Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (schools)/Archive 2

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Refurbishing proposal

I'm about to post my refurbished naming conventions proposal. I'm changing some stuff to be in line with the more recent discussion on the WikiProject school page, and I'm unhistoricalling (wow...that's not a word!) this project. I'd like this to be in a little better shape and then, if community consensus agrees, we can hopefully go forward with plans for subproject WikiProject:Schools Disambiguation. Miss Mondegreen talk  20:15, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Disambiguation

It should be noted that this does not deal with the actual disambiguation, nor is this intended to. Whether or not a subproject of WP Schools is created (or WP Universities is they join on board), there are really great guidelines set for how disambiguation should be done, and unless it beomes apparent in the process that disambiguation should be done differently for schools, we should really just follow those guidelines.

This means that dismbiguation pages might not always be at the school name. For example, there are lots of schools with Harding in the name. Many named after the President, though maybe not all. The names of the schools are similar, but not the same. They should however all link to the same disambiguation page however and that disambiguation page should be listed at the general Harding disambiguation page. The dismbiguation page won't be at the [[Harding High]] namespace or anything like that. The name would have to be all encompassing of the various types of schools, and, of the various types of Hardings. Miss Mondegreen talk  14:59, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

What are "schools"?

Is this just covering educational institutes for minors or also universities, colleges, continuing education and so forth? "School" is not universally taken to mean "educational institution" and if this is covering universities (as the overview implies) then would not Wikipedia:Naming conventions (educational institutions) be a more accurate title? Timrollpickering 22:26, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

At the moment--it only applies to schools. It was originally created that way, and there was debate on the talk page as to what it applied to. If you look at the history and scope section, that should be made clear, and it should also be clear that this is based on the historical proposal, and that those proponents that have not been discussed since (like do Universities reply) have not been changed from that proposal. I've posted comments on the talk pages of the WikiProjects Education, University and Schools hoping to hammer out these details. I also took a quick glance at the talk pages I didn't follow (I follow the schools talk page mainly) and did not see further discussion on the naming issue, suggesting that this issue, for the most part hasn't been an issue in the University project. So, that's the answer as to where this stands on Universities now.

I do believe that to a certain extent this or something else will be necessary for Universities. It's not a problem the way it is with schools now. There aren't that many Wheaton colleges, and a lot of Universities deal with having a name that is the same as another University, or close by adding their location to the name of the school, so we don't want redundancy in school titles. To a certain extent, this issue has been taken care of by the Universities themselves, as they don't just field local applicants, and knowing that, and that the school know has to be unique, there are dozens of names which sounds similar, but are different by one word. Whereas a very small percentage of the schools that wikiproject schools handles opperate like that. Most only field local applicants, and so as long as the schools are enough miles apart, when you refer to a particular school, it doesn't matter if there are twenty that go by that name, people know what you're talking about. There are also more elementary schools than middle and more middle than high, and more high than college, etc, so there will be more things that need to be named and therefore more overlapping names. I'd really like more feed back from the people who deal with this, especially the ones who are working on universities and colleges in other countries, and I'd like some worst case analysis thinking--assuming that we really do write articles for every college and university, but I see much less of a necessity for this for colleges and universities, and I think the duplication that it would create would be awful. Look at how many of the schools on this list (List of universities in Georgia) include part of their location in the name of the school. Can you then imagine readding that information to the end of the article name? Miss Mondegreen talk  16:41, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

There are a few issues with university names, mainly when the institution has both a legal name and a different brand name (making "official name" a meaningless term) - see for instance "Durham University" (not "University of Durham"), "Queen Mary, University of London" (not "Queen Mary & Westfield College" - I'm a researcher there and nobody uses the old name anymore) and others. Generally so far the articles have gone for the brand name but there have been people trying to push for the legal names, especially as some of the brandings have been a little controversial. Timrollpickering 10:58, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

But doesn't WP:NC(CN) deal with that already? This deals more with adding the location as a qualifier--and I'm questioning, and the previous version of this proposal questioned the extent to which this is necessary in Universities. There are fewer Universities, they tend to have more unique names, and to some extent this is already done by the Universities themselves because so many already include their location in their name, to make the name of their University unique. Other than the common name aspect of this policy--how much of this actually applies to the universities? Would you want Durham University rename [[Durham University (England)]]? Miss Mondegreen talk  13:15, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Well no, and not just because [[Durham University (United Kingdom)]] would be the accurate term. That said I wonder just how many in the UK know that "York University" isn't the University of York - within the UK nearly all universities can be called "Foo University" and "University of Foo" with few batting an eyelid (although official rebranding exercises can provoke backlashes). The tricky one may be "Open University" - I'm not sure if all the various institutions that use that name have the disambiguators already built in or if Wikipedia is using them correctly for non-English language institutions (there's also the whole issue of whether or not to use the native language name which can be quite complicated as some institutions use a translation and others the native form in English). Timrollpickering 14:42, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I must say, I'm a little confused about what you are or are not proposing for Universities. What do you think should happen to the University names, if anything? Miss Mondegreen talk  21:17, May 6 2007

Versions

Miss Mondegreen, are the 2 versions you proposed mutually exclusive? I am inclined to favor version 2 for universities (ex. Rutgers University as opposed to "Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey"), but I think version 1 would better fit high schools and lower level schools - there would be less need for disambiguation and redirects, and the full official names would be easier to source than common names, of which schools can have more than one. Wl219 07:49, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

The difference in the versions isn't actually offical name v. common name. Really, official name should be removed from the first version, because when necessary, i.e. Rutgers or Stanford, schools clearly follow the common name guideline. However, this guideline rarely applies to schools. We use the official name of schools unless the official name is less known then a common name, and that really needs to be made clear in both versions, because that is not what is being changed.

The problem at hand, that this guideline intends to deal with is that most lower level schools have some form of the location attached already, because the percentage of lower level schools that have a unique name is very, very small. There are hundreds of Lincoln High Schools--the official name of the school, even nicknames won't help, only location will. And, to a large extent this both doesn't need to and can't be applied to colleges in the same way. A quick look at the Rutgers article shows that the campus exists in multiple New Jersey cities, so [[Rutgers University (city, New Jersey)]] wouldn't work. I'm going to change the guideline so that both versions say common, but it really needs to be made clear that we only go to that guideline if there's a need to and I'm not sure how to phrase that. That's both current practice, and what would be the guideline btw. Miss Mondegreen talk  09:01, May 6 2007

A view

Sorry to wear the "black hat" but I think that the process that Wikipedia has for naming is largely successful. I'm pleased to see that this proposal largely reflects that. I think its useful to offer guidelines to schools. However I think the idea of changing the name of a school article is going to create a lot of heat! Schools feel really strongly about their names. I had my head bitten off for trying to file some schools like "The Arrdvark School" under A rather than T. If I'd tried to change the name then I would still be putting out flamemails. I think the advice is good. We need to particularly warn schools that they may need to add qualiifiers when they think they are unique. e.g. How many schools are "Riverside" ... there are going to be dozens! So ... fine ... but not sure about more than advice as we can never enter a debate about the "common name" ... only they will know. Victuallers 11:51, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, the common name part etc, is already guideline, and while some schools are going to complain, the problem with school names is so out of hand that there are sometimes articles on wikipedia for schools with identical names, only no one knows because different identifiers or capitalization is used. The extent of the problem is already large and is growing. It will be an enormous problem--polls over whether to use commas or paranthese brought out some bad blood, so I fully recognize that people will dig in their heels. But I don't see an alternative way forward, and I think that the biggest proof of that is that people keep coming to the WP:Schools talk page and suggesting a proposal or asking for one, on a regular basis.

The other thing is, is that consensus established in guidelines and policies overrules consensus established in an article. We propose changes based on guidelines and policies, but disagreement based on "i don't like the policy" isn't valid disagreement, because there is already consensus with the policy. Hopefully, people will come here from the associated projects and enough people are associated with them that a guideline like this won't be so much of a shock. Miss Mondegreen talk  12:51, May 6 2007

Thanks for the full reply. Maybe practise will show my fears to be groundless. Or we need to only step in where there is a problem. Anyway ... have you all looked ar * Wikipedia:WikiProject Education in Canada as that has naming advice too. Victuallers 19:38, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there is any particular conflict between this policy and theirs, but their policy seems nationally based, it doesn't take into account similarly named schools from other countries, and as such I think this is a much more general guideline and is therefor much stronger. Adam McCormick 20:25, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

what about additional pages?

University High School (Los Angeles) really needs to be move to (Los Angeles, California). There are a lot of University Highs-a lot in California, a more outside of California. This is something that could use a specific name and a long disambiguation page. I think there are five or something Uni Highs in California alone.

But Uni High has not just an article page, but a List of notable alumni of University High School (Los Angeles) and [[Category:University High School (Los Angeles)]] and [[Category:University High School (Los Angeles) Alumni]].

I'm assuming those would also need to be changed too, right? Does anyone have any idea how many articles have multiple pages or categories? Miss Mondegreen talk  01:42, May 7 2007

Policy

I believe that the second version (Which is essentially the first with the location as a requirement) of this guidline should become Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools Policy. My only suggestion is, that, even if no second, similarly-named school(s) exist, there should be redirects from the school name without the location. Adam McCormick 19:10, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

You're language there doesn't make much sense. Are you saying that if no other similarly named school exists there should be a redirect instead of disambiguation? That I would support. I would not support redirects when there are similarly named schools floating about. When there are redirects, people get lazy and link to the redirct instead of the actual page name, and that's less likely to be caught in a situation where a disambiguation page already exists, whereas if a redirect exists and a disambiguation has to be created, one of the steps in that process is changing any links that go to the redirect page, and either deleting the redirect page, or making it the disambiguation page or something. In a situation where you can often have 10 or 20 or 100 schools with the same or similar names, redirects are a nightmare, and it may start with only two schools, but these names are common. I think once it hits two articles, we should go from redirects to disambig pages and be firm on that account.

I'd like to see the second version be policy too. It's already done to a certain extent, except that there's no convention, and so we probably have, or will have soon two schools with the same name with no qualifiers because they aren't following naming conventions and that's just disasterous for the organization of the project. If you want to add in language about redirects until disambiguation and change the tags I'd be cool. Miss Mondegreen talk  00:06, May 10 2007

I was only suggesting that while there is only one page (No conflicts) "My Shiny Grammar School (Somewhere, New Brunswik)" there should also be a page at "My Shiny Grammar School" which redirects to the actual article. Then when a new school say "My Shiny Grammar School (Frankfurt, Kentucky)" tries to start a new article it will hit the redirect so it doesn't think that it is the only "My Shiny Grammar School". At this point the redirect should be made into a disambiguation page which also prevents new articles like "My Shiny Grammar School (London, England)" from thinking that they are alone. Is that more clear? Adam McCormick 05:57, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Adam. Re-directs are alright before a disambiguation page is needed. They can cause problems with WikiLinking, but that is just something we are going to try and get around. A lot of school articles are going to have to be moved to implement this rule; when pages are moved they create re-directs automatically so there are going to be a lot that appear anyway. Camaron1 | Chris 16:53, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree, except that the disambiguation page might not always be located where the redirect page was. And that would be left up to the disambiguation project, but for example, there are Harding middle schools, high schools, elementary schools, all sorts of schools, and even within ones of the same level, there might be slight naming differences, so a disambig page might be located at a generic name that would apply to all Schools with the name Harding. The disambig project might want to make the common names redirect to the disambig page, but that's really not for this page. I'll make the changes now. Miss Mondegreen talk  06:34, May 11 2007

I added stuff for redirects. I don't know if tags have to be changed or if this has to be restructed to be proposed policy. Someone want to handle that? Miss Mondegreen talk  06:56, May 11 2007

The changes make sense to me. The existing tags seem alright too; this makes more sense as a guideline, not as a policy. The difference being that guidelines can be changed more easiley and are subject to more exceptions than policy. Camaron1 | Chris 13:04, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

exception for schools that already include their location in official school name

How would people feel about handling the whole university issue by excluding schools from adding a location qualifier, if their official name already includes their location.

This would deal with a large portion of universities, as well as lower level private schools and some of the public ones as well, especially in countries outside the United States

Just in case there are duplicates in any of these schools, these schools would an additional location qualifier in paranthesis if necessary.

So if two schools named The Apple Valley School of Performing Arts had articles, they'd both move to the following namespaces:

[[The Apple Valley School of Performing Arts (California)]]
[[The Apple Valley School of Performing Arts (Georgia)]]

and add a disambiguation page at:

[[The Apple Valley School of Performing Arts]].

That sound good? What about you university people? Miss Mondegreen talk  05:09, May 12 2007

what to do with the redirects?

Ok--so I finally moved University High School (Los Angeles) and all it's dry and sundry pages to University High School (Los Angeles, California).

This included moving:

• 2 categories
• 2 peer reviews
• 2 article pages
• 3 talk pages

and then fixing all of the links.

I did all of that, and once I moved everything over cat wise and made sure that nothing linked to the old shells of the cats, I put them up for speedy deletion.

But I'm left with a gazillion redirects. Almost none of the pages have anything linking to them. Some of them didn't to begin with, like archives. The rest, I was thorough, to the point of changing wikilinks in comments and archives--being sure to pipe them so that they looked exactly the same. Considering that the general goal is to either delete the redirect pages or have them point to a disambiguation page, I felt it was a bad idea for no one to have any idea what they were talking about.

Some of these redirect pages I feel very comfortable deleting right away--archive ones, and certain talk pages, etc. However I'm unaware of the consequences of removing a redirect page in cases like these Special:Whatlinkshere/List_of_notable_alumni_of_University_High_School_(Los_Angeles), and deleting is really very permanent. Does anyone think it might be a better idea to redirect all of these to the disambig page? (I can't see that working)

Ideally, the main namespace would stick around as a redirect to the disambig page and the others would be deleted (or, more boldly, all would), but before I make a move like this I just want to double check and make sure that there aren't any real reprecussions I haven't thought of. I see all of the reasons not to have these redirect pages--is there any reason to? Miss Mondegreen talk  09:58, May 12 2007

Beginning with the redlinks

Should we be proactive and start changing redlinked schools at disambig pages and stuff like Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/High schools? If we change redlinks which is simple and just requires a quick check at what links here, we make sure that new articles are created in the proper namespaces. Disambig pages, and lists like the missing encyclopedia lists have the location in text after the link most often, so it's really just going through and doing rote changing. Any opinions? Miss Mondegreen talk  08:19, May 13 2007

Sounds like agreat place to start. I'd say fixing red links should make following the convention easier for those not directly involved Adam McCormick 03:17, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Do you think we should put this on the todo list for wikiproject schools until a disambig page subproject is created?

Now that I've started to put this in motion at least with Uni High (la, ca), and I'm at the point where redirects have to be deleted or redirected to the disambig page, can you see any reason not to delete them? AFAIK, there is only one University High School (Los Angeles), but I'd never bet the farm on it and I we're talking seven redirect pages for one article--which I really don't like as nothing (minus bot records) currently link to those pages and leaving them around seems like an invitation to use them. Miss Mondegreen talk  09:55, May 14 2007

I think that there should be one page at "University High School (Los Angeles, California)" and one redirect/disambiguation page at "University High School" and that the rest should be deleted. Adam McCormick 13:00, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

That's what makes most sense to me to, and what the guideline says, but I just wanted to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything before I went ahead and started doing it. Miss Mondegreen talk  22:48, May 14 2007

consensus for guideline

do we have it? if not, what does it take to get it? last time this was around, it was guidelined with less consensus as far as i can tell. Miss Mondegreen talk  20:48, May 18 2007

I don't think there can ever be complete consensus, but at least as far as voices within the project are concerned, there seems to be agreement. Adam McCormick 05:10, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

so it's safe to delete the proposed tag? that's what happens next no? also, shortcut at WP:NC(SCH)? we agree that this is a good name for this convention even if we get full consensus from wiki project universities about the application of this to universities as well? Miss Mondegreen talk  06:43, May 19 2007

I think it's safe. The shortcut should be fine and perhaps we should do a bit of linking from other, similar guidelines so thatthis gets used for schools. Adam McCormick 07:13, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I would agree that consensus has been reached. Now, what needs to be done is a huge renaming of school articles on the encyclopedia - I have already started. Camaron1 | Chris 09:36, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Bold renaming

My interpretation of this guideline means I think The Petersfield School (Hampshire, England) and Sheet Primary School (Hampshire, England) are now named correctly, is that right? Camaron1 | Chris 10:01, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

erm, I think yes to the latter and I don't believe so to the former. It should be located at Petersfield School (Hampshire, England), no? Can't the article be named without the definite article? Miss Mondegreen talk  18:59, May 19 2007

The schools official name is The Petersfield School which is usually abeviated to TPS, all media I can find also refer to the school as The Petersfield School. Here are two examples: http://www.petersfieldschool.com/, http://www.petersfieldschool.com/Communications/Topics/2007-03/Topic_Issue_37-March_2007-Pg01.pdf. Hence, I think the current name is appropriate. Camaron1 | Chris 19:10, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Then just make sure it uses {{DEFAULTSORT}} Adam McCormick 21:50, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Does that mean that we're going with official school name and not common name? Miss Mondegreen talk  00:04, May 20 2007

No, in this case "The" is part of the most common name and the official name Adam McCormick 01:25, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is generally both. Default sort is already switched on. Camaron1 | Chris 09:25, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Re-direct deletion

After reading through recent RFD discussions I noticed old re-directs for school articles are been listed for deletion. I assume that this is because they are now incorrect parameters such as x school (Portsmouth) created by a move to x school (Portsmouth, Hampshire, England). So re-directs like y school created by a move to y school (Guildford, Surrey, England) would not be deleted unless they were replaced with a disambiguation page later on. I am saying this because listing every re-direct created by a school article move for deletion is not going to workable in the long run - judging by the huge amount of moves that will be required to implement this guideline. Camaron1 | Chris 13:48, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

No, those redirects are all right--they would turn into disambiguation pages, or possibly redirect to disambiguation pages later on if necessary. However name + parameter ones should be listed for deletion, as they are entirely arbitrary. First however, all "what links here" should be adjusted (except for bot records), to reflect the new parameter name. This will, for some articles probably include talk pages and archive pages, and so the best way to do this in these instances, is to pipe the links so that the appearance of what is written isn't changed. These are minor edits to talk page comments that are ok, because they preserve the readability of the text--the text still appears to be the same, and the link still goes to the same place. Use common sense though--look at the page. Not all links should be changed (for example listings of moves). Miss Mondegreen talk  19:03, May 19 2007

Yes, that is what I thought; thank you for your insight. Camaron1 | Chris 19:13, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Rfd

As per some recent Rfd debate I think it might be acceptable to allow redirrects from "School Name (Municipality)" to "School Name (Municipality, State/Region)" and that in cases where there are multiple schools of the same name within the same Municipality this should be a disamb page. I think this will avoid prolonged discussions in the future. Adam McCormick 23:16, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't, with one caveat.

If deletion of a redirect means breakage of old links in old versions of pages--the article is old and has been at that page for a long time and has a lot of things that link to it, and if no confusion will be caused by the keeping of a redirect--we should keep it, but still edit everything (minus bot records) to link to the new namespace. Just because a redirect can exist now doesn't mean it will be able to in the future.

Until someone raises a new issue about these redirects, that seems to be the ONLY reason to keep a parameter redirect. The article was here isn't a reason (though it's a good idea to wait around a week before listing the rfd so that people watch the new space), and the idea that people won't be able to find the new article doesn't make sense. Searching for "school name + parameter" will yeild the article anyway, and if we're talking about wiki newbies etc, even if they new enough to know to search for a parameter, the odds that they'd guess the right one are miniscule.

I'm going to edit the page to explain what circumstances redirects shouldn't be deleted under. And I welcome people to look carefully at the situation and see if we're missing anything, see if there are other situations where deleting a redirect would cause problems. Miss Mondegreen talk  23:37, May 19 2007

For the few cases where there are multiple schools in the same municipality with the same name (I believe NYC and Chicago have Catholic schools with same names) - We would have to figure out exactly how it should be disambiguated - Should it be "School Name (Borough/Community, City, State)" ? WhisperToMe 05:14, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Naming would be different in each scenario most likely. How places are named and divided are dealt with differ from country to country and within countries themselves. In these cases, we should look at the area closely, and at the schools. The schools probably release information and do so with general location information in addition to specific location information, and the location that they are associated with is probably our best bet. Miss Mondegreen talk  07:16, May 20 2007