Wikipedia talk:Notability (schools)/Archive 1

message: Unless someone works on Kadoori Agricultural High School someone will put it on VfD.  If you look at the article you will see why it really needs help.  It is so bad that I have no idea where to merge it!  Vegaswikian 23:21, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If that's the case then I will cease to participate in the discussion since you've hijacked it into a "Let's make sure every school that has ever existed have an article" and you continue to attack the people who list schools on the VfD page.  RickK 21:10, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)
You're right, I did make some regrettable statements expressing my extreme bemusement at the continued nominations, which I have come to regard as doomed.  Although this was based on firm evidence, some of my comments were not helpful and only served to raise the emotional temperature.  I have withdrawn them and apologised.
On the idea that I have hijacked this article and turned it into a "Let's make sure every school that has ever existed have an article" page, clearly that's incorrect because if I believed this and acted on it then I'd delete the suggestions on merging.  I am not so radical a mergist as Radiant!, but I am a member of that group and would far rather see a few redirects to one substantial article on a school district than a bunch of withered stubs and not article on the district. Of course I do still observe that successful deletions of school articles are becoming rarer than hen's teeth. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 23:25, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kadoori Agricultural High School 

message: Zen Master inserted a  template with the edit summary "this can't be anything more than a {proposed} policy without a vote, can it?".
Well obviously a policy can (and many of our policies did) emerge without a vote, but that misses the point by a mile.  I've heard nobody suggest that this should be a policy.  It isn't policy material.
Also it isn't really a proposed whatever-it-is.  It's just whatever-it-is.  A summary of a discussion we had over a couple of weeks.  There is broad and very widespread agreement over the summary.  It is cited a lot as jolly good advice.  Please let's not pretend that it's a proposal, it's just a summary.  I'd call it a guideline but understand that this may upset some people so I'll say it's a whatever-it-is and lots of people think it contains some jolly good ideas. It isn't a proposal and it isn't intended to have any teeth.  The advice it contains is supposed to be self-evidently good advice, born or experience, and I think it does a very good job of it. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 22:46, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Does this mean you are going to create a {whatever-it-is} template header? ;-) zen master    T  22:57, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Explanation of [[User:Tony Sidaway|Tony Sidaway]]'s revert of an edit by [[User:Zen-master|Zen-master]]

message: Let's change it from "Do not nominate schools for deletion" to "think twice before nominating schools..." That should be easier for everyone to live with, and feel less oppressive to school deletionists. Kappa 23:24, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it needs to be underlined by evidence, which we have in abundance.  As I said on a VfD thread earlier today, between 22 April and today some 70 school VfDs have been started, discussed and closed.  Not one of those 70 school-related articles was deleted.  Even the school playing field article was kept as a redirect.  That isn't an argument for not nominating (as you recognise) but it's a very good pointer for those who might be thinking of deletion and, if they were aware of the likely outcome, would probably just opt for a quick merge and move on to the next--and there's nothing wrong with that. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 21:02, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Think twice before nominating"? 

message: I would prefer if this page stayed neutral in the debate between 'all stubs will organically grow' and 'stubs are not helpful'. Neither has been empirically proven, so I see no reason why NPOV shouldn't apply here, thus imho we should avoid terms like 'most', 'every' or 'rarely' related to either group. Radiant_* 12:00, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
Well none of the edits on this page have come close to saying that all stubs will organically grow, but I think the presumption that they're useless flies in the face of the facts.  The current version gives some random articles that I selected using WikiWax.  Well over half the articles I found had grown substantially from very short stubs.  The reason many short stubs appear on VfD is that they're nominated for deletion very early in their lives, usually within a few weeks and sometimes within the first day.  Significant organic growth in general takes place on timescales of months, six months being a typical period from initial creation.  Often school articles are listed for deletion long before this. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:34, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Stub growth?

message: I quite like seeing school articles with worthwhile information in.  However, I believe when Jimbo OK'd school articles in principle, he did mention as long as they're not mass-inserting a ton of one line stubs.  .  Well, there seems to be a ton of one line stubs on schools being mass-inserted at the moment, and every one is put up for VfD by the same people (today it's been Dunc-something or other), then the same people vote to 'keep' every time, (Tony Sidaway, Kappa et al).  And most of the time, these articles remain as stubs (or merely have a template added; this in itself does not stop them being a stub).
I'm not sure if this is the right place for a proposal (please, if it's not, someone feel free to transpose it), but perhaps there needs to be some sort of intermediate 'expand this school article' flag on articles such as school stubs, and if they're not expanded beyond one line spammy stubs (as 90% of them remain) within 7 days, they then get deleted? Proto 15:57, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  School Stubs