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CFD notice

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Timrollpickering (talk • contribs) 23:27, 9 August 2011

Categories for discussion: various Former pupils in England and Northern Ireland alumni

Various 'former pupils' categories (all in England) have been nominated for renaming. Comments are invited at the categories' entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Occuli (talk) 15:22, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

See also the section Northern Ireland alumni on the same page. - Fayenatic (talk) 17:48, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Notability: Schools

There is currently a long and important thread at User talk:Jimbo Wales #Notability of High Schools. This may finally be the opportunity to get any ambiguities cleared up regarding any perceived interpretations of (non)notability. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:26, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Thornton Fractional North High School

I'd like to ask if any editors out there could keep an eye on this article. There is an editor who is adding a few alumni who don't appear to meet notability. I am trying to work this out with them, and hope that diplomacy can work here, however, it would be nice if a few folks could keep an eye on this article. LonelyBeacon (talk) 00:24, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Inclusion of non-notable alumni

There is an ongoing issue at St. Patrick High School (Chicago). An anon continually adds an alumnus who is a non-notable red linked. The individual does not come close to meeting WP:GNG. The anon does not dispute this, stating that the individual in question is a "staple of the community". I don't dispute this either. An explanation of guidelines was left on the talk page, however the anon is insistent that this individual be listed. I have been reverting said alum, and have now been warning the anon (who has been banned once before for disruptive editing). I have now been informed here that this does not constitute vandalism, and that the exclusion of non-notable alumni cannot be enforced if editors challenge it. I would like to hear opinions on both sides of this matter over at the article talk page. LonelyBeacon (talk) 22:29, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

You're slightly misunderstanding the problem. It is correct that adding non-notable alumni is not vandalism. It could perhaps be considered the case that edit warring to add non-notable alumni, after being told of the guidelines for schools articles, could be considered vandalism. In any case, edit warring on your own part is unnecessary, and certainly going beyond 3RR for these reasons is unwise. There's a few admins around here, and if one of them were to semi-protect the article, then the problem goes away and the IP can go and find something more useful to do than edit-warring with you (or the IP might choose to discuss it with you on the talk page.) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:06, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I found some you were missing, LonelyBeacon. Moonraker (talk) 02:42, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

WP Schools in the Signpost

"WikiProject Report" would like to focus on WikiProject Schools for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Other editors will also have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. -Mabeenot (talk) 15:30, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Notable parents

Resolved

 – Guideline updated. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 11:38, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I raised the following at the Help desk who suggested I brought it here.

Some school entries (see This section or this search) are including lists of "Notable parents". These seem superfluous, but I'm not sure which policy might cover them. "Promotional", "Notability is not inherited", "Undue" - none of these seem quite right. Or am I alone in thinking these sections should be removed?

David Biddulph suggested it was an appropriate topic for WikiProject Schools.

Adrian J. Hunter said This is sort of covered by the first bullet point of Wikipedia:WikiProject_Schools/Article_guidelines#What_not_to_include, "School articles should specifically not include ... Any mention (including lists) of non-executive teachers, pupils, administrative staff, school secretaries, etc." You could suggest that the guideline be updated to cover this. You're not alone in thinking these sections are out-of-place.

Could I, therefore, propose that the guideline is updated as suggested.
Arjayay (talk) 10:56, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Ridiculous to list parents. I have deleted the section from some articles already and would suggest that members of this project consider doing the same. --Simple Bob ^{a.k.a. The Spaminator} (Talk) 13:36, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I think if a current student at the school is notable then that person can be mentioned as such. This would presumably be very rare, though - perhaps a few heirs to thrones and one or two others. "Notable parents" does not seem to make sense - we don't list "Notable customers" in the Walmart article, or at least I hope we don't. There are also some BLP implications of publishing information about where notable people's children go to school.

Where the education of a particular type of people's children is a notable aspect of the school, it might be worth mentioning. Sidwell Friends School has an entire paragraph on this topic in its lead, and I'm not sure whether it's undue weight or not.

I agree with updating the guideline as suggested. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 14:09, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

There being no opposition, I've updated the guideline per consensus demonstrated here. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 11:38, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I think this one is important enough to need it's own bullet point. Notability is not genetic. We're not a gossip magazine. We don't talk about famous people's kids just because they're famous people's kids.

I also put in "non-notable" in the first bullet point to accommodate for those circumstances where a school janitor is actually a retired head of state or a student enrolled in 2nd grade found Higgs Boson. ˜danjel[ talk | contribs ] 14:38, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Please comment at Pathlight School's ongoing peer review!

Fellow Wikipedians, I humbly present my latest contribution to Wikipedia and this WikiProject, an article about Pathlight School, a Singaporean special school for autistic children! All of you are invited to comment at its ongoing peer review to help the article become Wikipedia's first special-education-related GA, thus supporting the quest to counter systemic bias on Wikipedia! I hope you enjoy reviewing this short, but interesting, article, as much as I enjoyed writing it! --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 04:10, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

no responses? shows the projects lack of interest in special education. biased much? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.221.245 (talk) 02:31, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Stats for school AfD

Milowent has researched some interesting stats concerning the outcomes of deletion discussions for high schools. See User talk:Milowent/History of High School AfDs. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:17, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Archmere Academy Mastersingers

This article has multiple issues, chief of which is its apparent non-notability (not to mention the advert-like quality of the content). I've suggested that this be merged with Archmere Academy. Discussion at Talk:Archmere Academy. – Voceditenore (talk) 09:15, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Category problem

For example, Beresford High School is in both Category:High schools in South Dakota and it's parent Category:Schools in South Dakota. The latter due to the template. What to do? Voxii (talk)

I've removed the category from {{SouthDakota-school-stub}}, matching similar templates for other states. Kanguole 13:33, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Multiple national people by schools CFDs

Eight countries are currently using multiple non-(Old) Fooians forms for their schools categories. I've initiated separate discussions for each country as follows:

• Barbados
• Fiji
• Ghana
• Hong Kong
• India
• Ireland
• Isle of Man
• Pakistan

(No "Fooians" or "Old Fooians" categories have been nominated in these discussions due to the additional debates surrounding them.)

The relevant national WikiProjects have also been notified. Timrollpickering (talk) 02:08, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Tim, this really is turning into an obsession with you. What you should do, to avoid further disruption, is initiate an RfC on the whole shebang, and then have the good grace to accept whatever it comes up with. This picking away here and there, multiple separate debates (often accompanied by you mass-creating cats in your preferred format) really helps no-one. DuncanHill (talk) 08:23, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

There was an rfc, above; while it reached no conclusion there is no great disagreement except vis a vis the Old Whatevers. Opening cfds is not disruptive and the by-country categories which have been discussed separately are all now individually more coherent than before. Occuli (talk) 15:17, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

"mass-creating cats in your preferred format" by Timrollpickering has been disruptive, particularly when it is in a new format not previously used within the parent category. Timrollpickering then goes on to say that the parent category is a mess to justify further renames. Most of the relevant cfds have been closed in his favour by Vegaswikian, despite Vegaswikian indicating in the rfc that he is not neutral on the matter of renaming. Very cleverly Vegaswikian only took part in the rfc and not the discussions. There was disagreement within the rfc beyond the Old Fooians but it just got conveniently ignored. Cjc13 (talk) 15:40, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

The CFDs have now closed. For the record the outcomes were each for a consistent format for the country (Fooians/Old Fooians categories were not included in the discussions) and the individual formats were as follows:

• Barbados - All at "People educated at (Schoolname)"
• Fiji - All at "(Schoolname) alumni"
• Ghana - All at "Alumni of (Schoolname)"
• Hong Kong - All at "Alumni of (Schoolname)"
• India - All at "(Schoolname) alumni"
• Ireland - All at "People educated at (Schoolname)"
• Isle of Man - All at "People educated at (Schoolname)"
• Pakistan - All at "(Schoolname) alumni"
• Singapore - All at "(Schoolname) alumni"

Timrollpickering (talk) 00:57, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Scandal at Yeshivah College, Australia

G'day All,

I've removed a couple of paragraphs from this article, (diff: [1]) because it seemed like we were starting to tip over and into a bit of scandalmongery for the sake of scandalmongery.

I was hoping that anyone else would like to contribute to the discussion at Talk:Yeshivah_College,_Australia#Sexual_Abuse_Section... ˜danjel[ talk | contribs ] 00:29, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Titles with city and state

I have noticed a well-meaning editor has gone through several of the local high school articles here in Ohio and changed the city name to a more precise location. Most of these are rural schools that are located in a township or village that does not have its own post office or ZIP code. For instance, he moved Coventry High School (Akron, Ohio) to Coventry High School (Coventry Township, Ohio) and Jackson High School (Massillon Ohio) to Jackson High School (Jackson Township, Stark County, Ohio) (without redirecting the old title to the new). While the new title is technically correct in terms of actual location, it seems awkward and in many cases much longer. The cities previously with the names of each school are the school's mailing address. Like Coventry has an Akron ZIP code and Jackson has a Massillon ZIP code since both are located in unincorporated townships near the city they have a ZIP code for. In the news, the Associated Press will often refer to these schools as "Akron Coventry" and "Massillon Jackson" because of their mailing address. My question here is, what should be done about the titles? Do we use the precise location for ambiguous school names or the city associated with the school via the ZIP code? In, speech we really don't see or say something is located in "Coventry Township, Ohio", we'll just say it's located "in Coventry near Akron" or even "in Akron" and then when people ask what part "Coventry". --JonRidinger (talk) 18:37, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

While there has always been consensus to use parenthesis for disambiguation for US schools, exactly how to do it has never been completely agreed. Some editors prefer simply School name (State) unless there are multiple schools in the same state with the same name, while others want to use School name (City, State) at all times, and disagreement over this killed WP:NC(USS). In either case, I'm not aware of any precedent to use townships, with "City" always preferred if there is one. In my opinion, we should just use the state unless further disambiguation is necessary. However, in other cases, I don't have a strong opinion on if townships or cities should be used - I admit the former term is a little alien to me as it is not frequently used in the UK any more. Jackson High School (Jackson Township, Stark County, Ohio) does stick out as over disambiguation to me, if the state is not sufficient, the only one further location should be necessary - three is too much. CT Cooper · talk 20:16, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

In that "Jackson High School" example, the long "Jackson Township" disambiguation is rendered more problematic by the existence of Jackson High School (Jackson, Ohio), which is a different school in a different Ohio community (in Jackson County) called "Jackson." If the school is usually considered to be in Masillon, the name Masillon would be more effective for disambiguation than having two Jackson High Schools with titles indicating that they are in "Jackson". --Orlady (talk) 20:32, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I"m a Brit so perhaps you think I'm not qualified - so take my contribution for what you think it is worth. If you look at the Jackson Local Schools school district website it is quite clear that all the schools in the district are located in Massillon. I find it bizarre therefore that the Wikipedia article Jackson Local School District makes no mention of Massillon. I think that what is at work here is localism. People identify with their village, town, suburb, subdivision more than they identify with the city, county or metropolitan area that they are located in. Whereas addresses are fixed according to rules defined by the USPS, there are no such rules on WIkipedia so people seek to make the Wikipedia article reflect their localist views. I don't think that's right or wrong, but I do think it explains why people would choose to name articles that way. Having said all that, I think it is much cleaner to use the formal Foo High School (City, State) so would support the consensus that seems to be building here. --Bob Re-born (talk) 20:44, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

That is part of the reason I try and keep the difference clear in the various building templates. The address is just that, a way for the USPS to deliver mail and for your GPS to find the place. The location is where the thing really is. In many cases these are the same, but in the wild west, which apparently includes parts of Ohio, they may well be different. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:12, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Just as a background for everyone, this can be an issue all over the east because of the presence of hamlets, towns, townships, villages, and cities. Not every little crossroads has a post office, but it may have a school or be the location of a consolidated school. The Jackson example, for instance, uses Massillon as their location because of the ZIP (postal) code boundaries. The schools are physically located in Jackson Township, but Jackson Township does not have its own post office since it is so close to the city of Massillon. In many eastern states (Ohio included) you'll have towns/townships with the same name as an incorporated village or city (Mantua, Ohio and Mantua Township, Portage County, Ohio...in New York there are towns (same as a township in Ohio) like Palmyra (town), New York and villages/cities like Palmyra (village), New York). In thinking about the purpose of using parenthesis in titles, while I'm all for being precise within the articles, the parenthesis simply allow the disambiguation, so precision isn't necessarily required since many schools will simply have a state name in parenthesis rather than a city name. --JonRidinger (talk) 23:58, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Notice re: external link discussion on school article

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which may be of interest to WikiProject Schools. The thread is School video re: construction features. Thank you. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:11, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Merged Schools

I was thinking about the fact that Vaucluse High School and Dover Heights High School merged to form Rose Bay Secondary College a few years back. Those first two schools don't technically exist any more, as they've been merged into one. My perspective is that a defunct school that is, itself, a precursor to another school, is not notable enough to warrant an article and should be represented in the remaining school.

I'd like to extend this also, and betray my usual inclusionist roots, and suggest that schools that are closed should be merged into the successor school or locality. Most closed schools would struggle to meet notability; are rarely expanded beyond stubs (or start articles at most); and are watchlisted by very few, and, thus, escape notice if vandalised.

If this was one school that changed it's name (instead of two schools), the issue probably wouldn't even need to be discussed, but, for safety's sake... ˜danjel[ talk | contribs ] 08:44, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I've come across this issue several times. My flagship example is what I did when I (re)created Malvern St James. It's in my home town and is one of the UK's leading and most expensive independent girls schools. Over the recent years, it has swallowed up seven private girls schools in Malvern.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:57, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a bit of an hostile history, isn't it... And that'd roughly be the model for my approach: (a) all precursor schools (that merged into the successor school) are acknowledged in the history; (b) the alumni section is broken into sections for the students who came from the different schools. ˜danjel[ talk | contribs ] 09:15, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes. Except in the case of Malvern, most of the precursor school s came to Malvern Girls College cap in hand asking to be bailed out. The renaming to Malvern St James is a synthesis of Malvern Girls College and St James. All the trophies and trivia from the other schools are on display in the trophy hall at the 'new' old school. The same thing happened in Malvern with The Boys College which was also one of the country's most exclusive boys schools. It swallowed up several other expensive boys schools in Malvern, and a girls school, renamed itself Malvern College (one of my GAs), and admitted girls. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:53, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Certain schools have certain independent identities that are notable and should have their own page. Vaucluse HS for example had a certain independence and the institution that swallowed it up bears no relation to its history. For other certain mergers such as the merging of Narrabeen Boys and Girls or Fort street boys and Girls, there was a mutual founding and thus no idependent page is required.Siegfried Nugent (talk) 15:19, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

The solution to merge articles of this kind should also be based on common sense. When a school has been subject to a takeover or a merger, if a substantial Wikipedia article about that school already exists, it should be allowed to stand, and updated with the history of the merger and the two articles should be cross-referenced with 'Main article' tags. Vaucluse High School is not a substantial article. It can be merged into Rose Bay Secondary College leaving a redirect. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:53, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree that Fort Street Boys & Girls Narrabeen Boys & Girls were closer than Vaucluse HS and Dover Heights HS, both prior to their mergers and during, but I think that there is enough relationship between VHS and RBSC that they can be merged. I worked closely with RBSC for years. There were teachers who were (and still are) technically (depending which part of the DET bureaucracy you asked) still employed as VHS (or DHHS) teachers, kids in the playground in VHS uniform, books in the library stamped as one or the other...

The benefit will be that, in the long run, we have a more comprehensive article instead of two shorter disconnected articles. I see from your userpage, Siegfried, that you've been thinking of writing a DHHS article as well.. If we can work the VHS article and any draft work that you've got for DHHS, then we could get a "Good" article out of it. Yeah? ˜danjel[ talk | contribs ] 04:32, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I think such a compromise would be agreeable, I guess one of my concern is/was that VHS and DHHS naturally lost their identities with the merger and had a fairly notable history in themselves and could justify an independent page. I just want to make sure that they are recognised as the two constituent parts of RBSC's history instead of just weak reference to the merger and nothing else. Siegfried Nugent (talk) 04:31, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

University housing for families and school zoning

In the United States many major public universities have dedicated housing facilities for families. What people in this project should do is, if a major public university does not have this already:

• 1. Check if the university has student housing earmarked for families with children
• 2. Identify those units
• 3. Locate them via a campus map (PDF/JPG preferred) or a street address
• 4. Identify the school district the complex is inside
• 5. Identify specific school zones, if applicable
• 6. Post the school zoning information in the article that contains in-depth information about university housing - This is not considered inappropriately directory-like. Because it is an essential component of a family area (a subdivision, a residential tower, etc.), it is automatic for inclusion in the article.
• 7. Post the information in the articles of the high schools and/or other notable schools

One gets bonus points if he/she finds reliable sources that state exactly how the presence of university housing impacted the school, or vice versa. An example is here, regarding the University of California Los Angeles: UCLA_student_housing#Graduate and regarding the University of Texas at Austin: List_of_University_of_Texas_at_Austin_buildings#Residential_buildings

DO NOT post school zoning info for university residence halls/apartments dedicated for single/non-family students. Since it is not possible for school aged children to live in those buildings, the info would be irrelevant. WhisperToMe (talk) 17:57, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Why do you say it is "not considered inappropriately directory-like". Who does not consider it so? It seem to be to be exactly that. It is, at best, trivial and not worthy of the effort of adding it for other universities. I would question its relevance in the existing articles. --Bob Re-born (talk) 07:24, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree that this level of detail is inappropriate for our encyclopedia articles. ElKevbo (talk) 08:02, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

When you write an article, there are some aspects that are inherently pertinent to the article that would - You may think "oh, it's directory-like" on the surface but it really takes away from the article when you don't include it. The importance can become obvious once somebody does research and finds reliable sources related to the subject.

In most American school districts areas are "zoned" (geographically assigned) to a particular group of schools. As in if I live at 235 Anytown street, I am assigned to W elementary school, X middle school, and Y high school. It's not trivial information since zoned schools affect the culture of the neighborhood, real estate values, etc. When areas have their zoned schools change (new schools open, old schools close, etc.), newspapers write articles about it. Some schools signify their neighborhoods or give neighborhoods a strong identity.

http://www.houstonpress.com/1997-04-17/news/what-s-wrong-with-wheatley/3/ - A high school is located in one community. When the middle class fled from the community in the 1970s, the school suffered. Another community was added to that high school's boundary, but residents are expected to vote for different trustees and some residents don't want to go to that particular high school

http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1996_1369717 - A neighborhood's property values are lower than in comparable areas because it's not zoned to a particular high school

So therefore it should be expected that a high school article should contain, say, a list of small towns (for a rural school) or inner city neighborhoods (for an inner city school) that "feed" into the school. It should also include notable residential developments (notable buildings like apartment/condominium buildings which have their own Wikipedia articles), and residential components of notable institutions (employee housing or family housing at institutions).

The coverage of an American school will not be complete unless the neighborhood components are included.

And perhaps a best-case example, here's UC Village, a family housing development of UC Berkeley. I found what school district it's in, and linked Albany High School (Albany, California) to UC Village. At UC Village I linked it to Albany USD and Albany High. I wrote in detail about its relationship with the elementary school next door: UC_Village#Education

WhisperToMe (talk) 14:41, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree that this information may be appropriate for articles that are dedicated to covering particular neighborhoods, apartment complexes, or housing units. And it definitely seems appropriate for articles about public elementary, junior high, and high schools given their direct connection between geography and attendance. But I maintain that this level of information would be inappropriate for an article about a college or university, not because the information is not interesting or useful but because the connection between the two subjects is too indirect and tenuous. ElKevbo (talk) 15:13, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Most bigger colleges and universities have specific articles on the student housing facilities (such as UC Village, Florida State University student housing, List of University of Texas at Austin buildings), so that I meant was that the school information goes in the specific housing facility articles. It would only go in the main university article if there was no specific article on the university housing or campus buildings (i.e. Temple_University#Main_campus because there is not yet a specific article on the campus buildings). WhisperToMe (talk) 15:15, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I don't understand why we would want to add this information to the main articles of colleges and universities. Are we also going to start adding information about other government services that some fraction of students and staff might use e.g. post offices, DMV offices? What about local grocery stores? Everyone needs to buy food! And local utility companies? Every off-campus resident will have to pay for electricity and water.

So where do we draw the line? Personally, I draw it here because this information is not directly related to the college or university except in unusual circumstances that can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. ElKevbo (talk) 16:43, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

"I'm sorry but I don't understand why we would want to add this information to the main articles of colleges and universities." - ElKevbo, re-read this sentence: "It would only go in the main university article if there was no specific article on the university housing or campus buildings"

As in, the moment that the university housing/campus buildings gets a dedicated article, the information gets removed and put in the child article.

When a family of articles is not well developed, information that wouldn't normally go in a well-developed main article goes in the (under-developed) main article because the entire article family is not developed. As more and more is added on the subject, the more specific info gets taken out and put into child articles. The idea is that the very specific info on the housing units is only there because the child article does not yet exist.

WhisperToMe (talk) 16:52, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Any, I will answer the rest:

"Are we also going to start adding information about other government services that some fraction of students and staff might use e.g. post offices" - Actually many universities have their own post offices, and the majority of students either use the post offices or services from that post office.

"DMV offices?" - Students aren't forced to go to a particular DMV office, so no.

"What about local grocery stores?" - Students aren't forced to go to a particular grocery store, so no. - EDIT: One of the sources on the UT Austin family housing says that it is close to a grocery store. So I added that detail, but it doesn't specify which one.

"And local utility companies?" - Some university-operated housing complexes actually do require people to buy utilities. So I haven't decided, but that is an interesting question - If you mean "off-campus" non university property, then that wouldn't be relevant.

And the "school zoning" stuff is always discussed in the context of a particular "housing unit" or group of housing units. Again, when the info becomes well developed enough to break into a sub-article, it goes.

WhisperToMe (talk) 16:58, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

If you're saying that when there is enough information about housing to create a separate article and only then will this information be included then that's fine by me. But adding this to a general college or university article goes too far unless there are special circumstances e.g. experimental school(s) at the college or university, unique history between the school(s) and the college.

My opposition is not because this is useless information; I acknowledge that this is very useful and pertinent information in some articles. But it just doesn't relate directly to a college or university. It's about the politics, history, and geography of the local area and we generally don't include that information unless it's directly relevant.

These articles are not campus guides and we should not allow them to be. ElKevbo (talk) 03:25, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I meant that the information should go in a separate article about housing/buildings. For every major college/university the housing should get a separate article. I can imagine that there would be enough reliable sources on the campus buildings and/or housing developments to get a dedicated article in relation to any state university. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:22, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

This sort of detail would be inappropriate for a school article. As this question mostly relates to universities rather than schools I would suggest you raise this subject at Wikipedia:WikiProject Universities. Dahliarose (talk) 09:53, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

It's been raised there too. I'll respond to that "detail" argument above. It relates to both. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:41, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Not that I'm interested (only really working on Australian schools), but would you like to convince us why it relates to both and, thus, why we should be working it in? ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 14:44, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Check out the news articles above (for general info on why neighborhoods/communities are important) and the UC Berkeley stuff I found (universities in particular) WhisperToMe (talk) 14:48, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

And at the resource request page I asked for some articles so I can better develop the Albany USD and UC Village articles in regards to the relationship between the two. WhisperToMe (talk) 15:07, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Demonstrate for us

OK, WhisperToMe, I get the impression that this is important to you. Maybe it's a good idea. *shrug*

Choose one article, any article you want, copy it over to your userspace as a draft (follow the instructions at WP:DRAFT). I'll help if you like. Make the edits that you're suggesting to that article and show us how this will benefit things.

If you need help, get in touch through my talk page. Please note that I'm, personally, still not interested in the work. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 17:33, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

• So you are interested in seeing a section discussing schools zoned to a university housing property? I was working on one in depth, but it's already in the mainspace: UC Village#Education - I'm waiting on some resource requests that talk about it more in detail (Wikipedia:WikiProject_Resource_Exchange/Resource_Request#Albany_School_District_and_UC_Berkeley). What I'll do is make User:WhisperToMe/Unisample and copy the info.
• WhisperToMe (talk) 17:36, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Great. Finish it and/or your draft. Get some feedback. We'll see how it goes. :] Everyone's happy for the timebeing. Except for me, it's 4:39am here, and I'm really sleepy... ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 17:41, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Alrighty :) WhisperToMe (talk) 17:42, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

The sources were posted. Please see UC_Village#Education - In this case UC Village contributed significant numbers of students to Albany Unified School District schools. The development cycles at UC Village influenced enrollment figures at Albany USD schools (predictions and reality). Now I'm going to work on University of Texas at Austin... WhisperToMe (talk) 00:48, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I've copy-edited it slightly, but otherwise looks good. Good job. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 01:11, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks :) - I also added List_of_University_of_Texas_at_Austin_buildings#University_family_apartments - It discusses the UT Austin housing complexes in relation to Mathews Elementary School. In particular one point made by the articles is that the international students at the UT Austin family housing influences the Mathews Elementary school culture. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:17, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Fall 2011 Photo Contest

WP:NRHP is having a Fall Photo Contest running from Oct. 21-Dec. 4, 2011. I'd like to encourage anybody who enjoys photography, as well as anybody who is interested in historic places to participate as a photographer, a sponsor, or both.

One way that an individual editor or a project can participate is to sponsor their own challenge. For example, somebody here might want to include a challenge such as "A barnstar will be awarded to the photographer who adds the most photos to the NRHP county lists of previously non-illustrated NRHP sites that include elementary and high schools." To sponsor a challenge all you need to do is come up with an idea, post it on the contest page, and do the small bit of work needed to judge the winner(s).

Any and all contributions appreciated.

Smallbones (talk) 03:08, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Craigmore Christian School

Dominic.hopps (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who seems to be the named principal of Craigmore Christian School, has added some text in two places to this article where I dispute their neutrality (in regards to diff) and their alignment with WP:WPSCH/AG (in regards to diff).

I've reverted him three times, left messages on his talkpage and warnings for WP:COI and WP:3RR.

Can someone else please take a look at this? ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 04:54, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Also, just to note, I've added "School rules" to WP:WPSCH/AG#WNTI. It is technically covered under the point regarding trivia of interest to the school only, but, I think it needed to be spelt out more clearly. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 05:02, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:SCHOOLCRUFT at Trinity_College,_Perth

G'day Guys,

Have had a slow edit war with an IP at the Trinity College article. I'd like someone else to take a look over it. The text under contention is visible in the latest [2].

Paragraph by paragraph, the issue at hand is that the text that the IP wants is in clear breach of a couple of our policies and guidelines:

1. non-neutral language per WP:NPOV;
2. mention of an informal rivalry between Trinity and Aquinas, per WP:PEACOCK and various aspects of WP:SCHOOLCRUFT;
3. mention of names of clearly non-notable students, per WP:WPSCH/AG#WNTI.

If someone could please pass an eye over it, I'd appreciate it. I've tried raising the issue with the IP, but, so far, they're just not responding. I'm going to point them to this discussion in a moment. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 04:40, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Looking into it right now. Link title

The current cast as of this revision is fine, although the article does tend to include too much detail in places. Further editwarring or replacement of unwanted material may be followed by immediate blocking of the IP account. I'll remain open to any suggestions that semi-protection may be the better solution. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:06, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Courtesy note

This is a courtesy note to this Wikiproject, because I think that I am about to do a whole bunch of redirects on articles that fall within your domain. A few days ago, I found Wellow School, an article about a primary school in England. As you all know, Primary/elementary schools don't get the default-notability presumption like high schools and universities do. This school had only 1 trivial mention in an independent source, and no indication of notability, and, as such, I took it to AfD. The article creator objected, on the grounds that it's just the same as other primary schools, and lots other primary schools have pages. We pointed out on the AfD that they shouldn't, but it caused me to start investigating. Well, lo and behold, I found (right in front of me) Category:Primary schools in Hampshire and its parent category, Category:Primary schools in England. I started looking quickly through those now, and, while I found one or two that appeared to meet WP:GNG, the vast majority don't. Starting from tomorrow or the day after, I plan now on going through the primary school categories, and, per standard practice, redirecting every one (to the school board page if there is one, to the city page if there isn't) that doesn't have indication of notability. If those redirects are undone (and the notability problem not fixed), I'll take the articles to AfD. Of course, if anyone here wants to help out (either with the redirects or with proving the schools notable), feel free to do so. If anyone has a policy based objection, feel free to put it here. Qwyrxian (talk) 14:56, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I concur. I've done the same thing in the past, taking the reverted schools to AFD. Of course, I either get the attitude of "you can't remove the article without AFD!" if I collapse to redirect, or "quit wasting time at AFD!" if I do the AFD first. Ah well, can't win. tedder (talk) 15:02, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I concur too. I redirect them when I come across them, but are thousands of primary school articles in the Wikipedia that shouldn't be here. There is generally no comeback because they have mostly been created by WP:SPA who never come back. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:33, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Go for it. It is the right thing to do. What you are talking about is WP:BRD - be bold, get reverted, then discuss cycle. I have deleted a few primary school articles in this way and not been picked up on it so far. If and when I do then I do (and my work is reverted) then I will discuss and (if appropriate) go to AfD. --Bob Re-born (talk) 17:26, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

concur I've run across a few that I wasn't sure needed to be here, but left them to see if anyone was going to add anything. Mostly people haven't added anything. Thank you for taking the time with that. I can help out on North and South Carolina schools. One question is: If there is not a school board page or a town/city page, do you redirect to the county page or is there somewhere else to go to? I would think just going to the county page, but wanted to make sure. -- JoannaSerah (talk) 18:42, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Personally a district stub page would be better in my mind. The district article would be created at some point, so why not now? If that is too much work then the only choice would be the county. I'm surprised that we have towns or cities without articles and schools with articles. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:30, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Creating a stub seems pretty reasonable and fairly easily accomplished. And you are right that most schools that have articles are in cities/towns with articles as well. I didn't have any specific examples. It's just that I know there are lots of schools out there in rural areas that don't necessarily fall in a township. Creating a stub is probably the way to go. However, with just a stub there, other editors might come along and tag/delete that district/board article for non-notability. Would school districts be like high schools and sort of fall outside of the notability requirements?-- JoannaSerah (talk) 23:49, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

In the past, district articles have received strong support to retain at AfD as notable. I suspect that this is some of the compromise to all schools are not notable. An additional protection would be to tag the talk page for the state and schools projects. That way attempts to delete will be noticed on the projects' pages in most cases. And yes, there are a lot of redirects to articles without any information. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:05, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

OK. But if you're redirecting to a locality then please make sure to include a small section at that locality with mention of the schools. I've seen a few people who redirect school articles to their localities without any information on the topic of the schools; the result for readers is that they fail to find any information whatsoever should they search for those primary schools. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 21:59, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, if turning an article into a redirect then please make sure that there is information about the subject of the former article in the article that you redirect it to; and that any sourced information in the original article is merged into the target.

Incidentally, it is unlikely that you will find any "school board" articles, or indeed "school district" articles, related to articles in Category:Primary schools in England! Another ENGVAR variation to note is that many of them (most of them?) won't be anywhere near a "city". --Demiurge1000 (talk) 22:40, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Does the UK even have school boards? In any event, JoannaSerah brings up, as far as I know, school districts don't have default notability; in fact, in many cases, I'd expect them to be less notable than an elementary school. In the US, given the problems with No Child Left Behind, it's possible that some districts are notable, if only because they may have showed up in the local paper for having problems meeting the testing requirements. But it would be a shame to me to have to create a bunch of school district articles that were based primarily on news reports that they weren't meeting some arbitrary government standard.

Also, with regards to the need to include info in the locality...are you all recommending that we add (if there isn't one already), a bullet list in a town/city/county with whatever elementary schools we know about them? I don't know about the UK, but I know in the US that a major city could have hundreds of primary/elementary schools, and I would argue that including a list of all of those schools would violate both WP:UNDUE and WP:NOT. Plus, since we probably don't actually know the names of all the local schools, wouldn't it be undue to list just the ones that happened to erroneously have had a page before? Qwyrxian (talk) 23:56, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

No, we don't have "school boards" or "school districts" in Britain. Some state schools are under the control of the local authority, others are controlled by a church, others are academies and controlled by the rich person or company that sponsors them. DuncanHill (talk) 00:26, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Most settlements in the UK that are large enough to have a primary school have a Wikipedia stub. if not, it means creating one (complete with infobox, cats, stub template, etc). The bottom line is, that redirecting schools needs often quite a bit more work if it is to be done properly.

• The new UK designation of Academy is for certain high schools that are now funded from central government to relieve them from the constraints of the LEA.and manage their affairs more independently.
• Redirects should have the {{R from school}} template on them so that we can keep track on them
• Bulleted lists should be avoided wherever possible (MOS) and converted to prose.

Most of these issues are covered in the pages of this project. If not, please let us know, or make the suggestions for their inclusion here.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:42, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Kudpung, I guess my question is, lets assume I decide to redirect a school page to a local area (city, town, whatever). Others have said that I need to be sure to include that school somewhere on the local area page. How do we do that? If there's not education section, should I create one to say "One of the primary schools in X is Y"? That seems awkward. It's almost equally as awkward if there is already an education section but it consists only of high schools and colleges. I don't mind including the info on principle, but I can't actually imagine any useful way to incorporate the identity of one specific primary school into an article about a city. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:46, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

I think that yes, you should create such a section where it doesn't already exist - so long as you think it's a sensible place for the information to be. Yes, it means that some such sections will be woefully incomplete, but that's just because they aren't finished yet. For example, let's say I find a school in Derbyshire, I discover it's run by Derbyshire County Council, so I click on Derbyshire County Council, which it turns out is only a redirect to Derbyshire#Education anyway, and the entirety of the prose of that section is currently just "For a list of individual schools see Category:Schools in Derbyshire. The Derbyshire school system is comprehensive with no selective schools. There is selection by average house price in some areas.[huh?] The independent sector includes Trent College and The Elms School- junior school to Trent College are located near Derby." But if the school were in or near the Derbyshire town of Matlock, maybe it's better there; and that article already has a fairly detailed section on education, including primary schools (and some weird promotional material.)

Per WP:ASTONISH, a reader who types in the name of their local primary school shouldn't find themself looking at an article about a city, county or town that doesn't even mention the school they're looking for, with no idea why they ended up there. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:10, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

+1 with what is said in the above paragraph. When Greenwich Public School was merged into Greenwich, New South Wales, there was no section created. Prior to this edit, searching for Greenwich Public School would result in an article with no apparent connection... ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 06:12, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Here's an example from a tiny village in my county: Suckley. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:55, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Ardtornish Primary School. Is there a policy that covers this topic of redirecting without representation in the new article? ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 22:37, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

If an education section does not exist, we make one, or as in this case, include it in the short stub. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:49, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what we do, but (some) people don't. Can we write something into WP:WPSCH/AG and maybe draft something for WP:GEOG (and child projects, such as WP:AUSTPLACES) to follow in regards to merging in non-notable and/or stub school articles into localities to follow in regards to redirecting school articles? ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 02:03, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

In reply to Demiurge1000, "There is selection by average house price in some areas.[huh?]" sounds like an editor mangling the issues about school catchment areas and their effect on house prices (and social segregation and so forth). However the term "selection" in relation to schools normally means schools choosing the pupils on some basis, usually academic assessment, whereas parents choosing the school is normally "parental choice". I think the editor was trying to make a point rather than a statement of fact. Timrollpickering (talk) 02:56, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Convoluted reorganization of several schools

A mess is going on with some schools in Chandler, Arizona. There's a Hamilton Prep, a 7-12 college prep school; a Chandler Traditional Junior High School; and Arizona College Prep, a new school which is gobbling up both but isn't fully transitioned yet.

How should the Hamilton Prep and ACP articles be organized right now while it's only a partly-open school, and how should they be REorganized in July 2012? Raymie (t • c) 20:12, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

See the Merged Schools thread at the top of this page. It will give you an idea. Some examples of complex school mergers have been given. Articles that are about defunct schools should be kept, and categorised as 'Defunct schools in...' , and the section that deals with the history of the school will be updated to include a lnk to the page of the school that has gobbled them up. There is nothing urgent about school articles, and if the merger is comlicated, it might be best to wait until the operation is complete in July next year. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:49, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Merge - please comment

Please comment on a merge proposal at Talk:New Kent High School and George W. Watkins High School D O N D E groovily Talk to me 03:29, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Overzealous removal of information from Newman College, Perth - House System information

I've started a discussion on what I feel is the overzealous removal of information regarding the house system at Talk:Newman_College,_Perth#Regarding the removal of guilds/factions (diff) and would like others to comment if possible. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 12:06, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Nude swimming at US schools

I found a newspaper article that discussed the historical practice of nude swimming at US schools:

• Kaplan, David. "David Kaplan: This HISD skinny-dip was no fun." Houston Chronicle. Sunday June 22, 2008.

WhisperToMe (talk) 06:02, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Notability

I have clashed many times about completely non-notable primary and secondary schools that are supposed to be notable according to the rules of this project. What is the rationale about the policy to declare all secondary schools notable? Night of the Big Wind _talk 22:28, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

No-one, I am sure, really wants to recite the arguments for and against since these are regurgitated every couple of months to no real benefit. Suffice to say, there is a significant difference between primary and secondary schools. Primary schools are mostly non-notable but because of their impact on their communities experience shows that for secondary schools, with enough research, ample sources can be found. In any case, to avoid using valuable time trying to identify the few that are not notable, in addition to high schools a whole of raft of subjects are accepted to be notable eg railway stations, airports, super-regional malls, numbered highways, named bridges, inhabited settlements, fauna and flora etc. TerriersFan (talk) 22:44, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

That sounds to me as I don't no why, it has always been so... No links available to prior discussion about this? Night of the Big Wind _talk 23:35, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Just think how many secondary schools there are in all the countries of the world. It would be quite impossible to try to gauge every single one of them against a notional (and no doubt fairly arbitrary) set of criteria to determine notability. The only practicable solution is to deem all of them notable. It isn't doing anyone any harm. -- Alarics (talk) 00:26, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

You can also chose to say: "All secondary schools are non-notable, unless they have something special and remarkable." That is just as easy to determine... I would not dare to say that my first secondary school is notable. Not even because I attended it a year! Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:44, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

If you post the name, I'll write a well sourced page for it! TerriersFan (talk) 01:58, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Plantage Mavo, Beverwijk, The Netherlands.

(edit conflict)That's right, and I would have to give very much the same answer. There are however some explanations on WP:WPSCH/AG#Notability. High schools are accepted to be inherently notable based on the interpretation of this statement by Jimbo Wales in 2003. Eight years of precedent has followed, and no schools may be deleted per WP:CSD#A7, though where that policy decision is, is anyone's guess, though it has been on the CSD template since 21 July 2009 when it was added by Od Mishehu, and may have been based on this discussion, where this thread is particularly interesting. Nevertheless these discussions, and in particular this one are perennial and always peter out without even consensus being summarised, and there was another one this year (2011) that went nowhere.

Primary schools are not inherently notable and are subject to notability being asserted per WP:GNG and WP:ORG, however, and probably based on the same discussion, there is a long-standing precedent confirmed through a tacit consensus of possibly thousands of redirects to the school district article (USA) or the education section of the article on the school's locality (and if there isn't one, it is created to accommodate it). See also: this discussion, and this discussion in 2007, and this discussion in 2008 and this in 2007. There are about 200 schools in the category 'redirect from school'; there are probably thousands of schools that have been redirected but many users are unaware of the use of the {{R from X}} templates when creating redirects, which add them to trackable categories.

Most school articles, other than those that are blatant spam for private schools, high street cram shops, and minor private 'Brighton' style EFL schools that land at WP:AfD, get there due to editors not being aware of the exceptions that are practiced for schools

The bottom line is that school articles are neither toxic, nor especially numerous (when compared for example, with the many 1,000s of one-line stubs about minor soccer players) so it is probably best to go along with these well established precedents rather than to waste everyone's time with AfD or by redebating ad nauseam an issue that is most unlikely to ever reach a clear consensus through the formal RfC process. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:23, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

To be true, your reply gives me the creeps. The Big Jimbo says something and Wikipedia follows.

On the other hand, you say more or less that A7 is not allowed, but an AfD is. Is that correct? Night of the Big Wind _talk 03:22, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

But why would you want to AFD? At times I think that we are losing our grip on what we are about here. If I tell anyone about Wikipedia the first thing they do is try to look up their high school. If its not there they ask "Why isn't it important enough for an article?" and when I try to explain notability their eyes glaze over. And justifiably. The notability guidelines were designed to keep obvious nonsenses off the project. I can't believe that they were ever intended to deal with fine nuances of importance between high schools. We write Wikipedia for people to read so why not cover significant public institutions that people want to read about? At times WP:GNG seems to be an article of faith not a guideline that should be used with discretion. TerriersFan (talk) 03:58, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Night of the Big Wind, if you follow the links in my posting you'll find the answers to your questions there. We can only interpret what is in the archives as well as you can. In 2003, WP was still completely in its infancy, and Jimbo himself made the the founding policies and principles. At that time it was perfectly normal to be guided by his pronouncements on what he had created. Since Wales no longer has executive powers, what he may have said is not legally binding, but his words are usually apt and at least influential. GNG, as TF says, is a guideline, as is WP:ORG, but exceptions are rare, and any exceptions are generally covered by established precedent. Thus there is no need to rock the boat over schools, for which notability, or lack of it, is reasonably clear. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:33, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

UK School cats: Changes

As we are aware, some 1,000 or so high schools of various kinds in England have been granted 'Academy' status. This changes the legal statute of the school from one governed by the LEA to self governance with central funding. It does not affect the day-to-day running of the school or its curriculum. Cats are being changed, as well as new cats created for 'Academies in Foo county'. It is unlikely that there will be more than a couple of academies in each county except perhaps in large urban agglomerations, and the utility of creating cats for just a very low number of entries warrants some discussion here. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:20, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I get what you are saying. Take the ceremonial county Somerset as an example. More than 50% of the secondary schools already have academy status. By the end of this academic year it is expected that there will be perhaps two or three local authority funded schools in Somerset, and perhaps one or two each in North Somerset and Bath and North East Somerset, so these will be in the minority. Look at primary schools and the situation is the exact opposite, but on Wikipedia we focus mainly on secondary schools (mainly due to their argued notability) so we definitely need to pay attention to the distinction between local authority funded (typically community) schools and academies. --Bob Re-born (talk) 19:27, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

A small authority such as Medway is losing most of its 17 secondary schools to academies. I encountered 4 tonight. To maintain usability I suggest you hold fire- it could be that Academies in Kent will just be a superset including all of the Grammar schools in Kent, High schools in Kent, and Comprehensive schools in Kent. More of an inssue is that all these classes include 2 local authorities- but exclude 4 others that traditionally though them selves to be Kentish!...

The current UK government has stated that it would like ALL state secondary schools in the UK to be designated academies in the future. With this in mind, I think its fair to assume that most of the academy categories will be populated sooner or later with more than just a couple academies in each county except perhaps in large urban agglomerations. If anything, perhaps they should be split further into LEA areas rather than just ceremonial counties. Bleaney (talk) 10:35, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

No need to split into LEA areas because academies are completely independent of the local authority (even though they may still choose to buy some services from the authority) - that is why LEA should be removed from the infobox of any of the new academy converters. --Bob Re-born (talk) 10:55, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I accept your point Bob Re-born which is why I originally split the Acdemies in England category into ceremonial counties rather than LEA areas. The only exception is Academies in London which is further divided by London Borough. Bleaney (talk) 11:02, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Specialist schools in the UK

Im a little confused here. As I understand it, Specialist Schools as a designation was only meant for state schools who still recieve funding directly from their LEA. Academies (who are funded directly from the Dept of Education) should therefore not use labels such as Language College (even though they may specialise is Languages as all potential academies have a specialism which has to be stated when applying for academy status). The actual Specialist school scheme (which designated specialisms) has now ended anyway, but could someone give me some clarification on this? Bleaney (talk) 10:16, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Correct. There will be no more specialist schools, although schools will be allowed to retain their existing specialisms (but not apply for new or extra ones). --Bob Re-born (talk) 10:51, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for confirming what I have already said Bob. I've asked Kanguole to tweak the UK school infobox for an extra Academy URN. And we'll be keeping the specialisms param. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:58, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

All we need is to work out which fields we want and what they should mean. Bob and I discussed it at Template talk:Infobox UK school#Ofsted reports for academies (revisted), but I don't think we came to a final conclusion. Kanguole 18:52, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we should resume discussion over there then, or do we keep it here? Ofsted now support two URN's for an academy - pre- and post-conversion. Unfortunately the post-conversion URN will yield an error until the academy receives its first inspection, so the solution to me would be to leave urn and ofsted fields exactly as they are now to avoid any confusion, but to add old_urn as a field. If this is present then we could link automatically to the Ofsted reports. The old URN is always available for academy convertors in the "Links" tab on EduBase. --Bob Re-born (talk) 21:32, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

That's precisely wjat I meant. Wez need two URNs - pre and post conversion. The new URN will yield an error until a new inspection report has been posted to it , and this can take up to three years. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:21, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

The template talk page is probably the best place to thrash out the design. Kanguole 23:03, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Blue Ribbon notability

I am confused on the notability of Blue Ribbon schools. Are they automatically notable? The Kennedy Middle School AfD in Cupertino closed "redirect" because people couldn't find any Blue Ribbon proof. However, it was honored in 1992-93 (as Kennedy Junior High School). (I might look into a DRV of that.)

I want to AfD Tucson Hebrew Academy, but it's a Blue Ribbon school, and I may have to reverse course and fix some serious categorization issues about Blue Ribbon schools. In AZ info would have to be added to Agua Fria Union, Amphitheater, Chandler, Dobson, Flowing Wells, Green Fields Country Day, Greenway, Mesa, Mesa Mountain View, Red Mountain, Santa Rita, and Xavier [82-02], plus Arizona School for the Arts, Highland, Tempe Prep, and University (Tucson). If B.R. schools are notable, that'd open the floodgates for new articles (Except for GFCDS and ASA, all are high schools/academies/whatever.) Raymie (t • c) 05:19, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Consensus has been fairly strong to keep Blue Ribbon schools. tedder (talk) 05:21, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Two notability discussions one after the other... Can someone please fill me in on why there is this huge drive to delete school articles? Are they offensive in some way to people's sensibilities? Or are people out to get notches for their belt or something? Aren't there more productive things to do? This wasn't a bad article; just an article that needed a bit of TLC.

Seriously, if an article is anything more than a single sentence/paragraph, let it live. Or, gods forbid, use the energy that you would otherwise put into an AfD to expand it. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 05:31, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I completely agree. -- Alarics (talk) 06:45, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I will always argue that Blue Ribbon schools should be kept. --Bob Re-born (talk) 10:23, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

• So-called "Blue Ribbon Status" is class based and Americanocentric and there is no such "overwhelming consensus" for maintenance of any such arbitrary standard for rich, American elementary schools to do an end run around notability standards facing all other schools that is imagined here. One or more recent Delete outcomes at AfD have been overturned on appeal, which is hardly the "overwhelming consensus" envisioned here — just that there is a highly motivated pressure group striving to maintain this "standard" for inclusion. It is an inherently unfair inclusion metric. Carrite (talk) 19:50, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Spanish language, other minority languages, and US school districts

Just as a reminder, folks, if you have knowledge of the Spanish language, please make sure to contribute to the Spanish language articles about US school districts, in addition to the English versions.

Since many new immigrants from Spanish speaking countries do not know English and enroll their children in American public schools (especially in big cities, the states bordering Mexico, and the State of Florida (not to mention Puerto Rico)), it is important that the articles on US school districts in Spanish are improved.

Please see: es:Categoría:Distritos escolares de Estados Unidos for a listing. Also please start new articles, especially if the district in question serves a significant Hispanic population

For some big city areas in the USA, other minority languages are common, depending on the metro area. They include:

• Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Cabeverdian, Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Hmong (Wikipedia hasn't been established yet for Hmong), Khmer, Korean, Lao, Oromo, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Samoan, Somali, Tigrinya, Urdu, Vietnamese

For those of you who know these languages, it would be helpful to work on big city school districts which have minorities in those groups.

Thank you, WhisperToMe (talk) 03:23, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Minority languages for Canadian school districts

For those of you involved in Canadian school districts,

If you know French, please try to contribute to articles in English and French.

For other minority languages spoken in Canadian schools, they are:

• Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Mandarin Chinese, Croatian, Dari (not sure if it has a Wikipedia), Greek, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Singhalese, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Tamil, Telugu, Turkish, Twi, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Yoruba

Thanks, WhisperToMe (talk) 03:33, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

UK School reference articles

It seems a glaring ommission that we have no UK state secondary modern school, or even comprehensive school at FA. or even GA. There is little at B to work with. All the top articles are on schools in the private sector. Any chance of a representative school to be worked up? Best I could find was Wright Robinson College--ClemRutter (talk) 03:57, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

What about The Kings of Wessex Academy? --Bob Re-born (talk) 09:29, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Or Hanley Castle High School? --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:51, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I haven't been ignoring you- I just had a intensive attack of real life. Thank's for the ideas- I have had a look and ended up with more observations.

• Hanley Castle High School seems to follow the guidelines. As a VC rural ex- private foundation, now floating as an academy it is not very similar to a typical post Butler LEA purpose built comp- as it says it serves three counties- I am not griping just commenting.
• No stats, to guide parents moving into the area or really any detail of philosophy. Coming from other ares of WP, where the articles are a little more hardnosed- I am asking has the body of human knowledge really been enhanced by the reading experience.
• Its not the school that isn't notable- it is the straight jacket within which one must write that stops it being notable.
• The Kings of Wessex Academy seems more cutting edge, though has a lower quality rating and deviates from the guidelines. It has stats- but doesn't necessarily tell the full story.
• So, should an effort be made to work both these school up to GA, so we have a model to follow- and before that should we have a look at the guidelines to beef up how UK schools are treated. Most of the articles that I have seen have a section called controversy which is filled with tittle tattle from the tabloids. On the article I was hoping to rewrite a UPG teachers and even the pupil he was alleged to have had an affair with have been named. Comparing that 1800+ school (which has been targetted by the press - where we sent our children who both graduated from good universities with good degrees) with the charmed life in Elgar country is a little difficult. If we rip out the history section of that purpose built comp- we would lose 200 words while at Hanley you lose half the article. But if HC could be worked up, we should see a better proportion. We need a GA before we have the ammunition to knock the other article into shape.
• Could we them work up a typical inner city comp to GA. It gives an unfair picture of UK education if the only schools articles are on Schools for Toffs and the schools in the leafy suburbs.
• Looking at the whole issue of Primary Schools and notability- to a future WP editor, his own Primary School probably has the greatest and thus (most notable) influence on his academic life. Policy suggests we put them in lists: look at one of my list articles List of mills in Tameside a similar format for each county would be possible. Here we hit a silly problem- you can't display the school badge- as fair use justification- precludes the use on list pages!

Sorry if I am treading on toes- but time is short and I switch off tact around the 00:30. It just seems a vast area that newby editors could assist in, if we gave tham a strong lead. --ClemRutter (talk) 03:24, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Hanley has been a state school for a hundred years, but as with many very old schools, it continues to be part funded by ancient trusts. Nevertheless, the school's history and traditions were thrown out of the window in the 70s and today's students are practically unaware of the history of what is now an ultra-modern 21.C campus with a few tiny centuries-old buildings in the middle of it. The history section of school's own website, first launched last year, is based on the Wikipedia article. There is only one city in the county, and being a very rural county, with the exception of Worcester which is also too small to have clearly defined inner/outer city areas, most of the schools, especially the newer ones are in leafy suburbs rather than in the town centres.Most of those in the town centre are, like Hanley, now state schools (some with partial selective entrance) and are very old former trusts and charters.

I have improved dozens of UK school articles, especially Worcestershire of course, because I created WP:WORCS. Although I certainly don't 'own' any articles, Hanley may have a certain ring of quality to it because I created it from scratch, and it's a school that I have almost unlimited access to. I was however able to bring a toff school in the area that I have never set foot in to GA. There should be no question of 'ripping out' the history sections of any school - it's more or less what makes any encyclopedic article notable, while purpose built post-Butler schools need other content to compensate. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:32, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

We have a list of schools that are potential l candidates for GA and FA, perhaps the help of the Wikipedia city/county projects could be enlisted. If the community can decide on a school article to develop, I'll certainly where I can, but there's not much I can to from here to dig around in school and government archives that are not available online or in local libraries, or take photos. Much of the valuable background to schools is found in books on local interest and history. Let's not lose sight of the fact however, that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and not a school guide for parents - for that there are dozens of school guide sites, and the BBC and The Guardian league tables. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:32, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

• The main constraint is the availability of sources. There are several histories of Eton College such as A history of Eton college. 1440-1875. There doesn't seem to be anything equivalent for the socialist equivalent - Holland Park School. FA writers seem to prefer topics for which they can obtain a stack of books. Myself, I started Great Ealing School but didn't get very far for lack of sources. Warden (talk) 19:38, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

List of districts

Back in 2008 User:DGG suggested turning List of Long Island public school districts and schools into a category In 2011, I agree WhisperToMe (talk) 20:10, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I've learned better since 2008. It's more useful as it is, at least until all of the individual school districts have articles, because it provides for a place to list the schools in the other districts--and to redirect articles about the large numbers of elementary schools . should they be started. ~

special education

wikipedia is too biased. so much discussion about deleting school articles. what is this project doing to improve coverage of special education? no articles for some basic terms in special education, zero featured articles about special education. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.156.10.13 (talk • contribs) 15:46, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

There's no bias here. Wikipedia is created by its contributors - somebody has to know enough about a subject to write about it. If you think something's missing then you can write about it. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:50, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

There is a point though, WP is great at documenting the minutiae but right across the board the articles on 'big' topics are often trite. I see this in other area, and have almost despaired at what to do- the 'big' article contains a lot of well written text on an insignificant aspect of the topic- and that being an area where I had no specialist input. I waited for the article to magically be fixed--well then saw another strategy was needed. I worked out what my vision of the article would be, and started to collect references. A few months later I posted a note on the talk page that I intended to do some big mods, and a week later after receiving no feedback, did a rewrite that I knew was solely from a EU perspective (my geographical knowledge) plastered with the references I had collected, I took the existing text and floated it in a sub article with a far more limited title, Then I waited for the flak. None. All that has been changed is a few typos. Three weeks later, still looking for references the topic was discussed on the BBC- excellent! I then heard the presenter reading out my prose- which had been incorporated into the script! So, when you identify an area that needs improvement. Go for it, I agree that above argument is distracting and off-putting, but it needs to be seen as experienced editors that have identified a cause for concern and are struggling for a consensual answer, but will all be supportive if you tackle the 'biggies', hope that helps- the Winter break is an excellent time to start. --ClemRutter (talk) 10:27, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

A solution would be to see if there is a child article in which to put the more "insignificant" aspects in.

WhisperToMe (talk) 20:10, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

User:Hildanknight has been working to improve coverage of Special Education, and has got Pathlight School to GA. Given the vast numbers of articles on ordinary high schools that are in poor condition, this means that, proportionally, there are more special schools at GA level than there are non-special schools!

As others have said, the flimsiness in coverage of broader concepts is by no means unique to the special education topic area; it's the same pretty much throughout Wikipedia, naval warfare being stuck at C-class while there are so many gazillion featured battleship articles is the first example that springs to mind.

And, yes, WP:SOFIXIT applies here as everywhere else. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 14:06, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

This is a big problem with Wikipedia and it is in fact very difficult to write general articles about education as the vast majority of sources discuss the subjects from a national perspective rather than a global perspective. It also gets very confusing as the terminology varies from one country to another so it is is difficult to establish a consensus on the vocabulary used. I did try at one time to work on the Special education article. This is in desperate need of attention as the introductory sections are written almost entirely from a US perspective and reflect US terminology and usage. If anyone has any expertise in this area and could provide some global perspective, particularly with reference to special education in the European Union and Third World countries, it would be much appreciated. Dahliarose (talk) 15:35, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

you regulars know how to write featured articles. i do not. i can sign up and learn to contribute. but one new contributor cannot fix a big problem. need many contributors. glad user hildanknight wrote about pathlight school. hope that sets an example for other regulars who can be more interested to write about special education. this is an area that the schools wikiproject can place more emphasis on. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.156.10.12 (talk • contribs) 14:11, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

naming convention (city, state)?

• User:Dohn joe (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Salesian High School (Richmond) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Salesian High School (New Rochelle) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

There's a naming convention that says simply disambiguating to the city is incorrect, right? The above articles were just moved to strip the state from the disambiguation. tedder (talk) 20:03, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

The lack of naming conventions for schools does mean editors often "do their own thing" with disambiguation. However, disambiguation for US schools is normally (State) or (City, State), with (City) on its own being rather unusual from what I have seen. CT Cooper · talk 12:43, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Page names

A discussion at the Village Pumps suggests that having WikiProjects call their advice pages "guidelines" is confusing at least some editors into thinking that they're the same as the "official" community-wide guidelines like WP:Reliable sources. WP:POLICY#Naming generally discourages the use of terms like "guideline" or "policy" in page names even for regular policies anyway. So some of the WikiProjects are renaming their pages to something like "Article advice", "Recommendations", or "Style advice". This is just a friendly suggestion that your group consider doing the same. There are templates listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide#Advice_pages if you want to tag the pages that way.

While you're at it, if it's been a long time since anyone overhauled those pages, this might be a good time to do that, too. I don't know what the history is for your group, but it's pretty typical for a page to get written and then neglected for a long time. If you happen to find anything that no longer matches up with the community-wide Manual of Style or other general guidelines, then perhaps it would be good to fix it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:04, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

This is a highly active project. Our AG page is under review and development. If you are sending this out as a blanket message, you may wish to do some research first, and while your at it, consider adjusting the authoritarian tone. Thanks. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:11, 21 December 2011

Support totally Kudpung. An editor coming to this page looking for advice on what to include understands the word guideline. It it patronising rubbish to suggest otherwise- get a life and edit some articles if you have time to kill.--ClemRutter (talk) 16:50, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Kudpung is right that our guideline page is relatively active. The current page clearly states its current status with a tag, so I don't think there is a great risk of confusion, and a page move should not be necessary. CT Cooper · talk 12:35, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Position of school name in Template:Infobox UK school and Template:Infobox school

Over on Template_talk:Infobox UK school I have proposed that the name of the school be moved from its current position in this template to actually be inside the top of the infobox, as it currently is with Template:Infobox university. In my opinion this would look visually more attractive, and would also provide greater continuity between UK school and university articles. It has been suggested that I bring this proposal here for discussion. Raywil (talk) 18:01, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The master template for all infoboxes - {{Infobox}} - states that the title can go inside or outside the box. My personal preference is for outside, but interestingly {{Infobox school}} has it inside so we don't have consistency even between infoboxes within the scope of this project. So I propose that this discussion is widened to include both templates, in which case I vote outside in both cases. (And I just tweaked the section heading to be clear). --Bob Re-born (talk) 18:18, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I have always thought that the UK schools infobox was one of the least attractive and that it could do with a face lift. I also feel that all school infoboxes should have the same overall look. However, it's a matter of opinion and we'll probably never get enough people to agree on a solution. If a change were to be agreed, someone would have to go through 50,000 articles and change them all in order to maintain consistency throughout the site.--Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:47, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Would it not be possible for a bot to carry out such changes? Raywil (talk) 00:46, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Possible. But with all the rest of clean ups that need to be done to schools, is it really a priority? --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:05, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

GISSV - is this a pre-secondary school or what?

A (very poor) new article has been created - German International School of Silicon Valley. I am unsure from the official website whether this is a secondary school or something else. Can anyone sort it out? Thanks. - Sitush (talk) 18:44, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

It seems to go up to secondary level - mentions grades 11 and 12 - and has over 400 students according to it's website. That strikes me as probably being a valid high school article (I'm assuming that means age 16ish?). I'll do an immediate tidy up - I wonder if anyone can find good local sources to support it? Blue Square Thing (talk) 18:58, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Most clearly notable. Provides education to Abitur, the German university entrance school leaving qualification, similar to UK A-level (year 12-13), French Baccalauréat, and European Matura. Compares to US Grade 12. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:37, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I was asking for clarification, being ignorant of grades etc, and to see if someone with more knowledge than me could rescue an extremely poor article, but since you mention the notability thing ... Here we go again. Providing education, as schools generally do, is not in itself notable. That is like saying that I am notable for breathing. - Sitush (talk) 10:25, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

It would appear that events below have rather overtaken this thread but I am just going to make the point again: providing education, as schools are supposed to do, does not make them notable. I am increasingly concerned with the arguments deployed by some people interested in this project. I have no doubt at all that their intent is good but there is at best an unintentional abuse of Wikipedia terminology from people whom I think perhaps should know better. I do have the distinct impression that the primary arguments for a lot of school articles existing is (a) because "there are too many to clean up" and (b) others exist, so why not this one. No-one has yet shown me a specific, community-wide discussion of any depth that exempts schools from GNG and, to be honest, a lot of what is said along those lines appears to be based on some sort of long-lost history or, dare I say it, mythology. We are in a "I challenge / It has been dealt with / Where? / Some years ago. We do not need to show it now because it is done & dusted, + there are too many articles now / I challenge" cycle. I don't get involved too much in this area purely for the sake of my own sanity, but when I do then it is almost invariably the case that the articles are either unencyclopedic in content or unencyclopedic in style of writing - the latter being a particular irony, given the subject matter. Perhaps that is just my bad fortune but somehow I suspect not.

I am losing track of what is going on here at the moment, with AfDs flying around etc. Did anyone actually sort out an RfC as, I think, was suggested recently? Or is the current AfD furore because an alternative route has been adopted? Is that some sort of campaign, or coincidence, or what? The entire mess of uncertainty and disagreement that is our schools notability policy needs fixing, and in my opinion the talk page of an "involved" project is not the place to fix something as deep rooted as this. - Sitush (talk) 05:02, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I think the RfC was put on hold for the new year. Didn't stop the torrent of AfD's.

I addressed before the RFC was drafted why I consider schools (all schools) to be notable: that they are the centres of virtually every community that they serve in a way that few other organisations can compare (Q1 - noone really argues against this for some reason). ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 05:11, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Wescott School

I wonder if anyone would like to add comments to the discussion on the talk page of Wescott School. I don't want to violate the three revert rule but this school is clearly a notable school with a long history and there is no need to merge it. At what point does an article have sufficient references for a ref tag to be removed? Dahliarose (talk) 22:07, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

When the sources proof the notability of the school, not its mere existence. But a school of over a hundred years old is to my opinion notable. That school is clearly here to stay. Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:40, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Age shouldn't determine notability in any way as far as I'm concerned. If you genuinely believe non notable which i personally agree with take to AFD. Edinburgh Wanderer 00:57, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

It is just one of the reasons as stated on the talkpage of the article itself. Night of the Big Wind _talk 02:00, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

It would help if experienced editors would answer queries based on policies, guidelines, or what is done here by clearly established precedent. That said, the current practice is explained at WP:OUTCOMES, a non-opinion essay that documents these precedents, and which supplements Wikipedia:Deletion policy. Primary schools are thus not considered notable per se, and the number of references may not be of the kind that assert notability for importance or any particular uniqueness according to WP:GNG and WP:ORG. This is obviously a shame for any articles that are more than a one-line stub, are neatly presented, and where the creator has obviously invested some time; but unfortunately those are not reasons to 'keep'. As a compromise, unlike most articles that do not meet the criteria, the practice is not to delete them, but to merge any usable content to the article about the school's locality or it's state or regional school authority where it may be listed. Those who vote 'delete' or 'keep' for non notable schools at AfD discussions are possibly either not aware of the practice, or they might be expressing a personal deletionist/inclusionist opinion. The bottom line is that before creating any article, the onus is really on the author to review existing articles of the same kind, read the guidelines and topic projects, and as in the case of WP:WPSCH/AG, the way a Wikipedia project has reached consensus to interpret these recommendations and carry them out until such times as precedent or policy has been changed. Projects alone however, do not overrule policy, unless as stated, there is a clear written or tacit precedent to do otherwise. Mass deletion nominations therefore are unproductive and simply take up time that editors could be constructively employing elsewhere. The very least they do is to reinforce once again the existing practice.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:38, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Why are you so afraid that tightening of rules would lead to mass nomination/deletion? Do you really think that somebody will nominate all school articles? Night of the Big Wind _talk 06:32, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

People are already nominating large numbers of school articles with only a scant glance at points #8 and #9 at WP:Guide to deletion#Considerations. If anything, we need a concrete statement saying "If a school has some semblance of notability, improve it or just leave it alone." ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 12:07, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Ehm, can you proof your first statement or do you have the ability to look inside somebody elses mind?

Regarding your second statement: I think it is better to say "Improve it or make an effort to get it improved". Night of the Big Wind _talk 14:37, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

A quick look through of the recent contributions of one of the editors about which I'm concerned, there is no evidence of any attempts to do any of the work that would align with points #8 and #9. I don't have to be a mind reader to be able to say that the editor isn't doing it. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 23:23, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Most people adhere to the much more important WP:BEFORE... Night of the Big Wind _talk 23:34, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, section C & D... Moving on... ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 23:36, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

The article had sufficient references when you removed the ref tag the first time, and it was already clearly notable. Absent any controversial statements, a few references could easily cover a school article. The article also has too much encyclopedic information to be merged into the proposed community article--it would unbalance it beyond reason. I have removed the merge tag.--Hjal (talk) 08:18, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree it would be far better for these just to be redirected withough going to afd as it really is waste of time when established con re primary schools exists. However once at AFD I see no point in keeping redirects are cheep and if someone has bothered to take it there we might as well delete them. Edinburgh Wanderer 11:19, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree that given the level of traffic at AfD as it is, alternative routes to dealing with such articles should be taken if possible. It is clearly impractical to nominate every single school article individually to AfD given the sheer numbers, and previous attempts to get around this by putting dozens of schools together in one AfD haven't worked well either. The issue of AfD and re-directs is looked at #Recent Afds. CT Cooper · talk 20:16, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure if 'Most people adhere to the much more important WP:BEFORE' . Do we have any stats that prove this theory? From my intensive 2-year long research on NPP, my empirical findings are that they don't. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:24, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Multiple school AfD nominations

There seem to be a few editors who are having a blitz nominating lots of schools, and particularly primary/elementary schools, for deletion. Although few primary/elementary schools meet the notability requirements I'm concerned that with so many deletions going through in bulk there will not be time to give each article due consideration. If you have time to post your comments please visit the AfD page here. Dahliarose (talk) 21:48, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm a bit concerned about the justification given by the nominators for a lot of these AfD's, for example User:Epeefleche (who seems to contributed ~50 of the AfD's on that page (wtf?)):

K-8 school. Convention with such schools is, as I understand it, to delete and/or redirect. Appears to be non-notable. Created by an SPA. Delete (w/redirect to whatever makes sense would be fine) appears to be in order.

This is the wrong rationale up to the point where s/he says "Appears to be non-notable". ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 23:47, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

I've commented on the one that I think should be kept; the rest are pretty clear. I'd list the ones here, but I think people should make up their own minds.

Basicly, I'm of the opinion that if an article asserts notability for whatever reason, and provides a reference for that assertion, then it should be kept. I'm very concerned about the "DELETE EVERYTHING" mentality. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 00:26, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I think that AfD's, particularly for schools, need to be reconsidered. The alternative option of userfy really seems to be beyond people. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 01:03, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I do not think there is a "delete everything"-mentality here. There is far more a mentality "keep everything even if it is not notable, not because it is a rule but because it is easier then looking into it properly" Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:21, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

BTW, at my first county I only find 12 of Epeefleche's hand, not 50. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:24, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Interesting, those 12 are not all his nominations, butr are nominations he took part in. Night of the Big Wind _talk 02:09, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm getting 43 school article AfD's started by Epeefleche. I'm not sure what you're counting... ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 07:37, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't agree with the keep everything mentality but the sheer number of school AfDs going through at present suggests that the nominators have not spent any time investigating these articles thoroughly to check what sources are available. There is no inherent assumption that any type of school is notable or non-notable. Each school article must be considered on its own merits. Dahliarose (talk) 01:30, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

~60 odd school AfD's (and I have to say that most are probably valid) suggests that there's a problem. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Huaian_Foreign_Language_School is particularly emblematic of the issue here. While the article is very poorly written, it is quite clearly about a school region (i.e., a collective of schools), not a primary school as the nominator asserts. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 01:41, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

oh there is a problem all right. However it's not the problem you seem to suggest. I have participated in many of the AFDs and I haven't seen one close as a keep. These are all nonsense articles that need to go. The community seems to agree. Fmph (talk) 08:12, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

there all but one primary schools. I'm not seeing a problem here. There is a consensus here there non notable. Edinburgh Wanderer 11:16, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

There is no policy that dictates that all primary schools are non-notable. The majority are but some are not. Each article has to be considered on its merits. I've seen many cases where primary schools do not get deleted as the nominator has failed to look for sources and the school subsequently turn out to be notable. With all these deletions going through at once there is insufficient time for the community to give each article due consideration. The reasons cited for nomination also imply that the appropriate checks have not been carried out prior to nominating the articles. Dahliarose (talk) 13:52, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

the consensus is that they don't pass this project so there is no Bye for them they have to meet WP:GNG. If they do then thats fine but the majority don't and are non notable. Edinburgh Wanderer 20:09, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

True, but it also gives a list of actions that should be taken before deletion is carried out. I hope that this is being followed for all nominations. CT Cooper · talk 20:19, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

One of the key criticisms which is often levied against the presumption of secondary schools being notable is that people to interpret it to mean that all primary schools are non-notable, which is not intentional and not true at all. CT Cooper · talk 20:05, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Secondary Concern: Redirects/Merges won't be fulfilled properly

I have a secondary concern arising out of the mass nomination of school articles in that I'm worried that the redirect/merges won't be fulfilled properly either by AfD nominators. It's also likely that the large amount of work created won't likely be taken up by other editors. I have a great deal of enmity for situations where readers search for something and find something completely different. For example, when Greenwich Public School was redirected a section that wasn't there. I'd like to ask people to be wary of this situation arising. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 23:59, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

<sarcastic mode on>Aha, a volunteer to fix it!<sarcastic mode off> Night of the Big Wind _talk 05:24, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Hehe. Yeah. Already fixed one: Holne Chase Primary School (could probably be improved if anyone knows more than I could tell with Google maps). ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 05:50, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Dajnel, at several places above, you express your preferences (any assertion of notability is good enough for keeping, articles should be userfied rather than deleted, we shouldn't have these AfDs because the resulting redirect may not be properly done). Please understand, these are all your opinion, and none have any basis in practice or in policy. If a primary school does not meet WP:GNG, it should be redirected. The use of AfD is, in fact, a courtesy to other editors. When I find primary schools that don't meet WP:GNG, I don't use AfD--I just do the redirect myself. Also, there is no requirement to merge anything, and, in fact, there is almost never anything worth merging. The only thing that needs to be done is for that there needs to be a specific mention of the primary school in the target (so that someone being redirected there understands why they were redirected). For example, if an article contains information sourced only to the school website, like "School X is 20 years old and enrolls about N students per year", that information should not be merged into the locality/district article, even though it's verifiably correct, because that information isn't important enough to belong in a general article. If there were one notable fact supported by an independent source, perhaps that could be added, (something like "School X, which is the oldest school in the local area"), but that would be an issue to hash out at the target article. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:53, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I was under the (mis?)understanding that this was a talk page, i.e., a venue at which we can express our opinions about such things? Sorry again.

But to address each of the rest of your points:

• WP:GNG, absolutely. But to delete without doing a cursory search for sources is rather careless. That's where I'm concerned. The one AfD I have put forward was only done so after a fairly substantial period during which I tried to actually get things done. To juct click XFD using twinkle (or whatever) without following the rest of the process is lazy and seems to be what is currently happening.
• The existing consensus is that primary schools should be merge/redirected to their localities. But, per WP:SURPRISE, we should seek to make sure that people find the information that they're looking for (THAT is where my concern lies; see, for example Holne Chase Primary School, which was redirected here). Just as policy doesn't necessarily state this, neither does it state that school articles should be deleted out of hand (unless you can point me to that policy?).
• That's fantastic that you act boldly. Well done. I'm sure you do the right thing and only include what information is relevant. I am not advocating for more information to be included in localities than that. Good job. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 04:27, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

An opinion that has no basis in policy or guidelines is just that, an opinion. It carries no weight unless you can change those policies/guidelines ... and if you wish to do that then this is almost certainly not the correct venue. - Sitush (talk) 04:40, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

The same can be said about the counteropinion then. So we're back to where we started. Yay. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 04:42, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Fixed a few

I'm sure there's many many more, but... Fixed Saint Rose School, Eagle View Elementary K-8 and St._Joseph's School (New Windsor, New York). Just used google maps, so if someone with more in-depth knowledge (i.e., regarding how enrolment catchments work in the US) could take a look, I'd appreciate it. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 16:15, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Doon School

This is to bring to your notice that although Doon School has been rated top-importance on WikiProject Schools, it is still rated as low-importance on the article's talk page : Doon School.

I will be grateful if someone can change it!

Thanks!

Merlaysamuel (talk) 21:15, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

The importance was changed to low by Jezhotwells (talk · contribs) here when reverting an inappropriate assessment. Since it is listed as top-importance at WP:WPSCH, I am reinstating top-importance. CT Cooper · talk 21:37, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

No way is this article of Top importance to this project. How does it satisfy the criterion?

• Top-importance - It is expected that at least one article from each country should be in this category. Countries with higher populations will necessarily have more schools of top-importance. Top importance schools will usually have a long list of notable international alumni or important national alumni (e.g., prime ministers, presidents, senior royalty, Nobel prize winners). They will often have received substantial national or international media coverage as evidenced by inclusion in TV programmes, books, e.t.c. They will be the most notable schools in their particular country, and they are also likely to have articles in foreign-language Wikis.

The_Doon_School comprehensively fails that. Jezhotwells (talk) 02:30, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Have you seen this: List of Doon School alumni? Night of the Big Wind _talk 06:25, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

With all due respect to Jez for his skill and expertise on GA, FA, and DYK reviews, having read the article in question and it's GA review, I concur with CT Cooper that this projects rates The Doon School as Top Importance. Unlike quality ratings, importance is a local project priority assessment. See WP:COUNCIL/AFAQ, Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/WikiProject#"Importance", WP:COUNCIL/G., and Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Assessment#Article importance standards, and see also: List of Doon School alumni. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:16, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, importance ratings may and should vary depending on the project concerned. I think I should emphasise that I didn't originally assess this article as top-importance, someone else did, and I was just putting it back as it was. The only possible case for demotion here is down to high-importance, because this school definitely isn't mid or low-importance, though I am content with top-importance. CT Cooper · talk 10:32, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Article-title guideline

Neither Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Article guidelines nor the other guideline pages in Wikiproject Schools seems to address what title to use for articles about schools. In particular, what is the standard for "fuller formal title" (example: Central Bloopsville Middle School) vs "shorter name used in casual conversation" (example: Bloopsville Middle)? Seems like all the articles use "School" (or "Academy" or something like that), which helps make the article title more self-explanatory but may sometimes collide with WP:COMMONNAME. The actual case that prompted me to go looking for guidance is today's move of First Flight High School to First Flight High. DMacks (talk) 00:45, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

The issue has been resolved by an administrator per moved First Flight High to First Flight High School over redirect: without the "School" it doesn't follow Wiki naming conventions . FWIW, most schools that want to impart a notion of professionalism, would call themselves 'Hanley Castle High School' rather than just Hanley Castle High. The official name should be used, which will be the one in it's memorandum of incorporation, unless of course it is really to long or cumbersome for a page name such as His Majesty the King's Royal High School in Udon Thani for the Apprentices of the National Federation of Fisheries Workers of Thailand, which for example, we would probably shorten to 'Royal Fisheries High School (Udon Thani)' and create some redirects for some likely search terms including its full name. For schools with the same or similar names, the guideline at WP:DAB tells us what to do. First Flight High School does not fall into either of these cases. According to its web site, its name is First Flight High School' and not some contrived student nickname. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:12, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Why should the "official" name be used? Surely WP:COMMON would indicate otherwise? Fmph (talk) 10:38, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Do you mean WP:COMMONNAME? That guideline suggests that "major international organizations, major English-language media outlets, quality encyclopedias, geographic name servers, major scientific bodies and scientific journals" be referred to for judgement. Such sources would likely refer to the school as "First Flight High School". ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 12:45, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I did. Thank you. My favourite quote from it is this one:

"Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources."

That's the point I was making. Fmph (talk) 13:12, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Comon sense, not common name, is what is required here. For example, anyone in a 15 mile radius of this school discussing it informally in an educational context, will refer to it as Hanley and everyone knows what is meant. In any other context, especially reliable sources, it is is always referred to by its full name.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:07, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I am connected with a school in an Australian country town universally known as "Tech" to everyone in the town and for many miles around. The part-word tech is not even part of its official name these days. Common sense says that it also won't be the article name. HiLo48 (talk) 07:40, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Funny you should say that. There is another school near this school. It's official name hasn't been Malvern Technical College for over 50 years; in the meantime, while still providing exactly the same function, it has been Malvern College of Further Education, then Malvern Hills College, and now South Worcestershire College. It's still referred to as 'The Tech' by all generations. But only in informal circles of course. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:16, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

FA with a cleanup tag?

While looking through your articles-by-quality grid, I stumbled upon St John Plessington Catholic College, an FA of top importance, according to the templates an its talk page. I've changed the FA parameter to start, but as I don't know this project's importance scale I'd appreciate someone grading that part, unless of course it is actually top. I just don't think y'all want this article in the very top left corner of this. Thanks in advance, Nolelover ^{Talk·Contribs} 14:50, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Looks like this was a (now blocked for socking) user doing a bit of a fly by on the article. Now fixed. I assume that WP:MERSEYSIDE feels the same about it that it did before. Thanks for catching it. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 15:08, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Primary schools: when there's nothing to redirect to

I've just closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vani Nursery and Primary School as a redirect to Education in Tamil Nadu, as that is the standard outcome for primary schools, and there's a pretty good consensus for this even though it's not actually codified in a guideline (I myself, accept this standard practice). However, the problem is, not only does the target not mention this school, it cannot. Tamil Nadu has over 72 million residents. Literally the only mention of elementary schools in the article is this sentence: "The structure of education in the state is based on the national level pattern with 12 years of schooling (10+2+3), consisting of eight years of elementary education, that is, five years of primary and three years of middle school education for the age groups of 6-11 and 11-14 years, respectively, followed by secondary and higher." It's a private school, so there is no school district to direct it to, and, to be honest, I don't even know if India/Tamil Nadu has school districts. There is no List of schools... article for Tamil Nadu, nor do I think there should be: with 72 million residents, the list would be catastrophically large, unmanageable, full of spam, etc. Standard practice is that we should never redirect unless the original search term is mentioned in the target article, but adding one elementary school to this article would be a big WP:UNDUE violation. So now what? I don't see a solution here that actually meets the conflicting instructions in WP:REDIRECT and WP:OUTCOMES. Qwyrxian (talk) 05:29, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Redirect to its locality: Eriyodu where it is mentioned. It's extremely rare that a locality for a school does not exist. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:47, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Wow. I am. Not smart. Grading too many papers, I guess. I've fixed the redirect--thank you. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:22, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Radio broadcast of school athletic games

Hi! I found an interesting source related to online radio broadcast of high school athletic games.

• Alexander, Steve. "Sports broadcaster finds online audience." Star Tribune. January 15, 2012.

WhisperToMe (talk) 04:52, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

credits on a photo

Am I insane, or is this a gratiutious case of WP:CREDITS? I used good edit summaries, I left a personal message, and I feel ignored. Sigh. tedder (talk) 00:28, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I see it has been remedied (for now anyway) and do think you did correctly. The edits by the one putting the photo in the infobox in that manner do seem non-constructive and probably vanity edits. The caption added was completely unnecessary. -- JoannaSerah (talk) 05:33, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. DMacks and TParis helped out. And they came back as the IP. Really? Sigh. tedder (talk) 05:35, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Article help request

I started The Regis School of the Sacred Heart almost five years ago because I thought that the school was a unique enough institution in its locale that, even though it it only encompasses preschool through eighth grade, it met the notability guidelines. Not being the most experienced editor at the time, I included too much detail. In the past several weeks, however, another editor has added much more minutia to the article, much of which I boldly removed today.

As this is a subject area that I am not very familiar with, I would like to ask for some assistance with the article with the goal of turning it into something reasonable. I think that the article can be cleaned up and saved, but if project members feel that it doesn't meet notability guidelines, I will not object to a deletion nomination.

Thank you ​—DoRD (talk)​ 16:17, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

See if you can find some sources that are from outside of the school's website. There is one source from the Houston Chronicle that really helps. I've nominated articles for deletion with FAR less in the article than here and they've been saved simply by having just one article in a regional newspaper (and the newspaper was FAR smaller than the Chronicle). As for the article itself, it currently reads like a brochure rather than an encyclopedic article, so there is TONS of bias and unsourced claims. For instance, the Curriculum section mentions a "strong base of knowledge". "Strong" is an opinion, and as such is promotional language, something you'd expect to find in the school's own materials. The entire philosophy section is inappropriate for a Wikipedia article (since it's entirely opinion and promotion) and I wouldn't be surprised if it's a copyright violation from the school's own website. If anything is directly copied or nearly a direct copy, remove it or completely rewrite it. The source for the Goals section indicates what is on the Wikipedia article is simply cut and pasted. Basically, the article needs to be far more neutral. --JonRidinger (talk) 19:20, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Buffalo Public Schools

In Buffalo Public Schools, each of the schools profiled has below it a selected list of former principals and assistant principals, with each person's previous job and next job indicated where available. This seems excessive and unlikely to be of general interest, but I can't find a guideline that would specifically discourage that. Is there consensus that such lists should not be included? --Metropolitan90 (talk) 19:10, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I agree this is excessive. This ought to be covered by WP:WPSCH/AG#WNTI, though it is not explicit on not going into excessive detail about staff. Looking at the sources used, many of them are spreadsheets which contain significant personal information (e.g. salaries, where they live, and reasons for resignation) whose use may conflict with WP:BLPPRIMARY and WP:BLPPRIVACY. CT Cooper · talk 22:15, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

I think WP:NOTDIR probably also applies. The article needs a fair amount of work.

As an aside, "School in Need of Corrective Action", "Persistently Lowest Achieving", "School in Need of Improvement", "School in Need of Restructuring"... Why does almost every school have one of these in their Status fields? Pretty depressing. You can't have a dozen "Lowest" schools, surely. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 00:44, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

This is a problem in a lot of articles about schools and districts in the western New York state area, which leads me to believe it's the work of a single editor or closely related editors. I've removed quite a few of these former administrator lists, in some cases multiple times from the same articles. They fail for a number of reasons (not a directory, non-notable, BLP) and should all be removed as soon as they are noticed. The only faculty that should be listed are current faculty requested in the infobox (like principal and assistants for the high schools and superintendents for the districts) and any notable (i.e. an article exists about them) faculty, former or current. --JonRidinger (talk) 20:04, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

WikiWomen's History Month

Hi everyone. March is Women's History Month and I'm hoping a few folks here at WP:Schools will have interest in putting on events (on and off wiki) related to women's roles in schools; i.e. school building, founding, women's only schools, educators. We've created an event page on English Wikipedia (please translate!) and I hope you'll find the inspiration to participate. These events can take place off wiki, like edit-a-thons, or on wiki, such as themes and translations. Please visit the page here: WikiWomen's History Month. Thanks for your consideration and I look forward to seeing events take place! SarahStierch (talk) 20:55, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Notability of secondary schools (part 2)

Recently I have asked what the idea was behind declaring all secondary school as notable. The answers were not making me happy. More or less the answers were: it is Jimbos opinion in 2003; too much work to judge notabily of every secondary school; it is a consensus. To my opinion those answers are an admission of weakness.

Jimbo has now a different opinion and thinks that every school should be scrutinized. To prevent to send good willing editors into the woods I hereby present a (draft) proposal.

A secondary school is notable

a) as the school (and its predecessors) are at least 100 years old.

or

b} as the school has been involved in notable events, sport events or incidents.

or

c) as the school has other notable facts (amongst others: a first, special type of schooling, notable building, special history etcetera)

A secondary school is not notable

a) as there are no reliable third party sources

The proposal leaves room for debate about notability, but removes the blanket notability tag. Night of the Big Wind _talk 16:33, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

We had this discussion again a few months ago when wales changed his mind. Wales has no executive powers - the community decides. No consensus was reached to change the current practice, and you are asking to revert a long standing precedent that would involve a huge administrative task to delete literally thousands of school articles and revert thousands of hours of good will editing done by the members of this project and other editors to maintain the school articles, and some who work almost exclusively on schools might leave Wikipedia. Not to mention the load on the servers. Schools are not the only sector to enjoy some exceptions, there are also settlements, airports, geographical features, listed buildings, government departments, etc., to name but a few. It is unlikely to happen per WP:PEREN but you're welcome try. The most likely outcome, if there ever there is one, would be to keep the status quo. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:51, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

If Jimbo has no exective powers, why do people still refer to his 2003 statement as an argument for keeping all? Night of the Big Wind _talk 17:49, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

The proposal is fundamentally flawed. 100 years is an entirely arbitrary number - why is a 100 year old school more notable than a 99 year old school or even a 9 year old school? Population grows and more schools open as a result. Then you say a secondary school is not notable because there are no reliable third party sources - so you automatically imply that all UK secondary schools are notable because the performance of every single one is reported by BBC News, Times, Guardian and Telegraph, plus the Financial Times - all of which meet the criteria of reliable third party sources. Bottom line I see nothing here that would convince me to change the status quo. --Bob Re-born (talk) 17:08, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

No, the only thing I say is that unsourced articles are automatically non-notable. For the period, if you want another arbitrary term, that is okay. 50, 150, 75, is all okay to me. Night of the Big Wind _talk 17:49, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually I'm saying no period of time is acceptable as a measure of notability. A yet-to-be opened school can be notable if it has sources. --Bob Re-born (talk) 18:05, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Please see an essay I wrote some years ago. I still stand by it. All secondary schools and tertiary institutions, in my opinion, are notable. -- Necrothesp (talk) 17:12, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

You think that a non-accredited tertiary instituted is notable? Night of the Big Wind _talk 17:49, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I do. Carrite (talk) 19:58, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Clearly I'm talking about properly established colleges offering genuine courses, not "colleges" selling dodgy certificates that operate from one room above a fish and chip shop! -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:27, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Ironically, we had some discussion a couple of years ago about proposing an RfC/Cent to get the current practice written into the guidelines - dozens of people told me not to bother, with the reasoning that we don't need a mega debate to confirm something that is already anchored and archived in encyclopedia-building spirit if not in writing, and that I would be wasting mine and everyone else's time. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arbor View High School, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Windward High School, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oak Hills High School, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Keira High School, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Collier High School, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dickinson High School, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Keller Junior High School, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stearns High School, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Castlehead High School, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Airedale High School, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dysart High School - an old list, yes, (by courtesy of User:WhatamIdoing) but check to how many are still red-linked. And there have been hundreds more time-wasting AfDs since. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:34, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and I forgot to mention, in addition to Necro's essay, there is also this one Wikipedia:All high schools can be notable, and there are probably a dozen or so others. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:46, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Nothing is sacred on Wikipedia. Building a collection of data about schools has nothing to do with building an encyclopedia. Night of the Big Wind _talk 17:57, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Like building a collection of album tracks, or soccer players 'notable' for only one game as a reserve player? Or 1-star Dutch restaurants? Of course nothing is sacred Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:19, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Aha, I signal a lack of arguments... Night of the Big Wind _talk 18:24, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Yup, you do! Although I suspect that's not what you meant. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:10, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment It appears there's some confusion between being notable and being worthy of a unique article. There's no reason Thistown High School couldn't redirect to Thistown, State#Thistown High School unless or until there's sufficient third-party material available about sufficiently important things about the school. Having a unique article is NOT supposed to be a status symbol or a competition, but that's exactly what some contributors here are supporting. They refuse to work on articles about the school's town, or any other articles related to the town, but scream bloody murder if they can't have even an article about their school, often based on its official site alone and some local coverage of some school sports. Point out there's little content, and we see miscellaneous trivia is added. This is not contributing to an encyclopedia, this is more like tagging by graffiti artists. I understand this is just a game for some students to get "their" school into Wikipedia so they can ridicule the students of nearby schools which don't have an article, but this is an encyclopedia. We want contributors, but contributors to an encyclopedia. If you don't care about the idea of an encyclopedia, then you really aren't contributing. 76.192.43.251 (talk) 19:33, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Would be very much against this proposal one its totally flawed age will very rarely make something like a school notable. Nor do i believe a change to a long standing consensus/agreement on this is necessary. Edinburgh Wanderer 19:37, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Looking at the discussion at Jimbo's page I am not the only one not agreeing with this so called consensus. Maybe within your project there is consensus, but I smell a lack of support for it outside the project. Give that a thought too. Night of the Big Wind _talk 19:48, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

You started that dissuasion as well. They should be kept in one place. On top of that your proposal is very flawed. Bring back a proper merited proposal and then you might get somewhere. Its totally flawed you cannot expect to get change based on that. Edinburgh Wanderer 19:54, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales' opinion is simply one of many thousands at WP. He is in the distinct minority on this matter. I suppose his deletionist ideas here are based on WP:TOOMUCHTROUBLE, which somehow envisions that if most all standing articles on high schools are eliminated, there will be nothing to vandalize and nobody will try to create new ones in the future. I can't imagine a more disruptive change of horses than this, actually. I'd cite WP:WAYTHEHELLMOREWORK as the counter to his ill-conceived new ideas here. Carrite (talk) 19:55, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

It may also be worth noting notability is permanent not temporary. If we had a half decent proposal and it was based on future articles then maybe. But to go through deleting schools we all deemed notable previously would be the wrong course of action. Edinburgh Wanderer 20:06, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Right my friends, this is the first time I join this debate but the proposal is elitist- political biased and undermines most of Wikipedia aims. I am first to concede that most of the articles are stubs, and the guidelines promote trivia and encourage articles that will be non-notable, but the solution is a root and branch rewriting of the guidelines to encourage useful articles.

There seem to be some hard working editors here that could do with assistance with the task, rather than being subject to sniping. Writing copy is a far more valid task than complaining.

So look at the points in the proposal which may have been made in good faith, but taken in the context of the UK, looks like a deeply political act.

All schools are not notable unless:

• the school (and its predecessors) are at least 100 years old.

// What you are saying is that Private schools are OK. but state schools are not. It is OK to promote private companies and give them free advertising but not the school attended by the majority of the population. OK to advertise the child care provided for the rich but not for the education of children of parents that need to work. You are making a Disney like, judgment that old and tacky is somehow notable. If you are going to make an arbitary judgement on age why 100 years- why not tie it in with a notable Education Act such as the Forster Act - or just say no school built after 1515 to tie in with the foundation of one school I know.

• the school has been involved in notable events, sport events or incidents.

//The primary function of a school is to teach- to take a child from a state of ignorance to one of knowledge there many other more erudite ways of putting, but none of them involve hosting a series of one off incidents. If all you are interested in is a list of football teams you are on the wrong page- fun but trivia. If you are looking for incidents then the subject gets very dark- are you looking for stabbings, deaths from gunshot wounds- that is sick. A school article needs to describe the community it serves, demographics, the ethos, the education philosophy it adopts curricular excellence, the buildings- yes a bit of history--no, not league tables but certainly some statistics. It can describe out of school activities forms of parental support. We need to give details of methods of funding-- etc

• the school has other notable facts (amongst others: a first, special type of schooling, notable building, special history etcetera)

// We are either back here discussing trivia, or as each school has a special history-- we must include every school.

You then go on to say secondary school is not notable

• because there are no reliable third party sources

// What is this about: The UK has OFSTED whose sole task is to produce reliable information on everything that moves in a school and most things that don't. The LEAs are statutorily obliged to churn out information-- WPeditors task is to filter out what we need.

We must move on WP is now the most important reference work in the world, so we have to accept the responsiblity we have had thrust upon us. Deletion is chickening out, we need to establish clear guide lines and work up each school article to C or better. A simple test- if a child in County Clare wishes to know what the school experience is like for her distant cousin in West Derby, the article on Broughton Hall High School should tell her- that is how we can add value as OFSTED and the LEA will be focused on info for the local resident. More to say- but lets get back to editing, and thinking about more relevant structures and guidelines. --ClemRutter (talk) 20:16, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

What on earth do you mean with What you are saying is that Private schools are OK. but state schools are not.? This is a propasal aimed at secondary schools in Canada, Brazil, India, Germany, USA, England and about another 180 states with seconday schools. It is not focused on England alone. There are lots of state schools in for instance the Netherlands that are older then 100 years.

There are lots of school that do nothing more then what are they are supposed to do: teaching. Is that special? No.

About the events: I think use use an overly negative viewpoint on that. There are also positive events. And it can help when the school was the first to use, for example, the Montessori-system. But also notable former students, like politicians, war heroes, sport stars can help determine notability.

Night of the Big Wind _talk 20:46, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Exactly- you admit that you do not understand why it is, that giving entry to old schools is advantagious to private schools (known as public schools in England) or the relevance of the Forster Act that attempted to chip away at the religious closed shop run by the Conservative (political bias) Anglicans (religious bias) but you still want to make a blanket rule that would favour them- schools. You seem not to understand that your blanket rule perpetuates the dominance of the upper class. The point is that others do- and they have no difficulty in saying your proposal is wrong. You noticed all the examples I took were from one region in one country in the UK. This was intenional as this is an area I have a degree of knowledge. I am less familiar with the Middelbare scholen in het Nederlands but I can say the WP Category tree is a mess- more a collection of tags. It looks if there are 26 articles on secondary schools (or less), 13 of which are on selective gymnasia, and others on private colleges. I would love to know as a reader, where a parent in Haarlem sends their child if they don't get 85%+ in the selection test needed for entry into the SG Haarlem. It is quite small 839 students, whereas other Haarlem Schools (ref scholezoeker)have a respectable 1800 but where are the articles. You still want to discuss schools as if they were films (movies)- it is not notable if they were the first or last to into a Montessori technique into the town/ LEA/ region/ country but an interesting bit of trivia. Real schools do education and how they do it: differs from year to year, school to school. It is our encyclopedia job to do education articles on each school, the reader can make the comparisons. You don't understand schools if you think the majority of schools have a choice on how to work. Further schools try very hard to discourage drug-taking, and set high standards of moral behaviour so listing 'sports stars' and celebs doesn't tell you much about the school- it is movie star culture- ideal for an article about a film. The current batch of war criminals/politicians all seem to have done the same course at the same school where entry is determined by how much land their father inherited... hardly a criteria relevant to most schools. But the debate is should all secondary schools be classified as notable- and in the country I am familiar with the answer is a resounding yes. If the question is do the guidelines help us to write good articles dis[playing the unique nature of each school, the answer is to spend more time on putting forward constructive suggestions to what needs to be in tha article core and what can be pruned!--ClemRutter (talk) 00:17, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Simply, they look elsewhere. Most likely the Municipality of Haarlem has a special website for all schools they are responsible for. No need to look at Wikipedia because the local goverment provides the info. Maybe it is interesting for you to know that a "public school" in the Netherlands is not a private school, but a school open for the public. Private schools are very rare in The Netherlands. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:15, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

That's a non-argument if ever I heard one. Why do we have articles on towns, government departments, military units, universities, companies, pretty much anything that exists today? They almost all have websites. What they don't do is provide all the information we do. Many such websites, for instance, have nothing on the history of an institution, which we may well have (not necessarily, but often, and we certainly should have). In fact, I often feel while reading official websites that they're trying to imply that the institution popped into existence fully formed in its present incarnation, particularly if the institution did not have an exactly glowing history from the outset. They're in the business of providing corporate information that seeks to present themselves only in a positive light; we are in the business of providing factual information of interest to people presented warts and all. Corporate websites and Wikipedia in fact exist for completely different purposes. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:35, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment Please stop insisting the articles must be deleted when they would obviously be simply moved into their town's article. You're playing to the stereotype of all or nothing, my way or the highway Wikipedian arguments. If separate article vs. total deletion are the only two options you can even imagine, I would suggest you find a different hobby. 76.192.43.251 (talk) 21:17, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I think you need a new hobby, because you do not read properly. We are talking about how to determine when a secondary school is notable. Not what to do after that. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:15, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

While I don't like the proposal as written (I also find the 100 year history part to be arbitrary), I do think that default notability is wrong. I don't believe that they deserve the exemption given, especially given that recently in countries like the US there has been a very significant increase in the number of tiny charter schools (sometimes enrolling only a few dozen students, and having operated for only a few years). I don't see any reason why these companies (or organizations, if they're non-profits) should be deemed notable by default. The problem is, GNG isn't a good substitute, because it is often the case that a school may be mentioned dozens of times in numerous articles (such as for having had a newsworthy sports team, teacher, academic program, etc.), but it is far rarer for a school itself to be discussed. I also don't find the IPs argument compelling (that these can all be merged), because in a major metropolitan area, this would mean that we would overwhelm city articles with education information. So, while I do think that we should move away from default notability towards some criteria, I don't think I know yet what those criteria should be. Perhaps GNG-lite: either one detailed discussion of the school itself, or four or more (number is arbitrary, open to debate) passing mentions in RS. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:00, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I think it would be a good idea to have a set of criteria on this, but it should also be a set of criteria that is careful to avoid systematic bias according to the locations or classifications of schools. The age of a school seems an obvious no-no to me (not only does it, for example, exclude pretty much all state schools in the UK, but there are undoubtedly many countries where it actually excludes all schools). And other things like sourcing would need careful consideration. I also think it would be good to have guidelines to ensure school article creators are encouraged to demonstrate notability, rather than being given a hard time because they are annoying.--FormerIP (talk) 01:26, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

The history part is indeed arbitrary, and will always be arbitrary. It does matter what term you chosse. I have chosen a hundred years for the same reason as centenarians are deemed notable: they are old. Another term (50,150, 75 or so) can be chosen.

I have also the nasty idea that my proposal is misunderstood. It is not A and B and C, but A or B or C. Written out:

A secondary school is notable as the school (and its predecessors) are at least 100 years old OR as the school has been involved in notable events, sport events or incidents OR as the school has other notable facts (amongst others: a first, special type of schooling, notable building, special history etcetera)

I hope that clarifies it a bit. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:28, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

For the English lads: they can always use the third condition: "a first". The first state run school in Cornwall, or you name it. In the English context, that is special. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:32, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes the either/or thing does clarify a bit. I had wondered about it. But why should any school be notable purely because of its age? Even if it is 500 years old (when, I would agree, it is likely to be notable), surely other things will mark its notability?

I think you're missing the point about English schools, NOBW. It is about balance and the danger of having criteria which create bias. There are 29 state schools in Cornwall, but only one will have been the first (that's assuming that first in a county counts as a first for the purposes of the criteria. Why not first in a sizeable town?). There are 8 independent schools, some of which probably ought to be notable (I have no idea without examining them), the rest of which are likely to be distinguished from the state schools only by the fact that they are not state schools and the fact that they are over 100 years old. --FormerIP (talk) 01:49, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

It is a draft proposal. I prefer to have a rough general guide, with additions to cater for special circumstances. I know that a general rule will never properly fit in all cases. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:59, 13 December 2011 (UTC) In fact Padstow was the first place that popped in my mind, but I doubt if that village has a secondary school. And if so, there will never be a second. That is why I haven chosen for the example Cornwall.

I still fail to understand why Night of the Big Wind considers hundreds of thousands of schools worldwide to be less notable than his 100 or so stubs on Dutch restaurants. Do restaurants influence the entire world's population in their early years? Are they government funded or funded by important trusts? Could society exist without restaurants? Could society exist without schools? Is an entry in a commercial guide book of dubious authority, in any way more reliable than Ofsted and EduBase, or the ISI. I think not, and perhaps this is the criterion we should be examining and redebating - and where is the Wikipedia:WikiProjectRestaurants with its dedicated contributors? All mainstream schools are listed somewhere, but exactly how many of the world's millions of restaurants/pubs/saloons/delis/cafeterias are reguarlry inspected by a recognised body? More specifically, building a collection of data about restaurants in the Netherlands has nothing to do with building an encyclopedia, - Wikipedia priorities should fall squarely in favour of spending time cataloging schools rather than offering free publicity for eating houses. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:17, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

You are making the wrong argument here. Your argument here supports two things: 1. The topic of Seconday Schools is notable 2. Individual Dutch restaurants are not notable. Neither of these are relevant to Night of the Big Wind's proposal, nor are they relevant to the issue of specific secondary schools being notable by default. Your opinion regarding the restaurants has some merit, but that does not (and should not) diminish Night of the Big Wind's proposal in the least. It is essentially a character attack and you are suggesting that someone who thinks Dutch restaurants are notable has no business saying something else isn't notable. The two are unrelated. Heeerrresjonny (talk) 11:55, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

To put matters into perspective. What I am describing are not "Dutch restaurants" but "Dutch Michelin starred restaurants". And I am a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink. Night of the Big Wind _talk 13:32, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Just from experience, it's much easier to get reliable sources on secondary schools than primary schools, partly because primary schools are not as prominent. This is especially so for schools in urban areas. For many of the famous Houston high schools I got in-depth reliable sources.

For very small rural high schools (where they are the only high school in the district) it's okay if they are merged into the district article, in most cases.

WhisperToMe (talk) 03:23, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

According to the wise words of one experienced editor, I believe this proposal and its discussion is a waste of everyone's time. There are a lot of school articles to be improved, and that's probably where our time can be best invested. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:15, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Often the best way to "argue" is to constructively work on an article and use it as an example. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:26, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Both Kudpung and WhispertoMe kind of have a point. Even though I lean more towards the deletionist end of the spectrum, it might be better to look only at articles that are specifically concerning. For me, that's the micro-schools, the schools that just opened this year with no relevant history, the charter schools that come and go in a few years, etc. The problem is, if we just drop the discussion, and someone decided to raise an AfD on one such school, it would likely get kept just because everyone would refer to this consensus without an actual discussion of the underlying issue. As a side note, I believe that Kudpung is right one 1-star Michellin restaurants as well...but that's probably better taken up elsewhere. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:24, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Qwyrxian, I'm personally neither a deletionist or an inclusionist, but I do not necessarily pass judgement on those who have specific leanings so long as they are clearly within the true spirit of building an encyclopedia and keeping it free of trash. I simply try my best to interpret our complex policies and guidelines as closely as possible - and knowing how difficult that can be, I understand only too well that others may not find it easy either. What do raise concerns however, are the kind of comments at RfA where the !votes clearly express some hard leaning without wanting to hear the standard arguments. Your reasoning that we look only at articles that are specifically concerning is perfectly sound - when I argue for deletion for example, is for establishments that are high street cram schools who have programmes addressed at high school students and claiming the right to be included as a high school. These schools operate extremely aggresive marketing (it's an area I've been connected with for 30 years), and their articles are generally nothing but adverts masquerading as articles. Overall, I believe we already use a lot of common sense when proposing schools for deletion, and where most schools are kept or redirected, these PROD and/or AfD have been raised almost always by editors who are not familiar with the finer details and exceptions to the guidelines that are accepted. The maturity of these traditional exceptions through long tacit consensus through precedent is like English Common law, and do not need an act of Wikipedia parliament by further debates to confirm them, and whatever Mr Wales has said in the past or says today is not part of today's policy making. The Dutch restaurants were cited as an analogy in an attempt to understand why the proposer wants to introduce deletionist theories for schools when the many short articles he has created himself often rely solely on what is probably an unreliable source, and for a subject that in my opinion is of far less importance than schools; I am not suggesting that we debate their merits here, or even begin any formal disputes anywhere about the notability of eating houses. If page patrollers could be made more aware of the exceptions, especially the A7 that does not apply to schools and can be assume to have been agreed by consensus, then it should be clear that schools are one of the special cases and that only borderline articles should find their way to AfD. PROD is slightly different - most school articles are started by WP:SPA who don't return, and have only themselves to blame if the pages get procedurally deleted after 7 days, and I see no reason why we or the ARS should spend time trying to save them. FWIW, there are probably around 50,000 school articles in the encyclopdia, and new school articles now only arrive at the rate of about 4 or 5 a week and mostly from developing countries. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:55, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I strongly oppose this proposal and support the status quo, per Kudpung and Necrothesp. -- Alarics (talk) 08:17, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

This. Again. WHY? I've previously stated that I think this quest for notches of deleted school articles. Everything that needs to be said has been said, ditto on whatever Kudpung has said. Moving on with our lives. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 12:09, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

It is indeed easier to avoid an indepth discussion but the repeated question "why are all secondary schools notable by default" should ring a bell. Most likely, the consensus for it does not exist outside this project. Night of the Big Wind _talk 13:56, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

If I see the mixed reactions on my proposal, I still get the feeling there is some support for the general idea behind it: "A secondary school is not notable by default". Unfortunately, too many people skip immediately to the part of deleting, while there are more option then that. Merging, redirecting and improving, for instance.

People have stated concern about the notability for

1. micro-schools (Qwyrxian)
2. brand new schools with no relevant history(Qwyrxian)
3. "temporary schools" (charter schools that come and go in a few years)(Qwyrxian)
4. high street cram schools (Kudpung)Is that the same as the Irish "Grinding Schools"?

Right? Night of the Big Wind _talk 14:20, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Surely the burden of proof lies with the contributor who believes a school to be notable, not the other way round? The present default argument - that all secondary schools are notable by definition - is a convenient way to deflect the usual way in which we do things here. This issue was raised last weekend at the Manchester wikimeet and at least those within range of my (rather poor) hearing seemed to think that the present default is, at best, peculiar. - Sitush (talk) 21:28, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion, yes! Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:11, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

"The usual way in which we do things here" -- but surely schools are not the only example of this. For instance, as far as I can see, every railway station is in practice automatically deemed to be notable. You could argue that many railway stations are not really notable, depending on what you mean by "notable" (Notable to whom? as with schools, they are probably fairly notable within their immediate geographical area but nationally? how many schools or railway stations are notable at the level of the whole world, which is supposedly Wikipedia's universe of discourse?) It is a very elastic concept, and the present policy is a handy rule of thumb which really isn't doing any harm and saves a tremendous amount of pointless argument. -- Alarics (talk) 22:45, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

It does not harm.... Do you know this one: It doesn't do any harm. In fact, it does harm. The encyclopedia gets filled with subjects totally not notable, just because a wikiproject declares it is notable by default. It does not matter if we are talking about schools, schips, footballers, railway station or locations containing not more then two farms and a cattle crush. Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:11, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

"Surely the burden of proof lies with the contributor who believes a school to be notable, not the other way round?" Really? What's the source for that? The "usual way we do things here" is for an article to be created, to be nominated for deletion if somebody believes it's not notable, and for any editor who chooses to contribute their opinions to the debate. That is exactly what's happened. The fact remains that most editors who contribute to these debates do appear to believe that secondary schools are inherently notable. That's not circumventing normal procedure. It is normal procedure. It's only those who dislike the fact they're in the minority who seem to be trying to make a special case for schools not being notable unless they're explicitly proved to be. And let's face it, how do you really "prove" that something's notable? It's a far too abstract and subjective concept. We work by consensus here, not rules. And consensus is clearly that secondary schools are inherently notable. -- Necrothesp (talk) 23:00, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, really. Because the present "rule" to declare all secondary schools notable by default, conflicts with WP:GNG. That states clearly: On Wikipedia, notability is a test used by editors to decide whether a topic can have its own article. Information on Wikipedia must be verifiable; if no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, then it should not have a separate article. Wikipedia's concept of notability applies this basic standard to avoid indiscriminate inclusion of topics. Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:17, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I was being a little subtle and, I must admit, that may have been intentional on my part, sorry. Regarding the point that Alarics raises, WP:OSE. I am prepared to raise a similar argument with regard to railway stations, obscure villages etc. I also do not believe that these things are "really [aren't] doing any harm" - the very fact that these discussions are raised so frequently demonstrates that there is a serious difference of opinion. The maintenance costs can be considerable and when we have GNG then I think that we should apply it. I have similar frustrations with WP:CRIN, which results in a huge range of anomalies whereby, at the extreme, someone can turn up at a cricket ground, hit the grass as 12th man, not even touch the ball and still be notable by the project guideline. But, like I say, that is OSE.

With references to Necrothesp's point - "where's the source for that?" - the source is GNG. Yes, it is a guideline but it is one that is, by definition, generally adopted. The problem is that in the case of schools, as is apparent in this debate, there is a piling on effect. Yes, consensus applies but I think that a few people really do underestimate that there is a silent majority. I am quite happy to push this further if it might cause people actually to say what they think, from either point of view. There is a similar issue with India-related articles, where there is an oft-stated acceptance that the quality/notability/sourcing/you name it needs to be fixed by some sort of concerted effort ... but when it comes to the crunch people do not understand the subject area and so back down in the face of a small but vocal group. A part of the reason why these things - villages, sub-divisions of a clan of a caste etc - drift along is because the content is useless/pointless/trivial etc to many but deemed to be important by a few.

Like it or not, this is an issue which will not go away, and Jimbo was quite right to point out recently that those who quoted his 2003 opinion as some sort of "be all, end all" will not do the same now that he has changed his opinion. Sure, he is just one person but the apparent hypocrisy in these debates stinks. - Sitush (talk) 00:22, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

So as not to leave things hanging, this is the Jimbo comment to which I referred above. - Sitush (talk) 00:59, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but I'm still waiting to hear where in GNG or anywhere else it says the onus is on the creator to prove notability. The onus is on the creator to provide verifiable sources, which is a different thing entirely. Notability is decided, if necessary, in AfDs. Are there many secondary schools whose existence is not confirmed by at least one verifiable third-party source? Nope. Is any more than this needed for a stub? Nope. Are stubs acceptable? Yup. As usual, Night of the Big Wind has managed to completely miss the point and claim that guidelines say things that they don't say. -- Necrothesp (talk) 01:59, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

You have no better argument then an ad hominem attack? Tssss. But you can find it in one of the "basic articles" of Wikipedia: Wikipedia:Your first article. As newbies are advised to Gather references both to use as source(s) of the information you will include and also to demonstrate notability of your article's subject matter., I guess that that is also valid for other article-writers. Night of the Big Wind _talk 02:30, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

No ad hominem attack there. I said you'd misinterpreted the guidelines, which you have done. What you have repeated is essentially what I've just said. The onus is on the creator to provide verifiable sources. Notability, on the other hand, is and can only ever be subjective. You think schools are not inherently notable; many of us think they are. Subjective on both sides. Neither opinion is backed up by "evidence" because neither possibly can be. However, the consensus clearly remains that they are inherently notable. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:26, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

And on another point, Sitush, who exactly are you accusing of hypocrisy? Anyone who considers Jimbo's opinions to be binding is misguided. I for one have never read or quoted his opinions and don't really care about them any more than I would about any other editor's. I wasn't even aware that he had made a pronouncement on school notability, nor do I care. So who exactly is being hypocritical here? Would you care to tell us? Accusing people who do not agree with you of hypocrisy does nothing to advance these debates. -- Necrothesp (talk) 02:04, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I accuse no-one, nor do I necessarily agree with NOTBW's draft above. However, there is an apparent hypocrisy if Jimbo is to be believed and, certainly, in the past I have seen people refer to his earlier comment. Take it or leave it. - Sitush (talk) 11:02, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

• The community of AfD participants has had a consensus for years, dating back at least to 2005, that secondary schools are normally considered notable enough to warrant their own articles. If I were starting Wikipedia from scratch back in 2001, I might have sought a tougher standard for notability of secondary schools, but at this point so many secondary schools have articles that I see no point in trying to impose a tougher notability standard now. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:27, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

@Night of the Big Wind: if you don' know what a cram school is, why not look it up here? - and perhaps it's another article you'd like to add to your deletion list ;) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:25, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but I am not familiar with local slang. But a cram school is indeed the same as grinding schools. Nevertheless, it would be nice when you start making a difference between a discussion about notability and a discussion about deleting. You give me the idea that you think that that is the same, while I regard it as two different things. Night of the Big Wind _talk 11:09, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I drew a comparison with railway stations and was told that I was wrongly using a WP:OSE ("Other stuff exists") argument. But WP:OSE is about disputes over individual articles. It warns against defending an article whose notability is being contested by pointing to the existence of another article on a like topic: "x was kept so this should be too". (It does not, incidentally, say that this is always wrong. It says: "If you reference such a past debate, and it is clearly a very similar case to the current debate, this can be a strong argument that should not be discounted because of a misconception that this section [i.e. WP:OSE] is a blanket ban on ever referencing other articles or deletion debates.") Here we are talking not about a few individual articles but about a whole vast category of articles. A distinction has been drawn between railway stations (notable by default) and bus stops (not usually notable), and likewise between secondary schools (notable by default) and primary schools (not usually notable). I presume there must be similar "rules of thumb", whether explicitly articulated or not, in other subject areas too. If we are to delete thousands of secondary-school articles we ought, in equity, also to delete an absolutely enormous number of articles in other subject areas too, making Wikipedia a much smaller encyclopaedia than it is now. Maybe that *is* what ought to happen, but it is a discussion that goes way beyond the scope of this project. -- Alarics (talk) 07:32, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I have not said that we should delete school articles. Not yet. We need to examine this mantra of inherent notability and there is no need to consider other subject areas in order to do so. Are you suggesting that we should do nothing because it is too late? And that we should tolerate the addition of still more? Since when has notability been determined by the number of articles on Wikipedia? The existence or otherwise of some sort of "cost" related to amending the status quo is surely not a criteria for encyclopaedic content? - Sitush (talk) 11:02, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Why are we talking about this?

I still don't get why we are, again, expending effort discussing this. So I'm going to ask a few rhetorical questions for the sake of it. If I'm wrong in any of this, please let me know.

(Q1) Are we able to deny the primacy of schools in terms of their effect on communities and individuals?
(A1) No. Schools and their work are of great importance in terms of their effect on communities and individuals. Ergo, notable at least in it respect to the dictionary definition, as has been mentioned above.

(Q2) Does the presence of school articles detract from the value of wikipedia?
(A2) No. It's not as if school articles prevent articles being written on more "valuable" subjects.

(Q3) Is it the case that school articles detract from the value of other articles at wikipedia?
(A3) No. In fact, it adds value particularly and for example to biographies, geographical articles and so on and so forth.

(Q4) Is it the case that readers/editors don't read school articles?
(A4) No. The level of vandalism on school articles, in the very least, proves that there is interest.

(Q5) Is our allowance for school articles resulting in "too many" stubs?
(A5) No. There's nothing wrong with a stub, unless it's actually the case that it can't be improved. Most school stubs can (and should) be improved.

Should I keep going? Is there a point to this conversation besides being a deletionist crusade? Seriously, I want to know the motivation. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 11:58, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

We could go on forever:
(Q6) Are school articles hate or attack pages?
(A6) No. If so, extremely rarely.

(Q7) Are school articles hoax or vandalism-only pages?
(A7) No. If so, extremely rarely. and vandalism is caught almost 99% at recent changes patrol.

(Q8) Do school articles take up too much space?
(A8) No. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia.

(Q9) Do editors work regularly on cleaning up school articles?
(A9) Yes. Some are also watching Wikiproject Watchlist - WikiProject Schools,

(Q10) Are school articles edited by competent Wikipedians?
(A10) Well, yes, at least by those who do the anti-vandalism, clean up work, and expansion.

(Q11) Are school articles edited by people who are knowledgeable about schools and education?
(A11) Oh yes!

(Q11) Is Wikipedia interested in schools and education?
(A11) Oh yes! With a big budget too!

There is another question, but I'll refrain from being cynical.
Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:27, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

And the four missings questions are:

(Q12) Are secondary school always notable

(A12) No!

(Q13) Do secondary schools always pass WP:GNG?

(A13) No!

(Q14) Does Wikiproject Schools with strong substantive arguments?

(A14) No!

(Q15) Is it valid to question existing (formal or informal) rules and guidelines when they are not reflecting the opinion of the whole community?

(A16) Yes!

Night of the Big Wind _talk 17:28, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I think schools should be required to at least pass GNG in principle. But it's also a bit of an arcane matter, because it's hard to imagine that very many secondary schools could possibly fail GNG. --FormerIP (talk) 17:37, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Humour. I keep on reading these rants and I am reminded of a BBC radio show Just a Minute. I can't do our deletionist for hesitation, but the repetition is getting boring, and the deviation from reality is chronic. I am now quite convinced that each aecondary school in the UK automatically fulfills GNG, as HMG publishes interminable reports on each seconday school leading to independent source overload. Crammers are not secondary schools- in the same way that the local theatres drama group isn't- they are out of school activity. Home schooling, or education otherwise (defined by the 44 act) is an opportunity for childen of secondary school age but again is not a secondary school. Of the last four question- by all means put them but the answer to all is yes- the last being qualified with the phrase when it is not hesitation, repetition or deviation. --ClemRutter (talk) 19:36, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

• Indeed. All ordinary schools in the UK are notable by virtue of the inspection reports which are both detailed and independent. What seems to drive the deletionist sentiment is a hatred of the commonplace - the ideas that you find at WP:MILL. But that's an essay not even a guideline and so has no force. WP:GNG makes it clear that notability does not mean fame or importance and so mundane topics are just as welcome as the special cases and novelties. Warden (talk) 19:49, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

(Q1) Are we able to deny the primacy of schools in terms of their effect on communities and individuals?

Well, for schools yes. But to imply that this is the same for individual schools as opposed to the collective is a stretch based on OR. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:10, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Often with secondary schools, the effect on the community on the school and vice versa is well documented. Sometimes it happens with primary schools too WhisperToMe (talk) 20:11, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

• I am slightly butthurt to stumble across yet another discussion of this topic without seeing my opus User:Milowent/History of High School AfDs cited. We have eight years of precedent settling us into a pretty good system.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 20:03, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Yes, it is proof that this project has a good management of AfD's, but it is no proof that there is consensus about the so called rule outside this project. Night of the Big Wind _talk 20:13, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
    • This project has nothing to do with AfDs. I am not involved in this project, yet I support the retention of school articles on AfDs. It is very noticeable that deletionists always seem to claim that genuine consensus supports them, even though they are opposed in AfDs. If this claimed "silent majority" actually bothered to give their opinions on AfDs then maybe consensus would be changed! Since they don't, one must assume that they either don't exist or don't care. In either case, if their opinions are not voiced then they don't count. -- Necrothesp (talk) 20:38, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
      • And in the mean time you try to intimidate the ones that do open their mouth, so that they shut up again? Night of the Big Wind _talk 20:56, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
        • Oh please! Nobody's intimidating anybody. Most of us just don't agree with you. What's intimidating about saying so? -- Necrothesp (talk) 21:13, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
          • That you guys come out in force with the wackiest arguments to camouflage the lack of consensus about your stance outside this wikiproject. All what I here is "it works fine for us" and that is one of the lousiest arguments available in this discussion. Any body still talking about the original proposal? No! Just a load of blahblah to drown it in the mud. Night of the Big Wind _talk 21:28, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

NOBW, serious question. What is it that tells you there is a lack of consensus outside the Wikiproject? --FormerIP (talk) 21:36, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

See for example the remark van Sitush: This issue was raised last weekend at the Manchester wikimeet and at least those within range of my (rather poor) hearing seemed to think that the present default is, at best, peculiar. - Sitush (talk) 21:28, 13 December 2011 (UTC) Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:02, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Night step back a bit. You are really making this one user against the rest and it is now rubbing people up the wrong way if were going to get anywhere here then everyone needs to calm it a bit. It dosent and shouldn't be like that. If you want anything to happen them maybe the RFC suggested below is the only way to go just let things take the proper course you have made your point very clear and so has everyone else but a workable proposal would need to be found. I agree what we have isn't perfect but whats proposed so far isn't going to cut it either. Edinburgh Wanderer 00:53, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

As I said before: And in the mean time you try to intimidate the ones that do open their mouth, so that they shut up again? Sorry, won't work. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:31, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

If anyone is trying to intimidate anyone it seems to be you. I haven't asked you to shut up i have said step back take a break calm down. Go with the RFC suggested below just stop the arguing every time someone comments you assassinate what they have said its not right. Just see what happens. I have said before change may be needed just because your initial proposal was flawed dosent mean it has to stop there all that had to be done was to come back with a workable solution. Edinburgh Wanderer 01:38, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• Question/Comment - sorry, hadn't seen this previously. I can understand the logic behind the proposals here, but from a purely practical point of view it seems to me that if a whole host of secondary school articles are deleted that we're then going to be continually fighting them popping back up again as kids create them every other week. I'm not sure that's awfully productive. I'd rather see articles sourced properly and use the GNG to apply to them if necessary rather than running AfDs week after week. Blue Square Thing (talk) 19:03, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it will be much of a problem. The sudents of a secondary school are not kids, but unruly teenagers Somebody estimated lately that there appeared 4-5 school-articles a week. Even if that number doubles, it is still manageble. Night of the Big Wind _talk 20:24, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

If we were to delete the majority of articles we have I think you'd see more than that at secondary level fwiw - given the vanity/vandalism/munchkinism rate on high school articles in Suffolk and Norfolk. I tend to think that on a practical level that means an awful lot of contested prods and then (probably failed) AfDs. Sure, enforce GNG but I think you're probably creating a logistical problem rather than anything else. Blue Square Thing (talk) 13:59, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

RfC?

Ok.... Reading above I think it's pretty clear that we have two groups with fairly strong opposing viewpoints. I'm not sure reasoned debate is going to help us achieve consensus on this. Two questions - 1) Has there ever been a simple and clearly laid out RfC on this topic? 2) Would anyone oppose me drafting one to measure consensus? NickCT (talk) 22:07, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I am not a member of this group and new to this arena, but I see this simply as one editor, who enjoys arguing. User:Kudpung has summed it up nicely, others have explained the history. I think it is grossly unfair to describe this a two groups- one group and one dissenter with other editors like yourself making concilatory gestures. I leave others to answer your questions — Preceding unsigned comment added by ClemRutter (talk • contribs) 23:47, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it is accurate to say that there are two groups. What may be a better statement is that there are editors who believe that most schools will not meet the notability guidelines and there are editors who believe that most, if not all schools, should have articles without any consideration of notability. Then there is that third group who believe that the truth is somewhere in the middle and there are probably at least two subgroups where one believes that all secondary schools are notable and the other that supports the current compromise that reduces the battles at AfC. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:58, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I would be happy to see this issue at RfC because there seems to me to be a substantial amount of "history" regarding the issue that has got lost somewhere and just become a mantra. But to lay my cards on the table, my objections from some months ago were the claims being made that secondary/high schools are inherently notable. Drop the "inherent", disallow the school websites/Ofsted reports etc (which are routine inspections and data collection) and we might begin to get something that is at least a little closer to GNG. I really do have no idea how many schools are truly notable, but these situations of "inherent" notability generally irk me, and especially so if they have been formulated by a project that, almost by definition, has a vested interest of some sort. I would be quite happy if all project notabilty guidelines were dropped and we returned to GNG. - Sitush (talk) 00:23, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Its pretty much one user thats causing the problem here so two camps isn't entirely the case and its become far to heated. As i argued above if someone has a workable proposal on School notability guidelines then go ahead and propose them but nobody has. Therefore it is always going nowhere a RFC will only work if people do that. Night of the Big Wind proposal is totally non workable. Come on age of a school is no way to indicate notability. it would make a bigger laughing stock than the current lets do nothing way of thinking. the intention is good but the proposal isn't. There has been a lot of talk and lets face it no workable proposal. Ofsted reports are reliable sources they are done totally independently of the schools. On top of that my concern here is notability is permanent we cannot turn around all of a sudden and say were deleting all these because we no longer deem them to be notable its not right on the scale thats basically being proposed because merging the articles in most cases won't be workable. A new guideline is probably needed but would more likely gain backing on a future basis. Very few wikiprojects would dare to go back and change notability guidelines that have allowed an article to exist for years be suddenly deleted. Edinburgh Wanderer 00:47, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with the characterization that "pretty much one user" is dissenting here. Regardless, even if that is the case, an RfC would highlight that there is consensus for the "secondary schools are always notable" position. As such, it could be used as the basis for quashing dissent and/or writing policy..... I'm going to work on drafting an RfC when I get a chance. I'll give everyone a chance to comment before launching it. NickCT (talk) 01:03, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

My point here is that reading the above it does read that way. Change may well be needed and on a wider scope there is feeling of need for change but the problem here was the proposal was never workable. If the proposal had been then I'm sure it would have faired differently. Im assuming you feel change is needed and yeah it probably needs something but i ask you do you think the proposal made above is workable because basically it will result in virtually all non private school article being deleted also the age of a school isn't really a notability point. I could easily be a 100 year old school in the middle of no where who nobody has heard of that not notable at all. It would be totally wrong to go back and delete all these articles. Future maybe but not just suddenly delete 50,000 odd articles. Edinburgh Wanderer 01:22, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Man, why are you so focused on deleting? There are more options then deleting! And my proposal was to find consensus over when secondary schools would be notable and when absolutely not. The rest will need discussion with all the options on the table: keep, merge, improve, delete. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:40, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Merging is not a workable option when we are looking at it on this scale. Deleting is the most likely as based on the proposal very few would be a keep. I would be happy to work on a proposal but the one you came with was never going to work. A blank canvas would of been better to look at the situation and collectively come up with criteria where as thats not what happened. It rubbed up far too many people up the wrong way. Edinburgh Wanderer 01:45, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I have tabled a proposal that included three grounds on which articles could be deemed notable straight away (or after discussion). The part about the age of an institute will always be arbitrary, no matter which term you take. I took the term 100 years, in line with the centerenarians on Wikipedia. But 50, 75, 150 are fine to me, as long as there is consensus about the term (or consensus to scrap that part). About the other two parts "as the school has been involved in notable events, sport events or incidents" and "as the school has other notable facts (amongst others: a first, special type of schooling, notable building, special history etcetera)" was hardly any discussion before the thunderstorm broke out. If you think the proposal is fundamentally flawed, be bold and call as spade a spade and tell the world which parts make you unhappy. Then we can start a discussion about it and maybe compose a better proposal. Be bold, think positive and help Wikipedia forward. Night of the Big Wind _talk 02:00, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Being bold (again) I would say that your proposal above is clearly worded to attract a consensus that would be in favour of your terms that clearly lean towards reasons for mass deletion. Any proposal would have to very carefully scripted to be completely neutral and allow the community to make up their own minds. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:37, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

In fact, my friend, is that you admit that there are scores of secondary schools with an article on Wikipedia, that should never had gotten one if the was a proper entrance barrier like WP:GNG. Night of the Big Wind _talk 20:27, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, a neutral proposal would be, "Secondary schools, like the majority of other subjects on Wikipedia, must meet WP:GNG." That is, secondary schools enjoy no special treatment either way, and each must be judged on its own merits. Sadly, though I agree with this stance in principle, I'd probably feel morally compelled to vote against it simply because it would likely increase systemic bias against poorer countries. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:14, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

That's not neutral because it's one-sided and does not mention the staus quo so that !voters can choose for themselves. A proposal statement for an issue of this kind should not lead the witness, or as you say Qwrx, introduce systemic bias. I really feel that as Night of the Big Wind opened this can of worms, that he should do this himself and see how far he gets with it, but not being one for schadenfreude, here goes:

Suggested RfC draft (and please note that is is a suggestion only) - please do not vote here.
This RfC is in two parts:

Introduction

Secondary schools are, by definition, schools/colleges/academies offering fully accredited mainstream education that follows a general education curriculum to the minimum school leaving age or beyond in their respective countries. This generally dos not include primary/elementary schools, middle schools, distance learning organisations, or private institutions offering booster courses for exam preparation.

Previous RfC discussions on the notability of high schools have been held at

• Foo
• Foo
• Foo

Essays on the subject

• Wikipedia:Notability (high schools)
• Wikipedia:High Schools
• Wikipedia:All high schools can be notable
• Wikipedia:Schoolcruft
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes
• Wikipedia:Inherent notability
• Wikipedia:What notability is not
• Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions
• Wikipedia:Other stuff exists
• Wikipedia:Run-of-the-mill
• Wikipedia:Articles with a single source
• Wikipedia:Existence ≠ Notability
• See also: Category:Wikipedia essays on notability

Guidelines

WP:NOTABILITY, (WP:GNG), (WP:ORG), (WP:FAILN)

Proposal 1

Since 200x, high schools have been accorded defacto notability. that [details]. Some 50,000 school articles have been kept based on this precedent, and the majority of AfD have been closed as 'keep'. Some Wikipedians feel that that a clear guideline should be established for the notability of high schools in which the status quo should be maintained, and written into an official Wikipedia guideline. Other types of articles that need not necessarily fulfill Wikipedia:General notability guidelines are [...]

If you support this proposal, please add your comment below, remembering to sign it with four tildes.

• Your signature and comment here

Proposal 2

Some Wikipedians feel that that a clear guideline should be established for the notability of high schools in which secondary schools, like the majority of other subjects on Wikipedia, must meet Wikipedia:General notability guidelines. That is, secondary schools enjoy no special treatment either way, and each must be judged on its own merits., and deletion should should be treated by normal processes on a case-by-case basis.

If you support this proposal, please add your comment below, remembering to sign it with four tildes.

• Your signature and comment here

Well there you go. It's not perfect, but it's succinct and most people should be able to understand it. Note that we do not make any references to statements by Jimmy Wales, or discussions on other users' talk pages. If the !voters want to bring those up in their rationales, it's up to them. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:20, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, this proposal goes even further then mine Of course, I support it. Night of the Big Wind _talk 12:54, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

RfC Mock-up

Hey guys, editing this RfC on the talk page could become cumbersome, so I have created it at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Schools/Draft_RfC. I suggest we all move there to work on it. NickCT (talk) 14:31, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Night of the Big Wind began this entire discussion, but ironically, this would appear to make his proposals for deletion of schools rather moot. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:43, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed; this is pointless. Firstly, it is predicated on a misapprehension; no-one claims that high schools are 'inherently notable' just that they should be kept on pragmatic grounds, as are designated settlements, fauna and flora, named bridges, numbered highways, airports, super-regional malls, railway stations, high court judges, peers of the realm, religious saints etc. When there is so much work to do on Wikipedia the thought of fighting 50,000 high school articles only to prove that most of them are notable makes me shiver! We have had several attempted standards on schools (and if we are to try again why not include all schools?) and they have all failed in the face of the determined opposition of a minority of editors. What we have is a pragmatic position (redirect most elementary schools (except those clearly notable) and keep high schools (except those that can't be verified)) which allows us to move on to more urgent stuff. TerriersFan (talk) 02:23, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Guideline

During the discussion the wish for a Guideline to determine the notability of schools surfaced. Collegue TerriersFan and me have both written a draft for those guidelines. Interesting enough we took completely different approaches for writing this. A problem? Nope! Just good for the discussion. You can find the drafts here:

• User:TerriersFan/Notability of schools
• User:Night of the Big Wind/Notability of schools

Please, do say just NO when you did agree with a part of the drafts. It works better when you come with a counter proposal! Let us see what we can build together. Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:21, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Recent Afds

Night of the BIg Wind's new deletion policy proposal appears to have stalled as with all such PERENs on this topic. Of the 100 or so primary schools that were suddenly mass proposed for deletion over the holiday period, roughly half are being redirected and half are being deleted (they are not all closed yet), and some are being deleted without properly evaluating the consensus. Not only is it contrary to any effort to adhere to consistency in the way policies, guidelines, or precedents are applied throughout the encyclopedia, but such arbitrary voting and closing by those who are not aware of the policies, guidelines, and precedents, does not accord equal debate to all schools that are proposed for deletion at AfD. The situation is now getting ridiculous and a ruling is urgently required one way or another. And naturally I suggest keeping the status quo and getting it promoted to official guideline (one with the policy essay page notice). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:25, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Speaking with my admin hat on I believe that if you recreated a deleted primary school as a redirect, that it would not meet WP:CSD#G4, and would have to go to WP:MfD. In other words, it doesn't really matter if the result is "delete" or "redirect", since nothing in deletion policy prevents the recreation of a substantially different article; in this case, a redirect to the relevant school district or locality. It is irritating that others have to do extra work to redirect, but at least the afd's aren't fatal to the notion. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:02, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I said on my talk page earlier, WP:CSD#G4 clearly does not cover re-directs. AfD only has ultimate jurisdiction over articles, with re-directs being covered by RfD, and the burden of arguments needed to keep re-directs are far less than that for articles. There has only been one case in which I was challenged for creating a re-direct post-AfD, and that was by Pastor Theo (talk · contribs), which was probably not done in good faith, and hence doesn't count. CT Cooper · talk 18:54, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I think you are wrong, Kudpung. NickCT was preparing an RFC and my proposal was only part of that. Nick should officially launch his RFC (january is a much better time for that then the Christmas period) and then we can go on. You are to anxious to keep your "long standing consensus" that overrules WP:GNG. Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:54, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Night of the Big Wind, if you were to read everything I've ever posted on this topic over the years, including on my RfA, you will have noticed, as many have, that I don't personally mind which way consensus falls as a result of a correctly and neutrally proposed RfC, but that I will firmly uphold any existing conventions, precedents, and unwritten consensus that clearly exist until they are confirmed or changed. Note that WP:OUTCOMES, although an essay, neutrally documents historical facts and 'is intended to supplement Wikipedia:Deletion policy' . (the bold text is mine). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:37, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

So you think that the essay "Common Outcomes" is more important then the Guideline WP:GNG/WP:N and the policy WP:V???? Night of the Big Wind _talk 09:43, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Note that WP:OUTCOMES, although an essay, neutrally documents historical facts and 'is intended to supplement Wikipedia:Deletion policy' . (the bold text is mine). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:19, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Intended by whom? The essays authors? It still carries no extra weight. Fmph (talk) 12:15, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

RfC???

Where is the promised RfC? Night of the Big Wind _talk 20:09, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay, then I write a RFC myself. Night of the Big Wind _talk 00:43, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, here it is: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Secondary schools should meet WP:GNG or are they exempt? Night of the Big Wind _talk 01:20, 2 February 2012 (UTC)