Wikipedia talk:Schools/Archive 1

message: *Please re-read the "notes" section carefully. They contain meaningful content that may affect consensus votes.
*One or two weasel-words e.g. "resemble."
*Ummmm, OK if everyone else in the world thinks cheerleading competitions and band competitions have a whiff of notability, I can gracefully bow to the inevitable... if that's the case, I mean.
*"Province" or "regional"? Should wedefine those or link to a def? What about "county"? What about "surrounding two or three counties"? I mean.. there's room for interpretation.
*Not sure how significant the diffs are b/w this and original; if your only prob was the few things you changed, why didn't you say so?
*--Ling.Nut 00:55, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They aren't the only problems I had. This is more inclusive than I would have ideally. And note that the change to the first criterion does change things a lot. Most schools that are kept "per WP:SCHOOLS" were kept under that condition. Under the newer form that's much more difficult. As to the other points, they are good and I will look at them in detail momentarily. JoshuaZ 02:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Ok, I've dealt with most of the above, as for province etc, it might make sense to link or define those turns, but I would think they are normally somewhat self-explanatory. As for the whole keeping if they have succesful athletic teams and such, I'd rather not keep those but I would rather get a compromise that has some chance at passing and isn't totally ridiculous. In so far as that, it seems like that's a reasonable thing to compromise on. JoshuaZ 02:57, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opening comments 

message: Oh... I was experiencing Cognitive dissonance. --Ling.Nut 02:49, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Huh? JoshuaZ 02:57, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That was supposed to be a joke. I have been accused of being cryptic before. I dunno why. I certainly understand myself. --Ling.Nut 03:01, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yeah, you are being cryptic. I still don't get the joke. JoshuaZ 03:03, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

text: <Emily Littela>Never mind.</Emily Littela>. (It wasn't all that funny anyhow.)--Ling.Nut 03:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cognitive dissonance 

message: *Body has a 6, notes section has an 8, and the two don't match. I'd change it myself but I'm not sure which you wish to keep and which you don't.
*Will continue looking at it.--Ling.Nut 04:26, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, ok. If there are no more gross stupidities on my part or other issues, I'm going to wait until morning and then move it into Wikipedia space as a proposal and see what happens. JoshuaZ 04:32, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notes still hosed 

message: I only engage these discussions periodically, because of how pointless doing so is.  I generally know the outcome will be no consensus, but believe the answer usually should be delete.  It happens that I am engaged right now, and this looks a chance to actually establish meaningful standards.  The ultimate test of a standard will be if both sides of the conflict can say, "yes, that is a reasonable place to draw the line."
One of my personal tests for coverage is whether or not a published source is local to the school.  The local paper will, almost automatically, comment from time to time upon various issues that arise in the school districts in its publishing area.  Such coverage, no matter how much of it piles up, does not constitute encyclopedic notability in my eyes.  If there is coverage from outside the area, that is a stronger sign of notability.  The example I've had on my user page for a few months is St. Charles East High School, which had the misfortune of becoming the poster example school for the mold crisis of a few years back.  It was covered in the Chicago paper, but Chicago is the closest big city and is only 40 miles away, so that doesn't tell us much.  The coverage it got in the national school specialty press, like this cover story is a lot more compelling evidence of notability.
As for notable alumni, I don't believe that this is a sufficient criteria.  If for multiple notable alumni there were independent (of the school and of the alumni) coverage discussing the significance of the schooling on what they did to become notable, that would be worth having an article on the school.  On the other hand, , , and  show that three notable people went to Gosforth High School, but don't say anything at all about the school.  So these sources are of no help in writing an article about the school that adheres to our fundamental policy.  In the case of biographical subjects, we don't consider being married to someone notable enough reason to have a seperate article on the spouse if there is no coverage primarily about the spouse.  Marriages are a lot more intimate, influential, and normally long lasting than any individual's time at a school.  So I can't see why notability by association would be legitimate for schools but not for people.  GRBerry 03:45, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The notability conferred by alumni is more because I want this to have some chance of getting acceptance and without that clause in it the chance is close to zero. As for your observation about coverage having to be from outside the local area- this seems highly reasonable to me and would again be reflected in what it would have were this my opinion on what we should include and not an attempt at a compromise. I think the restrictions on news coverage already added goes a fair way to making the news coverage criterion more reasonable. JoshuaZ 03:52, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment from an irregular 

message: As a school deletionist, I must say that I am rather pleased with this proposal. My only reservations so far:
*Criterion 4- Some further explanation/examples should be provided regarding the "significant awards or commendations have been bestowed upon the school or its staff".
*Criterion 5- I am very reluctant to accept this criterion. I believe that notable alumni/staff should only grant notability to their respective schools if there are notable achievements carried out by these people related with the school itself.
Anyway this proposal seems promising. Good work.--Húsönd 03:59, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Seems like a good start

message: (cross-posted from the talk page of the other school proposal) This proposal is far, far, far better, WITH THE GLARING EXCEPTION of the "notable alumni" clause. For the thousandth time, due to the nature of schools (they see thousands upon thousands of students over the years, and everyone has to go to some school), ALMOST EVERY SCHOOL THAT HAS EVER EXISTED CAN BOAST NOTABLE ALUMNI. I would !vote for this proposal if not for this clause, but with it in place, I would never support this proposed guideline. -- Kicking222 14:30, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, well Vegaswikian tightened that part up a lot so that there notability needs to be tied in some way to the school. Does that help matters? JoshuaZ 15:53, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Also note that even with the version before Vegaswikian modified it, the restriction to multiple alumni rather than a single one will substantially reduce the use of this clause to what I think might be unfortunate but arguablly acceptable levels. JoshuaZ 15:56, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The sentence "The school has notable alumni or staff... from their activity at the school" is incredibly vague, and does not make much sense. Also, though the word "alumni" is used, I think it should be specifically noted that the guideline requires alumni as opposed to a single alumnus. Too often, the singular is confused with the plural. -- Kicking222 16:14, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

text: [Edit Conflict]In my opinion, the tightened up version from Vegaswikian is a definite improvement here.  I'm going to reword in an attempt to make the current meaning clearer as "has alumni or staff that because of their activity at the school are notable enough to meet a biographical inclusion guideline like WP:BIO or WP:MUSIC."  This may be too tight for the inclusionists, (either in my rewording or the current form of "has notable alumni or staff (e.g. would qualify for an article under WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC or some other inclusion guideline) from their activity at the school.")  But I don't see how to loosen it up while still meeting my concerns that it not loosen to the point of affiliations that are not discussed in reliable sources more than trivially.  Since I can't see a viable looser position, I'll wait until somebody else has a good idea.  GRBerry 16:20, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The obvious looser position would be "multiple alumni who are notable per WP:BIO or another notability criterion. However, this seems to be much too loose for most non-inclusionists. It seems to me like it might be a reasonable compromise but without input from the inclusionists we can't be that sure. JoshuaZ 16:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Frankly, as an inclusionist, I'm more interested in what happens to the schools that don't meet the criteria than the specific nature of the criteria. Particularly, what happens when a school article is verifiable but fails to meet this criterion? If the article is to be deleted, then this proposal is unacceptable in my view. The proposal needs to establish that deletion of verifiable articles is discouraged, and that articles which don't meet these criteria typically shouldn't be taken to AFD. How articles that fail to meet the criteria are handled is the most important question in understanding how this proposal would play out in practice, and it needs additional attention within this proposal. Christopher Parham (talk) 17:12, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  That can be presumably left open to the individual AfDs. I would naively presume that when the article has a lot of material it will be merged and where it has nothing more than basic statistics it will be deleted. That seems consistent with the description given here. What precisely would you prefer? JoshuaZ 17:18, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If the proposal doesn't address the major locus of dispute (i.e. whether or not to delete school stubs) then it is useless, and we don't need more useless policy. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:24, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

text: WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT Christopher, everything you just said is just equal to "keep all schools." There are tons of things I could write articles on with completely verified info that would still not meet notability requirements. You're saying nohting more than EVERYTHING verifiable should be kept, which is irrational. Of course, if something is unverifiable, it should be deleted- whether it's a school or anything else, that's one of the core policies of Wikipedia. But your idea is that the only guideline should be verifiability, and I cannot stand for that. -- Kicking222 17:51, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Can you show me an example of unnotable that is covered in multiple reliable sources? And I mean realiable, not some local media or webzine, that publish anything they receive withou verifying it. Of course, often you will be able to write an article, but it will be only few sentences long. BTW: do you have to shout? :) --Jan.Smolik 18:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  We had an AfD a few days ago of a school where we didn't have anything really notable other than that two notable athletes had gone to the school. Both of the athletes school-associations were reported in multiple reliable sources about the athletes. JoshuaZ 18:10, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Obviously, I think that verifiable information on schools ought to be included in Wikipedia. This is the position of most school inclusionists, and it is de facto our standard practice. I see no reason to support a policy that would result in such information being lost, because such a policy would clearly be worse than the status quo. As a practical matter, insistence that verifiable material on schools be deleted is a poison-pill. The reasonable middle ground is to agree that material be included while settling on an organizational scheme that reduces the number of "non-notable" school stubs to a level that "deletionists" can accept. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:24, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Part of the issue is that many "deletionists" consider not all verifiable information to be notable. To use a non-school example. In many locations birth-certificates are open to the public and thus easily pass as verifiable facts that certain people were born at certain times. Indeed, combining with marriage-certificates and other public documents one could easily make a sort bio about most people from developed nations. However, that information is not-notable by itself. The "deletionists" see a lot of the school information in a similar fashion. JoshuaZ 19:22, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Obviously, that school of thought exists and is quite common. My point was simply that if you insist on this position, you will never produce a broadly acceptable proposal (with the probable result that we will continue to keep effectively all school articles). I think that most "inclusionists" would be thoroughly willing to set limits, even fairly strict ones, on what schools should have independent articles. What most inclusionists wouldn't accept is the deletion of articles that don't meet those standards. If the goal of this proposal is to delete articles that don't meet the standards, as it currently appears from some of the comments above, then in my view it will quite obviously fail. On the other hand, if it is made explicitly clear that school articles should not be deleted under these criteria and that they are not deletion criteria, then I imagine that this proposal will find fairly widespread support among inclusionists. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:39, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Given that, I don't think consensus is ever going to be reached since we have substantial minorities who are unwilling to budge on this issue. I have to say that I would have hoped that inclusionists would be willing to compromise somewhat on this matter if it only ended up involving a small fraction of the schools in question. JoshuaZ 01:10, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm certainly not particularly optimistic about any formal consensus being reached on this issue. I think it's more likely that our de facto policy will simply grow more entrenched as additional thousands of school articles are added to Wikipedia. Eventually, written policy may catch up to our practices. As to your last point, it doesn't seem reasonable to expect people to endorse a policy change that, in their view, will simply worsen the quality of the encyclopedia with no benefits. Christopher Parham (talk) 01:27, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Under the current system occasional schools are deleted in a somewhat haphazard fashion. This would a) make that less haphazzard and b) reduce the acrimony c) allow school inclusionists to spend less time arguing on AfDs and more time building school articles. JoshuaZ 08:42, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Re: #5

message: *In response to Chris Parham, I would like to point out an attempt about a year ago to compromise on merging some of the more trivial school stubs. Would that be a reasonable solution? >Radiant< 12:27, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments on merger

message: Much thanks to Joshua for his work on this and attempts to reach compromise.  I have one question on criterion #4.  A national award given to a school would satisfy it.  Also certain state awards depending on the number of schools that received the award.  I would suggest trying to make this more specific.  Does anyone have any ideas?  JChap2007 19:32, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've seen one national award in an AFD recently that appears to be given to 320 middle schools in the U.S. per year, and was a bare listing of the award and the school.  It was also given by an awarding body that I'd never heard of.  So maybe the right way to limit this issue is, instead of measuring national/state, use the language that WP:WEB does "a well known and independent award, either from a publication or organisation."  It still leaves potential discussion about whether a particular award is adequate, but uses language that is working in another topical area.  They go on to give examples in a footnote.  I don't see any obvious examples to use from :Category:Awards, which is troubling for the criteria, but solvable by asking the Wikiproject.  GRBerry 20:31, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sounds good to me. JoshuaZ 21:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think my concern about this is best presented in an example: Spotlight, Academic Improvement and Excellence Awards are very well-known in Illinois.  However, they were awarded to 683 schools in the state last year.  I would think that the award would have to be prestigious enough to generate non-trivial news coverage. JChap2007 23:56, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps another phrasing, then.  How about, to borrow from criterion #3: "Significant awards or commendations that are not common awards have been bestowed upon the school or its staff.  Note that the test for this is that there exist multiple, non-trivial independent reliable sources covering the award."  The RS test ensures that the award has been covered in news media or similar.  And yes, this sort of places it under criterion #1, again, but to my mind, that's the best standard in any case. Shimeru 08:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually, that wording wouldn't necessarily put it in under criterion 1 since that only specifies that the award has been covered, not that the award in the context of the school has been covered. That may be overly broad. JoshuaZ 08:41, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hm... you're right, as far as staff are concerned.  (The grant of an award to a school is pretty self-evidently in the context of the school.)  But I think if multiple staff members have been granted such noteworthy awards, the school would already pass under criterion 5, anyway.  The sticking point might be, again, determining whether the award were itself trivial. Shimeru 10:14, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criterion #4 

message: I fail to see the point of criterion five. Just like having a famous child does not (generally) make the parents notable, having had famous pupils does not (generally) make a school more interesting. Most articles on celebrities don't even mention what school they went to. Articles should stand on their own. >Radiant< 12:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Again, the original point of it was to add some general keep criteria that would make the more inclusionist editors happy. Presence of notable alumns does seem to be frequently cited as a keep reason for AfDs. Personally, if we can get a consensus that has a few extra schools being kept as a result (do to things like alumni) if it means getting consensus I'd be inclined to be in favor of it. JoshuaZ 02:30, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It does? Please give an example or two of a school that has had famous alumni and does not fall under any of the other criteria. >Radiant< 13:23, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Most primary schools (and kindergartens, nurseries, ...) where some notable person has gone to school (excluding major celebrities: I can imageine the primary school of Bill Gates having had extra attention for that fact, but I doubt that Fuchun Primary School will have had many extra verifiable sources because its association with Ivan Hong Dian Jie, or (to take a more famous alumnus) Grove Primary School, Belfast has many reasons to be included, even though Kenneth Branagh is an alumnus. Or perhaps Belmont Secondary School, which has multiple famous alumni, but seems hard-pressed to be included under any of the other criteria (80 distinct Google hits isn't proof, but it is perhaps a good indication of the lack of coverage). I think a better case can be made for criterium 4 being superfluous: if it is truly a major award for the school, then there has to be coverage beyond a passing mention. But in the case of alumni, most of the sources will just say that "after going to this primary school, this secondary school, ... celebrity X started doing what we are here to tell you about". This is the kind of source that shows that there is a notable alumnus, but which doesn't count as passing criterium 1 since it is only a mention in passing. Fram 13:57, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't think having notable alumni makes a school notable. TJ Spyke 05:46, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

text: An exerpt from a comment I posted on Wikipedia talk:Schools: "If an alumnus is notable for academic work, then I think his/her secondary school would be notable, but I'm not so sure about an elementary school. If the person became notable before or during her attendance at the school (i.e. royalty), then ... um, probably the school, no matter what level, is notable. (Have to think about that one.) Otherwise, if the person is notable for reasons unrelated to their attendance, then it would have to depend on multiple independent non-trivial coverage of the connection (mere school records would not be sufficient, IMO)." Xtifr tälk 07:08, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think even the secondary school would be notable in that case (though the post-secondary might).  But I suspect that this is one of the places where we'll need to compromise to reach consensus.  Personally, I'd be fine with removing the criterion entirely, under the reasoning that if the school were that important to the notable alumnus's... notability... then there would already exist multiple independent reliable sources saying so. Shimeru 09:18, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alumni?