Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Article advice/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

A few thoughts

I've changed the order on the bottom section and removed the sentence about encouraging the creation of parent articles on school areas. As far as I am aware school districts are a North American phenomenon. Such articles are presumably welcomed for American schools but I'm not sure that we really want to encourage the creation of similar articles for the rest of the world. In the UK we have Local Education Authorities but I don't think any of them have their own page. People don't know normally know which LEA a particular school would come under and the logical place to look for the article is the one on the place where the school is situated.

I wonder too if we ought to have a recommended deletion process, eg, - mass deletions are not recommended and are unlikely to be successful. SeeWikipedia:Articles for deletion/Beaver Creek Elementary School. - PRODs should only be used for primary/elementary schools. Do a Google search as a test of notability before prodding. If in doubt take to AfD. - Does anyone have time to do a count of deletion outcomes for high schools/secondary schools so that we could quote the figures? Very few seem to get deleted. If people see the statistics they will be less likely to nominate such a school for deletion. - Recommend that articles should have a notability tag if there is any doubt about the school's notability. Presumably there is a way that schools with such tags can be picked up by a bot, and then monitored. It would be much better to have people actively working to improve articles rather than trying to delete them. Dahliarose 15:10, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea of a bot checking for Schools articles that have a notability tag. In that way or otherwise, it feels like there needs to be a way for someone (especially someone outside the project) to easily point out articles that are probably notable but need attention.

At the same time, though, I'm realizing that a lot of the problems being "solved" with this page were already solved:

• school articles were sometimes posted in the Project's talk page if someone thought they needed attention
• AfD noms that were mentioned on the Project's talk page were (universally? almost?) grown into notable articles
• I was unaware, but there is a list of Common AfD outcomes for Education articles

If this subpage is worth keeping, we might need to clarify or expand the scope (maybe I'm just being overly critical of a page that hasn't had a chance to grow much yet). ---- Hebisddave (talk) 18:06, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that there are still huge numbers of very poor school articles. Of the nearly 10,000 school articles which have the WPSchools tag over 4,000 have been assessed as stubs (and I've assessed a fair number already so I've got a good idea of the scale of the problem). There are still some 2,000 awaiting assessment. Some of these stubs might be reasonable articles but most of them are not and they're all at risk of deletion, especially if they have no references and very little content. Only a tiny minority of school articles come to AfD or get posted on the Project page. There are some editors who come to the rescue of schools in AfDs but they can only do so much and you only get five days to turn the article around. If there are lots of schools nominated at once or if the key editors are on holiday then potentially some notable schools will and do get deleted. We really need to get people to write proper articles in the first place.

The common outcomes page is now very out of date. It would be useful to have an update but it is probably quite a time-consuming process to go through all the archives. -- Dahliarose (talk) 18:32, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Overall I think the page is good, and I have no regrets in suggesting its creation. There are problems with schools and the deletion process; I think that this page can help give more guidance to this issue, even if it is only WikiProject advice; some AFDs are getting very repetitive in their results and arguments made are often over pages such as WP:N - which are often simply to general. For example, secondary schools are regularly nominated for deletion despite the fact they are rarely deleted, some advice and statistics on this would be good here. A suggestion I do have on adding to this page is bringing up the re-directs issue, in many cases it is better just to re-direct (and merging as necessary) non-notable school articles, rather than going through AFD/PROD to get a total deletion. Camaron1 | Chris 19:12, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

A proposal

The proposed guidelines in WP:School are a development of this project page and fully compatible with it. However, as written, I think that the guidelines in this project page are too general to be much help. What I should like to do is copy the WP:School page across. I think the much more specific criteria will be of great help to article creators. TerriersFan (talk) 00:24, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

It appears WP:SCL is unlikely to succeed as a Wikipedia guideline, and looking at the talk page as every day goes by that does not seem to be changing. I would not object to moving the information over there to here, though things might need to be re-worded a bit as this is not a policy proposal, only a general project guidance. Also, content not suitable for a policy proposal recently removed at WP:SCL (ie the background section) could be reintroduced here. Camaron | Chris (talk) 21:30, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Wall of text

We're still forgetting that although admins, regular editors, and school project members contribute enormously to cleaning up school pages, a huge number of school articles are created by children. Much of the New Page Patrolling is also done by young editors who are not fully aware of deletion policy.
This means that the guidelines should be short enough to describe how school articles should be put together, rather than provide lengthy discussion on why we have guidelines for schools. The average 5 - 8 grade student will almost certainly not take any notice of explanations of the Wikipedia process of consensus, perennial issues, or follow many linked pages.
We need to help these kids create and develop school articles rather than put them off by presenting them with a wall of text that even many regular editors would have difficulty in understanding.
--Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:19, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps a simplified scaffold for "getting started" that students can copy & paste and fill out? -danjel (talk to me) 08:19, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

That model page is actually planned as part of the expansion of the WP:WIZARD after the new paage creation rule goes into effect. I will ask you to review it for us before it goes live - or you can even give us a head start by making a draft of it yourself in your sandbox. Some of it may need invisible php. and js. adding. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:53, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Took a look just then. Sounds like a good idea, but, yeah... Needs more scaffolding so that young editors will have some ideas on what to add. I'll have a go at a draft structure, but I can't help with PHP and JavaScript; outside my realm of ability.

I'm pretty flat out at school at the moment; please hassle me about this if I seem like I've forgotten in a week or two. -danjel (talk to me) 10:37, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Mascots?

Where should mascots be listed? I've been moving them under sports or similar headings. RJFJR (talk) 15:48, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Should that be under WP:WPSCH/AG#IB? Z22 (talk) 02:47, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Military academies?

Trying to figure out to what extent military academies fit within the scope of this WP. It would seem that military schools would. Perhaps the academies would fit better under WP Universities? Thanks, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 20:35, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Can you explain what you mean by military academies and military schools? Which country are you thinking of and what ages do they teach? The schools project is really only for institutions that teach up to about the age of 18. Higher education is covered by WP Universities. Confusingly universities in the US also seem to be known as schools but American universities are not included in WP Schools. Dahliarose (talk) 23:02, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your reply. See the article Military academies. Much of it is really a list. It includes both what we might call the 'service academies' in the US, but also military-style schools up to age 18 (toward the bottom of the article). Neither of the WikiProjects (schools or universities) explicitly includes military-oriented institutions, but both probably should, in their respective domains... The WikiProject Military history also has some interest, historically. DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 07:18, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

The list does indeed look a bit of a mess. Certainly all the military institutions that offer pre-university training should be included as part of WPSchools. Some of them are already tagged for the schools project such as Prytanée National Militaire and Wellbeck College. It does look as if most of these academies are university-level institutions, and they should therefore be included in the Universities Project. Dahliarose (talk) 12:52, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Fair use rational

Can the Fair Use Rational be re-formatted so it doesn't go off the side of the page (IE8, Vector)?
I'm not sure what the <pre> </pre> commands do. Having tested it, removing them reinstates the line wrap, but not knowing why they are there, I am loath to just remove them.
Arjayay (talk) 17:52, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I think it might be sensible to update the article guidelines to use the standard non-free image fair use rationale table, rather than encouraging the older way of manually writing it out, which is clearly more awkward. See File:ThePetersfieldSchoolLogo.png for an example, which shouldn't have any issues. CT Cooper · talk 18:21, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Notability

Could I suggest that we make a few amendments to the notability section of these guidelines? In the last year or so we seem to have had a number of editors taking these guidelines too literally. They take the view that all primary schools, elementary schools and middle schools are 'non-notable'. I believe some of these schools have had pages blanked and have been redirected without any discussion. Others have had inappropriate merge tags added to them. No one would argue that all primary schools will justify a standalone article but, in practice, some primary schools do require an article, and we need to make this clearer. These are usually schools which have a very long history, are in historic buildings, or which have only been primary schools for a short time and were previously grammar schools or national schools. We also do not cover English preparatory schools in these guideline. Prep schools do not fall into any of these three categories, and in my experience there are usually sufficient sources to produce good standalone articles for most of these prep schools. The schools are often in historic buildings and have lots of notable alumni. Here are two examples of both types of school which had merge tags added to them: St. Aubyns School and Sir John Moore Church of England Primary School. Dahliarose (talk) 11:26, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it would be useful to distinguish between prep schools and primary/elementary schools. The same reasons you raise above (e.g., that they have historicity) should apply to schools regardless of their title. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 11:35, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Further, Australia, NZ and many other countries don't have "prep" schools (or, they are in name only), so this would be a UK only thing. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 11:44, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I know prep schools only apply to the UK but there are quite a few of them! What I was really getting at was that we ought to provide here some indication of the types of primary/elementary/middle/prep school that do merit articles (eg, age of school, large numbers of notable alumni) so that people don't go around blindly tagging and AfDing articles without considering the content. Dahliarose (talk) 11:47, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

For the record, I agree, and historicity, notable alumni, special-designation, etc. would be points I'd suggest/agree with. However, I'm not sure that anything we wrote here (in a wikiproject managed guideline) would have any effect on the more global movement against primary schools. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 11:50, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Is it really necessary, though? I mean, yes there are some editors who get on a kick about going through and purging all elementary and middle school articles. But really, if the schools are actually notable in their own right, they should be able to survive an AfD. All one needs to say is, "Wait, keep this. It is notable on its own because..." If it really IS notable, it should stay. I do think the AfD discussions might need to last a little longer than they do sometimes, but correcting inappropriate use of the AfD process is not the same as needing to revise our guidelines. Thank you. -- JoannaSerah (talk) 14:05, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

The prevailing culture is to delete primary/elementary schools. The bar for "notability" is set so high as to be unattainable through discussion because there is simply no premise that will be accepted as a basis for a school being notable. The suggestions that I would make would be schools that are high achieving, have some sort of special status (like being a school for gifted children or what have you), some historical value, etc. All these schools have been quite happily deleted at AfD because nothing is good enough. Arguing against that mindset, regardless of whether a school is notable or not, has proven to be exceptionally difficult. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 14:39, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I drafted the original wording, although it has been modified since then, and the intended wording was that most primary schools did not meet WP:N, although some do. I am open minded about revising the wording to clarify a few things, for instance to make clear that school article either need to meet the WP:GNG or WP:ORG, not both. I don't have a strong opinion on prep schools. CT Cooper · talk 19:09, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm concerned about a presumption of notability for schools articles. It is generally understood that most schools (because of the role they play in their community) are notable. I this interpreted as meaning that we would be very surprised if a school could not pass GNG given that almost any school we might think of has been the subject of reliable secondary sources. But given the large number of schools it's almost certain that some schools are simply run-of-the-mill; There are institutions which have been the subject of few or no reliable secondary sources. There's nothing all that exceptional or notable about these institutions. In such cases do we simply disregard GNG because of a faith-based position that notability must exist... we just have not found it yet? --Salimfadhley (talk) 14:11, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

The deletion of primary school articles in Australia is creating a bias in wikipedia towards private fee paying schools. For the Australians state of Victoria I found that fee paying schools had a 96 % chance of being notable while government schools had a 55 %. Wakelamp (talk) 09:02, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Suggested new wording

How about the following:

"In practice articles about high/secondary schools, school districts and large umbrella school organisations are usually kept, as they are almost always considered notable, unless their existence cannot be verified in order to stop hoaxes. For most elementary/primary schools and middle schools, insufficient sources will be available to produce a standalone encyclopaedic article, but each article needs to be judged on its individual merits based on the potential availability of sources. Prep schools in the UK should not be compared to primary/middle schools and need to be judged on a case by case basis. In general terms, there tends to be a correlation between the age of the school, the number of notable alumni and the availability of sources, and multiple reliable sources will usually be found for older schools and those with many notable alumni to satisfy WP:N. Older schools will often have had several changes of name and care should be taken to search for sources under all the known names. Schools which do not justify a standalone article are normally merged into the locality article (such as a village or town). US school articles should normally be merged into the school district article or the appropriate locality article if this is not available. Due to continued controversy over deletion of school articles they are formally exempt from the speedy deletion A7 criterion, though not A1 or any other of the general or article criteria."

I don't think there should be any suggestion that schools of any type should not have to comply with the usual notability guidelines, but I'd like to get away from the false implication that all primary/middle/elementary/prep schools will automatically not meet these requirements as this is patently not the case for many schools. There are too many editors rigidly applying the "rules" and merging articles or nominating articles for deletion simply because they are primary/middle schools, etc without any regard for the sources. Dahliarose (talk) 20:14, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure it's not your intent but the phrase "high/secondary schools ... are usually kept, as they are almost always considered notable" implies a presumption of notability. I'm also concerned about something we all seem to take for granted which is that schools for older pupils are considered far more notable than schools for small children (e.g. prep schools and junior schools). Why not apply the standards of GNG evenly. There are notable prep-schools, and there are unremarkable senior schools. --Salimfadhley (talk) 15:10, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I took the original wording there. It should really say that any high schools and secondary schools that come up at AfD are invariably kept as sources can always be found to satisfy WP:N. The only exceptions are schools in non-English-speaking countries where it's difficult to find English-language sources. The point is that at present people are not applying the standards evenly. AfD seems to be something of a farce these days with editors voting on deletionist or inclusionist lines without any regard for the content. There have also been editors nominating articles for deletion or merging and redirecting them simply because they are prep schools or primary schools, and they seem to have done so without even reading the articles or making any attempt to check for sources. Dahliarose (talk) 23:37, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

The original wording already have this included: Exceptions to this are when a school article of any level does, or can be shown to clearly have the potential of meeting the notability guideline. So, if an article of a notable primary school with references to show notability comes up at AfD, people can show this guideline in the original wording (if they care to take this guideline into account). Z22 (talk) 02:40, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Surely the purpose of this text is to provide guidance to editors on how to interpret and apply GNG for schools. Most of the information seems to be unhelpful for that objective. I think we need something much shorter that simply outlines the special concerns that apply to school articles:-

What (if anything) is so special about school articles that require different application of GNG? Why should British prep-schools be singled out for special treatment? Is there any reason for approaching notability for junior schools differently from senior schools? --Salimfadhley (talk) 12:52, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

My intention was to stop primary schools and prep schools being singled out for special treatment which has been happening in the last six months or so. Editors have been interpreting these guidelines to mean that all such schools should be deleted/merged regardless of content whereas high schools/secondary schools seem to be automatically kept regardless of content. I've just amended my draft wording as it's really WP:N that is more critical. WP:GNG is just one part of the notability guideline which does say that it should be used with common sense and that there can be exceptions. The point about English prep schools is that by their very nature they often tend to have a large number of notable alumni so regardless of the content of the school article you effectively need a page for navigational purposes to host the alumni. Also the prep schools tend to be quite old. With any educational establishment that's been around for more than a hundred years there will inevitably me plenty of sources available to write an encyclopaedic article, though the problem in many cases is that the sources aren't easily accessible online. Dahliarose (talk) 15:21, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree with your intent. I do not think any category of school should be singled out for special treatment. There are some private schools which are run of the mill. There are some state-funded schools which are exceptional or have been subject of news-coverage which makes them almost certainly notable. I think the problem with the policy as originally stated was that it plants the seed that some categories of school are inherantly notable while others are inherantly non-notable.

I think we need to emphasize the need for consistent application of GNG and give some clues as to where those reliable sources might be found. I certainly think it's a good idea to point out that older schools might have more offline sources and notable alumni. --Salimfadhley (talk) 16:19, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Instead of rewording to prevent a category of school from being singled out, we should not define another category of school to single out for another treatment. The three coordinators seem to have prior involvement in creating the notability section with some special treatment of high school / secondary school. I have no idea on the reasons but I assume there was a healthy debate about it in the past. So, I don't think we will need to focus on debating that again.

I still think the the current wording can be tweaked a bit and the problems as some of the articles of notable prep-schools can be solved.

• Add as the second bullet point to be something like: School article of any level does, or can be shown to clearly have the potential of meeting the notability guideline should not be nominated for AfD. It should be kept.
• Move that Exception sentence in the second paragraph to the first sentence of that paragraph and reword a bit like: For schools that cannot be shown to clearly have the potential of meeting the notability guideline, the following actions should be taken.

My point is, if the prep schools you were talking about are notable and with references, then tweaking the wording to emphasize not to go overboard with AfD should just do it (if editors care about this guideline at all). Z22 (talk) 01:36, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

The GNG is a guideline, and has served us well. The division between high schools and junior high-primary schools is a working compromise that has served as well also, and, is a defacto guideline. The only reason it is not a formal guideline is there has never been agreement over the exact wording. That it is a defacto guideline is shown by better than 99% of the decisions at AfD being made according to it: the only high school articles deleted for lack of notability in the last 4 or 5 years have been those whose current real existence cannot be proved, or where the article is copyvio or hopelessly promotional--the one or two exceptions have been very small proprietary schools. Guideline are simply descriptions of what we do here.

The reason behind the schools de-facto guideline , which I helped establish, was to avoid the very frequent AfD nominations of high schools, which about 90% of the time were found notable by the GNG--with the exceptions being erratic and more a function of who showed up than any pattern. The GNG sounds simple, but the problems on school articles were with the words "substantial" "third-party" and "independent". For school articles, or indeed most local articles, there is usually cosniderable doubt about these three factors,and it was always possible to argue for inclusion or exclusion on the basis of how they are to be applied to a specific case. (As an example, any long-established high school has usually won some athletic or academic award or championship, or had some notable alumnus. The articles reporting this are of course generally from local papers whose inclusion criteria can always be questioned, and the ruling on that can be whatever you want it to be.) There were at times 20 of them a day, and it was interfering with the proper work at AfD. At the same time, if lower level; schools were defended energetically, about 20$ of them were being included, despite the usual inability to find adequate sources--again, depending on who appeared at the AfD, for there were too many such debates for anyone to consistently follow, and the same possibility of arguing in either direction from borderline sources. Considering the likely errors, it was realized we would make fewer mistakes with an arbitrary line of division.

DGG ( talk ) 17:48, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Comment moved from project page.

Concerning point 6 under general tips, the following comment was placed underneath. Inappropriate there, I have moved the comment to the talk page for discussion. Thank you. -- JoannaSerah (talk) 19:49, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

1. The above is incorrect. College in the UK more often refers to tertiary (post 18 year old education) than not. Almost as often it refers to pre-19 years education. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.229.240.202 (talk) 19:35, 4 May 2012‎ (UTC)

I've had a go at redrafting this section now. Dahliarose (talk) 15:35, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Very rarely in my experience has a university being referred to as a "college" outside of the US; informally "uni" is much more common. That said, the new wording is probably more sensible. CT Cooper · talk 19:52, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I've heard the word college used, but I think it's an older expression going back to the days before all the old polytechnics and further education colleges got renamed as universities. Dahliarose (talk) 10:47, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Another attempt to redraft the notability section

This was inspired by Dahliarose's proposed new wording for the notability section. Comments please:

Individual articles about schools must meet the Wikipedia notability guideline (WP:GNG). Articles about educational institutions (including schools) are officially covered by the organizations and companies sub-guideline.

It has been the subject of years of discussion on how school articles should fit into this guideline. Many proposals have been made for a specific guidelines for school-article notability such as Wikipedia:Notability (schools). No consensus has been reached, hence many standards are observed by editors who clean-up, or propose articles for merging or deletion.

It is recommended that editors only create a new page about a school school article when the school passes the notability guideline. It must display significant coverage in reliable sources. Consider making use of offline sources, especially for older schools.

Drafting an article in the user space (such as at Special:Mypage/School article) or personal sandbox and then moving it into the main space when it is ready to be seen by everyone is an effective way of avoiding deletion.

It can be difficult to find reliable sources concerning elementary/primary/prep schools or middle schools. If insufficiently sourced these articles will normally be merged into the locality article (such as a village or town). US school articles should normally be merged into the school district article or the appropriate locality article if this is not available.

Articles about school districts, high-schools and secondary schools are rarely deleted or merged. This is because it is usually easier to find reliable sources supporting the notability for these kinds of schools.

In summary, if a school article of any level can be shown to have the potential of meeting the notability guideline it should be kept.

Due to continued controversy over deletion of school articles they are exempt from the speedy deletion A7 criterion, though not A1 or any other of the general or article criteria. --Salimfadhley (talk) 11:41, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Too long. I think we should keep the bullet points that it has right now and replace the explanation with your wording. Still, your wording needs to be rearranged. I would let other editors to comment first before making any change to the page. Z22 (talk) 02:44, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

There has been a huge amount of renewed discussion and polemic over school notablity earlier this year, and I suggest that any changes at all should be made following a consensus by a broader representation of the community. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:59, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Alumni

Most pages I edit on schools contain a class year of graduation (or for the transferee, an intended year). This is mainly for credibility; to be able to detect fabrications a bit more easily for the semi-notables that wind up here (athletes and musicians usually). I suggest this be made part of the suggested sentence (and not resume!) on the alum. "(brackets)John Evelyn Smith(brackets) 1989, Professional football player." Student7 (talk) 14:54, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools#Independence High School (Thompson's Station, Tennessee)

Perhaps I should have posted the above here, but as I didn't, I'd appreciate comments on my post about an editor with a COI and possible guideline violations. Dougweller (talk) 06:59, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Article naming

Can we have a section in the guidelines on article naming? In particular use of the definite article "The" when it forms part of a school name; and also disambiguation guidelines both the global default and any accepted country guidelines e.g. Use uses "Foo High School (City, State)", while UK uses "Foo School, Local-authority". This would save a lot of unnecessary page moving. --Bob Re-born (talk) 23:11, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

There is no consensus on school article titles, beyond standard Wikipedia-wide practices such as only using "The" when its forms part of the official name. Disambiguation practices in particular remain controversial and non-standardised - see Wikipedia:Schools#Article titles for past proposals. In the US there is consensus to use brackets, although some details have never reached agreement e.g. whether to use (City, State) from the start or whether to use (State) except when two schools in the same state have the same name. In the UK there is mixed use of commas and brackets, and while using the local authority in the title is common from what I have seen, it is not universal practice.

That said, notability is even more controversial and it gets a mention, so I certainly see the case for including it in this guideline. Like with notability, any section should focus on the current reality and give advise on how to deal with it. CT Cooper · talk 23:58, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

It would certainly be good to strive to some sort of consensus on naming and I think it would be a lot easier to achieve than the hot potato (or is that poison chalice?) of notability. I would be happy to start the discussion. --Bob Re-born (talk) 00:01, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

It's not discussed anywhere near as much as notability, but you can find some previous discussions here - this relatively recent one here acts as a good summary of the main conflict between parenthesis and commas. I think any new discussion will have to set expectations low - standardising all schools to parenthesis or commas isn't going to happen; even going with the majority on a country-by-country basis has problems, particularly in the UK where it is split almost down the middle with various methods are used both with commas and parenthesis. One big advantage this page has over creating a formal guideline is that due to its informal nature - local consensus is enough; there is no need for community wide approval. That said, any content added to this page which results in a mass moving of school articles may well set off a lot of wikidrama - to avoid this I would recommend that whatever the guideline recommends, this is with the caveat that existing disambiguation is grandfathered, except in the case of clear talk page consensus for a page move on an article-by-article basis. CT Cooper · talk 16:39, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

School Newspapers

Hello all, if a school's newspaper is published online, would that be considered a legitimate source for the school? dominiktesla -talk- 01:32, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

As a primary source, probably not, and not of any more real value than a blog (which is not admissible). School articles often contain far too much detail anyway, and a school newspaper would generally just add to it. There is an obsession for sports achievements, for example, rather than academic content, while some schools list all the plays the schools drama group has produced and the contents of the school canteen menu. I don't think a school newspaper, usually a student project, would be of much use to an article. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:48, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Ok, that's what I thought. Thanks for confirming it. dominiktesla -talk- 02:07, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Ofsted report mentioned within non-school article - spam or notable?

Is the mentioning of the result of the Ofsted report in this article just spam, or is it a notable fact? I appreciate this isn't an actual school article, but thought folks here might be able to advise. Thanks. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 08:07, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I think you are right to question the link and i would draw the same conclusion that the current link is inappropriate. What would be better is to provide a link to the Ofsted report in question and instead cite that as a reference to the assertion that the school is rated as outstanding. --Bob Re-born (talk) 19:59, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Spam link removed. Ofsted claim removed as not needed for this article. If it were a school article it would be different. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:29, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Thankyou both for your replies, which differ slightly in approach. Can I infer therefore that mentioning a school's Ofsted assessment is of borderline notability within a non-school article, but obviously if such a mention is made, a proper reference (not a link to the school's website) is required? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 07:28, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Unless a primary school is truly notable in its own right - and most aren't - and has its own article, mentioning that one exists in a village is sufficient and no references to its academic performance are required. Even if it were a high school, which we generally accept all articles about, we leave it for the school article itself to discuss its academic achievements; just a link to the page is enough. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:01, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks again Kudpung, that's nice and clear. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 19:38, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Admissions

I note that a large percentage of (UK) schools articles have 'Admissions' sections, such as here. 'Admissions', not mentioned in guidelines, contain quite a range of different information from page to page, some of which is difficult to fit comfortably elsewhere in articles - in which case I normally add it to the lede if it's of short length, which is not ideal. What is the view of the Project on 'Admissions' sections, and should guidelines give advice on this ? Thanks. Acabashi (talk) 10:59, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Guidelines for extra-curricular accomplishments

I am currently having a debate with another user regarding the inclusion of the accomplishments of extra-curricular programs at high schools over at Talk:Huntley High School. It initially began as an edit war, and was filled with misunderstandings. I realize that editors are trying to clean up a lot of the trivia, cruft, hearsay, and unenyclopedic content that has consumed many high school articles. However, in one editor's removal of this stuff, they also removed some things which I consider to be notable, encyclopedic, and definitely backed up by reliable sources. This led to an edit war that led to my blocking, and now we are finally having a discussion about it. From my perspective, a school placing 1st in a state championship in a particular sport or activity is really not any more notable than a school making it to the state finals. If you get 2nd, 3rd, or 4th place, you still get a giant trophy, medals, inclusion on the sign welcoming people to the town, etc. At least in Illinois, that's how it is. It's also just as documented in the newspapers, etc. I understand the line needs to be drawn somewhere to eliminate overly-long lists of conference and regional championships (of which there are many for any given school), but state appearances are a little more rare. Furthermore, I think it is a little more notable when a school makes it to the state finals and wins second or third place multiple times in one sport than a school that wins the state finals one time, never to be heard from again. It's similar to the great actors and musicians that have been nominated many times for awards but have never won (and actually have an entire Wikipedia articles dedicated to the awards, most of which are typically only nominations). I think including all state appearances also gives a little more context to the strength of the school's athletic programs and a more comprehensive understanding to the casual reader. An editor (I cannot recall whom) placed a simple uniform list in this article (and in the articles of several other high schools, where it still remains in many) that says: "The following teams have finished in the top four of their respective IHSA sponsored state tournament or meet: Baseball: 4th place (2009–10); Volleyball (Girls): 4th place (1994–95, 97-98), 3rd place (1996–97), 2nd place (1990–91, 95-96); Journalism: 2nd place (2011, 2013), 3rd place (2007, 2010); Science Olympiad: 4th place at State (2010–11); Basketball (Girls): 4th place (2013)." The sports were actually bulleted in the article, but I separated them by semi-colons for the sake of this discussion. To me, this provides the reader with more info ("this school seems to have fairly strong and accomplished volleyball and journalism programs"), rather than, "this schools has programs, just like every other school". Contrast this with the school that placed 1st in basketball in 1953 but haven't been heard from since. So, we are to include the lone 1st place finish from 60 years ago, but not the multiple successes of a program at another school? It just doesn't make much sense to me. I really think it does more good than harm and provides more value to the reader or researcher to include all state final appearances for a high school, rather than only 1st place finishes. What are your thoughts on this? Thanks. Abog (talk) 16:37, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion re: "this school seems to have fairly strong and accomplished volleyball and journalism programs"), rather than, "this schools has programs, just like every other school", the latter part of that statement is more appropriate to the dispassionate, neutral, non-POV content we should be striving for in an encyclopedia. Anything else sounds distinctly promotional. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:54, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting we straight up say those things that are in quotes. By objectively listing state appearances at finals, and applying the same criteria to all schools, we are being neutral. I'm just saying that a little more information is better and provides the reader with greater context. A lone 1st place finish for one school is really not any more notable than a school that placed 2nd, 3rd, and 4th multiple times in the span of a decade. Failing to include this is a disservice to the reader and provides no value to Wikipedia high school articles in terms of athletic accomplishments. I strive for maintaining neutrality while also providing the reader with more comprehensive information. Let the reader make their own inferences, if they make any at all. In any case, I believe the reader is better served by providing a little bit more information. I'm failing to understand the harm in including all state appearances. Most schools don't go to state finals all that often, so it isn't going to make the vast majority of articles overly long, other than a few extreme exceptions like the few larger, older schools in wealthy areas that have storied athletic histories, and in those cases they command and deserve longer articles anyways. Abog (talk) 18:16, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I too had noticed the "top 4" language in several articles. All are on Illinois schools, which due to the "boilerplate" nature of the copy and the fact that it is just on schools in Illinois, leads me to believe it may have been a part of some edit drive that WP:ILLINOIS did at one time. I have been removing it as I come across it, which was part of the background as to how this discussion started.

I do not see the argument above equating wealth with accomplishment. East St. Louis Senior High School, arguably one of the poorer (economically) schools in Illinois, lists several accomplishments, all within the current guidelines (could use some ref improvement, however). Same for several inner city schools in Chicago.

I don't think it is debatable that we need to have a line below which we do not talk about accomplishments. To not do so would lead to considerable havoc. An argument ad absuridum would be the school that never won a football game. Then, when they win a game, we include it? Actually, that would be something that would belong per WP:IAR, just because the lack of accomplishment would be interesting. But the team that wins one or two games a year; do we talk about that? Obviously no (although I have seen it).

Due to the differences in structure for athletic tournaments across the country (and I am limiting this to the US, because the OP seems to be concerned with the phrase in the guidelines "In the United States, this would nominally be a "state championship"."), I think that the most logical place to draw the line would be at state championship, as that pretty much means the same thing times 50. (California and possibly New York may be exceptions). John from Idegon (talk) 20:13, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I naturally didn't interpret Abog's comment I repeated in italics as being a verbatim sentence to be used in articles. It was the sense of it that is important and which we should consider very carefully with school articles. I have re-editeded, rewrittten, created, dozens of school articles and my first concern is that they are informative but without being promotional. Many schools are naturally proud of their sports and/or academic achievements and don't hesitate to extol these virtues in their own websites and school listing/review sites, but that's not what we're here for on Wikipedia, and that's one of the reasons why we provide external links - especially to pages that will be updated more often than ours. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:20, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

All I'm saying is that a school's appearances in state finals is typically one of the most notable things about the school (in the U.S. anyways), after the basic things like the building/grounds, enrollment and other stats, programs offered, and academic stats (test scores, etc.)). I realize there are significant problems with many of the high school articles (poorly referenced, written by students or staff from a promotional perspective, gossip and mention of non-notable things, etc, etc.). I realize that a lot of this needs to be addressed and constantly monitored by the project, and that the articles require significant improvement. Once the articles are brought up to Wikipedia standards and are more uniform in structure, perhaps this issue can be explored more in the future (in a year or so). I think you're going to find that due to making the cutoff "state champion" over "state finalist", the articles will be kind of lacking and will fail to give readers a comprehensive understanding of the school's history and its extra-curricular activities. At least in a larger state like Illinois. I really don't think adding all appearances at state finals will make the articles incredibly long...it's really only going to add a few lines. I've said all I can say, and clearly out of the three of us, I am the odd one out. Like I said, maybe we can explore this again in the future. Until then, I will peruse the IHSA website and the high school athletic websites of other states for more comprehensive info in this regard. Good luck with the project. Also, I thank you for your time in discussing this with me. Even though I appear to have lost this battle, I feel better about the situation having talked it out. Thanks. Abog (talk) 15:30, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikilinking in the infobox

I am not clear on the consensus on this. Do we wikilink the country in the infobox? John from Idegon (talk) 19:04, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

No, it is WP:OVERLINKING EyeTripleE (talk) 04:55, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Just so you are clear, there is no consensus for this, either. John from Idegon (talk) 06:40, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I probably should have prefaced by saying 'In my view'. This discussion is how we build consensus however. EyeTripleE (talk) 17:15, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

This isn't a matter that particularly needs a lot of discussion. Infoboxes are treated separate from the article for purposes of WP:OVERLINKING. On the particular thing I had asked about, I'm guessing the view that it is an overlink comes from the common term portion of overlink, but in my view that represents an "Americentric" view in this worldwide encyclopedia. John from Idegon (talk) 19:50, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Reverted changes

@John from Idegon: what do you disagree with about the changes I made? EyeTripleE (talk) 04:55, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't see it to be a good idea to make bold changes to any guideline or policy. Please propose what you want to change here and ask for input. You have not been here anywhere near long enough to boldly change things that have such a wide effect as a guideline without consensus. Please get one. John from Idegon (talk) 06:37, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Concurring with John. In fact with over 60,000 school articles already, I don't really see the need for any drastic changes. In fact school infoboxes are a devil in diguise, people see all those parameters and they just want to fill them all in and even create more. We'll have one soon for the guy who backwashes the swimming pool filter. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:04, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I did appreciate EyeTripleE's intent in adding the word "notable" before "teaching award"...Jacona (talk) 13:42, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

and Kudpung กุดผึ้ง's comment about infoboxes resonates. I have had one editor dispute my removal of lists of non-notable school employees try to use their inclusion in the infobox (where I was leaving asst. principals) as a reason they should also be included in the main article, so I have begun removing them from both when I find them, especially in New Jersey articles. Jacona (talk) 13:46, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't disagree with your comments about infoboxes but I am not proposing any changes to the infoboxes here. My proposed changes are as follows:

1. Teaching awards → Notable teaching awards - There are many school and local awards but these should probably not be included in the articles.
2. Delete "a team can win" - These words don't really add anything. Teams don't participate in championships that cannot be won.
3. Nominally → Normally - Many schools existed before there were state level championships and thus participated in other large tournaments. For example, in Illinois, private schools were not allow to join the IHSA until 1941 and thus had to participate in separate tournaments prior to that year. These schools could not participate in the nominal state championship. State championships are normally correct but not always.
4. Championships → Championship appearances - When schools reach the state championship level they are subject to non-trivial press coverage even if they lose. I am of the view that these appearances are notable. Additionally, this indication gives the reader a better view of the athletic capability of a given school; even for schools with good athletic team that routinely qualifies for state level tournaments, winning the state tournament may still be a relatively rare event. EyeTripleE (talk) 17:12, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

@John from Idegon, JaconaFrere, and Kudpung: thoughts? EyeTripleE (talk) 17:49, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

I have no problem with #2. On 1 and 4, I disagree completely. Notable staff should meet BIO. Period. School articles are huge magnets for namecrufting. A bright line criteria is needed. For extra-curricular activity achievements, I see no good reason to change. Yes it could be cool to be able to say XXX High School made it to the finals, when it is the only time they have ever done anything like that. But what about ZZZ High School, that is an athletic powerhouse and goes to the finals almost every year in some sport? The athletic sections on US high school articles are already way overblown. If you add runners up to the list of athletic accomplishments to a school like Carmel High School (Indiana), you are going to have an athletic section the size of the rest of the article combined. I oppose 3 also, but that reason is somewhat complicated. I'll discuss that after some others way in. Thanks for the ping, EyeTripleE. John from Idegon (talk) 18:53, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, guess the others don't have anything to add. I'll go ahead and do #2 since that one isn't controversial. I understand. your reasoning about #1. For #4 I would hope there would be a way to appropriately balance the athletics section even for very successful teams. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on it and I won't press it further. I am curious about your reasoning for #3. EyeTripleE (talk) 18:27, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Just noticed this discussion. I agree with EyeTripleE about #4. For many high schools, a trip to the state finals has been the peak of their athletic accomplishment, and whether we like it or not, for many readers that's the most prominent fact about the school. John from Idegon's concern overloading articles about athletic juggernauts in understandable, and maybe we should have some editorial discretion about condensing runner-up info for schools that have multiple championships in the same sport, but in general I don't think adding some additional years to a list of state finals appearances is going to bloat the text of the articles. Our goal with school articles should be to produce better-written articles with more meaningful content—and as a side benefit, show interested students how to write better Wikipedia articles so that they can move on to become positive contributors on other topics—and it always strikes me as somewhat counterproductive to discourage good faith contributors by informing them that they can't include properly sourced and written content that actually reflects what readers want to know.

On the other subject raised in this thread, school infoboxes: I agree that there are all sorts of listed parameters that generally are best omitted from the infobox, even when they are appropriate for the article text: for example, notable alumni. --Arxiloxos (talk) 19:11, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Anything that is sourced, no matter how trivial, is to be retained in New Jersey high school articles according to WP:PRESERVE, making any sort of work by Wikiproject schools irrelevant, as all New Jersey articles are owned by a single editor.Jacona (talk) 01:50, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

That is unfortunate. Does the editor know that Wikipedia is NOTEVERYTHING? EyeTripleE (talk) 03:56, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Regarding #4, I know I said I wasn't going to talk any more about it, but now there are at least three editors, including Abog in 2013 above, with this viewpoint. Perhaps we should give it some further discussion. EyeTripleE (talk) 04:08, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

There is no need to be in any rush here. We're discussing changes that affect thousands of articles after all. John from Idegon (talk) 05:25, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Proposed addition: "Accomplishments other than state or national championships are typically not notable and should be avoided, to avoid giving undue weight to any particular activity." This allows for occasional cases when it makes sense to list a notable accomplishment, while discouraging what I see as cause of the problem: editors connected to one activity at a school adding too much information about that one activity. -Hebisddave (talk) 17:55, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

I am of the opinion that state appearances should be included, especially since making it to state is pretty rare and notable in and of itself. It also provides a glimpse into the quality of a school's extra-curricular programs and into that school's history. For example, "wow, that school has been to state for volleyball seven times, they must have a pretty good volleyball program there." Or "journalism has been to state four times...decent journalism program as well". In my opinion, writing some substance about the quality of the programs (which can be fairly done through the listing of state appearances) is better than just a listing of all the extra-curricular programs, which is going to be the same list on every school page over and over again. It's really hard to take Wikipedia seriously these days when it comes to high school articles. Especially when a double-standard exists, where editors come down hard on me for posting state appearances on one high school article and yet allow it to continue on many others, several years later. Oh well...I guess if I actually want to know what makes the schools different from each other, Wikipedia is of no help. I should just go to the state high school athletic association website and figure it out myself. We don't have to do that with the playoff appearances of professional or collegiate sports teams or the endless lists of nominations of entertainers, but yet for high schools, Wikipedia has proven to be utterly useless. What a wasted opportunity, especially for a topic for which it is sometimes difficult to find hard data. Abog (talk) 21:05, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

That's an interesting point. Theoretically a small/community college with fewer students than a large high school could have more detail on its athletics. I think we could stick this information compactly in a table. Without prose we could worry less about boastful athletics sections. EyeTripleE (talk) 00:51, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

I am very glad that I ran across this page since I write and maintain over 300 Texas High School articles. I have tried for over five years to develop a standard template for the school articles I write that gives the information about the school and its achievements without puffery or overt promotion. I agree that there has to be a limit to how much achievement is mentioned so I feel it should include being a state champion or finalist (team sports). The only thing I really don't know what to do with are individual state titles. I feel that the title won should be listed but not the person as that goes against Wiki policy. I do appreciate the efforts of all of you especially John form Idegon and Kudpung who have seen my articles and have offered constructive criticism. My biggest beef are those from outside the USA who feel obligated to redirect school articles to either the community or district page without any commentary. I have lost quite a number of articles this way only to have to recreate them. Love to hear feedback from this group. Indyjrg1762 (talk) 01:41, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

That isn't good. Have they seen WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES? Yes, individual titles are harder to deal with and I've been trying to decide how to approach this on articles I have been working on. I think that by current guidelines non-notable individuals shouldn't be named in the article. Something more general like "Middle Town High School had state champion runners in the 400 m in 1975, 1992, and 2004" could be possible, but it seems strange to say this without naming the champions. Probably I would only include this information if it is noted in literature in context of the school (e.g. Middle Town High School has produced more individual state champions in cross country than any other school in the state). It's a tough call. EyeTripleE (talk) 07:11, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

So regarding #3, given there are four of us seemingly in favor of this, what is next? Is there now consensus for this? Should we go to RFC? EyeTripleE (talk) 07:15, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Again, there is no rush. Although it appears consensus is leaning toward allowing runners-up, I really like Hebisddave´s proposed wording, and his reasoning for it. A bit of wiggle room. I also like EyeTripleE's last statement on record numbers of individual achievements. To me, the reason for avoidance of discussion on individual achievements is twofold. One, the article is on the school not the students. Two, using any names invites namecrufting, not to mention the privacy of minors issues. John from Idegon (talk) 07:47, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

This seems like a reasonable approach. Does anyone have further comments? It seems to me that there is consensus to update the wording. EyeTripleE (talk) 20:53, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

I have to agree with the thoughts Abog has put forth as I was just discussing the same subject in another talk area. It is a shame that more content can't be added to high school wiki pages as they are so generic right now that they are almost useless. Contrary to what many many think, a new resident could make a decision on which school they would like to send their child to based on information they could find in Wikipedia. If they want to send their child to a school that is strong in baseball or chess, past performances in State competitions could be a determining factor, so if they can't find it on Wikipedia they have to go somewhere else. As long as new pages are not being created for specific activities for each school, I really don't see the harm in allowing top three finishes or individual State Championship/All-State honors on the high school wiki pages. It is already being reported in local newspapers, websites and activities associations. Finally, try to find competition results for 1957. Almost impossible to find unless you find old newspapers. Wikipedia which was founded as and encyclopedic resource would be a perfect engine to house this historical data.Hermanns 99 (talk) 23:48, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

It occurs to me that the current wording doesn't limit article content to only championship victories. Mentioning participation in championships at the state and national level seems to be in line with the guidelines. EyeTripleE (talk) 13:22, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

John from Idegon, as I interpret their statements, those who supported allowing more than championship victories (which is not even a clear restriction in the current text, it is an interpretation of the meaning of "championships") were

• Arxiloxos
• Abog
• Indyjrg1762
• Hermanns 99
• myself

Even you said "it appears consensus is leaning toward allowing runners-up" (though I think the consensus was for an even wider amount than 1st and 2nd place, probably more like final four).

• Hebisddave Proposed additional wording. (Which was added, though it still leaves ambiguous the meaning of "championships").
• Kudpung and JaconaFrere asked for a consensus before making changes.

This seems like a pretty firm consensus to me. Thoughts? EyeTripleE (talk) 18:27, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Personally. I'm not really bothered. It's only in the USA where athletics are considered more important than criteria of academic achievement. Add to that, Wikipedia is not supposed to be a 'choose your best school' site. What we need on Wikipedia is consistency, and the best guidelines there, IMO, are the school articles that are more of a generic nature. Call me old fashioned, but I come from the era when one needed to graduate from High School in Latin to be accepted at university. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:49, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

well saidJacona (talk) 23:25, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Is being a finalist in a major championship notable for school articles?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Is being a finalist (not only the winner) of a major championship notable for school articles? EyeTripleE (talk) 20:22, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

The current wording of the article guidelines for the athletics section in school articles is as follows:

Major extra curricular championships should be appropriately listed in a "Sports", "Athletics", or "Activities" section. Major extra curricular championships are defined as the highest possible championship from that activity's organizing committee. In the United States, this is nominally a "state championship". National championships, when referenced, may also be listed. Accomplishments other than state or national championships (or their equivalents) are typically not notable and should be avoided to avoid giving undue weight to any particular activity.

In the past editors have used this paragraph to justify exclusion of all but first place championship positions in school articles as not notable. In the two discussions above editors have discussed whether or not finalist positions (other than first place) in major championships are notable for school articles. This RfC comes from a request for greater community input.

Arguments from prior discussions

Above arguments that these appearances are notable When schools reach the state championship level they are subject to non-trivial press coverage even if they lose. I am of the view that these appearances are notable. Additionally, this indication gives the reader a better view of the athletic capability of a given school; even for schools with good athletic team that routinely qualifies for state level tournaments, winning the state tournament may still be a relatively rare event. EyeTripleE (talk) 17:49, 1 October 2015 (UTC) For many high schools, a trip to the state finals has been the peak of their athletic accomplishment, and whether we like it or not, for many readers that's the most prominent fact about the school. John from Idegon's concern overloading articles about athletic juggernauts in understandable, and maybe we should have some editorial discretion about condensing runner-up info for schools that have multiple championships in the same sport, but in general I don't think adding some additional years to a list of state finals appearances is going to bloat the text of the articles. Our goal with school articles should be to produce better-written articles with more meaningful content—and as a side benefit, show interested students how to write better Wikipedia articles so that they can move on to become positive contributors on other topics—and it always strikes me as somewhat counterproductive to discourage good faith contributors by informing them that they can't include properly sourced and written content that actually reflects what readers want to know. Arxiloxos (talk) 19:11, 2 October 2015 (UTC) I am of the opinion that state appearances should be included, especially since making it to state is pretty rare and notable in and of itself. It also provides a glimpse into the quality of a school's extra-curricular programs and into that school's history. For example, "wow, that school has been to state for volleyball seven times, they must have a pretty good volleyball program there." Or "journalism has been to state four times...decent journalism program as well". In my opinion, writing some substance about the quality of the programs (which can be fairly done through the listing of state appearances) is better than just a listing of all the extra-curricular programs, which is going to be the same list on every school page over and over again.... Oh well...I guess if I actually want to know what makes the schools different from each other, Wikipedia is of no help. I should just go to the state high school athletic association website and figure it out myself. We don't have to do that with the playoff appearances of professional or collegiate sports teams or the endless lists of nominations of entertainers, but yet for high schools, Wikipedia has proven to be utterly useless. What a wasted opportunity, especially for a topic for which it is sometimes difficult to find hard data. Abog (talk) 21:05, 9 October 2015 (UTC) It is a shame that more content can't be added to high school wiki pages as they are so generic right now that they are almost useless. Contrary to what many many think, a new resident could make a decision on which school they would like to send their child to based on information they could find in Wikipedia. If they want to send their child to a school that is strong in baseball or chess, past performances in State competitions could be a determining factor, so if they can't find it on Wikipedia they have to go somewhere else. As long as new pages are not being created for specific activities for each school, I really don't see the harm in allowing top three finishes or individual State Championship/All-State honors on the high school wiki pages. It is already being reported in local newspapers, websites and activities associations. Finally, try to find competition results for 1957. Almost impossible to find unless you find old newspapers. Wikipedia which was founded as and encyclopedic resource would be a perfect engine to house this historical data.Hermanns 99 (talk) 23:48, 9 May 2016 (UTC) Above arguments that these appearances are not notable I don't think it is debatable that we need to have a line below which we do not talk about accomplishments. To not do so would lead to considerable havoc. An argument ad absuridum would be the school that never won a football game. Then, when they win a game, we include it? Actually, that would be something that would belong per WP:IAR, just because the lack of accomplishment would be interesting. But the team that wins one or two games a year; do we talk about that? Obviously no (although I have seen it). Due to the differences in structure for athletic tournaments across the country (and I am limiting this to the US, because the OP [This refers to Abog] seems to be concerned with the phrase in the guidelines "In the United States, this would nominally be a "state championship"."), I think that the most logical place to draw the line would be at state championship, as that pretty much means the same thing times 50. (California and possibly New York may be exceptions). John from Idegon (talk) 20:13, 26 November 2013 (UTC) School articles are huge magnets for namecrufting. A bright line criteria is needed. For extra-curricular activity achievements, I see no good reason to change. Yes it could be cool to be able to say XXX High School made it to the finals, when it is the only time they have ever done anything like that. But what about ZZZ High School, that is an athletic powerhouse and goes to the finals almost every year in some sport? The athletic sections on US high school articles are already way overblown. If you add runners up to the list of athletic accomplishments to a school like Carmel High School (Indiana), you are going to have an athletic section the size of the rest of the article combined. John from Idegon (talk) 18:53, 1 October 2015 (UTC) It's only in the USA where athletics are considered more important than criteria of academic achievement. Add to that, Wikipedia is not supposed to be a 'choose your best school' site. What we need on Wikipedia is consistency, and the best guidelines there, IMO, are the school articles that are more of a generic nature. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:49, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Support (yes, it is/may be notable)

• Support as proposer. EyeTripleE (talk) 22:41, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
• Support per my comments above. --Arxiloxos (talk) 02:00, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
• Support with the provision that it should still be written as an encyclopedia, not as a list of accomplishments, and due weight should be given. Describing a school's sports (or other club) program and mentioning that they were able to reach the regional level X number of times within Y period would be fine. Pure lists and going into extreme detail may not be warranted. Fieari (talk) 06:34, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
• Support as noted above, these appearances may be notable for a particular school. For example, for most high school sports in Florida, winning a regional championship qualifies a team to the state final four. For a team that won their region 1 time, it's probably notable. For a team that's won state 3 times, the 5 times they won regional isn't notable. (in response to RfC) --John, AF4JM (talk) 11:53, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
• Support with appropriate sourcing. Alansohn (talk) 16:56, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
• Support - Key words are: MAY BE notable... We don't need an RFA to legislate common editorial sense, do we? Smalltown High School, with 125 students, finishing 2nd in a state basketball championship might be huge news and worth including. Gargantuoso High School, with 4,000 students, might not be. There should be no "bright line." Carrite (talk) 18:12, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Oppose (no, it is not notable)

• Oppose, because answering "support" appears to give automatic notability to all championship appearances, which is inappropriate. Championship appearances are sometimes notable. These situations are already addressed by the final sentence of the quoted guidelines (non-championships are "typically not notable" due to undue weight, which leaves the door open for appropriate mentions when the championship appearance is significant to the school or otherwise noteworthy). That sentence is relatively new and we haven't had time to see if it can solve this problem before adding this additional rule. (Full disclosure: I suggested that sentence as a resolution to a previous discussion.) --Hebisddave (talk) 13:24, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Some editors are still taking it to mean only championship victories are notable and are removing content based on this. I don't think all appearances are notable but I also don't believe there is consensus to reflexively remove non-first place finishes. This discussion is to establish if non-1st place appearances CAN be notable. I've adjusted the wording based on your comment. Some editors have discussed notable/non-notable dividing lines below. A holistic approach is certainly feasible. EyeTripleE (talk) 23:16, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

Whether or not finalist positions are notable, I think the wording needs to be altered. The current wording is ambiguous as it doesn't explicitly say "championships" means "championship victories" rather than "finalist positions in major championships". EyeTripleE (talk) 19:45, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

The line before that is not ambiguous at all. It states the highest possible achievement. That would be the championship, not appearing at the championship. John from Idegon (talk) 21:17, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

No, it says "the highest possible championship". According to our article on the subject, "in sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion." So the "highest possible championship" means "the highest possible competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion." EyeTripleE (talk) 22:37, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

I take it that is a regionally specific concern, an as such it up to editors in that country to decide the wording. I have got say that from the EU perpective it is mystifying- physical education is a subject within the curriculum, and sometimes the teachers have enough energy left to run a sports fixture with an easily accessible neighbouring school. ClemRutter (talk) 09:15, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes, how integrated sports have become in American schools is quite strange from a global perspective. There may be other countries this applies to however. John from Idegon requested an RfC before making any changes. EyeTripleE (talk) 17:22, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

• I'm OK with including team runners-up, but that's it, mostly because anything further just opens the door to the US school articles becoming even more dominated by athletics than they currently are (there are various reasons why that is the case). It's an issue of WP:WEIGHT. I don't think listing individual state champions is appropriate. When I expanded the extracurricular section at Theodore Roosevelt High School (Kent, Ohio), I mentioned a "final four" appearance for the boys soccer and boys volleyball teams, but it is in passing. The table I made for the athletics section shows the team state champions and state runners-up. In other sections, it mentions notable accomplishments of other curricular and co-curricular programs (like the marketing classes).

School articles need to give a thorough but still general idea about the school, not every specific activity or accomplishment, especially non-notable individuals. Yes, when describing the various teams or programs, some context should be provided, but within reason. If a school has produced a high amount of individual champions in a sport, for instance, that cited fact should be mentioned, but not a listing of the specific individuals any more than naming non-notable coaches for the teams. For some schools, listing team runners-up isn't really going to be needed since they have so many state championships across sports, or the runners-up can be mentioned in prose as opposed to a chart. --JonRidinger (talk) 15:06, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree that individual awards should generally not be listed. I don't think we're proposing to change that section of the article guidelines. My personal inclination is to generally draw the line at the final four. For a very successful school, editorial judgement may be in order to determine which accomplishments are worth noting. It is also worth noting that a table of accomplishments can be made collapsible if it becomes very long. This reduces the impact on page layout. EyeTripleE (talk) 22:39, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

I don't like having a blanket policy to eliminate such a mention of a school's achievements. At some schools, their one time achievement of reaching the final four would be notable relative to that school, particularly if it is a cinderella situation. At another school an itemization of their dominance should include a final four level or championship game (loser) mention in the overall flow. "XXX School won the state championship in 1938, 1956, 1972 and 2001. Between 1968 and 1984, under coach XXX they made the final four every year except 1981 and have been in the final four 28 times." At some schools, their dominance or meager success might be down to the league level. At some schools, a dominant individual athlete could put an otherwise unheralded school's name on the map. Or a dominant coach could have a string of successes in an individual based sport (track, swimming, wrestling, gymnastics, tennis etc etc). In prose, I think a laundry list of individual athletes, capped somewhere around ten would be practical. Beyond that, some schools with a fanatical editor could build out a table of their success which, if complete, would make for solid content within an article. Because one school has an editor willing to put that kind of effort in shouldn't mean it should be eliminated just because the school across town doesn't have a similar table. And speaking of across town, many schools have long term, traditional rivals. The winner of the annual game could have a long history with the prize of "the old jug" or the like which is relevant content for both schools. The key to everything on wikipedia is sourcing. When any of these situations exist, localized sources are highly likely to cover them. We should expect that a (probably local) source be available to back up at least some of the claims. I am a firm believer in WP:BEFORE. Before you remove content, check to see if there is a source. If you are sufficiently informed to find this discussion, you are sufficiently capable of an editor to fix a problem rather than to just blindly eliminate content. If a source proves an editor knows what they are talking about, I am far more likely to believe they are adding valid content about a highly localized subject I would not know about from a distance. I consider the addition of valid content to be a major improvement over some school articles that are only two sentences long. Even if the reporting of one sports result without mentioning other sports throws the balance of the article off, beggars can't be choosers and I think we should accept what valid contributions we can get. School articles attract inexperienced editors and vandals. They take a lot more work to monitor. As we do so, we have to recognize bullshit from incompetence. Pull the trigger on one, but help the other to make our content better. Trackinfo (talk) 18:41, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

I concur with Trackinfo. With appropriate sourcing, appropriate details of athletic accomplishments that may not be at the national level could be and should be included. Sure, these need to be monitored and a proper balance struck, but there is no bright line that would specify that standard. Alansohn (talk) 17:00, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Sourcing is very important, but don't forget, just because something can be reliably sourced doesn't mean it belongs in an article (see WP:ONUS). I think drawing the line at non-notable coaches and individuals is reasonable, especially thinking about WP:FANCRUFT and WP:UNDUE as I said before. It's the same with the notable people list. Just because a school may not have a lot (or any) notable people doesn't mean we should "lower the bar" and list some successful alumni to "balance it out". It's not about making the articles equal, but more about having some sort of standard structure and general content. Some schools are going to have a lot in their athletics section; some aren't. Same with city articles. Small towns aren't going to have any many sections or as much content as a larger city in most cases. Nothing wrong with that.

I do agree with the importance of prose for some of these more general facts like a Final Four mention or a large number of individual champions, though. --JonRidinger (talk) 18:02, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Eliminate all specifying text beyond the first sentence.

Major extra curricular championships should be appropriately listed in a "Sports", "Athletics", or "Activities" section.

• Support As I enumerated above, and others @Alansohn:, @AF4JM:, @Carrite:, @Arxiloxos: have similarly commented, this section should be kept deliberately vague. The specificity could be used to eliminate valid content for a school whose accomplishments are minimal on the national scale but are significant for that school. These kind of situations will be much better addressed in the individual school's talk page where the value of balance and relativity to the school can be discussed. I do not expect that the vandals and krufters will be able to sustain an argument to keep junk. And in this open encyclopedia, more power to them if they can. Those of us who watch a mass of school articles might not be that all knowing about a local situation. Trackinfo (talk) 23:41, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposed guidelines for attendance boundary info and/or physical location

I'd like to add this information, but not sure where it would fit...

---

Confirming a school's location (United States):

The United States Postal Service street address "city name" may not necessarily show the municipality/unincorporated area which has the physical location of a school. To determine that, you can do one or more of the following:

• Use a mapping program: Google Maps, Bing Maps, etc.

• Sometimes a mapping program may not take you to the school's correct location. Search for the school's name instead of the street address and/or use terrain view to confirm if a school is really there.

• Use city limits maps and/or zoning maps from city websites

• Zoning maps may show exact locations of high schools

• Use U.S. Census Bureau maps for incorporated places and census-designated places. School district maps from the US Census Bureau may help too

Confirming a school district and/or school's attendance boundaries (United States and Canada):

Many U.S. and Canadian public school districts and public schools have designated attendance boundaries that serve incorporated places, neighborhoods/communities within those incorporated places, and/or distinct unincorporated areas. Use the following information to link articles together (urban neighborhood/municipality/CDP to school and vice versa) and to build a list of communities/areas served by that school.

• Check the school district website for attendance boundary maps of that particular school district/school
  • When you can, archive all documents through the Wayback Machine, Webcitation.org, and (if a .jpg or html file) Archive.is
    • If an initial archive on, say, archive.is and/or webcitation fails, try archiving in the Wayback Machine and then archive the resulting page in archive.is and/or webcitation
    • You can also archive with archive.is a Google Cache of a document. Useful for PDFs with text (sometimes school boundaries are described in text and/or are lists of street names with according schools) - it can also be done for a document that was recently removed from its website that is still resident in Google's cache
  • Compare to zoning maps and/or city limits maps from municipal governments, neighborhood/subdivision maps put out by homeowners associations, and/or US Census Bureau maps of incorporated places and census-designated places
    • Archive those too if you can!
  • You can also use Google Maps, Bing Maps, etc. to double-check/clarify any information you receive from those maps.

For Canadian areas, be sure to get school district information for all linguistic and/or religious backgrounds: For instance, in Quebec: get the information from the French school board and the English school board if you are determining which schools serve a neighborhood in Montreal. For Ontario; get the information from the English secular, English Catholic, French secular, and French Catholic school boards if you are determining which schools serve a neighborhood in Toronto.

It is important to check zoning maps of municipalities to confirm if any people live in the area covered by that school district/school:

• If a school district covers areas not inhabited by people (for example Wiseburn School District only serves commercial areas of El Segundo, California) it should still be listed on the school district page as the area may contain taxable property (The Mattel headquarters and other businesses bring money to the Wiseburn School District)
• If a school district covers areas not inhabited by people don't include that as part of the school's list of neighborhoods served, as no children live there. For example none of the schools in the Wiseburn School District "serve" El Segundo in that regard so El Segundo should not be listed among the communities which are assigned to those schools. Also don't include seniors' only residences and/or university complexes that do not house families/students with dependent children (check the university website to see which/if any complexes are permitted to house dependent children).

I've been doing this work for years, and it's time to have a guide so others can do it too! WhisperToMe (talk) 23:43, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

WhisperToMe Sorry to sound so unenthusiastic, but a) this is very americocentric, and b) of the 400 signed up members of this project less than 10 are active and two of them are coordinators, and c) probably as much as 75% of the thousands of school articles are 1-line stubs anyway, posted by SPA and not in the USA. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:05, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

It is indeed very specific to North America and I developed this guide for the purpose of improving schools in that region. About 50% of editors on Enwiki are from the U.S., and information about American and Canadian schools is relatively accessible (which means it's easier to make a decent article). Having said that, it's good to address schools in other countries.

Firstly the school district model in North America is unique to that region. That is why ordinary public elementary and middle schools in North America are supposed to be redirected to their school districts and not to municipalities, but for every other region the public schools redirect to their municipalities. The concept of "school district boundaries" generally doesn't apply to other countries. (I am aware in France they have intercommunale schools which take students from multiple municipalities but I can't think of anything similar in other places)

As for the schools themselves, in many other countries high schools don't have attendance boundaries at all. China, Japan, etc. you have to apply to your public high school. I know some French municipalities do post cartes scolaires and there are attendance boundaries for schools in France. I used information from articles in Le Parisien, for example, to show which communities certain French high schools draw from. I could do more research on how to find attendance boundaries for elementary and middle schools in other countries (though this would mostly improve municipality articles and not school articles themselves).

I wonder if there are more active editors in country-specific projects, and perhaps tailor certain guides like this to those particular countries.

WhisperToMe (talk) 08:37, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

WhisperToMe, I'm not belittling your efforts fir an instant - in fact I find them very noble, even if IMO they might possibly go a tad beyond the bounds of what is absolutely neccesary for a school article. Nevertheless, with my near 10-year experience as a coord on this project, I've seen some big changes in the profile of the average school article over the years. I think you'll find you are the only one doing it and you'll have your work cutout to apply it to the thousands if US school articles. What some of us believe is that the majority of US school articles could do with is some information about the traditional subjects they teach; hundreds of articles only mention their success of their baseball teams and the activities of their marching bands. While I do realise that this is a special part of US school culture, if I were a parent I would be more interested in academic results. What the tiny handful of active WPWPSCH editors do nowadays is make sure that the CSD and AfD processes are not abused and try to keep up with spam for for-profit organisations and cram schools. The vast majority of the schools that arrive these days at NPP are one-liners from the Indian sub continent. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:11, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Don't worry... I understand it's not belittling my efforts :) - I guess a lot of what I do is based upon the fact that I first became interested in this area of editing through improving articles about Houston, my hometown. First I linked and expanded articles about Houston neighborhoods and linked them with their schools, then did the same for Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, Miami, etc.

The attendance zones of the schools and their relationships with their communities is an aspect that personally interests me, but it's also something that has a major effect on the schools themselves. Usually schools that draw from wealthier neighborhoods do better, but there are cases when the neighborhoods abandon their schools: see Bay View High School in Milwaukee, which is not used by its surrounding community.

Part of the reason why you don't see as much coverage about academics is that US-based school coverage is heavily focused on the athletics (especially in Texas, especially so in small-town Texas) to the detriment of academics. It's a much-criticized part of American culture but the emphasis is sadly real. You may find more sourced information on academics particularly in big-city schools (especially magnet, gifted and talented, etc. schools), certain charter schools, and private schools. For lower achieving big city schools you may find information about efforts to improve the academics (say innovative programs/courses). But coverage of academics is flat out nonexistent for many (especially small town) American schools.

South Asia's a completely different environment and I'm unfamiliar with it. I reckon it may be hard to find reliably sourced info, but if some editors from India and Pakistan can find info on schools in say The Hindu or Dawn that would be kinda cool.

WhisperToMe (talk) 10:22, 2 January 2017 (UTC)