris 20:44, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: New essay

message: Template: has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — « FMF » 19:17, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  TfD nomination of [[:Template:{{ucfirst:Infobox School II}}]] 

message: Ok, so am I reading this correctly that for a new infobox for a US high school, I should use  instead of ? If so, can somebody add a note to the template section to reduce confusion?--uɐɔlnʌɟoʞǝɹɐs 18:39, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template confusion 

message: I was bold: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Schools/ArticleGuidelines. If I was too bold, let me know.  Feel free to change it as you like, of course. I have no experience with creating such a page and no personal attachment to its contents :) --Hebisddave 16:34, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've had a go at amending the page to reflect what I think is the current situation, ie, all schools have to satisfy WP:N. I've also changed the terminology to reflect usage in countries other than the US. Dahliarose 18:13, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Great work, I have made a few standard changes so the page can fit into the rest of the project. Camaron1 | Chris 20:40, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

text: I did some revising.  If the school does not warrant an article we need to make it clear that information about the school is encouraged in either a district article or locality article.  So I combined two sections into one since they are really about the issue and how to solve it. Vegaswikian 23:18, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Task Force