Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 04:54, 21 February 2007

Opening comments

• Please re-read the "notes" section carefully. They contain meaningful content that may affect consensus votes.
• One or two weasel-words e.g. "resemble."
• Ummmm, OK if everyone else in the world thinks cheerleading competitions and band competitions have a whiff of notability, I can gracefully bow to the inevitable... if that's the case, I mean.
• "Province" or "regional"? Should wedefine those or link to a def? What about "county"? What about "surrounding two or three counties"? I mean.. there's room for interpretation.
• Not sure how significant the diffs are b/w this and original; if your only prob was the few things you changed, why didn't you say so?
• --Ling.Nut 00:55, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

They aren't the only problems I had. This is more inclusive than I would have ideally. And note that the change to the first criterion does change things a lot. Most schools that are kept "per WP:SCHOOLS" were kept under that condition. Under the newer form that's much more difficult. As to the other points, they are good and I will look at them in detail momentarily. JoshuaZ 02:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

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

Cognitive dissonance

Oh... I was experiencing Cognitive dissonance. --Ling.Nut 02:49, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Huh? JoshuaZ 02:57, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

That was supposed to be a joke. I have been accused of being cryptic before. I dunno why. I certainly understand myself. --Ling.Nut 03:01, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, you are being cryptic. I still don't get the joke. JoshuaZ 03:03, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

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

Notes still hosed

• Body has a 6, notes section has an 8, and the two don't match. I'd change it myself but I'm not sure which you wish to keep and which you don't.
• Will continue looking at it.--Ling.Nut 04:26, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, ok. If there are no more gross stupidities on my part or other issues, I'm going to wait until morning and then move it into Misplaced Pages space as a proposal and see what happens. JoshuaZ 04:32, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Re: deletion

This proposal could use a stronger clarification that the solution for articles that don't meet the criteria is not deletion. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

• This is already covered in WP:LOCAL which is included in the proposal. I think adding deletion would cause another vote that will not reach consensus. Vegaswikian 22:47, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
• WP:LOCAL supercedes this? Why are we doing this then? Suggest this page superceds WP:LOCAL for all and only the set of school articles. --Ling.Nut 22:57, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
• Agreed with Ling.Nut here. Also note that in practice WP:LOCAL isn't applied to schools much anyways (for that matter, WP:LOCAL seems to be almost completely ignored on AfD). JoshuaZ 00:40, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed as well, deletion is the central point to the entire discussion on schools. If we don't place the issue front and center, then nothing on this matter is going to improve. And this MUST improve, under the requirements for notability that most pro- add-every-school-in-existance wikipedians adheres to, the 7-11 down the street from my house qualifies for an article.

Yet at the same time, I do aknowledge the futility of this subject. Both factions are not going to form a consensus under the current conditions (see WP:SNOW}, and neither side seems particularly willing to compromise on the matter. Trusilver 00:58, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

So isn't the solution to the schools "problem" simply to apply WP:LOCAL more systematically? Verifiably expandable ("notable"?) articles to be kept separate, verifiable encyclopedic stubs with little potential for expansion to be merged into an appropriate target article. Articles with no verifiable encyclopedic content whatsoever ("School X is great") to be shot on sight, as usual. Poof! End of controversy. No need for instruction creep, or for diatribes against "schoolcrufters." No real need for AfD, in fact. We could just discuss, instead of voting. But maybe that wouldn't be so satisfying? -- Visviva 16:18, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment from an irregular

I only engage these discussions periodically, because of how pointless doing so is. I generally know the outcome will be no consensus, but believe the answer usually should be delete. It happens that I am engaged right now, and this looks a chance to actually establish meaningful standards. The ultimate test of a standard will be if both sides of the conflict can say, "yes, that is a reasonable place to draw the line."

One of my personal tests for coverage is whether or not a published source is local to the school. The local paper will, almost automatically, comment from time to time upon various issues that arise in the school districts in its publishing area. Such coverage, no matter how much of it piles up, does not constitute encyclopedic notability in my eyes. If there is coverage from outside the area, that is a stronger sign of notability. The example I've had on my user page for a few months is St. Charles East High School, which had the misfortune of becoming the poster example school for the mold crisis of a few years back. It was covered in the Chicago paper, but Chicago is the closest big city and is only 40 miles away, so that doesn't tell us much. The coverage it got in the national school specialty press, like this cover story is a lot more compelling evidence of notability.

As for notable alumni, I don't believe that this is a sufficient criteria. If for multiple notable alumni there were independent (of the school and of the alumni) coverage discussing the significance of the schooling on what they did to become notable, that would be worth having an article on the school. On the other hand, , , and show that three notable people went to Gosforth High School, but don't say anything at all about the school. So these sources are of no help in writing an article about the school that adheres to our fundamental policy. In the case of biographical subjects, we don't consider being married to someone notable enough reason to have a seperate article on the spouse if there is no coverage primarily about the spouse. Marriages are a lot more intimate, influential, and normally long lasting than any individual's time at a school. So I can't see why notability by association would be legitimate for schools but not for people. GRBerry 03:45, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The notability conferred by alumni is more because I want this to have some chance of getting acceptance and without that clause in it the chance is close to zero. As for your observation about coverage having to be from outside the local area- this seems highly reasonable to me and would again be reflected in what it would have were this my opinion on what we should include and not an attempt at a compromise. I think the restrictions on news coverage already added goes a fair way to making the news coverage criterion more reasonable. JoshuaZ 03:52, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems like a good start

As a school deletionist, I must say that I am rather pleased with this proposal. My only reservations so far:

• Criterion 4- Some further explanation/examples should be provided regarding the "significant awards or commendations have been bestowed upon the school or its staff".
• Criterion 5- I am very reluctant to accept this criterion. I believe that notable alumni/staff should only grant notability to their respective schools if there are notable achievements carried out by these people related with the school itself.

Anyway this proposal seems promising. Good work.--Húsönd 03:59, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

• Again, I'm in agreement there but the inclusion simply of 3 notable alumni was meant as part of what I see as the necessary compromise that will need to occur with the inclusionists. However, Vegaswikian has just made it more exclusive a long the lines that you and others have suggested so we'll see what happens. JoshuaZ 05:55, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I see. Although I think that a compromise is necessary between deletionists and inclusionists (many of them would have to relinquish the "all schools are inherently notable" principle, and I'm skeptical about that), I still think that criterion #5 will grant notability to many schools that do not deserve inclusion . If this criterion is approved then I foresee the following situation: Madonna, Mel Gibson and the Dalai Lama happened to attend the same middle school. That is mentioned on their articles, but someone decides to create an article for the middle school using criterion #5 as an excuse. The article would mention that Madonna, Mel Gibson and the Dalai Lama attended the school (redundancy), and then proceed with the entire curricula of the school, non-notable teachers/janitors/alumni/mascots, the constant vandalism, poor format, etc, etc, etc... the wikitrash is back. :-/ --Húsönd 14:56, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
    • But where is the problem? There will be school article that will only contain list of one notable alumni. All other information cannot be included, unless reliable source is cited and thus criterion one fulfilled. --Jan.Smolik 15:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
      • The problem is that such lists are useless and have no encyclopædic content. The proper place for that information is the website of the respective school, not Misplaced Pages.--Húsönd 17:02, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
      • I see that criterion 5 has been modified. Thumbs up, I think everything's okay now (apart from criterion 4, which could be more specific).--Húsönd 17:04, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
        • The fact that the school is notable enough to have an article does not mean that every information about school is notable. Only information from reliable sources can be included. Therefore if only information from reliable sources is that school had a notable alumni, the article will be very short. One sentence. It is not unencyclopedic it is just short (or empty and deletable per db-empty). --Jan.Smolik 19:01, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
          • I agree with that. But what I verify is that school articles are among the favorite prey for vandals and are extremely prone for inclusion of irrelevant material such as the thorough description of all the bathrooms in a school (veridic). I believe that thousands of short articles of little use do not compensate for all the work they represent to RC patrollers.--Húsönd 19:19, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

One criterion

• Can someone give an example of a school that passes criteria 2, 3 and 4 but not 1? Perhaps those three should be eliminated, or used as examples instead?
• As for #5, if three notable people graduated from Nanny Miss's Preschool, would that make it notable by default? I don't like the sound of that. Why is this criterion necessary? Fagstein 05:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I had just tweeked this criteria. Does the new version work better? Vegaswikian 05:53, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The addition of criterion 5 was because many inclusionists seem to think that notable alumni are enough and there was some attempt at compromise. Vegas actually just modified it to be somewhat more restrictive (possibly too much to make the more inclusionist editors happy). The main inclusion of criteria 2,3 and 4 wasn't for any really good reason other than I guess that I was using the old proposal as a template. I wouldn't be surprised if one can find a school that meets one of those but not condition 1 but it would probably take some effort. I wouldn't object to their removal. JoshuaZ 05:54, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll toss in my agreement that Criterion #5 (having notable alumni) should be kept. --Elonka 07:29, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

We definitely need a succinct policy as to which schools are considered notable. I presume that Karl May School qualifies. --Ghirla 11:47, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Strictly speaking criterium (1) is only one we really need for all articles and we do not need any notability guidelines. If there is enough independent reliable sources about subject we can have article about it without breaking our NPOV policies and we do not need to care about notability. However, when somebody starts article it is sometimes difficult to decide whether those sources exists. Especially newbees but also many regular editors do not include their sources (and especially for stubs). Therefore I think that criteria (2) - (5) help select schools that will probably have enough sources about them. Indeed in long term the article can be kept only if it is sourced and fulfils criterium (1).

I would like to note that I am against including high school articles to Misplaced Pages as I personally think that 99 % of them is not notable. Even if they fulfill these criteria. But if somebody is willing to improve those articles and keep them NPOV, free of insults and vandalism, I am not going to defend them. However if I see a vandalism in a high school article in Recent Changes I am not going to bother reverting it. Having said that I want to express my support to this guideline. At least it gives some restrictions on the quality of the articles and does not allow for inclusion of information of current unnotable pupils and other unverifiable and uninteresting information. --Jan.Smolik 15:53, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Re: #5

(cross-posted from the talk page of the other school proposal) This proposal is far, far, far better, WITH THE GLARING EXCEPTION of the "notable alumni" clause. For the thousandth time, due to the nature of schools (they see thousands upon thousands of students over the years, and everyone has to go to some school), ALMOST EVERY SCHOOL THAT HAS EVER EXISTED CAN BOAST NOTABLE ALUMNI. I would !vote for this proposal if not for this clause, but with it in place, I would never support this proposed guideline. -- Kicking222 14:30, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, well Vegaswikian tightened that part up a lot so that there notability needs to be tied in some way to the school. Does that help matters? JoshuaZ 15:53, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Also note that even with the version before Vegaswikian modified it, the restriction to multiple alumni rather than a single one will substantially reduce the use of this clause to what I think might be unfortunate but arguablly acceptable levels. JoshuaZ 15:56, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The sentence "The school has notable alumni or staff... from their activity at the school" is incredibly vague, and does not make much sense. Also, though the word "alumni" is used, I think it should be specifically noted that the guideline requires alumni as opposed to a single alumnus. Too often, the singular is confused with the plural. -- Kicking222 16:14, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, the tightened up version from Vegaswikian is a definite improvement here. I'm going to reword in an attempt to make the current meaning clearer as "has alumni or staff that because of their activity at the school are notable enough to meet a biographical inclusion guideline like WP:BIO or WP:MUSIC." This may be too tight for the inclusionists, (either in my rewording or the current form of "has notable alumni or staff (e.g. would qualify for an article under WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC or some other inclusion guideline) from their activity at the school.") But I don't see how to loosen it up while still meeting my concerns that it not loosen to the point of affiliations that are not discussed in reliable sources more than trivially. Since I can't see a viable looser position, I'll wait until somebody else has a good idea. GRBerry 16:20, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The obvious looser position would be "multiple alumni who are notable per WP:BIO or another notability criterion. However, this seems to be much too loose for most non-inclusionists. It seems to me like it might be a reasonable compromise but without input from the inclusionists we can't be that sure. JoshuaZ 16:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Frankly, as an inclusionist, I'm more interested in what happens to the schools that don't meet the criteria than the specific nature of the criteria. Particularly, what happens when a school article is verifiable but fails to meet this criterion? If the article is to be deleted, then this proposal is unacceptable in my view. The proposal needs to establish that deletion of verifiable articles is discouraged, and that articles which don't meet these criteria typically shouldn't be taken to AFD. How articles that fail to meet the criteria are handled is the most important question in understanding how this proposal would play out in practice, and it needs additional attention within this proposal. Christopher Parham (talk) 17:12, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

That can be presumably left open to the individual AfDs. I would naively presume that when the article has a lot of material it will be merged and where it has nothing more than basic statistics it will be deleted. That seems consistent with the description given here. What precisely would you prefer? JoshuaZ 17:18, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

If the proposal doesn't address the major locus of dispute (i.e. whether or not to delete school stubs) then it is useless, and we don't need more useless policy. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:24, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT Christopher, everything you just said is just equal to "keep all schools." There are tons of things I could write articles on with completely verified info that would still not meet notability requirements. You're saying nohting more than EVERYTHING verifiable should be kept, which is irrational. Of course, if something is unverifiable, it should be deleted- whether it's a school or anything else, that's one of the core policies of Misplaced Pages. But your idea is that the only guideline should be verifiability, and I cannot stand for that. -- Kicking222 17:51, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Can you show me an example of unnotable that is covered in multiple reliable sources? And I mean realiable, not some local media or webzine, that publish anything they receive withou verifying it. Of course, often you will be able to write an article, but it will be only few sentences long. BTW: do you have to shout? :) --Jan.Smolik 18:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

We had an AfD a few days ago of a school where we didn't have anything really notable other than that two notable athletes had gone to the school. Both of the athletes school-associations were reported in multiple reliable sources about the athletes. JoshuaZ 18:10, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Obviously, I think that verifiable information on schools ought to be included in Misplaced Pages. This is the position of most school inclusionists, and it is de facto our standard practice. I see no reason to support a policy that would result in such information being lost, because such a policy would clearly be worse than the status quo. As a practical matter, insistence that verifiable material on schools be deleted is a poison-pill. The reasonable middle ground is to agree that material be included while settling on an organizational scheme that reduces the number of "non-notable" school stubs to a level that "deletionists" can accept. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:24, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Part of the issue is that many "deletionists" consider not all verifiable information to be notable. To use a non-school example. In many locations birth-certificates are open to the public and thus easily pass as verifiable facts that certain people were born at certain times. Indeed, combining with marriage-certificates and other public documents one could easily make a sort bio about most people from developed nations. However, that information is not-notable by itself. The "deletionists" see a lot of the school information in a similar fashion. JoshuaZ 19:22, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Obviously, that school of thought exists and is quite common. My point was simply that if you insist on this position, you will never produce a broadly acceptable proposal (with the probable result that we will continue to keep effectively all school articles). I think that most "inclusionists" would be thoroughly willing to set limits, even fairly strict ones, on what schools should have independent articles. What most inclusionists wouldn't accept is the deletion of articles that don't meet those standards. If the goal of this proposal is to delete articles that don't meet the standards, as it currently appears from some of the comments above, then in my view it will quite obviously fail. On the other hand, if it is made explicitly clear that school articles should not be deleted under these criteria and that they are not deletion criteria, then I imagine that this proposal will find fairly widespread support among inclusionists. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:39, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Given that, I don't think consensus is ever going to be reached since we have substantial minorities who are unwilling to budge on this issue. I have to say that I would have hoped that inclusionists would be willing to compromise somewhat on this matter if it only ended up involving a small fraction of the schools in question. JoshuaZ 01:10, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm certainly not particularly optimistic about any formal consensus being reached on this issue. I think it's more likely that our de facto policy will simply grow more entrenched as additional thousands of school articles are added to Misplaced Pages. Eventually, written policy may catch up to our practices. As to your last point, it doesn't seem reasonable to expect people to endorse a policy change that, in their view, will simply worsen the quality of the encyclopedia with no benefits. Christopher Parham (talk) 01:27, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Under the current system occasional schools are deleted in a somewhat haphazard fashion. This would a) make that less haphazzard and b) reduce the acrimony c) allow school inclusionists to spend less time arguing on AfDs and more time building school articles. JoshuaZ 08:42, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Comments on merger

• In response to Chris Parham, I would like to point out an attempt about a year ago to compromise on merging some of the more trivial school stubs. Would that be a reasonable solution? >Radiant< 12:27, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Personally I am really totally indifferent to merging so long as redirects are maintained and no useful content is lost. So I have no objection to a proposal for merging, as long as it worked reasonably well with existing guidelines like WP:SUMMARY. As I said a few comments above, I don't think there is any other viable compromise, because it makes no sense for any "inclusionists" to agree to a policy that would result in the systematic exclusion of schools. Christopher Parham (talk) 14:18, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Maybe we should take a page from Misplaced Pages:Candidates and elections, at least with respect to US public schools and Canadian public and separate schools: first create an article about the school district in which information about each school could be included. This would reduce the number of substub school articles. Of course, ti wouldn't solve the problem for private schools and schools in countries that don't organize their school systems in US/Canadian style districts and wouldn't reduce the concerns that we were creating directories. JChap2007 01:36, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Criterion #4

Much thanks to Joshua for his work on this and attempts to reach compromise. I have one question on criterion #4. A national award given to a school would satisfy it. Also certain state awards depending on the number of schools that received the award. I would suggest trying to make this more specific. Does anyone have any ideas? JChap2007 19:32, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I've seen one national award in an AFD recently that appears to be given to 320 middle schools in the U.S. per year, and was a bare listing of the award and the school. It was also given by an awarding body that I'd never heard of. So maybe the right way to limit this issue is, instead of measuring national/state, use the language that WP:WEB does "a well known and independent award, either from a publication or organisation." It still leaves potential discussion about whether a particular award is adequate, but uses language that is working in another topical area. They go on to give examples in a footnote. I don't see any obvious examples to use from Category:Awards, which is troubling for the criteria, but solvable by asking the Wikiproject. GRBerry 20:31, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. JoshuaZ 21:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I think my concern about this is best presented in an example: Spotlight, Academic Improvement and Excellence Awards are very well-known in Illinois. However, they were awarded to 683 schools in the state last year. I would think that the award would have to be prestigious enough to generate non-trivial news coverage. JChap2007 23:56, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps another phrasing, then. How about, to borrow from criterion #3: "Significant awards or commendations that are not common awards have been bestowed upon the school or its staff. Note that the test for this is that there exist multiple, non-trivial independent reliable sources covering the award." The RS test ensures that the award has been covered in news media or similar. And yes, this sort of places it under criterion #1, again, but to my mind, that's the best standard in any case. Shimeru 08:37, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, that wording wouldn't necessarily put it in under criterion 1 since that only specifies that the award has been covered, not that the award in the context of the school has been covered. That may be overly broad. JoshuaZ 08:41, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Hm... you're right, as far as staff are concerned. (The grant of an award to a school is pretty self-evidently in the context of the school.) But I think if multiple staff members have been granted such noteworthy awards, the school would already pass under criterion 5, anyway. The sticking point might be, again, determining whether the award were itself trivial. Shimeru 10:14, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and asked at the talk page for the Wikiproject. There has been thus far a minimal level of discussion there, but it is enough now to be worth linking to, if not yet enough to take an answer from. The discussion is at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Schools#School Awards. GRBerry 15:31, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Alumni?

I fail to see the point of criterion five. Just like having a famous child does not (generally) make the parents notable, having had famous pupils does not (generally) make a school more interesting. Most articles on celebrities don't even mention what school they went to. Articles should stand on their own. >Radiant< 12:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Again, the original point of it was to add some general keep criteria that would make the more inclusionist editors happy. Presence of notable alumns does seem to be frequently cited as a keep reason for AfDs. Personally, if we can get a consensus that has a few extra schools being kept as a result (do to things like alumni) if it means getting consensus I'd be inclined to be in favor of it. JoshuaZ 02:30, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

It does? Please give an example or two of a school that has had famous alumni and does not fall under any of the other criteria. >Radiant< 13:23, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Most primary schools (and kindergartens, nurseries, ...) where some notable person has gone to school (excluding major celebrities: I can imageine the primary school of Bill Gates having had extra attention for that fact, but I doubt that Fuchun Primary School will have had many extra verifiable sources because its association with Ivan Hong Dian Jie, or (to take a more famous alumnus) Grove Primary School, Belfast has many reasons to be included, even though Kenneth Branagh is an alumnus. Or perhaps Belmont Secondary School, which has multiple famous alumni, but seems hard-pressed to be included under any of the other criteria (80 distinct Google hits isn't proof, but it is perhaps a good indication of the lack of coverage). I think a better case can be made for criterium 4 being superfluous: if it is truly a major award for the school, then there has to be coverage beyond a passing mention. But in the case of alumni, most of the sources will just say that "after going to this primary school, this secondary school, ... celebrity X started doing what we are here to tell you about". This is the kind of source that shows that there is a notable alumnus, but which doesn't count as passing criterium 1 since it is only a mention in passing. Fram 13:57, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

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

An exerpt from a comment I posted on Misplaced Pages talk:Schools: "If an alumnus is notable for academic work, then I think his/her secondary school would be notable, but I'm not so sure about an elementary school. If the person became notable before or during her attendance at the school (i.e. royalty), then ... um, probably the school, no matter what level, is notable. (Have to think about that one.) Otherwise, if the person is notable for reasons unrelated to their attendance, then it would have to depend on multiple independent non-trivial coverage of the connection (mere school records would not be sufficient, IMO)." Xtifr _tälk 07:08, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think even the secondary school would be notable in that case (though the post-secondary might). But I suspect that this is one of the places where we'll need to compromise to reach consensus. Personally, I'd be fine with removing the criterion entirely, under the reasoning that if the school were that important to the notable alumnus's... notability... then there would already exist multiple independent reliable sources saying so. Shimeru 09:18, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Time for a rumble?

Now that we have an alternative proposal, how 'bout we have the two alternatives WP:SCHOOLS and WP:SCHOOLS3 offered to the masses for a face off and see which one wins a majority as a consensus guideline. Given the narrow group that has worked on Schools3, it has far less credibility than the original, regardless of the failure of the original proposal to reach agreement. Several of the criteria have been worded so narrowly -- especially the unintelligible criterion 5 re alumni and efforts to sharply restrict the general Misplaced Pages standards on non-trivial coverage in criterion 1, combined with complete removal of a number of the WP:SCHOOLS criteria -- that this proposal may be unlikely to win over any of the supporters of the original WP:SCHOOLS, without gaining the full support of those opposed to it. Alansohn 02:23, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• Charming suggestion. I would rush to point out that voting is evil and that if neither has a consensus then it doesn't make sense to make them face off. Furthermore, this one is still a work in progress. JoshuaZ 02:28, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with you. This proposal is still being developed. It will be a proposed guideline for a while. This is not a contest with another proposal, but an attempt to achive consensus in a difficult area. Lets not be forced to formally decide if we have a consensus here until we feel ready. Vegaswikian 02:58, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
• "Let's put my favourite, more inclusionist, proposal against this more deletionist one right now. The winner becomes the guideline. Oh, and mine wins because yours is still very new and thus has not had so many contributors." Is that a fair summary of your suggestion, Alansohn? As for the restriction of the general[REDACTED] standards on non-trivial coverage: local newspapers are almost never accepted as non-trivial coverage, or else we should include every sporting event, concert, fair, ... "The yearly fleamarket of Smallville-upon-Tweed was a great success, with 50 sellers and more than a thousand visitors. In an unlucky incident, the vicar's wife broke her ankle, but a merry day was had by all others". Hey, it's in the paper, let's turn it into an article! Coverage in local newspapers = trivial coverage. If something is covered in large, reputable newspapers (or books, ...), then the coverage in a local newspaper can be used as an additional source, to give more detail or so. But to accept subjects (any subjects) because they are covered, even regularly, in local newspapers, is similar to dropping all restrictions and saying that WP:BIO and WP:CORP are equally invalid because they are more strict than an inclusionist interpretation of WP:V allows. Fram 09:34, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Our Misplaced Pages:Verifiability policy, in all of its three main incarnations, says nothing about excluding local newspapers, and rightly so. The important qualities of newspaper sources are that they have names and reputations for accuracy and fact checking that can be consulted, and that several (at least two people) are involved in a process of review prior to publication. Those qualities are not determined by whether a newspaper is local or national. Uncle G 15:19, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Right now we have many of the same people who denigrate WP:SCHOOL using the barely developed, minimally discussed WP:SCHOOLS3 article as a basis for justifying deletions. Unlike the many deletionists who post AFDs for article just hours or days old, I am more than willing to allow this alternative proposal an adequate opportunity to develop. Furthermore, SCHOOLS3 was not developed on a tabula rasa, but was developed by cutting, pasting and modifying the original SCHOOLS proposal, and shouldn't need too much time to be completed. I agree that there are many articles in local publications that would not meet the "non-trivial coverage" aspect of criterion 1. However, as drafted by JoshuaZ and others, and based on your wording of its meaning, huge swathes of coverage will be eliminated, solely because the newspaper it appears in is not sufficiently national in coverage. As I have constructively suggested, Some definition must be developed to define what qualifies as "non-trivial", and the proposal as it exists now is a non-starter. Which publications would be included? I'm not proposing a more inclusionist version of the coverage requirements of WP:BIO, WP:CORP and WP:V; I'm merely suggesting that the actual wording of these universally-accepted Misplaced Pages guidelines are far more inclusive than the deletionist-targeted narrow version proposed here. It's amazing what is acceptable when one actually follows what the relevant Misplaced Pages policies say, and not what people insist they have to mean. I strongly encourage expanding this SCHOOLS3 concept into something that might actually appeal to some of those who favor the original SCHOOLS guidelines. Pick the amount of time needed and let's see put it to participants to see which alternative can demonstrate the greatest consensus, and agree that we will all accept the chosen option. Other than that, we will see more of this nonsensical rejection of use of WP:SCHOOLS while others are simultaneously appealing to a WP:SCHOOLS3 standard that has made only the barest attempts at being a consensus guideline. Alansohn 17:28, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Disagree. At the moment, I don't think it makes sense for anyone to really be citing either this or WP:SCHOOLS but I agree that discussion about criterion 1 does need to occur. JoshuaZ 17:48, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Discussion about this criterion 1 certainly does. It's different to the primary notability criteria everywhere else. Uncle G 15:19, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
    • This is not a 'deletionist-targeted' proposal! It is an attempt to find a middle ground that consensus can develop around. It is an attempt to 'actually appeal to some of those who favor the original SCHOOLS guidelines' since they need to be a part of any consensus. The problem is that consensus needs to find a middle ground, probably at a place were many editors are not happy. If we include too many concepts from the previous proposal, then this one will fail for the same reasons. Yes, editors have been using this in AfD, but other editors have been using the previous propsal in AfD forever. The bottom line is that we need to reach consensus. This proposal seems to be moving forward so lets try to keep it moving to a point where it can reach consensus. Vegaswikian 19:44, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Alansohn, many inclusionists refer to the discredited WP:SCHOOLS proposal when discussing their reasons to keep. What is different? Yes, it's a couple of months older -- but consensus was not reached, so it's no more valid than this proposal is, on its face. Yes, this one clearly needs further refinement -- but it's obviously more attractive to some than WP:SCHOOLS, or they wouldn't be referring to it. The point here is not to put this up against WP:SCHOOLS in some bizarre contest; it's to take it and adjust it in the hopes of finding a better consensus on methods for determining the notability of schools. Right now, WP:SCHOOLS is far more inclusive than the equivalent policies covering biographies, bands, corporations, etc., and there are many of us who see no reason it should be so. By the same token, it shouldn't be significantly more strict than those guidelines. But "let's vote and discard the loser" is not the appropriate way to reach a consensus -- I would be very surprised indeed if the losing side (and I'm not so certain that would be the "deletionist" side) simply gave up. No, what's needed is a compromise both sides can live with, though probably neither will be truly happy with it. Shimeru 22:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Wrong on several counts. WP:SCHOOLS is not discredited, and Alansohn has already explained that the primary criterion in WP:SCHOOLS is the same as WP:BIO, WP:CORP, WP:WEB, et al.. It is largely the same wording.

        It is this proposal that employs a criterion that is different from all of the others, not WP:SCHOOL. And the reason that it does so is that a small minority of editors are wholly ignoring the word "multiple" in the primary criterion of WP:SCHOOLS, WP:BIO, WP:CORP, et al. and are arguing against employing reliable, independent, in-depth, sources such as government reports because it is a convenient disguise for an old "stuck record" argument. Editors should discard the "stuck record" arguments, disguised or otherwise, and focus upon sources. The only reason put forward for discarding these published works that are detailed, published, reliable, and from sources independent of their subjects is, in summary, that "we end up with a lot of articles". That argument doesn't wash for towns, whose notability is demonstrated by the fact that they are the subjects of government reports (e.g. census reports) as well as local histories, local news coverage, and so forth, and it doesn't wash here.

        A very few editors are also making the false assertion that "every school is the subject of a government report". This is demonstrably false. There's a ready example of a school with no government report given by JzG on Misplaced Pages talk:Schools, and a few such schools have come up at AFD over the past month or so. This fundamental error has been pointed out several times, now.

        That this proposal is different to all of the other notability criteria (whereas WP:SCHOOL is, in contrast, the same), and attempts to exclude perfectly acceptable sources because of a wholly erroneous premise and as a proxy for a different argument altogether, makes it a bad proposal. Uncle G 15:19, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

        • In some (most?) countries, every accredited school (and nurseries, kindergartens, ...) have official government inspection reports. In some (most?) countries and regions, every restaurant (after a minimal time of existence of course) has official inspection reports by government agencies. As I have debated at length in a recnt school AfD, these are published as well (just like the school reports). Still, if someone wanting to have a non notable restaurant included would point to these inspection reports as evidence that the restaurant meets WP:CORP, he would be laughed away (or hopefully gently shown that he or she is wrong), even though it would fit the letter of the guideline. So, Uncle G, do you propose that we include every restaurant that has official inspection reports (for the US, e.g. accessible through this site), or do you agree that inspection reports can be disregarded as trivial (other options may be given as well of course, I'm not trying to create a false dilemma, just trying to show the untenable position you seem to have)? Fram 15:55, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
          • The untenable position is yours. In your very first sentence you repeat yet again a canard that is demonstrably false, and base your argument upon it. Moreover, accepting government reports as published works that go towards demonstrating the notability of cities, towns, and villages and not accepting such reports for schools is inconsistent.

            Finally, I suggest that you actually read some of these restaurant reports that you are using to support your argument. They don't support your argument at all. I've just looked up KEANI-EAST MCDONALDS, 1900 W SLAUSON AVE, LOS ANGELES, CA 90047 in the Los Angeles list. The report comprises solely a bare table of violation codes and a bare table of dates and grades. There's no prose content in the report at all. It's hardly an in-depth document. It's not even a whole page. Depth is what the triviality qualification is all about, as WP:SCHOOL clearly states and as this proposal gets entirely wrong. For comparison, the reports on schools that you are erroneously asserting to be on an equal footing with this restaurant report are tens of pages of detailed prose. The one linked to from Sidney Stringer School, for example, is 49 pages of detailed prose discussing a wide range of aspects of the subject, in 193 sections. To say that both are trivial, and to assert that to accept the latter is to accept the former, is to completely fail to understand the triviality qualification.

            Your argument appears to be based not only on the aforementioned canard, but upon not actually looking at the reports that you are suggesting are non-trivial published works. I strongly suggest actually looking. You'll find that your argument, and this entire proposal, is built on an completely erroneous foundation. WP:SCHOOL explains what triviality is about. That this proposal, in contrast, gets it wholly wrong is a reason to reject this proposal. Uncle G 02:58, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

            • First, saying that something is a canard doesn't make it so. So you are claiming that there are absolutely no countries where every accredited school has an inspection report? Bizarre... And then, you are changing the goalposts. First, inspection reports were enough. Now at once, they have to be lengthy and in prose. Why? Facts are facts, no matter if they are bulleted or in longer sentences. The inspection report of a restaurant (and there are often a whole series of them) shows existence, and is independent coverage. From WP:V: "Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Reliable: check. Third party: check. Published: check. Fact-checking: check. Accuracy: check. I don't see a mention of prose, length, ... There is nothing in WP:V about any of your sudden requirements: what you rry to do is crete an arbitrary rule. No problem with that, but then be upfront about it instead of trying to act as if I made some terrible error against WP:V by including food inspection reports. You consider them non trivial because they are more lengthy and detailed: I consider them trivial because they are mandatory and don't indicate notability of any specific school, even though they of course provide information. It is because these things are not clear cut that we try to develop a guideline. No need to attack the person presenting his arguments or to falsely attack the arguments themselves. 06:28, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
              • No-one has attacked you. And no-one has put forward an example of such a country. (Your URL doesn't work, by the way. So what point it was intended to make is lost.) It's certainly untrue for the United Kingdom, the only country that editors have asserted has an inspection report for every school. There was a U.K. school at AFD only last month that had no inspection report.

                No, the goalposts have not changed. "non-trivial" has always been a part of the PNC. It's you who asserted that "inspection reports were enough". This is your straw man — no-one else's. I just expended 3 paragraphs pointing out to you that government inspection reports are not necessarily non-trivial, and here you are still asserting that all government inspection reports are non-trivial. Once again, with emphasis: You are getting triviality wrong. These proposed criteria get triviality wrong. It's clearly explained what triviality is in WP:SCHOOL and our other notability criteria, which differ from these proposals. The only reason that you think that the goalposts have changed is that your idea of what they actually were was wrong in the first place.

                Furthermore, these are not "sudden requirements". These requirements have been part of notability criteria, in one form or another, for years, now. I also point out that verifiability is not notability, and that we are discussing proposed notability criteria on this talk page. Uncle G 20:03, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

• As I recently said at Misplaced Pages talk:Schools#Consensus?, "You'll know you have consensus for a guideline when both "keep" and "delete" opinions refer to it and the disagreement is about whether the article meets the guideline, not about whether the guideline is relevant." GRBerry 04:46, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
  • • • • • • • • You have attacked me by repeatedly saying that I haven't read or even looked at things I'm discussing, which is patently untrue and is a weak effort to discredit my arguments by trying to make me look uninformed. From above (and there is more in another section): "I suggest that you actually read some of these restaurant reports" and "Your argument appears to be based not only on the aforementioned canard, but upon not actually looking at the reports that you are suggesting are non-trivial published works. I strongly suggest actually looking. ". Then, back to the argument: you said above that "arguing against employing reliable, independent, in-depth, sources such as government reports because it is a convenient disguise for an old "stuck record" argument." I said that this isn't true, I'm arguing against government reports because they are trivial (as evidenced by the fact that they don't distinguish between schools, being used for all schools in some countries and by most schools in some other countries (which you have not shown to be a canard that is demontsrably false: you have shown that in the UK, not every school has a government report, which I have not denied or contradicted)). I asked that, if you consider government reports as WP:V sources, you would also include all restaurants that have an official inspection report. This was the logical conclusion of you argument. You then shifted the goalposts by adding that school reports are in prose and lengthy, and that that somehow implied WP:V. I can't find anything in WP:V that distinguished between short bulleted reports and long prose reports, so you are just desperately trying to fix the criterion so that schools are included while other things like restaurants are excluded. I have not used a straw-man, I have taken the logocal conclusion of your argument and shown that it is untenable. But it doesn't matter anymore, it is rather clear that no consensus is possible here, so I'll continue merging non notable schools where possible, and supporting their deletion when they come up on AfD, using common sense and my interpretation of the policies instead of some never ending discussion and not accepted guideline effort. This is such a waste of time, only to include extremely non-informative and banal articles which are utterly useless. Fram 08:44, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Criterion 1

People may want to read Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/David Brearley High School and the discussion there about criterion 1. The criterion may need to be modified and/or made more explicit precisely what counts. JoshuaZ 16:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Criterion 1 is all that is needed. Why the other criteria?

If a school meets criterion 1, then they are worthy of a[REDACTED] article. Criteria 2+ only serve 2 purposes:

1. They are reduntant to criterion 1 (for example, schools with unique programs to the level that such programs appear in reliable sources already meet criterion 1)
2. They overextend notability beyond what will allow us to write an extensive, well referenced article about the school in question. This is the whole POINT of notability: If a subject does not meet notability, it does not have enough reliable sources to make good references for a good article. (for example, a school may win a national award, but such an award may not merit more than a single passing 1 line mention in a single newspaper article about the award ceremony? Kind of a flimsy thing to build an entire article on).

So again I ask, why include all of the other criteria??? The extra criteria in OTHER notability guidelines (for example, in WP:CORP) are there for a very specific reason to solve a unique problem and are narrowly included. For example, the requirement that all corps that are members of a notable stock index (like the DOW) that are not otherwise notable exists SOLELY to for the completeness of the article about the stock index, not for any other reason. It is a unique problem that cannot be adequately addressed by the Criterion 1, and so is there, But it is a narrowly defined solution to a unique problem. Does[REDACTED] consider the North Dakota State High School Division AA Men's Field Hockey Tournament to be a notable competition? If not, then why do schools that win it become notable by extension? Most high schools DO recieve substancial press in reliable sources, and so become notable by that standard, BUT we cannot assume they will recieve that coverage simply because they meet an arbitrary criterion we set. This entire guideline should be reduced to 1 statement:

1. The school has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the school itself.

All other criteria are redundant(and are unnecessary) or in violation of this statement (and thus plainly wrong) and so must go. --Jayron32 05:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Schools are no more or less special than anything else in Misplaced Pages, and should follow the standard notability criteria. No free passes. Fagstein 07:39, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

And that will result in a no consensus decision. The goal here is to try and reach consensus. Vegaswikian 07:44, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know that I agree with that; I think it could easily reach consensus with the criteria being #1 only. It all depends on what these are criteria for. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:56, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, it might be worth a try. Criterion 1 is the most important of the lot, as coverage by multiple independent reliable sources generally shows the school's done (or been) something noteworthy. I suspect the point of contention would be what counted as valid sources -- mandatory inspections like OFSTED, local coverage of regular activities such as athletics or musical/dramatic performances, and directories really shouldn't, as they say nothing more than that the school exists and functions as a school. Focusing on defining valid vs. trivial sources should perhaps be our priority here. Shimeru 10:04, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Reliable sources could include ANY published edited newspaper, I would think. The size of the circulation is irrelevant. If the source undergoes any editorial process, it should count. Most schools end up qualifying ANYWAYS. Consider the following, and see which would be covered by a local or regional paper in something resembling indepth coverage:

1. School plays in a state championship sporting event
2. School scores well (or poorly) on the SAT or other standardized test
3. Teachers at the school are in a contract dispute
4. School has lots of fights
5. Fire in the science lab
6. a human interest story on top teachers or students from the school
7. a history of the school and its founding

While any ONE of these would not necessarily qualify a school as notable, then entire set taken as a whole SHOULD make it qualify. Most schools receive this kind of coverage in the press all the time, and such become quite notable, simply by the Primary Notability Criterion. WP:RS as a guideline does NOT restrict it to national coverage, the fact that these stories are published in an edited newspaper is all that is needed. The fact that nearly EVERY aspect of the school is part of the public discourse (student performance, teacher performance, athletics, extra curriculars, history, etc.) would make it notable. --Jayron32 16:59, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

If you insist.

1. No. A national championship, though, certainly. A state championship, I would want to see something more than local coverage for. The question is whether it is of wider interest, or purely local interest.
2. No. Not unless scores are truly exceptional in one direction or the other. Nearly every student takes such a test, and most scores are, not surprisingly, within a few hundred points of average, so such scores are trivial. Also, individuals with exceptionally high scores (not so much low scores) tend to attract blurbs, but if the school is for the most part average, these individuals' scores clearly do not reflect the quality of the school itself.
3. No, unless the dispute has attracted wider attention. Local news is not sufficient. Encyclopedias do not cover every dispute or strike.
4. No, unless the fights have attracted wider attention. Local news is not sufficient. Encyclopedias do not cover every altercation.
5. No, unless the fire has attracted wider attention. Local news is not sufficient. Encyclopedias do not cover every fire.
6. In local news, this is likely a puff-piece. Sometimes they are even written by people associated with the school, which means they are not independent sources.
7. Yes. An in-depth story on the school's history or founding is exactly the sort of thing local sources are good for. Even better if it's in a publication of wider interest, of course.

As you say, most schools receive the first six types of coverage in local media frequently. That's why they're trivial sources. Just like mandatory government inspection reports are. Their existence does not indicate that the school is notable on more than a purely local level, and a purely local level is not sufficient to support a full article. (It is, however, sufficient to support a mention in the articles relating to the appropriate localities -- school district, town, etc.) Shimeru 20:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• • As I have pointed out before, small local newspapers often do much less in the way of editing fact checking so it is only just barely that they squint by as being reliable sources, especially for school related articles almost no fact-checking occurs. The most blunt example would be a "human interest story on top teachers or students from the school" which very often are nothing more than a few random quotes from the relevant people and their colleagues. Furthermore, none of these demonstrate actual notabiilty. Almost by defintion if these things were at all notable they would be picked up at more than a local level (heck even a newspaper on the other side of the state(if we are talking about US schools) might indicate some notability, especially for larger states). JoshuaZ 17:14, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • It is not just limited to small papers. More and more papers and broadcast news seem to be using press releases. The articles are not reporting but advertising. Vegaswikian 23:40, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Which is why the primary criterion in WP:SCHOOL, WP:BIO, WP:CORP, and elsewhere already excludes simple re-hashes of self-publicity. There's no reason to employ "published in a local newspaper" as a proxy for "reprint of a press-release". It's simply not true. Excluding local press coverage is a lazy generalization when what one should actually be doing in this regard is looking at the specific source, reading it, and seeing whether it is re-hashing the subject's self-publicity. Uncle G 16:14, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
• What constitutes local or national seems a red herring also; a nationally distributed newspaper in say, Liechtenstein would have far less distibution than say, my local paper, the Raleigh News and Observer; yet one is national and one is local? Readership is hardly a requirement for notability, neither is mass-appeal; there are scientific journals with readership in the thousands, and with an appeal limited to a small techinical field; and yet THEY are good sources for any article here. To place any restrictions based on distribution, readership, or scope of appeal for any acceptable published work is to exclude reliable sources. A general indictment of the entire newsgathering industry also does us no good. We are left with what we have, and as long as its not Weekly World News, it probably a fairly reliable source. Perhaps to simplify and clarify my above arguement: Schools (as a collective) are open to public scrutiny, and also part of the constant public discourse. Insofar as schools (in the individual) receive copious press coverage as to their performance, are open to criticism, and are part of the public discourse, there is copious independant sources to write a neutral article about the school. --Jayron32 04:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Unlike scientific journals, local papers are not always thoroughly peer-reviewed, fact checked, and edited. Unlike local papers, scientific journals focus narrowly on a chosen topic. And an article in a local paper is not necessarily written by anyone with general expertise regarding the subject of the article. The size of the audience isn't the only factor that makes a source reliable, and to suggest that any published source short of the most sensationalist tabloids is reliable is, I think, setting the bar a bit too low for useful purposes. Shimeru 06:20, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I'll put in my two cents from experience here. I've been quoted in a newspaper at least four times, at least three from my local paper because of stuff I did/was doing while in High School. Two of those three articles misquoted me, at least in part. (The third time, the reporter asked for and got a copy of my speech, so they didn't misquote me.) I certainly received no calls for fact checking about any of them. This however, is not my real concern with using local press coverage; they were close enough to right, and our policy is verifiability, not truth. The issue is that routine local press coverage does not constitute notability for an encyclopedia, even one that is not paper. GRBerry 16:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
    • While verifiability not truth is our concern experiences like that make it hard to see local newspapers always as reliable sources which does go to verifiability. Agree in any event with the last sentence. JoshuaZ 17:01, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
    • On the contrary: It does, as long as one does not conflate "routine" and "trivial". An article announcing the dates of forthcoming sports events is routine. There will be such articles on a regular basis. It is also little more than trivial, in that it doesn't supply very much knowledge about the school except that it has sports events. That's a sentence in the article, at best. An article reporting a fire may also be routine, in that local newspapers report fires on a regular basis. But if it goes into depth about the property damage, the resultant financial implications, and what temporary and permanent effects the fire has on the future teaching and other activities of the school, then that is not trivial, even though it is routine. It supplies a lot of knowledge about a significant event in the school's history, and can potentially form the basis of one or more whole paragraphs in a "History" section of the article on the school.

      And that is how "fire in the science lab (2 beakers destroyed)" doesn't confer notability whereas "fire destroys school buildings, estimated $1million rebuilding cost, pupils forced to attend alternative school" does. Coverage of the first won't be in-depth. Coverage of the second most certainly will. All that we, as encyclopaedists, need to do is look at the depths of the specific sources covering the subject in question, i.e. to see that they are non-trivial.

      "Published in a local newspaper" is not equivalent to "trivial". "The sort of thing that local newspapers routinely report on" is not equivalent to "trivial", either. Uncle G 16:14, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Another issue

Regarding Helen M. Jydstrup Elementary School the school was nominated within minutes of its creation. I think it may also make sense to have some sort of agreement about a minimal amount of time that schools will be up prior to nomination. JoshuaZ 05:01, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I disagree, there is no such agreement for any article category. The nominator should just take the trouble of doing a minimal check to see if the article has a decent chance for expansion and meeting WP:V, but I don't feel that we should let the article stay for a minimum amount of time before nominating it. If the nominator is wrong often, he or she will probably learn to check more carefully first. Fast assessment of articles is the essence of newpage patrol, and many articles, after they are checked on creation, are not checked again for a very long time it seems... 06:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Having said that, the speedy nomination in this case was a bad idea, it should have either been prodded or AfD'ed. Fram 06:10, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Mm... I don't know about that. It's a new article, yes, but that doesn't stop other articles from being tagged with db-bio or db-band or whatever. This one was initially tagged as db-empty (just a restatement of the page title), and subsequently untagged because schools are controversial. Taking it to AfD is the proper next step for someone who feels it shouldn't be included. I'm wary of the possibility of setting a precedent that would keep every band someone decides to add for weeks, too. (And even more wary of setting up a special exception for schools.) Shimeru 06:14, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm concerned about the WP:BITE element, since these articles are more likely to be written by youngsters than other types of articles and are more like to therefore feel bitten if there articles are immediately AfDed. I don't see it as intrinsically unreasonable to consider holding things off for a while if it reduces biting. (indeed, I think this is the strongest argument for keeping school articles in general, but that's a separate issue). JoshuaZ 06:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't really see the connection. Yes, I suppose the nominator could have spoken up on the article talk page, or the author's user talk page, first... but we should judge articles by their merits per WP:V, WP:RS, and the rest, not by their contributor. If this new user had written an article about the band he's in instead, for instance, do you think we'd have people complaining about WP:BITE after it was tagged? Or would we instead be seeing WP:COI and "vanispamcruftisement?" I agree that the author should have been politely informed, but I don't agree that the article needs to stay around simply because it's not existed for some arbitrary time period. I don't agree that the article should be treated any differently than any other good-faith (but potentially unsuitable) contribution. Shimeru 06:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• That's a perennial issue about any kind of tags. In general, any proposal that "tag X may only be applied after Y days" is rejected as instruction creep. A consequence of the way Misplaced Pages works is that as soon as you hit that "save" button, you allow your work to be "edited mercilessly" by other users. (Radiant) 12:34, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

We do allow it for some things. For example images. JoshuaZ 17:07, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

• Isn't that more like "tag X may be applied at any time, but if it remains for Y days then Z happens" ? (Radiant) 10:27, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I disagree as well for the same reasons. No other type of article is told "you can't be nominated for deletion until X number of days after the article is created." Allowing for debate and improvement of the site is precisely the reason that the five day wait before deletion is in place. I nominated a school for deletion last night less than a day after it was created - Why? because 98% of all high schools are non-notable.

This is not to say that the school lacks importance to you, the wr iter. It just means that to the community at large, the school lacks any merit to make it stand out from the tens of thousands of other schools that do not, and will not have an article here. Trusilver 18:36, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Criteria #2

Can we discuss expanding this criteria to include schools that hold (or once held) a record in the listed activities? Accurizer 21:45, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Note, I am posting the same question at WP:SCHOOLS with regard to its Criteria #3. Accurizer 21:54, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

This seems more than reasonable to me. JoshuaZ 21:56, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, providing the record is reliably sourced. "Firsts" and "bests" are encyclopedic material. Shimeru 23:34, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Excessive narrowing in Criterion 1 of the "multiple non-trivial published works" standard

Misplaced Pages standards in general at the highest level -- WP:CORP, WP:BIO, etc. -- all reference the "multiple non-trivial published works" standard, which clearly specifies that this includes newspaper articles (other than those with "merely trivial coverage, such as newspaper articles that simply report extended shopping hours or the publications of telephone numbers and addresses in business directories.") There is no discussion that local newspapers are verboten, or that it must come from peer-reviewed journals or from noted journalists or in book form or must have a minimum circulation. The discussion above regarding which articles meet Criterion 1 is set so arbitrarily high and is so far removed from general Misplaced Pages standards. Virtually every single one of the scenarios User:Jayron32 proposed above (with limited exceptions), that were almost all brushed off by Shimeru and others, would meet any reasonable interpretation of the "multiple non-trivial published works", provided they came from sources that met WP:RS and satisfied WP:V. The original WP:SCHOOL version of this Criterion narrows the general "multiple non-trivial published works" clause to a degree, and is far closer to the spirit and clear intent of the version used in WP:CORP and WP:BIO. While the threshold of "multiple" might need be more than the minimum two, the current WP:SCHOOLS3 version of Criterion 1 is so far out of line with the most-widely accepted Misplaced Pages standards as to be unjustifiable. Significant thought must be put in to dramatically expanding the scope of Criterion 1 if there is any prayer of obtaining consensus on this issue. Unless there is significant movement from the extreme positions taken here, WP:SCHOOL will be the only viable option for achieving consensus on judging school articles. Alansohn 23:05, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

• It's WP:RS and WP:V that's in question for those sources. Does an article about a teachers' strike or a fire make a school notable? I think it does — if that strike or that fire attracted wider attention. If that's the case, then there's outside commentary and analysis to draw upon for the purpose of expanding the article. If it's a matter of purely local interest, though, then there is not, and the most that could be added is a sentence saying "In 1999, teachers went on strike," or "In 2003, a fire started in the chemistry lab." That information is not encyclopedic. Strikes and fires happen all the time, but they are generally unimportant — trivial — in the larger picture. Routine events of no particular impact do not make for good articles. That's why List of historic fires includes the burning of the Library of Alexandria but not the burning of the convenience store two blocks from my house a couple of months ago. The former is exceptional, the latter is trivial. I'm not opposed to such articles being used as sources for, for instance, a "History" section in the article, but if those are the only sources available, I have to question whether the school is actually of encyclopedic importance. Shimeru 23:33, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I sincerely hope you don't mean that a source is unreliable in violation of WP:RS or that it's unverifiable in contravention of WP:V because an article appears in a local newspaper. I encourage you to read what these Misplaced Pages gold standard guidelines actually say and try to justify this arbitrary standard. The "multiple non-trivial published works" standard, clearly specifies that this includes newspaper articles (other than those with "merely trivial coverage, such as newspaper articles that simply report extended shopping hours or the publications of telephone numbers and addresses in business directories.") While I would hope for greater quantity and quality in the references chosen -- articles that are about the school, and not something that happened at the school -- none of the scenarios you describe come even close to failing this clear, objective standard. On what authority are you creating an "outside commentary and analysis" requirement that overrides basic rules and regulations? Alansohn 12:32, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Not necessarily, no. But if it doesn't contain "commentary" or "analysis," then it's not an in-depth report, and therefore trivial. If it's not "outside," then it's not a demonstrably independent source. Local news can be a good source, but it isn't automatically, and I would go so far as to say that in most cases it's not. Shimeru 20:56, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
      • From what source have you manufactured a "commentary or analysis" standard.? This is simply an arbitrary barrier to excluding worthy schools. If you don't have a basis for this, it's worthless. Alansohn 21:04, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
    • This is why we need notability guidelines, to avoid the endless discussion over what coverage and how much coverage is enough to warrant an article. Almost every company will get an article in the local newspaper once in a while: still we don't accept articles on these companies. A band that plays at the twon fair may get an article (or a paragraph) in the local newspaper, and their article gets deleted as well. A local football team (or whatever sport you prefer) gets articles, the winner of the local junior cycling event gets an interview, ... We routinely dismiss all those because they fail the guidelines. All these guidelines are based on the opinion that coverage in local newspapers is not enough to establish notability, because they give undue weight to topics of local notability only (ass they should). Some of these local newspapers may have a very high reputation for fact checking and would thus technically be valid under our WP:V policy: most local newspapers are not so reliable. Where do we draw the line though. Student newspapers? Fanzines? Specialist amateur magazines? I think that under WP:V (and WP:RS), we should only include (as main indicators of notability) major newspapers and magazines, with a good reputation and a broader scope than just the locality. Local newspapers and so on can be used to "stuff" the article, to add additional info, but not to decide if something is worthy of inclusion, if something is notable. This is not an arbitrary standard at all, this is a valid interpretation of what is intended by "Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Most local newspapers don't have that reputation, and so are not acceptable. Fram 13:32, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
      • That's exactly backwards and wrong. The PNC focusses discussion on the specific sources that exist in individual cases, and their specific provenances and depths; and contrary to what you say that is exactly what discussions should be about. What discussions should not be is the application of generalizations such as "all locally reported stuff is not notable". Notability is not a blanket.

        We don't exclude companies because they only receive coverage in local newspapers. We exclude companies because of what their news coverages actually are, irrespective of whether it is published by a local newspaper, national newspaper, or international wire service. We exclude companies if the only coverage that they receive is simple re-hashes of the company's own press releases. Considering the exclusion of local newspapers to be a "valid interpretation" of our policies is simply wrong. It's not a valid interpretation. Our policy has never excluded sources based upon geography. The valid interpretation, which is quite different, is right there in the wording: "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". Local newspapers should be considered on their individual reputations, just as all other news services are. For example: PR Newswire is in no way a local newspaper, yet works published there don't count towards notability, because PR Newswire is a press release publication service, that performs no fact checking whatsoever on what it publishes. The size of PR Newswire's readership isn't the consideration. Its reputation for fact checking and accuracy is. The same principle applies to local newspapers as to international wire services.

        I strongly suggest avoiding arguments based upon ideas such as "undue weight to topics of local notability". That argument is based upon personal, subjective, judgements, on the parts of Misplaced Pages editors themselves, of what is "purely local" and "undue". Notability is not subjective. Uncle G 16:47, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

        • I have no idea what the PNC is, and I notice that you don't reply to the inspection reports part. Do you consider published inspection reports as verifiable secondary sources, automatically ensuring that an article on whatever gets inspected has to be kept? Fram 20:39, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
          • The PNC is shorthand for the Primary Notability Criteria. This is expressed seveal ways by several sources, but it boils down to: Nontrivial coverage in multiple, reliable sources. And, to the issue of "Local" papers: establishing a reasonable, NPOV cutoff for the difference between "National", "Regional" and "Local" newspapers is nearly impossible. For example, what is the difference, in reliability, between say The New York Times and smaller papers like say The Sacramento Bee, Nashua Telegraph, or Detroit Free Press, or even Christian Science Monitor? How small is too small? Is size based on readership? Also, what is a "purely local" issue? An individual teacher strike may only be of direct interest to a person in the local area, but what about someone with an interest in teacher strikes or public employee labor relations as an entire discipline? Isn't that a much broader interest? Denigrating an issue as a "local" issue is POV-ish: It's just saying "I don't care about it, therefore no one else should". The citerion for inclusion should be: Enough people have cared about this OUTSIDE of Misplaced Pages to put it as part of the public discource, so Misplaced Pages (as a Tertiary Source) has, within its scope, the right to include it as well. --Jayron32 21:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
          • Your question is based upon not actually reading the reports that you think "automatically" constitute non-trivial published works, simply because they are government reports. Try reading some. You're clearly in for a surprise. This proposal gets triviality wholly wrong, note, so don't use its definition. The correct explanation of what triviality is can be found in WP:SCHOOL, for your reference. Uncle G 03:05, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
            • No, I think it's WP:SCHOOL that has it wrong. An in-depth report is still trivial for this purpose if it's something every school gets. This is because the existence of such a report doesn't show that the government has especially "taken note" of that school in particular. It's mandatory, meaning it in no way confers any more notability than a building's inspection report does. Such reports can potentially be used as sources for certain information... but not for satisfying the "published works" notability criterion. Shimeru 03:47, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
              • It is not "something that every school gets". It is demonstrably untrue that every school is the subject of such reports. Please stop repeating this canard. It's a falsehood, and your entire argument, being based upon it, is fallacious. Uncle G 19:47, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
                • Granted, not every school gets a given report. There are a variety of different inspection agencies in different countries. However, almost every school in the first world is the subject of such an inspection or evaluation on some fairly regular basis, to the point where it is more noteworthy if a given school has not received such an inspection or report. The existence of these reports is therefore trivial in terms of establishing notability for the school (though not in terms of establishing verifiability, which is completely separate). If you intend to argue that that is not the case, please point to some examples of such reports that, in and of themselves, demonstrate notability for individual schools. Shimeru 20:22, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
              • I've seen some AfDs that have the temerity to question whether or not a school really exists, where an official report may help as a source. Other than that, it's hard to justify an official report as establishing notability despite the fact that it is a source in compliance with WP:V and WP:RS. Given today's standards-based school evaluation system, every school has some sort of inspection report. While a significant percentage of schools are notable, the inspection report standard would mean all schools are notable, which is extremely hard to justify. Alansohn 04:38, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
                • It is demonstrably false that "every school has some sort of inspection report". Please stop repeating this canard. And please stop ignoring the word "multiple" in the PNC, too. The "inspection report standard" is a straw man of your own creation. Uncle G 19:47, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
            • Uncle G, please don't assert repeatedly that I haven't actually read this or that. I have read some, I just interpret their value differently. It is your opinion that triviality is correctly described in WP:SCHOOL and not in WP:SCHOOLS3. Fine, let's agree to disagree, but don't make it personal by implying that I make statements without knowing what I'm talking about. I had read some school inspection reports and some food inspection reports, neither surprised me, and both are trivial (although, of course, the food inspection reports in general are even more trivial). Let's try to keep this discussion civil and factual, and let's not start defending a position by casting doubt on the opponent instead of actually answering a fairly simple question. Once again, Uncle G: do you consider published inspection reports as verifiable secondary sources, automatically ensuring that an article on whatever gets inspected has to be kept? Fram 09:06, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
              • This discussion has been civil all along. Triviality is correctly described in WP:SCHOOL. It's the same there as in all of our other notability criteria. That you are getting triviality wrong, thinking that a report with zero prose content that comprises solely two tables of dates and codes is an in-depth discussion of its subject, is the very source of your error, as I've explained to you twice, now. Get triviality right, applying it as per its description in WP:SCHOOL and our other notability criteria, and you won't paint yourself into the corner of supporting broken criteria such as the ones here in the first place. And, yet again, I draw your attention to the word "multiple". Read the criteria as they are actually written, including the copious explanations of them to be found in many places, including User:Uncle G/On notability. And see how they apply. Stop putting up straw men of your own invention, such as criteria that don't include "non-trivial" or "multiple", and then asking people whether they support or oppose them. Uncle G 19:47, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
                • As I see it, Shimeru and Fram are closer to right than Uncle G. However, I use somewhat different vocabulary because the issue is not really one of being "trivial". The essence of notability is significance or importance. A routine report does nothing to demonstrate significance or importance, precisely because it is routine. A routine report can, by its findings, cause something to happen that creates significance or importance. Here are two hypothetical examples in the school space. First, a report notes that the school's library is inadequate - the school board/council/... funds more purchases, and the next report notes the situation has been corrected, but no other record exists. Second, a report notes that the school's library is adequate, the problem remains uncorrected, and after a couple more such reports the school loses accreditation (or is taken over by a higher level of government) and this is reported on by the local paper. At this point something of significance has happened, and the school has become at least locally notable. Routine reports are routine, and do not demonstrate notability. This is not an issue of whether the source is trivial, it is an issue that their very routineness makes them not be evidence of significance, and thus not evidence that should count toward notability. When another published source comments substantively on either an action taken on the basis of a report or upon the report itself, that commentary becomes evidence of notability, and the report is a second reliable source, but not one that establishes notability. GRBerry 05:04, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

An example of what I'm looking for...

Trying to clarify a little what I look for in a school article. Earlier, I did some work on Wyoming Seminary to bring it in line with what I consider an encyclopedic article. (Not to suggest there's not still more that can be done -- just that I'd consider it an unambiguous "keep.")

I chose this article partly because it was my own high school, lo these many years ago. Therefore it somewhat mirrors the often-cited example of a new user logging on, searching for his school, and writing an article when he finds it doesn't exist (or is a bare stub).

Before my edits, it was an article like many of our school articles, perhaps even a little more developed than the average. We have a name, location, founding date, president (equivalent to the principal in many ways), and demographic info. We also have a bit about the name "seminary" and a claim to notability via diversity of the student body. (Note that this claim is not sourced -- one of those areas I mentioned that could still be improved.) We have a link to the school website, and no other references.

If this had been brought to AfD, I think delete votes would have been absolutely appropriate. As a graduate, I know that the school is noteworthy, but based on the article as it was, I couldn't point to a reason why. If we imagine for a moment that no further research were done during the AfD (not likely, I know), then it should be deleted as unverified through independent RS and potentially NN. (I also suspect it would have ended in a no-consensus, anyway, but that's neither here nor there.) My say-so is not (or, at least, should not be) enough.

After my edits, it has a more developed history section, including several "firsts." It has further claims to notability through both its history and its current activities. All of these claims are cited. It has references.

This school is noteworthy, but the "before" version of the article doesn't make that obvious. It was little more than a directory entry. The "after" version does, explicitly and with sources. It reads more like an encyclopedia article.

This is the sort of content I'd like to see in all school articles. What makes the school noteworthy? What has it done? What is it known for? What sources say so? If these questions cannot be answered, then I don't feel the school is worthy of its own encyclopedia article yet. Shimeru 23:52, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Here's the problem some have-I'm not entirely sure why this school is noteworthy. While I imagine it'd survive an AfD (and so I'm not going to nominate it, someone else can), this indicates to me that the guidelines are too loose. It's just one more school, I don't find a thing about this to indicate that it's very notable. It's old. So are a lot of things. I don't see a single reason why this article should be here. (And yes, I'd say the same for the high school I attended-if I found that here one day I'd AfD it myself, it's just not notable). Seraphimblade 12:38, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd disagree, there seem to be some clear arguments in the article for notability- "The school's Madrigal Singers, a 28-voice choral group, have gained recognition for their proficiency. The group has toured worldwide — most recently touring Asia in 2006" and "in 1892, the Wyoming Seminary football team participated in the world's first nighttime football game" (the second doesn't seem to fall under any obvious inclusion category here but I would naively think that it should. It may make sense to add something for it). JoshuaZ 13:13, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

You're right about the second not being included here. But that fact would qualify the article as notable so it would be included, school or not. Vegaswikian 19:05, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it would fit under the expanded criterion 2, as suggested in an above section. It's a record, of a sort. (I also think being on the NRHP is a reasonably good claim — that means a little more than "it's old.") Shimeru 21:00, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

The singers and NHRP listing might do it, upon reflection. Still, it seems way too many are getting listed (in my own generally-not-humble opinion, anyway!) Seraphimblade 21:37, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Somewhat. But there are those who would include every school, golf course, shopping mall, and business office, and we're looking to find a reasonable middle ground. I think it's inevitable that the criteria, when we're finished, will include a pretty large number of schools. But they'll also exclude a pretty large number of schools. As long as the ones that remain look something like this -- claims of notability, sourced and cited -- then I can live with it. The articles I don't like are the ones that run along the lines of "X High School is a high school in X, Indiana. It has 500 students and its principal is John Jacobjingleheimerschmidt. Its student body is 53% white, 43% black, and 4% other. It has a football team. Its motto is Reductio ad absurdam. Here is a link to its website." This is all information, and it's usually verifiable, but it's not encyclopedically substantial. If we can arrive at criteria that allow enough schools to keep inclusionists happy while demanding that articles show why they're a worthy encyclopedia topic to keep deletionists happy, we'll have achieved something. Shimeru 23:09, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Good proposal

This one is much better than the "standard" one. I support this over WP:SCHOOL. Lankiveil 03:12, 17 November 2006 (UTC).

Previous discussions

Just last November, this very discussion took place in Misplaced Pages:Schools. I note that in the current debate, except for vegaswikian and Christopher Parham, none of the original participants is present. Therefore, I would recommend that those who are interested in learning some of the history of this debate read Misplaced Pages talk:Notability (schools)/Archive 3, Misplaced Pages talk:Notability (schools)/Archive 4, and Misplaced Pages talk:Notability (schools)/Archive 5. It may be instructive to note that even though the suggested guidelines in this first lengthy debate were less restrictive than the current proposal, it still did not lead to any resolution, due in large part on the entrenched positions taken by many people in both camps. As a deletionist, I believe that notability is an essential criterion for the inclusion of any article on anything, and I support the idea that a fundamental determinant of notability is that, as per a comment made in that discussion, "multiple separate people, independent of the subject, have written and published works of their own about them, demonstrating that they find the subject notable enough that they have gone to the effort of creating and publishing works of their own about it." However, in the spirit of compromise, I am willing to accept less than what I consider the ideal, and thus support what I see as being a fair middle ground in Misplaced Pages:Schools3. Denni 20:22, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Discussion at WP:SCHOOLS

There is some discussion now there about making some proposal that is midway between the two. I think one obvious issue that needs to be addressed is making criterion 1 here more explicit and possibly slightly broader. JoshuaZ 18:17, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

A thought on criterion 1...

It occurred to me late last night that we may be writing the criterion and its related footnotes in such a way that the semantics are eclipsing the actual point. The purpose of the criterion is to allow an editor to show that the school is noteworthy by pointing to independent sources that have "taken note" of it. I believe the primary intent is to require sources that say enough about the school, and the impact of various events upon it, to allow for significant expansion of the article. With this in mind, the "local news" issue is something of a red herring. It applies to some extent, in that a secondary intent is to show that the school has some notability beyond the strictly local, but it's not meant to be a blanket denial of all local coverage -- only trivial local coverage.

Right now, the criterion reads: The school has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the school itself. This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, books, magazine articles, television documentaries, and public reports by school inspection agencies and consumer watchdog organizations.

I suggest instead something along the lines of: The school has been the primary focus of multiple published works, at least one of which is beyond purely local in scope, whose source is independent of the school itself. This includes (etc.)

"Primary focus" helps to avoid arguments over trivial vs. non-trivial -- an article that names the school only in passing, or deals purely with a single student or teacher at the school, or offers routine coverage such as sports scores or announcements of drama club performances, cannot be said to focus primarily on the school. The new criterion also allows for the use of local news, including historical and event articles, but insists on recognition above and beyond that level. Along with the caveat that mandatory inspection reports and directory entries do not establish notability, I think that would suffice, even if it's looser than I frankly would like.

Alternatively, we could try to reword it to make it more explicit that the sources should contain encyclopedic information and allow for expansion of the article beyond the basic statistics, but I think that'd be another semantic minefield. Shimeru 21:22, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

This seems reasonable to me. JoshuaZ 16:34, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Just one?

I simply cannot concur that a school can be considered notable if it is the subject of a single local newspaper article. ALL schools are at one time or another the subject of a feature in a local community newspaper. I am an unashamed exclusionist, my stance is based on the fact that Wiktionary defines notable as Worthy of notice, remarkable, memorable, noted or distinguished.. If something is remarkable (of remark), noted (of note), it MUST by definition be a minority thing. Something must stand out from the crowd behind it to be notable, absolutley to be distinguished (after all, distinguished from what?).

This proposal would include every educational institution of more than three students across the globe as distinguished. It has my unreserved opposition. •Elomis• 03:37, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Er. Are you certain you're commenting on the right proposal? This is the less inclusionist of the two. Nowhere does it suggest that a single source is sufficient, let alone a single local news article. Shimeru 09:05, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Proposed battery of modifications

Pursuant to a variety of comments here and on WP:SCHOOLS I would tentatively propose the following changes (note that this isn't what I think would be best but I think making this standard more inclusionist would make it more likely to be accepted). First, modify criterion 1 in a way similar to how Shimeru has suggested above and Alan suggested on WP:SCHOOLS. Second, as Alan suggested add a general criterion for inclusion of schools recieving the highest generic award given by the school's country (such as the Blue Ribbon in the US). This condition while it will annoy some of the less inclusionist editors (such as myself) is not intrisicallly unreasonable and seems like a possible compromise. Third, possibly consider generalizing the alumni criterion? I think some variation of this might actually lead to a compromise. Fourth, in general instead of deleting (even when mergers seem to be innappropriate) instead form redirects and not delete the history- this will allow articles to be recreated if the schools then become notable. JoshuaZ 16:38, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm dubious about any overly-broad criteria based on alumni. I think the fact that person X went to school Y is something of trivial interest in general, and most usually will be worth mentioning only in person X's article, if at all. Obvious exceptions will be with people of academic note, where the research that brought them note was performed at the school. The award criterion sounds acceptable, though. As for Shimeru's proposal ... I'm not sure, so I'll abstain from comment for now. I am generally in favor of mergers over deletions, though. Even in cases where it may not be entirely justified, it serves to offer the school-stub-spammers something useful to spend their time on. Xtifr _tälk 03:31, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts:

• • Criteria 1 should include that the coverage must be non-trivial (not just mentioning the school in passing, not just a standard "X school held Y event on Z date"), and should establish that the school is of note to something besides its community. If we allow notability within a community, we may as well just say "Alright, include all schools"-all schools are of interest to their community and receive some press coverage within them.

• • The award one is fine, but we should establish that, firstly, it should have to be a difficult-to-achieve award, and that it should be an award considered to grant considerable prestige and merit to the school. If, for example, only 0.1% of schools within a country have won that country's top honor, those schools are notable for having done so (and likely received considerable press for it too). If a quarter of them have achieved some certification, then it's evidently not very notable to achieve that particular certification.

• • The "notable alumni" bit should go away entirely, unless said alumni somehow defined or was defined by the school. Just having "stepped foot there" shouldn't qualify, but if a student's fame or career began while at the school (especially if this caused significant issues at the school which gained a lot of press) it might. Otherwise, again, we may as well "include all schools"-I would bet you that just about any school you can find has at least one alumnus whom WP considers notable.

• • The redirecting bit would be quite sensible, provided that the article is not then recreated before the school's notability really does increase. Seraphimblade 03:34, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm fine with removing the alumni criterion. I'm complete agreement with most of the above. It might be helpful if some of the more inclusionist editors would comment on this. JoshuaZ 03:58, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I fully support the direction that JoshuaZ is proposing. To follow up on the discussion above, Criteria 1 must exclude trivial articles -- sports scores, new staff, bake sale, etc., in addition to the existing reprints of press releases or days of operation, which are already widely excluded -- but articles that cover the school and its program would not be trivial and would establish notability per the "non-trivial coverage" standard. We may have to visit this issue by country, but the Blue Ribbon Schools Program granted by the United States Department of Education should meet the standard of a notable award; State awards may not meet that standard without other supporting evidence of notability. As far as alumni go, I can agree in regard to elementary or pre-school. It's hard to see how their nursery teacher led the student to become the notable they became a decade down the road; But for a high school, you'd be hard pressed not to see how the notable actress, football player, scientist, author or entrepreneur did not get a start in a high school play, compete on the football team, take a chemistry course with a professor who inspired them, develop a knack for writing or work on a school fundraiser that set them off on their path to future notability. Not all schools are notable, and many elementary and preschools will have a tough time establishing notability. But, a significant number of schools (especially high schools) will have multiple articles about the school and a significant number of schools will have notable alumni, which will mean that a significant number of schools will merit articles. I do not believe that all schools are notable; but excessive restrictions that mean that no schools are notable are just as unreasonable. We need to achieve a substantive broadening of the WP:SCHOOLS3 standards if there is any hope of achieving a guideline that will be accepted as a consensus. Alansohn 04:47, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

But for a high school, you'd be hard pressed not to see how the notable actress, football player, scientist, author or entrepreneur did not get a start in a high school play, compete on the football team, take a chemistry course with a professor who inspired them, develop a knack for writing or work on a school fundraiser that set them off on their path to future notability. The question, though, is: Are there reliable sources that attribute these notable individuals' success to their school efforts? We as individuals might draw that conclusion, but we as editors cannot -- that's original research. I think there are cases where mere attendance by a famous individual might confer notability, but these are cases where the person is notable (at least by association) before or during their time at school -- a member of the British royal family, say, or the daughter of the US President. If Joe Shmoe became a famous actor at age 30, it doesn't necessarily mean the high school he hasn't seen for over a decade is noteworthy. If we can find an interview where Joe talks fondly about how his role in Godspell junior year inspired his career, then yes, that's a good argument under such a criterion. But if there are no sources, how do we know that Joe hadn't planned to become a doctor? Shimeru 10:24, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

While I agree with Shimeru mostly I think at this point it may make more sense to ask not what is most logical for a school proposal but rather what are the most people willing to tolerate in a school proposal? I would tentatively suggest that as possible inclusion criteria go, the presence of notable alumni is one of the less unreasonable ones even if it doesn't make much sense. Therefore the less inclusionist editors (such as myself) may want to consider if an alumni inclusion criterion might be something that we can possibly give slack on. JoshuaZ 01:46, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I note that in our criteria for music articles, we say that information on early band projects of a notable musician should be merged to the musician's article unless the band itself was notable. This logic extended to schools would say that the school information should be merged to the article on their notable alumni. That is not really a workable solution for school articles. It would be a disservice to our readers, who would never expect to find a paragraph on a school tacked to someones biography unless the paragraph was focused on them while at the school. Similarly, for biographical subjects it is not sufficient to be married to, or the child of, a notable person - unless the spouse/child is notable in their own right we merge to the notable relative. This is how notability by association is handled in other subject areas, but the general solution is unworkable here. So we go overboard on inclusion and just say keep the article, go overboard on deletion and just say delete regardless of alumni, or we look for a compromise. The compromise that springs to my mind is a requirement that we be able to reliably source a non-trivial (more than names, dates and degrees) sentence about the alumnus' time at the school. So "Joe took Biology in 1976 from Prof. Smith" is inadequate, but if we can source "Joe took Biology in 1976 and was horrified by the required animal disections", that is a reason for inclusion. (The source should be independent of the school, it need not be independent of the alumnus.) GRBerry 05:26, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

That seems quite reasonable, actually. Loose, but acceptable. Shimeru 08:03, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Any proposed wording? JoshuaZ 02:27, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Notable alumni has to be one of the most popular reasons proffered for inclusion of articles, and a requirement that a reliable source demonstrate that the student's future notability arose from an experience in high school would be perceived as an unreasonable standard that is exceedingly difficult to find. I'd have to assume that 99.9999% of professional athletes starred on a high school team, though you'd be hard-pressed to find a quote that says "I owe my success in to my experience at ". It might be a bit harder to connect notability to school attendance in some circumstances, but there seems to be consensus that alumni are an indication of notability, especially for high schools. Alansohn 02:43, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll wager you're right about professional athletes -- you don't get to that level without a lot of practice and effort, and high school teams are a common place to find and invest that. But that's not the issue here. The issue is that we're asserting a school is noteworthy because notable people X, Y, and Z attended it. But if X, Y, and Z were not notable at the time they attended, why does their subsequent rise to fame make the school noteworthy? Clearly that's only the case if X, Y, and Z were in some way inspired or reaffirmed or shaped by their experiences at the school. But if we're asserting that that happened, Misplaced Pages policy demands verification through reliable sources that it did, in fact, happen. It need not necessarily be a direct quote such as the one you offer, but we can't simply insert our opinion without any such facts to back it up. I will concede, though, that this is an area in which quantity plays a role. If a school is known for producing a large number of noteworthy alumni, it is doubtlessly noteworthy on those grounds (see Juilliard School, for a famous instance). When claims of noteworthiness per "notable alumni" hinge on one or two athletes or actors or politicians, though, it's much less convincing, in the absence of reliable sources. Perhaps, since tracking down reliable sources in this particular instance is an undue burden (and somewhat tangential to the actual school), we could instead modify the criterion's language to reflect, as it were, weight of numbers? "X, Y, and Z" might make a weak claim, but "A through Z" makes a stronger one, in other words. Shimeru 10:44, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'd imagine most professional athletes got their start in sports on a Little League team (or similar type of league). That wouldn't necessarily mean the team is notable. If, on the other hand, the athlete constantly refers back to that experience as h(is|er) inspiration, that might make it so. I think that criterion here is reasonable as well-and not just if the athlete refers to it, but if other sources can be found that state a similar type of thing. On the other hand, if a school has a verifiable reputation for consistently turning out high-caliber athletes, entrepreneurs, politicians, etc., the school has likely received considerable press for that and would be notable. As to earlier, I'd also entirely agree that the Blue Ribbon award should qualify a school as notable-that's quite a prestigious achievement and likely gains the school a significant amount of press. Seraphimblade 11:11, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

That alumni can be a cause of notability is why it is relevant to have a criteria at all. I'm not sure that there would be any agreement that alumni are sufficient for notability. If the only reason we knew the school had notable alumni was that it mentioned them in its alumni magazine (as colleges and many non-government high schools have), then we wouldn't have anyone independent of the school saying anything about the school, which is the sort of evidence of notability that all the notability standards use. So the key is that we be able to source some non-directory type information from a source independent of the school. (The source does not need to independent of the alumnus - if they mention it in their biography, then that constitutes an implicit statement on their part that it was significant, and they are a reliable source on their own life.) So I'll go stick a draft wording up - keys are 1) multiple notable alumni, 2) non-directory data, 3) reliable source independent of school. GRBerry 23:52, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

GRBerry's proposal on alumni is a step in the right direction. We should be looking for independent sources for attendance at a school, and many reference sources will provide it. It is indicative that sources will almost always list an athlete's college, and very often list a high school. But such sources will hardly ever mention the middle school, elementary school, nursery school or little league program an athlete participated in. Furthermore, an article who is participating at the highest levels of a sport who would merit notability per WP:BIO were almost always top athletes in high school who should have press coverage for their feats at various levels, many of which will refer to the individual's high school. A major mention in an article might be evidence of the athlete's notability and might connect the athlete to the school, but I agree that it does not indicate notability for the team or the school. Alansohn 00:02, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I think that's a very reasonable direction to take it. Seraphimblade 00:08, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Also agreed. I think that's a great improvement. Shimeru 05:55, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Question

Why is there a WP:SCHOOLS and a WP:SCHOOLS3, but no WP:SCHOOLS2? 38.100.34.2 23:50, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Because WP:SCHOOLS is actually the second proposal on schools (see the top of WP:SCHOOLS for details), so this proposal is the third proposal. When making a new proposal I decided to label it in a way that reflected the actual history. JoshuaZ 01:43, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

kudos

Wow, this one looks about right, IMO. I am duly impressed by all the hard/good work.

--Ling.Nut 01:26, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

• I still have serious concerns. Look at criterion 2, for just one example. There are no justifications as to the existence of this criterion. For all other notability guidelines (like WP:CORP for example), when any secondary criteria attemts to extend the primary notability criteria (which is Criteria 1 here), there are specific and narrowly defined reasons for doing so. Why does 3 extracurriculars and 2 championships automatically qualify a school as notable? Such numbers are arbitrary and random. Why not 4 and 3? Why not 1 and 1? Why even use these as secondary inclusion criteria? There is nothing inherent about participation in a non-notable activity that should make a school notable? Even if the activity is notable, if we lack any third-party non trivial sources, how can we call it notable? If the sources exist, it is notable by criteria 1. If sources don't exist, how can we write a verifiable article with notable information? --Jayron32 05:41, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

• • There is some justification to this criteria. It may be possible to readily source the winning of pre-web era championships to a non-independent website, or one that only offers a trivial list of championships. Yet there will probably be articles in the local paper, or even statewide papers, about that championship. When I was in school, my state's paper of record (generally considered a local paper) covered state championships even for the class D schools, which if I remember correctly was roughly high schools of 100 or fewer students. Thus the championships can be viewed as an indicator for the presence of such coverage. The numbers, are, however are arbitrary. GRBerry 12:20, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Yes, but if they appear in reliable sources, they appear in reliable sources. If they don't, we can't write about it and reference it. Ergo, the criterion is either reduntant or overextends notability. It should then go. --Jayron32 05:20, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

• Were y'all in the original SCHOOLS discussion? I gave up. Trust me, you ain't gonna get anything near what you want. One side will fold its arms and say "All schools are notable" ad infinitum.
• Accept whatever you can get (if you can get anything, which is highly questionable).. trust me. It will save you oodles of frustration :-) --Ling.Nut 01:45, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

• • • Jayron, I agree that if they appear in reliable sources, they do. But the use of indicator variables is perfectly reasonable to an eventualist, because time pressures may prevent the reliable source from being found right now - especially during an AFD discussion. GRBerry 00:46, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
      • 1) If sources are found after a deletion discussion has closed, the article can be recreated. There is no mandatory waiting period for article recreation, if the recreated article substantially solves the problems of the prior deletion. 2) Likewise, new sources can be used as evidence in a Deletion Review, which has no 5 day time limit. 3) There is a fine line between saying sources may eventually exist to verify notabilty (which sounds like crystalballing to me) and saying that souces exist, but have yet been found. I would say that either case is an unreasonable jusitification to keep an article; if such, one could simply claim on every AfD... "Don't delete this, I know a source exists, I just haven't found it yet" and could then retain an article with NO NOTABLE FACTS indefinitaly. If no notable facts can be sourced, the article should be deleted. If sources are found, recreate the article. Its that simple. --Jayron32 04:06, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

We seem to be getting there

I would therefore like to inquire what other issues people think need to be dealt with? JoshuaZ 04:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

• As it is written as of now, only Criteria 1 and 3 (1=PNC, 3=unique educational program) seem to be appropriate as they don't extend notability to schools about which it would be impossible to populate an article with non-trivial facts. ALSO, it should perhaps be noted that all of the other criteria would be approprate facts to add to an article that has already been deemed notable by Criteria 1 or 3. For example, an article simply listing state championships won by a school contains no notable information, however, and article that already has information that passes Criteria 1 or 3 COULD and SHOULD list state championships won (assuming of course, verified in reliable sources). --Jayron32 05:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

• I would be quite willing to jettison criterion 2 for these reasons. I think criterion 4 speaks to the noteworthiness of the school, although it's also true that criterion 1 will usually subsume it. Criterion 5 is somewhat troublesome; I think there are cases where notable alumni can in fact make their schools notable, though I also think it's rather rare. I'm not certain outright removal of that criterion would be supported. GRBerry might have hit upon a good compromise, though; the current version is much preferable to earlier versions. Shimeru 05:46, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

• Criteria 1 we need, though I think I see a contradiction between the current paragraph and footnote four to it. The paragraph says that "public reports by school inspection agencies" are non-trivial, the footnote says "Standard government reports" are trivial. These need harmonization. My preferred harmonization would be to change the paragraph to "non-routine reports by school inspection agencies". Criteria 3 is the PNC in the context of the schools programs, so is not problematic.
• Criteria 2 and 4 are only justified if 1) they serve as highly reliable proxy variables for the presence of not yet cited press coverage that would meet the PNC and 2) we are willing to take an eventualist approach to such sourcing. I am willing to be an eventualist on this in hopes of getting a guideline in place. I also believe that #2 is a good proxy variable. I don't have a sense of confidence that #4 will be a good proxy variable as used in practice. We don't have strong enough definition of what constitutes a significant award. Can we improve it from the discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Schools#School Awards?
• I proposed the current wording of criteria 5 as a compromise. That means that even I am not completely satisfied with it, but it also means that I think we should have it in the proposed guideline. GRBerry 14:02, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the contradiction-criterion 1 states that non-routine reports by watchdog or government agencies qualify as non-trivial, note 1 reiterates that routine ones do not. That seems to be pretty reasonable. All restaurants receive health inspection reports, which are trivial. On the other hand, if a restaurant receives national press for flagrant health code violations and causing an E.coli outbreak, that would make it notable. The same would apply here-if the government makes a special report on the school as a model of what to do (or a model of what not to do), that would be a non-trivial mention, but a standard report on test scores and the like would be a trivial mention. The first mention is about the school, the second is about test scores and mentions the school in passing. Seraphimblade 15:17, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

It does now say "non-routine"; it didn't when I made that comment. Here is the diff. This change does eliminate that concern. Is there any way to improve criteria 4 at this time? GRBerry 15:50, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I see how that would've been confusing! Disregard the last bit then. I think for criterion 4, we should specify that it should be an award which is generally considered a major one, and has not been awarded to more than (my own number, this could be modified of course) 2% of schools that would be eligible for it. If it's a standard "passes basic standards" award that 60% of eligible schools have won, it's not very notable. On the other hand, if it's something like the Blue Ribbon Schools Program, or an equivalent program in that school's country, an award winner would likely be notable. Major state/region awards which are difficult to win might qualify as well, again if they're not awarded regularly and routinely. (Of course, generally a school winning a major award will receive a significant amount of press and pass on criterion 1 anyway.) Seraphimblade 18:04, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

• Once again, I think it looks good. I might suggest that you dry-run through some real examples and see how your scenarios play out. On example might be Boone County High School. I'm sure you can find others. --Ling.Nut 15:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Fixed up some of the references and such to link to the actual pages used as sources, rather than just the organization's front page. Seems to have gotten plenty of press, so I'd say it passes on criterion 1. Seraphimblade 18:20, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

School Awards & criterion 4

Okay, so we need to nail this one down a bit further...

Right now, the criterion reads: Significant awards or commendations have been bestowed upon the school or its staff that are not common awards. Generally, national awards pass this test. State, provincial, and other subnational awards may pass it depending on how many schools or individuals receive the award.

The first thing I note is that the second sentence needs revision. I contend that there are national "awards" that aren't "significant," such as indicators of passing the national standards of education for its grade levels. We could argue that the word "significant" in the first sentence eliminates such, but it's better to remove the potential contradiction.

Second, we should make it clearer that this criterion requires multiple awards or commendations, not just a single one. The use of the plural case may not be clear enough.

Looking at the suggestion from Wikiproject Schools (list by User:Hjal at 07:18, 8 November 2006 (UTC)):

• TeachersCount-Teacher Awards and Competitions This site has a long list of links to awards for teachers, some of which seem to be the kind of award that would justify including a teacher under "Notable faculty."

This is not a school award, so irrelevant to criterion 4. If it is sufficiently noteworthy to be covered in independent reliable sources, and reasonably exclusive, then that does make it support for a criterion 5 argument. (On a side note, criterion 5 should indicate notable faculty or staff as well as notable alumni.)

• Newsweek, The 100 Best High Schools in America Also includes a list of the top 1000; the single criterion used limits the value of this list, but it gets widely reported whenever it comes out.

I'd say making the top 100 in a country as large as the US might be notable. Top 25 or so would definitely be an argument for inclusion. Top 1000 is too loose to be useful in my opinion. For extremely small countries, assuming such lists could be found, top 100 might be too inclusive, but that's another matter. Newsweek does make a reliable and widely-reported-on source, even if its rankings are disputed.

• Washington Post 2006 Challenge Index

Not sure about this one. "Divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or other college level tests a school gave by the number of seniors who graduated in June." It seems to me this might be biased based upon school population. And does a school offering more AP courses than its neighbors really make that school notable? "Challenge" may not be the best benchmark.

• A top-100 list roils high schools CSM article about the Newsweek/Washington Post rankings.

Criticism of the Newsweek rankings, not a ranking or award in itself. Not really useful for this purpose.

• Ranking America’s High Schools-A Few Quibbles on What Constitutes 'Best' EdWeek's take on the Newsweek list.

More criticism of Newsweek's rankings.

• Canada's best high schools Macleans list from 2005.

Looks like a Top 30 list for Canadian schools. It's drawn from a smaller pool, about 200 schools, but I'd consider Macleans about as reliable a source as Newsweek. I'd say at least the "Top Overall" schools are worthy of inclusion.

• Edward R. Murrow High School Journalism Awards

Most of these honor students, not schools. However, "Best Edition" is for the student newspaper as a whole. I'd say that the winner merits an article. It's certainly an exclusive award. The student award winners can be used as evidence toward the "notable alumni" criterion, as they appear to be exclusive as well.

• Critics and Awards Program for High School Students "The Cappies"

Operates in only a few areas in North America, most awards go to individual students rather than the school's drama troupe, and the schools themselves nominate the critics, making this non-independent. On top of all that, there's the "Criticism" section's claim that critics like to "spread the awards around." I'm going to have to go with "no" on this one.

• California School Recognition Program

A state award. California Distinguished School goes to over 300 schools in the state every year. Schools nominate themselves and can reapply every 4 years. I don't think this is an acceptable level of exclusivity for a subnational award.

• Blue Ribbon Schools Program

As User:Dgies notes at Wikiproject Schools, this's been given out at the rate of roughly one every three days, and over 3,000 schools have gotten one. That makes it pretty common. I'm willing to accept it as one of the awards necessary to establish notability, though. It is national level, and it is a high award. Shimeru 20:21, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Again, I'll note that I think this criterion is redundant. I think we should consider awards only if the awards talk about the school itself (i.e. they profile the school, even briefly, instead of just listing it). Then it becomes a reliable source with which we can build an article. Fagstein 04:28, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Another idea from the other proposal...

If we're going to be supporting merges over deletes (not a bad idea), perhaps we should take up the "unmerged school" template and category that was once proposed at WP:SCHOOLS. This would give WP:SCH members an easy way to watch for school articles that need merging (or expansion and sourcing). The suggestion more or less got lost in the notability debate over there, but it seems like a good one. Shimeru 08:18, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I've bashed out a quick draft proposal at User:Shimeru/Template:Merge-school, if there's any interest. Comments appreciated. (I am aware of Template:Cleanup-school, and lifted some basic formatting from there, but I think this one serves a different enough purpose to justify its existence.) Shimeru 16:29, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the template gives the mistaken impression that unverifiable information is acceptable as long as it's merged. Unverifiability of information should be entirely separate from the issue of not having enough information to justify an article. Fagstein 04:19, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Good point. Thanks to JoshuaZ, that issue is now dealt with more explicitly. Shimeru 08:09, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the template is an excellent idea. Using prod tags does not draw sufficient attention to allow articles to be fixed. Using AfD to clean up articles has worked in the past, but it's an extremely blunt tool and it's not always possible or achievable to bring articls up to snuff in the couple of days that an AfD will last. Some intermediate state, using this proposed template, would allow interested parties to take a closer look at improving these article, knowing that there would be adequate time to do something about the article, before it went to AfD (if need be). Alansohn 03:56, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

My chief concern with this is that it does not set a timeline on how long an article has to be improved. It is my experience that only about 20% of school articles receive significant edits beyond their initial creation, and if significant edits are made, they tend to happen earlier rather than later. While categorizing school stubs as articles needing attention will help to some extent, I think that some kind of limit still needs to be imposed, otherwise these pages will hang around forever as very weak stubs. Denni 00:00, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, since the tag is dated, the fact that it's been there for a while without being addressed will be evident, and that would lend some weight to an eventual AfD nomination. I'm not certain a time limit would be viable, since other cleanup-style tags don't specify one. What sort of time frame did you have in mind, though? Anything less than a month would seem a bit hasty to me. Shimeru 00:26, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I've implemented the template. Usage is {{subst:merge-school}}. Hoping it will be more effective than the existing cleanup template. I plan to go through the current roster of schools needing cleanup over the next few days and retag the ones that seem appropriate. Shimeru 22:54, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Commentary

Probably nothing here that's not been said before, but here we go anyway ...

• Criterion 1. There is a de facto exclusion of most things that appear in the local paper. This is because they are either (1) trivial (2) of local interest. If they are beyond local interest, there will be further press coverage. As an example, the fire at Penyrheol Comprehensive School has received considerable attention in the regional/national news (depending on how you classify a television service originating in Cardiff broadcasting to all of Wales). The place was gutted, and the perp has been convicted and is due for sentencing today. It would be another matter to decide whether or not those references were trivial or not, but this demonstrates wider interest than merely local. It should be made clear that what I am suggesting here is only exclusion of trivial references to the school in the local paper in its area. Coverage in the papers in neighbouring areas might suggest more than local interest. The main reason for this applying to schools rather than anything else is that schools get an awful lot of trivial coverage in the local media compared to most other things. We don't hear about most people's garage bands being so successful on the local scene that they're supporting a major act on tour, but the local press start falling over themselves when someone in a local school gets into Oxford University.
• Criterion 2. This makes a lot of sense, though will need considerable interpretation for ex-US schools, possibly even within the US. A school that reaches the final stages of a California-wide competition will have probably faced more opposition than a school participating in what would be roughly the equivalent tier in the UK, which might be across Glamorgan. Of course, if only 20 schools in all of California participate in the state-wide competition, it might be an indicator of a "unique program" (sic).
• Criterion 3. There needs to be clarification on the scope of this. For instance, I was aware of one school in my area that offered Russian on an extra-curricular basis. Then there is the case of a school in an area with a large Asian population which was considering starting a kabaddi team - though this would certainly not be typical for a British school. For this, we really need the solution which I proposed about two years ago, which is to have articles on generic subjects such as High schools in the United States, such that we know what is typical and what is unusual. There have probably been a number of scholarly studies on school in general that an article should be feasible.
• Criterion 4. Care needs to be taken with the awards that are included here. First off, any award for which the school nominates itself is out. No questions, no argument. Anyone can nominate themselves for an award.
• Criterion 5. This absolutely has to go. I have no issue with listing notable former pupils on an article, but the school needs to earn the article on its own basis, and its own achievement.

As for comments that only criterion 1 is necessary, and that everything else is either more restrictive or redundant, I consider such a position to be absurd. By that logic, all our policies and guidelines are redundant to WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:OR. They provide clarification, and the additional criteria should be situations which would cause non-trivial coverage. I suggest #5 needs to go, since being some second-rate actor's alma mater is not (in the main) likely to attract vast amounts of interest necessary for non-trivial published works. Chris cheese whine 10:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Re your criteria 1 comment: The fact that a fire received media attention over a wider area does not make the school notable.

Re your criteria 5 commnet: This was added to help this proposal obtain consensus. Given the restrictive nature of the current version, would removing it hurt the changes of getting consensus for this proposal? Vegaswikian 18:31, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

For C1, as I said, it's a matter of whether or not it's trivial. I leave the decision about whether or not it's trivial to others. For C5, I would imagine there would be no opposition to removing it other than from the "zomg its a school!!11" crowd. It's mostly useless for judging the merits of a school, generally irrelevant, and endorses use of the association fallacy. Chris cheese whine 20:23, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

For C5 the current version of it isn't so bad since it insists that some independent had to find the alumni connection to be notable. I'd prefer not to have it but we don't have any realistic chance of this proposal gaining consensus without it. Since the notion has minimal plausibility I think we should be willing to let it stay. JoshuaZ 20:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:SCHOOLS plug

Hi there, in response to JoshuaZ's rewording of this last week, I've reworded the criteria at WP:SCHOOLS to (hopefully) meet a lot of the objections that the more deletionist side of the debate. Comments are of course welcome. Who knows, maybe we can meet in the middle somewhere... Cheers, JYolkowski // talk 23:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

One big concern I see remaining there is the "is likely to receive coverage..." criteria-this is a totally subjective criterion. I would suggest changing this to simply "has received coverage." Seraphimblade 00:15, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

A pretty good rewrite. I agree about the last half of criterion 3... we can't judge whether a school "is likely to" receive coverage; that's POV and crystal ball. I'd also remove criterion 4, because I don't see what "half of" criterion 1 would mean. That it's been covered, but only in publications related to the school? That the source is independent but not reliable? That the coverage is of no encyclopedic value? None of these make any sense to me. Finally, while I agree in theory with "Age," it should be defined such that it's clear this means "first school" or "designated national historic site" or such, rather than "older than some arbitrary figure." But perhaps that doesn't matter so much, since if it's being called distinctive, it should have attracted mention in reliable sources. Shimeru 05:36, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I still dislike WP:SCHOOLS. In fact, I now dislike its wording even more. I'm still fully on board with SCHOOLS3, though there's no reason I couldn't support both (or a combination of the two) if SCHOOLS is improved much, much, much more. -- Kicking222 14:41, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

And after reading this yet again, I think I like SCHOOLS3 just how it is. I don't think it's too inclusive, and I don't think it's too exclusive. I like every criterion. Suffice it to say, I'm completely supportive of SCHOOLS3 100% (or, since I play a lot of sports, 110%). -- Kicking222 23:47, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for not responding, I was away for a few weeks. However, looks like my rewrite has inspired further progress, so I'm happy for that. JYolkowski // talk 00:47, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Rewrite

I've had a go at revising the proposal based on some of the discussion above and at WP:SCHOOL. Better? Clearer? Possessing any shred of hope of reaching consensus? Shimeru 22:08, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

It's a step in the right direction, for what that's worth. Fagstein 05:37, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

WOW! This is MUCH improved. Criteria 2 is much improved. I would like it also to contain the statement "It is expected that all schools that meet this criteria will also meet criteria 1," since without meeting criteria 1, we can't write an article, since there will be no references!!! I still have some issues though, mainly with criteria 3 & 4:

• • • Number 3 is still arbitrary. Notions that "national" exposure is automatically "more notable" than "state" or "regional" exposure does not jive with the main idea of "notability" as expressed in the PNC. Notability is a boolean concept. Either the references exist or they don't. Either they are independant or they aren't. Either they are reliable or they aren't. Either they are non-trivial or they aren't. We can't rank-order references by saying "These kinds of references need only one mention because they are more reliable" and "These kinds of references need 2 mentions because they are less reliable" Either the coverage meets the Primary Notability Criteria or it doesn't. Collapse criteria 3 into criteria 2, and state only that "verifiably gained recognition for" yada yada yada. Arbitrary restrictions on the geographic nature or number of citations seems uneccesary.
    • Number 4 is also problematic. While any article on a school SHOULD MENTION notable alumni, the existance of notable alumni does not, by itself, make a school notable. There is a difference between statements that can be made in an article, and statements that indicate that an article is notable. The existance of notable alumni, where the alumni's notability is not tied to their time at the school, does not confer any additional notability to the school. It might be worded better to state: "The school has notable alumni or staff whose claim to notability is tied directly to their time at the school, and where such notablity can be verified in reliable sources." That seems much clearer as it establishes that notability for the school by alumni must be clearly established by a logical connection.

If I may be bold, I might make these changes myself tomorrow. I am quite tired now, and after some sleep, I might get to this. Otherwise, it would be interesting to how these proposals fly here. --Jayron32 07:18, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

• • • • 4 is part of a general compromise and is based partially on the observation that in AfDs many people are willing to keep based on the presence of alumni. Without 4 I doubt this will ever be acceptable to the more moderate inclusionists and if this is ever going to get a consensus behind it it will need them. The question about 4 should not be "is it reasonable" but "is it reasonable enough that one can live with it as part of a compromise?" I think the answer to that is yes. JoshuaZ 07:31, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Hm. I was trying to make obvious that the primary, overarching requirement was the production of sources (independent, reliable, non-trivial, etc.) -- that's why the boldface text and the new lead. The numbered criteria (or subcriteria, I suppose) are meant more in the vein of examples. What might you look for to show notability? Well, aside from the school itself, there's the national championship, the long list of alumni notable in a given field, and so forth. I absolutely do not mind if you (or anyone else) makes further changes, for what that's worth. On number 4, I pretty much agree; the current version is GRBerry's rewrite of the previous criterion #5 (see discussion above), included basically verbatim. (I did add the staff part.) I don't object to your rephrasing; I do think some concession to the notable alumni thing needs to be made, as JoshuaZ suggests. Shimeru 10:39, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and on national vs. regional... It's not so much that national distinction makes it "more notable" than a more local one, but that a national distinction serves as a stronger proof of notability than a state or provincial one. National-level distinction is harder to achieve, and so a single instance is a pretty good claim to notability. Local recognition is much easier, so does not automatically serve to make the subject notable; however, multiple instances of local recognition present a stronger claim. If you can think of a better means of phrasing these, by all means, please do. Shimeru 10:47, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry, can't support any proposal which legitimises the association fallacy. Criterion #4 has to go. Chris cheese whine 17:49, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
  • It isn't an association fallacy so much in that the people are notable and what school they went to presumably had some effects on what they subsequently did (the most obvious example of this would be athletes who were on the school sports teams). Thus, it is a weak rather than falacious argument. JoshuaZ 23:12, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
    • The school has multiple notable alumni or staff ... Even if it is used as a supporting example to suggest circumstances in which their might be verifiable coverage, it's still suggesting that the school might be notable on the basis of its staff and pupils. It's a fallacy to attribute their notability to the school. Many sports stars might well have achieved their own fame regardless of what school they went to. It's rather like suggesting that Arsenal FC is notable because Thierry Henry has played for them. Chris cheese whine 00:08, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

To accept the "notable alumni" criteria, we have to accept that an article is perfectly legitimate if it consists only of the school's name and the statement "(Celebrity name) once attended this school." Why does this make the article automatically exempt from requiring multiple reliable sources that feature it? Forget this compromise talk - half-assed hackjobs of policies are why the previous proposals have all failed. Fagstein 06:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, it does seem the prevailing feeling is against it. I've removed it from the proposal for the moment. Shimeru 10:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I've always been against the alumni criterion, and while JoshuaZ convinced me of its possible importance, I'd still rather not have it in there. I'm glad it currently isn't. -- Kicking222 17:38, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to repeat what I think are the strongest reasons to keep the alumni matter in 1) empirically it is often used as a keep argument in school deletion discussions even by editors who would otherwise favor deletion 2) it is very likely if a school has multiple notable alumni that some verifiable connection exists between why the alumni is famous and what they did at the school (this is for example very often true with athletes who played in the school temas) 3) If a school had notable alumni and someone is at our page on Alumni A and they want to know who else was a notable alumnus of the school they have no obvious way of getting that information. 5) I don't think it is realistic that this is going to be accepted as a compromise without some form of alumni criterion. (At this point I'm beginning to think that 5 and 1 are really the best reasons - I'd rather have a compromise with a few inclusion criteria that are somewhat too broad than the continued acrimony that we currently have. And given that schools with notable alumni are being kept I don't see much being lost in including it). JoshuaZ 19:00, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

This proposal has made some small but meaningful steps towards a compromise that might be accepted by the broad range of those Wikipedians with a more expansive view of school article inclusion. To add to JoshuaZ's arguments above, removal of the alumni criteria is a giant step backward in trying to craft a useful compromise for all school articles, and not just a proposal that satisifies a small number of deletionists. As I have suggested earlier, this could be an example of a criterion that must appear with other supporting material to justify inclusion. However its entire removal will not fly. Alansohn 20:13, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Why not? It's not a question of deletionism vs. non-deletionism. It's that with this criteria included, the policy essentially states that schools follow Misplaced Pages's deletion policy in that it has to have numerous reliable sources writing about it, but that for some strange reason having a couple of notable alumni is a "get-out-of-policy free" card which allows an article to be written on a subject without any direct reliable sources. It's just trying to put it in line with existing Misplaced Pages policies. Fagstein 03:27, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

We do actually allow similar statements in other guidelines when we have some other concern. For example, see criteria 2 and 3 of WP:CORP. In fact, since this criterion is (arguably) a proxy for having a high likelyhood of such sources existing but not having them on hand easily it is in line with the general policies. JoshuaZ 04:58, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what is meant by "non-routine inspection reports by government agencies". In England and Wales all schools, both primary and secondary, are subject to regular inspections by OFSTED. Nursery schools also have to be inspected by OFSTED. It is generally the failing schools which have non-routine or more frequent inspections, so, for English and Welsh schools at least, the current phraseology seems to suggest that failing schools are notable but schools which have good inspection reports are non-notable. It might be best to leave out this phrase altogether. An OFTSTED report can be a useful source of information but cannot be the only source used to verify notability. I would also suggest that for criterion 3 the bracketed phrase "(statewide or provincial)" be deleted as these terms could cause confusion. Not every country is organised into states (eg the UK is divided into counties) and state could in some contexts perhaps refer to a country. Provincial is also another term which could perhaps be open to interpretation. Dahliarose 21:05, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

That's a good point -- my main interest there is to denote a geographic/political area somewhat more extensive than a single town or city. Will try to think of a better way of phrasing that. Shimeru 06:02, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it might be safest to provide regional definitions by country (eg, state in the US, county in the UK, province in Canada) to avoid any ambiguity. The phraseology must be global and not just applicable to the USA. Dahliarose 11:44, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Bias against local press

I've removed this. There's lots of problems with media at all levels, not just local. This proposal was written from a bias prospective against local media. It also implies there's a problem with "typical" coverage, which is rather absurd. That fact something/someone is "typically" covered may well be an indication of notability. Let's keep in mind this "non-trivial/multiple sources" item is common to several WP:N guidelines, and we shouldn't be substantially changing that particular item. --Rob 13:26, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I have restored it. It's been substantially agreed upon that routine coverage such as sports scores is trivial -- insufficient to build an article around. If you would like to argue that this is not the case, feel free to do so, but please do not make such a major change without first seeking consensus. I would also like to point out that other notability guidelines do exclude trivial coverage, such as mention in passing. Shimeru 20:04, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with Rob that the "multiple non-trivial source" standard specified by WP:N (and elsewhere in Misplaced Pages) is rather broad and has no exclusion of local coverage. As long as the article is about the school and comes from a reliable source, it should be included. I will agree that routine sports scores, profiles of valedictorians, class play announcements and the like are trivial. I will even acknowledge that government reports routinely prepared for most schools are trivial, despite the mention in the WP:N definition of "published works". But we cannot ignore the fact that many schools do get coverage "about" the school that would meet any reasonable interpretation of the "multiple non-trivial source" standard. While some positive steps have been made here, attempts to narrow the "multiple non-trivial source" standard for schools will only make WP:SCHOOLS3 even more unacceptable as an option for achieving consensus. Alansohn 20:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

But local coverage that isn't routine in nature is specifically noted as non-trivial in the same footnote that Rob/Thivierr had removed, so I can only assume that his objection was to the exclusion of routine coverage. Shimeru 21:13, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

You're not actually arguing against what I did. I merely oppose the anti-local bias, and misuse of the term "routine". I fully accept excluding trivial coverage. We agree a school mentioned faintly, in passing doesn't count. However, its irrelevant whether that happens in a local or national/international publication. There are numerous international sources which have only trivial (or directory-style) information on schools, which wouldn't count. Also, whether something is "routine" is not what matters. If numerous papers give routine trivial coverage, that wouldn't count. But if they give routine non-trivial coverage, that should count. What's at issue is the depth of the coverage, not whether its routine. A list of school game scores is trivial, whether its in the local, or national paper. A comprehensive throurough, indepth story on a specific school, is signficant, even if its local, and even if its routine for that publication (e.g. its part of what that publication does). The question is "All other things being equal how does being local make a source unusuable". --Rob 02:38, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The article type that I believe the footnote is attempting to deal with is to make clear that something like an article about a student who scored many goals in in some sport is not useful for writing an article about the school. Furthermore, there is a genuine concern about local sources- even though they are published, they don't do nearly as much fact checking as what we would normally expect a reliable source to do and in fact for school articles they often do even less. I strongly doubt any school notability policy that doesn't attempt to deal with these issues will satisfy the less school inclusionist editors. JoshuaZ 03:20, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

You keep saying your opninion on local media, without showing has some proof of it, as a rule. Anyone can find good local and national media, and bad local and national media. Examples and exceptions don't make a rule. Are you contesting the idea there's local media that has strong fact checking? Its actually humorous, when you consider how often a single corporation (aka media conglomorate) will own large numbers local and national outlets. Often the reporter writing about an event in City Y for National Paper X, is the same reporter writing for the City Y Local Paper. The reporter may follow exactly the same standards for both (not always knowing which will run the story in advance). Also, the limited number of remaining truly indepedent local papers are often a good source of independent coverage. Next, in the age of the Web, it is absurd to give preference to what's "national/international". A 12-year old can have an "international" media outlet (e.g. a web site used around the world). But, the main publication of a million-person city, is merely "local". Now if you wish to exclude media media outlets that are not recognized/respected outside of their local area, we can talk about that idea. But I think generally, detailed rules on reliable sources need to go in the relevant page. This page should be for matters specific to schools. --Rob 05:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Hm... I think I see what you're trying to say, but I'm confused by the way in which you're saying it. Could you provide an example of a local publication which would routinely include comprehensive, in-depth stories about a given school? I'd been thinking of newspapers and community newsletters, but I might well be missing something. Shimeru 03:53, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Trouble is, if we're going to include routine coverage, we're right back to "include all schools" again-all schools receive some type of coverage in their local area, especially if we're including publications which specifically write about schools, and that's "what they do". What we're looking for is a requirement of notability-that the school has attracted non-trivial attention which is not routine, not given as a matter of course, and has some impact outside its locality (ALL schools have an impact and receive attention within their locality). I think the paragraph as written was quite good and clear on that, and I think there should be an "anti-local bias"-an important barometer of notability would indeed be "Has the school had an impact or gathered attention from outside its community?" Finally, I disagree that a 12-year-old's website would be "international" in scope-after all, most local papers would be international by this definition, most of them post their stories to the web. The definition would be the scope of coverage-if the paper mainly covers San Francisco, it would be local to San Francisco, even if you theoretically can view it in Manila. Coverage of a San Francisco school by this paper would be local. Coverage of a South Dakota school would be national coverage for that school, if printed in our San Francisco paper. Coverage of a school in London by the same paper would be international coverage. Does that make a bit better sense? Seraphimblade 07:50, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Which other notability guideline has had this anti-local bias you are insistant upon? Why are you insisting on deleting schools that would pass WP:N? Please cite specific official guidelines, and quote the passages in *other* notability guidelines, like WP:CORP which use the same approach. Its funny, that the very people who've been demanding for so long we treat schools like everything else, are now insisisting we can't, and we must have extra rules, that exist nowhere else. Let's be clear: I'm trying to make this page be consistant with WP:N and other "notability" guidelines that mention "non-trivial" coverage. No more, and no less. It seems you're only support WP:N when it favors deletion, but not when it supports inclusion. I'm expecting that you're utterly unable to quote other notability guidelines on this, to support you position. --Rob 13:57, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

So are we. We've had issues with defining "non-trivial" before, which is the reason that footnote was in place. Routine coverage is excluded in other guidelines, although the word "routine" may not specifically be used. For instance, WP:CORP excludes "newspaper articles that simply report extended shopping hours" (analogous to school sports scores) and "Media re-prints of press releases, other publications where the company or corporation talks about its products or services, and advertising for the product or service." (analogous to human-interest filler pieces). You are perhaps focusing too narrowly on the usage of the word "routine" -- if you can think of a better, concise way of stating the point, then please do so. Removing the point, however, is not terribly productive. Shimeru 20:18, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

As another example, specifically applying as requested to WP:CORP, a local paper in a small town might run extensive coverage of most new businesses that open. This would, however, be considered routine and trivial coverage, even if it went into quite a bit of detail on the well-anticipated (locally) new fast-food chain or megastore, and such a fast food chain or megastore wouldn't be "more notable" than a new one in NYC just because Podunk News has less to print then the NYT. Coverage in The Local Gazette wouldn't make Mom's Antiques notable under WP:CORP either-it just means there was a slow news day, or that the Gazette does that type of thing routinely, either of which makes it trivial. Now, of course, if several local papers print a lot of in-depth information about a school, that just might be enough source material to write an article from-but that's why it's suggested we should be a bit skeptical of local sources establishing notability, not totally against them. In some cases, notability and adequate source material may be established by purely local sources, but a school which has achieved national or international recognition is a lot more likely to be notable. No one's advocating prohibiting local sources-only making people aware that local coverage often (not always) is routine and trivial. Seraphimblade 21:04, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

This makes the over simplification that all "locals" are equal. A city city could be 10 million, a million, or a thousand. A city of a million can easily sustain a highly reliable newspaper. The question is whether the publication is reliable, not whether its "local". You keep insistantly repeat the assumption that "local" and "routine" means "trivial. Even if that was often the case, why be prejudice about? Lets simply demand non-trivial coverage. If a local item is trivial (e.g. list of sport scores) its excluded, just as we can exclude the same listing by a national source (for instance if ESPN rattles off some scores, with no detail/substance). Incidently, the National Enquirer is a national source, so I guesse, by your logic its more reliable than my local Calgary Herald. You also think my National Post is more reliable than the Calgary Herald for covering a story, even than it uses the same reporters, and procedures. So, far I just see a very over-simplified view of terms like "national" and "local". Also, you have yet to explain why any of your concerns are specific to schools. If they're not specific to schools, they belong in places like WP:RS, WP:V, or WP:N. We must *not* put detailed specifications on sources in each of the numerous notability guidelines (and such guidelines must be based on facts, not simple-minded stereo-types). Now, some sources, like government school reports, are specific to schools, soo rules to count/discount them, do belong here. But how precisely we weight the national/regional/local media simply doesn't belong on this page. --Rob 02:02, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Exactly right, as I just said! If local coverage is genuinely non-trivial, I have no problem treating it as such. We should place the caution, however, that local coverage is routinely trivial. I also do believe that "local" and "routine" weighs heavily toward (though does not by definition indicate) trivial coverage-if local papers cover every school that opens in the area, the coverage is likely trivial. On the other hand, if the coverage is usually a blurb but a full-feature article is written on a given school, that is likely to establish notability. (If the paper writes a full-feature article on every school that opens in the area, it would depend if such coverage were genuinely reliable and neutral enough to write a full article from-if so, it's likely fine regardless!) However, this last scenario just doesn't happen very often, if at all, and the fact of it remains that most local coverage is stuff like sports scores, human-interest type blurbs, and the like. Seraphimblade 02:12, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I've attempted to address this rather puzzling (to me, anyway) semantic issue by rewriting the bullet-point in question to exclude the words "local" or "routine." Better? Shimeru 07:13, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

And now there seems to be an issue with "common school events." Rob, your comment (from your edit summary) was "By your logic a large comprehensive series of articles on a school's drama department wouldn't count." Could you explain why not? As I read the footnotes, it would indeed count -- it is "large" and "comprehensive," so it's not a mention in passing -- bullet point one, check. It is not a directory or demographic data -- point two, check. It is not "brief coverage" of a common school event -- point three, check. It is not a government report -- point four, check. We will assume it's a reliable source for the purpose of this conversation, so point five, check. The only way I see for such a series not to pass would be the last -- if it's written up in the school newspaper, for instance. But if we assume that that is not the case, I don't see any logical way in which this large comprehensive series of articles could be taken to fail. I've expanded the point in question to (redundantly) make explicit that this is intended to exclude only the sort of coverage that cannot sustain an article: a given year might produce a dozen articles along the lines of "West Side High baseball beats North Side High 4-2," but there's nothing noteworthy about that -- baseball is a common school activity. Winning the state baseball championship? Not so common. But that aside, I honestly do not see how the previous wording could be taken to exclude any "large comprehensive series," and I'd like to see that logic laid out -- it might help in writing other sections of the proposal. Shimeru 02:05, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

If anything, local coverage is likely more detailed, and less trivial, when mentioning local schools, compared to national coverage of the same. Also, "West Side High baseball beats North Side High 4-2," doesn't count, if that's the *whole* story. But if that's just the headline to a complete newsarticle, giving detail of what led it it, and why it matters, than that probably does count, and will help provide a fleshed out article. --Rob 08:52, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Our differences

(Cross-posted to Misplaced Pages talk:Schools) Been away a little while, so I'm wondering whether the following summary is accurate. Is the main disagreement between these two proposals that the "inclusionist" side (sorry to use labels like that, but it's hard to come up with anything else) wants routine but useful coverage (e.g. OFSTED reports) and local news coverage to count towards "multiple non-trivial published works", while the "deletionist" side (again, sorry) doesn't? Thanks, JYolkowski // talk 01:38, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

(My own opinion, not presuming to speak for everyone here) I think that's one main issue. If we're going to allow "routine" government coverage to count, we may as well be back to "include all schools". The government reports on just about everything-if we're to open that can of worms, "all restaurants are notable" since they all get health inspection reports. For that matter, "all people are notable" since just about everyone has some type of government record. When we're looking at notability, we should be looking for something above and beyond the trivial stuff that applies to every(one|thing) in the category by rote or requirement. Seraphimblade 01:42, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Its hard to compare, since both are changing continuously and substantially. But the principal "core" difference is WP:SCHOOLS has supported the concept of being comprhensive, and this page has been based on notability. But we should focus less on bringing these two school pages together, and look at bringing them closer to other existing pages, such as WP:N, WP:CORP, WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, WP:WEB, etc... We have to remove the extra rules imposed against schools, that don't exist in other guideliens. If you want to remove "preferencial" treatment of schools, you must also remove discriminatory treatment against them as well. That means not adding these simple-minded words against "local" and "routine", which are unjustified. --Rob 02:13, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree, mostly. Ultimately, I'd like to see schools judged on essentially the same criteria as we use for corporations or organizations (though some modifications are necessary, since most schools are neither for-profit nor function in the same manner as charitable organizations). The standard should neither be significantly more nor significantly less difficult than the similar notability standards. Focusing on the sources is definitely the way to go; I do feel like we're making some progress, despite the couple of issues that remain. Shimeru 04:58, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Just to show that the criteria you want is actually attainable, can you link to some school articles that you made, that fully meet the criteria you wish. --Rob 08:57, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Nice qualification with the "that you made," but sure, I can offer you an example: Wyoming Seminary, which I talked about in more detail a few sections up on this page. It could stand improvement (on my to-do list), but it's got its multiple reliable independent sources, so it meets the first criterion of the proposal. (It also verifiably holds a national record -- first nighttime American football game -- and verifiably has national recognition as a registered historic site, so it meets the second criterion of the proposal, twice.) Shimeru 09:53, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

The transformation of this into this, and likely future expansion, shows the dangers of deleting an article because it doesn't *currently* meet all the requirements. Aritcles are improved piecemill, and we shouldn't demand final finished articles during AFD. Instead of making an article to meet your standards, you found an article that didn't, and have improved it, so it could. While that's good, it shows the danger of deleting articles so easily, because it prevents there improvement later on. Remember, AFDs often occur shortly after an article is made. We evaluate the draft version, not the final version. You're improvement of the school article, actually demonstrated the value of keeping articles that fail your standards, and keeping them, so that they can be improved later. We're a wiki. That means good articles come from many people, making many modest contributions. A good article, results from a chain of little contributions. If we delete the first contribution, we break the chain, and never get to the final result. You expect *other* editors to make their first draft good-enough, but can't do that yourself. The time it takes you to make one good article, as an example, would be much less than the time invested by others in articles you removed. --Rob 10:24, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I can do that myself, actually, and these days, I do. I freely admit that there was a time I was not so worried about providing sources. This was a mistake, and I know better now. Many supporters of broad inclusionism make this argument; the problem with it is that the articles are often not improved. In my current working through Category:Schools needing cleanup, I've frequently come across articles tagged for cleanup and expansion that have not changed in months, even years. Often, there is no significant change from the first draft to the current article -- some wikilinking, maybe, the addition of categories or an infobox, but no content changes. These articles are almost all unsourced, or sourced only by the school or district's website. It's not infrequent to find one copied and pasted directly from a school website. We shouldn't demand a finished article the first moment, no. But we shouldn't let these articles languish for months in the belief that "someone will work on them" when it is obvious that nobody is. It is not unreasonable to demand sources -- the opposite is enshrined in Misplaced Pages policy, in fact (WP:V). We would not accept an article about a band or a company remaining for months in such a sorry condition, and for the same reasons we should not accept an article about a school doing so. If Wyoming Seminary in its previous form had been nominated for deletion, I would have voted delete -- and then, later, constructed an actual sourced article showing notability. This is what you're missing: deletion is not a permanent decision. It doesn't prevent anyone from writing a new article that meets the standards. For that matter, deletion isn't even a first resort for this policy, as it is with WP:BIO or WP:CORP -- we suggest a merge and redirect as a compromise with the completionists. If there are people who want a school to have an article, they should do what we require of people who want any subject to have its own article: Find the sources, prove its notability, write an article that can stand. You say that many school articles can be improved? I fully agree. {{Sofixit}} and prove your point. That category I linked would be a good place to start: hundreds of articles that have been tagged for months. Shimeru 20:24, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Always merge/redirect?

SCHOOLS3 currently states that school articles not meeting criteria may be merged and should always be redirected. Is this really the policy we want to go with- to always redirect, even when the article's title is poor and the article has little history to speak of? What good would a redirect do in these situations? -- Kicking222 17:20, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I suspect it's one of those compromise things. If the title is poor, then it should probably be moved to a better title first, then the redirect deleted. I don't think we need to spell that out, really, just like there's no need to spell out that, if merging is declined, AfD is a possible next step. Shimeru 21:01, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

a bad redirect is also easily moved to become a good redirect with almost no outcry. And it's also increadibly easy to get redirects, deleted... compared to a school article, anyway.Garrie 05:51, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

bias against private tertiary institutions

Why should private tertiary institutions be compared against WP:CORP, but not private secondary (or primary or pre-) schools? I would have thought this actually makes it pretty easy anyway - most private secondary, primary and pre- schools are owned as part of a network of schools anyway so the whole network would meet WP:CORP pretty easily and each insitution would be too big for a single article. Garrie 05:49, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Why must for-profit schools be compared against WP:CORP at all if they satisfy WP:SCHOOLS3? Satisfying either CORP or SCHOOLS3 should be enough.

Further, I suggest a differentiation be made between for-profit schools that have successfully obtained government-recognized accreditation, from unaccredited diploma mills or those accredited by questionable accreditation mills. This way, properly accredited schools should automatically have at least 1 non-trivial source (ie, the website of the accrediting body listing them as a member). Wl219 12:47, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Talk Page Link

Is there any particular reason why the talk page link on Misplaced Pages:Schools3 links to the discussion page for Misplaced Pages:Schools? That's bound to confuse some users. -- Butseriouslyfolks 01:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Note 7 - Objective Triviality

Unless I am misunderstanding it, I disagree with Note 7. Isn't it the job of an editor to make the trivial / non-trivial judgment, based on all of the circumstances? Why is it better to bind ourselves to the source's determination whether something is or is not trivial? If a matter is only found in one source, but that source treats it like it is the most important, least trivial matter in the world, does that outweigh the fact that no other source even mentions it? I think an editor has to review and weigh the sources (or lack thereof) to determine whether a matter is trivial in an overall sense. IMHO. -- Butseriouslyfolks 02:02, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Twin proposals

It was kind of confusing that there were two twin proposals here. But the other one was rejected, and this one is ongoing. So I've moved the other one to Misplaced Pages:Schools/Old proposal, and moved this one here, so now all schools-related links point to the active proposal (or guideline, if consensus is reached on that). >Radiant< 15:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

That makes much more sense. The shortcut still points to WP:Schools3 and needs changing but I'm not sure how to do it as it seems to be embedded in the template. Dahliarose 15:43, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Notablity

Notablity of the Schools and Universities are the same thing??? There is no article named Misplaced Pages:Notability (universities). NAHID 15:14, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, basically. There seems to be a general agreement that educational institutions at the college and university level are broadly notable, so most of the discussion has focused on schools at a lower level. Shimeru 20:06, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Objections to the rejected proposal

Radiant's moves (WP:Schools to Misplaced Pages:Schools/Old proposal; the alternative WP:Schools3 to WP:Schools) obscures the previous discussion. The old proposal was perhaps labelled as rejected with a little too much haste, the thrust of the arguement was that the policy was substantially misdirected, and discussion was still ongoing.

The objections to the "Old proposal" are essential identical to the objections to this alternative proposal, and so I am coping the end of the discussion here for us to continue. SmokeyJoe 21:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Oppose

I oppose this policy proposal as too restrictive and would like to see this tagged as {{rejected}} and forgotten. Stop trying to make rules about what others shouldn't do. Stop trying to limit others. Existing policies suffice. New users and new articles should always be encouraged. Articles should be encouraged to be improved, not deleted.--SmokeyJoe 06:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that one of the few things most Wikipedians agree on is that there ought to be a few rules. I'd say that WP:School is a fairly open and broad-minded approach as to which school articles merit retention. If you think this proposal is "too restrictive", take a gander at WP:SCHOOLS3. I'm still trying to figure out if any school is notable enough to meet the WP:SCHOOLS3 criteria. Alansohn 06:39, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Sure. Hopkins School and Eton College easily meet the current version of that proposal. I suspect that making SCHOOLS3 somewhat more inclusive is more likely to get a consensus than anything else (although at this point I'm getting very sick of stubborn people on both sides of the discussion). JoshuaZ 21:28, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I support the request to tag this proposal as {{rejected}}. How many people are needed before we can tag it as such? --Stéphane Charette 02:51, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I've come down for deletion in a lot of AFDs for schools, but it will be harder without this guideline to refer to. I suppose then it will be easier to keep them. Hope that's what you want. Maybe the best points from this guideline proposal should be added to WP:local rather than insulting those who have worked hard on creating this by just trashing it. I am for accepting it, and frankly I was surprised to see mention of it being slapped (yet again) with a rejected tag. Did anyone see how often it was cited in school deletion debates? I recall seeing it quite a bit. Apparently since people get angry when you do a straw poll, the only way to establish a guideline is to refer to it in AFDs and tag it as approved. Edison 21:18, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Currently, schools are being expected to meet a particularly high standard, higher than for many other types of articles. Why? Some people seem to “not like”, even “hate” school articles and in response work to have them deleted, or write a guideline to be used as a stick to be used by elitists to overwhelm newbies. This is not a good thing. It is contrary to the principles of wikipedia. Who writes the woeful article about a humble school? A young newbie whose school is the most important influence on their lives so far outside of their family. What happens next? Their article is summarily deleted (all contributions hidden) with coded references to plethora of rules requiring hours of study to understand, and perhaps with threats to “block” if they attempt to recreate deleted material. What a welcome! What does the newbie learn? That[REDACTED] is patrolled by aggressive elites suppressing the contributions of those who haven’t learnt the elites’ rules.

My position is that any article that is verifiable and not original research should be allowed, subject only to very specific further conditions such as copyright or WP:BIO. Verifiable means that there must be sources. Add "No original research" and it means that at least one source must be third party. This should be applied on a section by section basis. I would support a policy stating that every article must be verifiable by at least one third party (aka secondary) source. Such a policy should be applied to Pokemon and other fantasies long before it is extended and tightened around real things like schools.

I think that this attempted guideline has become substantially misguided. It should be written to help new editors write a good new school article. Instead, it has become a tool of suppression. I would like to see a dramatic change in direction, and a clear statement that “failure to follow a guideline is not, per se, a reason for deletion”.

Where an article has zero worthy content, rather that delete it, I would prefer to see its content blanked (history preserved), and a redirect placed to a much more friendly policy, such as Misplaced Pages:Editing policy. SmokeyJoe 05:02, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with SJ. WP:N is enough of a guideline for determining whether a school article should be speedy deleted, merged, prodded or whatever. I think that we should work through WP:SCH to do as suggested above and to improve school articles generally. None of the high school articles that I have seen at AfD took as much time to improve to start class (or at least a keepable stub) as the collective time put in to argue pro and con on deletion.

Are we agreed to rewrite the policy, removing anything that can be interpreted as criteria for article deletion, and making it newbie friendly? I don't see any point in leaving a rejected form in place. SmokeyJoe 07:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I very much disagree to removing anything that can be interpreted as criteria for article deletion. The applicable policy here is WP:NOT a directory. If only directory type information can be provided and sourced on a school, such as its location, staff, etc., it should be deleted or redirected to an appropriate parent locality. If it can meet WP:N, with multiple reliable non-trivial source mentions, great! What this proposal and WP:SCHOOLS3 are mainly attempting to get across is what constitutes trivial coverage. If a newspaper publishes basketball scores for every school in its region, such mention is trivial, as are most "human-interest" type pieces. On the other hand, if several newspapers feature in-depth coverage of the school's excellent teaching staff, brilliant debate team, and winning sports teams (or alternatively, its terrible academic record, decaying infrastructure, and substandard teachers), it's probably notable! Also, while it's great to be newbie-friendly, and it's good that WP:BITE is a core policy, that shouldn't be considered our only core policy. Newbies might genuinely think this is a "free-for-all", and that it's fine to post a vanity bio or spamvertisement in article space. Granted, we should correct them gently, but we should correct them, and let them know "No, we don't do that." Of course, some of them only wanted to post their vanity bio or ad, and after finding out they can't do that, get mad and leave. What have we lost? One vanity bio or spamvertisement, from someone who never intended to make another edit anyway. I'm also tired of the "Pokemon" bit. Yes, there's a lot of garbage fiction articles. If you're sick of Pokemon, go write up WP:KILLPOKEMON, get support together for it, and quit telling anyone else we can't can any garbage articles until we get those particular ones. (For reference, I will probably be 100% behind the Pokemon criteria too!) But let's remember what "newbie-friendly" means. It doesn't mean "let the newbies do whatever they like"-this only leads to grief for that person later, as (s)he thinks now that what's being done is alright, and really isn't! Rather, it means to be gentle in correcting. "What were you THINKING when you wrote that turd? Don't ever write anything like that again!" is biting. "Hey, look, while it's great you want to create articles, there are some rules and guidelines for how to do that, and unfortunately the one you created doesn't fit those. You'll especially want to look at..." is not. Seraphimblade 06:36, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

That seems a constructive reply, thanks. I think the problem for me is criteria for deletion that do not derive directly from WP:NOR or WP:V. I have a problem with references to "trivial". I think that these expanded criteria obfuscate the importance of WP:NOR and WP:V, and I do think that these two policies alone are sufficient to cover most problems with school articles. SmokeyJoe 08:29, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps entirely separately is my problem with deletion of newbie good faith contributions. Deletion of an article, meaning the obliteration of the content, history and discussion is cruel and is not an effective teaching method. It would be better to edit out content, with explanation, and when the page is blank, redirect to somewhere appropriate. When the contributor returns, he can find the deleted material, read the criticism, and try again. A benefit of this method of dealing with substandard contribution is that there is no need for AfD or any administrator action. SmokeyJoe 08:29, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

However, I don't much like the idea of blanking an article and redirecting to a policy or guideline. If there is no suitable redirect to a locality or school district article (or equivalent), I think that it would be better to leave the barest amount of verifiable data, if any, along with a Schools project template. I think that every public school in the U.S, should be included, someplace or another, since so many people are interested in them for so many different reasons. Most primary schools probably belong in locality articles or in school district or other regional groupings, but almost every high school could (and should) support an independent article. I think that equivalent private institutions and schools in other English-speaking countries should be treated the same.

It would be good to have a list of exemplary articles to refer people to--not just FAs, but Good Articles about schools of different ages and sizes, in different states and countires, so people can see what can be expected of both big high schools with lots of history and small middle schools that may never have received national media attention but which can still be locally documented in a way that results in a good article that passes all of the real policy requirements.--Hjal 07:16, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Fixing the mess

It's positively rediculous to move Joshua's personal proposal (aka Misplaced Pages:Schools3) to this page. Just as it was absurd to for A Man In Black's personal essay to start the prior version at this location (along with messing with WP:SCH in the past). I figure we've had roughly 4 fundamentally different proposals, with each having various critical variations/changes. It makes much of the talk page discussion in various places, seem meaningless. There's a reason why Misplaced Pages keeps the history of project and discussion pages. We actually do want *useful* history, of discussions. So, lets not have admins force their *personal* preferred proposal onto this page. So, for now, I suggest, simply moving this back to Misplaced Pages:Schools3, and making this a disambig. Also, there's no evidence Misplaced Pages:Schools3 ever had more support than what was recently Misplaced Pages:Schools (both the recent one, and the one before that). Therefore, its equally deserving of being tagged as rejected. Of course, its hard for me to even discuss or explain all this, as I haven't a clue as to how to name/describe each proposal I'm talking about them, as there's a continuous flux of naming/meaning. --Rob 03:13, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Considering the number of editors this proposal has had, and the fact that its current state barely even resembles its initial state, it seems in rather bad faith to call it "Joshua's personal proposal" at this point. Tagging it as rejected without discussion is likewise not in the best of faith; it has never been formally presented. I would ask that you retract the former comment and refrain from the latter action, and instead concentrate on helping to establish a middle ground that could be, at least, reluctantly agreed upon by most involved parties. Shimeru 09:48, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Given the mismash of names, it's pretty much essential to refer to proposals as "Joshua's" or "A Man in Black's", as there's no other standard name. You're also making the conflicting criticism, that Joshua's proposal has had widespread input (hence it's not to be referred to as "Joshua's") but then you're claiming it's never been fully discussed/debated/considered and I'm too blame for rejecting it before its been widely seen. In a month or two, somebody will move their own proposal overtop this one. When that happen's, the only way anybody will know which proposal we were talking about, will be the personal names. Also, you do realize Joshua did promote his proposal in the discussion over "A Man In Black's" version of Misplaced Pages:Schools. And there was also (for a good amount of time) a merge tag for both. So, it's absurd to say it wasn't presented formerally. In any event, given you've rejected my approach of referring to different proposals, I request you develop your own. Referring to something as "this proposal" is essentially useless, as what "this proposal" is can change any minute. I do find it humorous how you criticize me adding a {{rejected}} tag, but you didn't complain about the prior (AMIB's) version being so-tagged, and worse, actually hidden (moved to another name, with no link to it). --Rob 05:44, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Please. It isn't the "Joshua's" that makes the phrase "Joshua's personal proposal" suspect. (But then, perhaps it wasn't clear. For the sake of clarity, it also isn't the "proposal.") On the other topic, there is a difference, at least in my mind, between a proposal having the input of several editors and a proposal being formally presented. The current WP:SCHOOLS proposal (and there's the term you requested, incidentally) has never been presented as other than a work in progress, though there was a small amount of discussion about doing so. It's clear that you personally reject this proposal; it's not clear that the community as a whole does. I do not particularly see why I should complain about the previous version being tagged; perhaps you could explain your reasoning further. Shimeru 09:54, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

The previous situation was very confusing with two different policies running simultaneously. Now that the changes have been made it makes much more sense to use this present policy as the basis for building a consensus. Then at least all the discussion will be in one place. Dahliarose 11:01, 1 February 2007 (UTC).

Before another survey

Before we get another survey request, can everyone consider the importance of reaching a consensus here. While this proposal does have flaws, it seems to be gaining traction on AfD discussions. So I guess we need to refine the criteria in a way that will gain consensus. The fact that the guideline does not completely satisfy most editors could mean that it has found some sort of middle ground. If that is the case, then we could be close to consensus. It might only be a few tweaks away. So consider rereading the proposal and see if it is one that could merit your supporting it as a consensus guideline. Vegaswikian 06:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

When you say "this proposal" is gaining traction on AfD, are you referring literally to this one, which was Misplaced Pages:Schools3, or are you referring to what was in its place at Misplaced Pages:Schools before it was moved to Misplaced Pages:Schools/Old proposal. Also, note, both have undergone radical shifts, based on contradictory principals. So, it's helpful to clarify what you mean by "this proposal". We now have a situation where many comments in AfD have had their meaning retroactively changed to support "this" proposal, when they actually meant something else. Also, in your edit summary you indicated that a poll would be needed to apply the rejected tag. That wasn't used when the last rejected tag of what's now Misplaced Pages:Schools/Old proposal was added. Also, as of late, anybody attempting ot start a poll, will find that it's quickly terminated by the "voting is evil" crowd. If polls were allowed, I'd happily wait a while, see a poll, and than only set a tag based on consensus. --Rob 06:32, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm talking about the proposal currently on this page. I strongly believe that if there appears to be consensus for this, or any other proposal, then there will be minimal objections to resolving this issue. If there is apparent consensus, then we could probably put on the guideline template and avoid a survey completely. I'm just trying to see if we can reach a consensus behind the current proposal or some variant of it. We need to keep focused on the goal of ending the AfD wars. Vegaswikian 07:23, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

This proposal has failed

The only way to reach a consensus here would be for everybody to just give up. There have been one or two previous thoughtful posts to the effect that the participants in all of these discussions didn't appear to be heading toward a consensus on what does or does not make schools notable, and the only possible resolution was for the deletionists to accept that all schools (more or less, with a few exceptions) belong in the project, while the school inclusionists should agree to work on developing guidance (probably at Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Schools) about what makes an acceptable school stub and what doesn't. I think that this is the only solution.

We should all also accept that a new school article should not go to AfD unless it has first been prodded and ignored for months or tagged for CfD, if appropriate, and subsequently challenged. If every farm boy that made it to the major leagues for a week in the 1930s is automatically notable; if every English football team playing at a level I never heard of is notable; if every company included in a stock index is notable, then every school is notable (or darn close).

All of the school AfDs that I've participated in or looked at have resulted in a keep or in no censensus and keep by default if anybody from WP:SCH participated seriously. The few high schools that have been deleted recently were not only candidates for good articles, some of them were notable by the strictest interpretation. Look at the AfD for Windward High School and then look at its website for five minutes--it looks like one of most innovative and interesting new high schools in the country, but a dozen people who made no effort to research the school and one administrator sent the article to the void.

WP:V is the only test that a high school or other public school article should have to pass, and almost every school could have a good article written about it that meets that policy, just as they could meet WP:N. Good editors will have to revert WP:OR and WP:POV violations frequently, unless posting by anonymous IP are restricted, but that's true of many articles.

• Every school is the subject of numerous publications by reliable sources. Every school. The information may not be available online, but it was published and it's out there. Public schools are planned and built following, in almost every case, multiple public meetings and formal public hearings; for teh past 40 years, most require significant environmental review and documentation; most are the subject of a bond election; many are conroversial, with local disputes by NIMBY neighbors and remote parents, struggles within the district or City for funding, dusputes with state education departments over designs and budgets, and hiring of the first and subsequent principals; followed by bond issues and parcel taxes to replace derelict buildings; sports dynasties and football coaches fired for incompetence; extraordinary teachers and pedophiles; and, however derided because of their universality, the mandatory reports required in the UK, California, and almost everyplace else are, in fact, not just verifiable and, generally, reliable, they are evidence of the "notability" of schools in the eyes of the whole community. These are not just "records," like a utility bill or a traffic ticket; they are complex, expensive, sometimes comprehensive, "reports." That we mandate them, pay for them, and dedicate scarce staff resources to them demonstrate the significance that society places on the differences between schools, their faculties, their facilities, and the success of their students.

• Almost every "notable" person went to school. Their schools get listed in their biographies (almost every serious biography about a modern person discusses their education). A blue link to their schools makes it easier for editors to write good articles about people, without having to do separate lookups about the person's schools themselves. It makes it a better article for subsequent readers, who can decide whether they want to know more about the subject's educational abckground or not.

• Almost every city and many CDPs have schools, and the rest are in one or more school districts or individual school attendance areas. Having school articles to link to allows the settlement's educational system to be discussed in summary or in a few bullets, with detailed information in the appropriate district or school articles. And, yes, localities provide a good place to list useful information about schools that have not attracted an editor willing to start a serious article about them. In either case, coverage of local schools makes for a better locality article, while links to separate school articles keep articles about small towns from being overloaded with school information.

I realize my discussion is specific to the U.S, in some ways, but I'm sure that similar arguments apply in most other countries. I also realize that many school articles are subject to constant vandalism, but it is usually fixed easily and without getting trapped in endless revert wars. I realize that the opponents of school articles are sincere in their belief that Misplaced Pages should include only "notable" schools (by which they usually seem to mean "extraordinary" schools), but I know that they are wrong. Jimbo has spoken on this issue, and even though it was not ex cathedra, I know that he was right.--Hjal 09:11, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I very much disagree with your reasoning. First, your "subject to vandalism" argument is a straw man. No article should ever be deleted because it is a vandalism target. At most, that should be an argument to semi-protect it. No one here has asserted that "subject to high vandalism" should be a criterion for inclusion/deletion, and I imagine most who support this proposal would strongly oppose such a standard. For myself, I most certainly would oppose it.

This proposal actually is well on its way to gaining consensus. It's not quite as tight a guideline as I'd like to see, but it's better than the current chaos with no coherent standards. "All schools are notable", by the way, is not a standard. It's a copout. The things you suggest make all schools notable, while true that they occur, do not establish notability. Notability requires sources to be multiple, non-trivial, and secondary. This is not a "pick any two" requirement. Government reports, records of public meetings, and a school's own website (as you cite with Windward High) are all primary sources. While these would be acceptable to help expand an article on a subject which has already established notability, they do not help to establish notability. Certainly, we don't have any drive to "include all garbage dumps"-but they undergo the same extensive procedures of environmental impact statements, planning and public-comment meetings, NIMBYism, and periodic reports to the government on status.

It is not, however, necessary for us to turn Misplaced Pages into a garbage dump. (I don't think we've filed the correct impact statements anyway!) I would much rather see us have only one decent article on a genuinely notable school then a forest of substubs on all of them. Basically, notability boils down to a very old writer's rule. Pretend to be a reader of your writing, who is totally unaffiliated and unfamiliar with the subject and author. As our hypothetical reader, ask the question "Why should I care?". If the answer is not apparent from the piece, it is poorly done and needs to be reworked or scrapped. Notability ensures that all of our articles can answer that critical question, even for a reader who hits the "random article" button and comes across the subject having never heard of it. For many schools, that answer seems to be "Unless you go to it or have a kid that does, really, you shouldn't." Stubs should only exist because an article has not yet been improved and expanded beyond that level, not because it currently can't be. If insufficient source material exists right now to eventually turn the article into a GA/FA, the article shouldn't be created until there is.

Please examine the Windward High AfD again. "One admin" did not send the article to the bit bucket, everyone who participated in the debate did. Don't I mean "only those who argued to delete"? Absolutely not. Two people who argued to "keep" were reduced to arguing that the article was "harmless". WP:HARMLESS is not an inclusion standard. An article on my dog would be harmless. So is an article on Lassie. What it would not be is something that is an inclusion standard, namely, one of these subjects is notable, and one of them is not. Another person was able to find only a few trivial mentions. These arguments did not take away from the positions of those arguing to delete, rather, it showed them to be quite correct-despite the argument that nontrivial sourcing "probably" existed, no one actually found any, not even the person who looked! (Though, I must give that person credit-at least (s)he bothered to try to look for sourcing, rather than resorting to platitudes about "harmlessness" or "keep all schools".) Finally, it matters not if they're the most innovative school the world has ever seen, until and unless secondary sources report on that.

Some of the rest of your arguments are based on usefulness of having school articles. Utility is not an inclusion criteria. I find telephone directories very useful, and every notable person has a telephone number (just like every notable person went to school), but that doesn't mean we should have those here. Every notable person has a bathroom too, but we don't have an article on George Bush's bathroom. (God help anyone who turns that link blue.) If all we can really have here is what's already on the school's website, that website is serving that useful purpose well and fine, and we don't need to simply act as a mirror site for it.

Already wrote a far longer response then I intended to, but I think you offer some very good insights into the "all schools are notable" mentality-and frankly, those arguments really required a good debunking. Everything should be examined on an individual basis, not "by category", for notability. If it has received multiple reliable non-trivial secondary source mentions, it is notable. If it has not, it is not. This guideline offers some very good tips for finding the line between the two, and I think it's a great addition to our notability guidelines. Seraphimblade 10:11, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Giving up is not a way to reaching consensus. That is a way to cave in to those who have an opposing view. As I said in the opening of this section. We need to work to develop consensus. How have your comments helped move us in that direction? Is my opinion that consensus is possible wrong? If so, why and what can be done to this proposal to fix that roadblock? Vegaswikian 17:44, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

This proposal has not failed. Yet.

It was a clever idea to subject the original Schools proposal to the dustbin, and have this one inserted in its place. Unfortunately, what was once the SCHOOLS3 proposal has made little progress in its months of existence in demonstrating that it will reach consensus. What was the SCHOOLS3 proposal has been created by a small number of individuals with an extremely restrictive view of which school articles merit existence. While there have been a few voices seeking changes that might achieve consensus, hardly any of these proposed changes have been implemented. It's well beyond the point of seeing whether this proposal will achieve a clear consensus or to see if the "old proposal" has a greater chance of achieving consensus. Other than that, the overlay of the original proposal with the narrowly drawn SCHOOLS3 option only creates confusion. I, for one, cannot support this proposal as currently worded. Alansohn 17:52, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I don't have too much trust in this process at the moment considering the manner in which this proposal with little input from all sides (not just those with particularly restrictive/negative views on schools) has now been moved into WP:SCHOOLS.

Speaking for groups of people (though not everyone) from WP:EiC, I'd like to see inclusion of a bullet that allows series of related articles covering both schools and school boards. Think of "completeness of coverage" as the theme. This was in the previous proposal -- the one people refer to as "AMiB's proposal" -- until the very end just prior to the conversations dying off and the rejection. --Stéphane Charette 23:07, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

"Completeness of coverage" is not and has not ever been a policy or guideline on Misplaced Pages, nor has it ever been a valid excuse to short-circuit other policies and guidelines. Complete series of articles based on a finite set of elements that already exist tend to do so because the individual elements in the set merit an article by themselves. Chris cheese whine 20:40, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

"trivial" secondary sources

Seraphimblade, or anyone, can you show some examples of school articles that satisfy WP:V and WP:NOR, but whose secondary sources are so "trivial" such that they require deletion and where you feel that extra, school-specific criteria for deletion are required? SmokeyJoe 21:47, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I can show you plenty of school articles which cite no secondary sources whatsoever, and plenty more which fail even to cite primary ones. Run a search for "school" and have a look at the first five articles you find-if you don't find that most of them cite no sources or primary ones only, I'd be absolutely amazed. Primary sources do satisfy WP:V and WP:NOR-they're perfectly verifiable, and so long as interpreting the source doesn't require extensive analysis, it doesn't violate WP:NOR. What it fails to satisfy is WP:N. I would imagine there are also some out there which cite only secondary sources which mention the school only peripherally (for example, mentioning that an alumnus attended it), are routine (printing of high school sports scores in the newspaper), or are "human-interest" type blurbs that really give no workable information. If you really want me to point to specific examples, I suppose I can find them, but right now one of these three problems apply to most school articles I've seen. Seraphimblade 05:47, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

In short, you can’t? I’ve failed to find any. Without examples of the benefits of additional school-specific criteria, why have them? You seem to want guidelines to use as a stick to beat on articles you don’t like, without offering constructive criticism. Doing this is discouraging, not encouraging, of contributions, contributors and the improvement of contributions. Many school articles contain violations of WP:V. Such content should be deleted, where any editor can review the deletions and reasons, and can retrieve the material if & when sources are found. SmokeyJoe 00:08, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Alright, if you're insistent:

• Elmwood School (Ottawa). The school's website is cited, and verifies the information provided. This also means it's not original research. However, no secondary sources are cited, which gives no indication that the school passes WP:N.

It passes WP:OR because it barely says anything. It needs expansion, or to be merged somewhere. So do we agree that the status quo is not good enough? The argument "delete because it fails WP:Schools" offends me. I see no reason to delete this. It intimidates new and potential contributors. Keeping the history available to allcomers is in better keeping with the principles of wikipedia. I want a helpful guideline, not a formula for quick and easy deletion. SmokeyJoe 00:55, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Merging is not a problem by me if a suitable merge target exists. The problem I see is in articles that can really never reach comprehensiveness without OR. That's what notability, in the end, is for-to ensure subjects we write about have enough source material for a good, comprehensive, neutral, OR-free article. If the sources are cited, but a good article hasn't been written yet, I would never argue for deletion. Seraphimblade 01:00, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I have no doubt that the sources exist. Your criteria creates a bias for articles with online sources. Library research is harder. It needs encouragement, not deletion of stubs. I also have little doubt that a suitable merge can be found. Perhaps some research is needed! Perhaps the destination article needs writing. If the proposed guideline specified that failures are not criteria for deletion, then I would be more sympathetic. SmokeyJoe 01:18, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

You mean if it included something along the lines of "In general, even when a merger is non-optimal, it is preferable to make redirects out of small stubs and not delete the history, rather than to delete the articles," perhaps? Shimeru 07:01, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes! Not just stubs though. Articles like Toko School, below, are what I had in mind, which have content but need improvement. WP:Schools should in no way imply that such articles are to be deleted. The policy should gently encourage improvements, much like WP:Local. SmokeyJoe 03:08, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

• Toko School. Same issue-primary source verifies what's said, but no secondary sources are cited.

So what would your guideline say about this school? Delete, with all records suppressed except for an Afd archive? Would that encourage someone to peruse the Stratford city library? I have no doubt that in that library is an abundance of secondary information, given that the school is over 100 years old, and no doubt connects to the majority of the people who lived in that some town. SmokeyJoe 01:06, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

You may well be right, or you may not, and there's no way to know. In the case that you are, if and when someone locates those sources, they're welcome to create or recreate the article! Again, if there's a suitable merge target (if it's so important to this town, presumably the town would be one?), merging would be fine too. Seraphimblade 02:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Of course there is a way to know! Someone can search the Stratford city library for sources, for example. Such a search is something I would want to encourage, and it seems it is something that you want to discourage. This is a good example of how some people want to hold schools to a higher standard than the vast majority of articles. I think a degree of leniency should be allowed for schools because there are important to their communities for extended periods, because they seem to always be associated with good faith contributions. SmokeyJoe 08:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

So, is it too much to say that someone should have done this in the 16 months the article has been up? Chris cheese whine 08:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I just had another good look at it, thinking of working on it, and even the primary source/external link doesn't support the content. I have to agree with you. My solution is to convert it to a redirect, not to delete it. SmokeyJoe 09:50, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

• Hummersknott School. One primary source, one trivial one (a government report that all schools receive). Verified, yes, notable, no reason to think so from what's there.

• Oldfields School. See above.

Neither of the above are based on trivial secondary sources that I wanted to talk about. Both contained unverified statements that should be edited out according to WP:V. Both are notable, I believe, but the verification is lacking. This is what I mean by saying that existing policies suffice. Tthere is no need for endless extra (punitive) guidlines. I wouldn't want to see the articles deleted because I hold hope that someone may find the redirect, find the histories useful, and then write a verifiable article. SmokeyJoe 09:02, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

This is just a sampling that I found in a few minutes with a search for "school". There are tons of these, with no maintenance, no secondary sources, and no reason whatsoever to believe that the school is notable in any way, or that a comprehensive article can ever be written. Is that true of all school articles? Absolutely not. But there are a lot like the above it is true of. Seraphimblade 00:22, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

What I was hoping you would show me is examples of school articles that are well cited to secondary sources, but where you consider those secondary sources to be excessively trivial. Note that I don't consider a list of external links to be sufficient for verifiability, do you? SmokeyJoe 09:02, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

There are several of those I've seen, but nowhere near the number with primary sources only. I have seen some turn up on AfD where the "secondary sources" are basically sites that list school directory information and maybe a very brief statement of what the school is (public, private, etc.). Really, though, I'm more worried about the ones with only primary sources-if for no other reason, those are a massive forest of substubs. In comparison, the ones that cite a trivial secondary source or two are a small orchard. Seraphimblade 09:15, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

So you mean, you're really concerned, mostly, with articles that fail WP:V or WP:NOR, ie articles that are not based on any secondary sources. So why are you intent on creating a guideline that is overkill for the bulk of the problem? And suppose the current version were made policy. What would you see done with it? SmokeyJoe 11:58, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Constructive suggestions

It might be helpful if people could indicate what they think is wrong with this policy and what they would like changed. I'm only speaking from an English point of view but the policy does not seem unnecessarily restrictive to me. It would be quite possible to write a good article about virtually any English secondary school with multiple verifiable sources which satisfy the criteria listed. I would much rather people were encouraged to do a bit of digging to seek out some of the more interesting historical material and appropriate references rather than take the easy way out and recycle existing material which is already on the internet (eg from a school's website or OFSTED report)purely to get a Misplaced Pages listing.

Note 6 possibly needs re-wording. Books written about schools are rarely completely independent. Most such books take the form of school histories which are invariably written by someone who is closely connected with the school such as a teacher, an ex-pupil or an ex-teacher. There are a number of books written about Reading School for instance but they are all written by an ex-teacher. I would imagine the situation is the same with the example quoted for the King's School, Worcester (note that the book itself was published in Worcester which suggests that it was published by the school). However, the fact that someone has found sufficient material to publish a school history suggests that the school is sufficiently notable for inclusion in Misplaced Pages. Dahliarose 23:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Discuss high schools first, and by itself

It can be seen at any AfD debate on a high school, that there are those who think only selected high schools are notable, and some who thing that all are. In a debate on an elementary or intermediate school, there are those who think that almost none are notable unless some major event has happened there (usually a disaster of some sort), and again, those who think them all notable.

Of schools I know, most established NYC high schools have articles; only 2 public elementary schools do. Seems reasonable. I suggest progress could be made by discussing high schools separately, and first. There is more likely to be some appearance of consensus. DGG

Entirely disagree. A school is a school is a school. There may be more high schools which pass the requirements, and that's fine if so. However, even a university should be subject to the sourcing requirements. It's overwhelmingly likely such sources can be provided, but apparently, we need more of a nudge to tell people Don't just argue they can be provided, bother to provide them! Seraphimblade 02:03, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Third criteria

Could the third criteria be merged into the second? (which it seems to reinforce). Other than that I fully support these guidelines as a means of countering the proliferation of articles on non-notable schools. --Nick Dowling 04:39, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Essay, rejected as policy or guideline

The previous version was less objectionable than this one, and was rejected. Radiant swapped pages around, so that the article carrying the rejected tag and associated discussion was relegated. Vegaswikian then argued that in the absence of a poll, this new version is not rejected. Is this not disingenuous?

As it stands, this article should be tagged as {{rejected}}. But will doing so lead to the page being archived and yet another variant, like a hydra's head, appearing in its place. As a compromise, I propose demoting the article from proposed policy/guideline to an {{essay}}. SmokeyJoe 00:12, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I second that. I suspect general opinion here is in the process of changing, and this is not the time to freeze the WP position on it. There is no point in trying to say its a guideline and then have people not follow it. I don't know if its done around here, but could we call it an essay, with an agreement to suspend further discussion for a few months? (Congress has a convenient way of doing that, their sessions occupy a finite number of days, and then they take a break, and then they start another. DGG 06:17, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Why interrupt discussion? SmokeyJoe 01:32, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the current version seems to have it spot-on. There are three good examples that suggest that something is realistically likely to meet the PNC. Tertiary institutions are not exempt from this, as it will be an extremely rare case if a university fails the PNC. Chris cheese whine 07:14, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I entirely agree with Chris, and really, this one seems to be approaching consensus (Smokeyjoe, as I recall, you above were even agreeing to work with this if we stated that merging is preferable to deleting, a position I think would be accepted.) So long as people would respect and leave alone the merged schools until and unless sources can be found, I'd have no trouble with that. I don't think this has been rejected by any means whatsoever, nor even close. Guidelines don't require unanimous consensus. If anything, it's coming close to time to work some final wrinkles out of this one and guideline tag it. Seraphimblade 02:00, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Not at all. This proposal continues to contain a killer flaw (specifically, it sets a barrier for schools above and beyond that which is set by the primary notability criterion). A proposal clearly recommending merging over deletion would probably carry consensus, but it would be pointless since (A) there is already a relevant guideline that says pretty much exactly the same thing, (B) there is no substantial resistance to merges if you actually go ahead and do them. Why create a second guideline to emphasize something that is not even controversial? Christopher Parham (talk) 06:08, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

It does no such thing. It sets the barrier at roughly the same place it is elsewhere - i.e. use of the PNC and some additional differentiating statements. Your suggestion is an utter fallacy - we expect differentiation from other classes of subject, there is no reason to exempt schools from this requirement. Chris cheese whine 12:41, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

“Approaching consensus”? NO! Just weeks ago a weaker version was rejected. Other previous variants were rejected before that. Do not try to deny that this is a troubled proposal. Recently, we have been free-wheeling. I thought it important to do this, to explore differences. SmokeyJoe 04:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I believe that the future of[REDACTED] would be better in the absense of the current version of the proposal. Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, incorporating specialized encyclopedias, including the encyclopedia of schools. I discovered WP:Schools to be instruction creep, where a few high minded individuals have written new rules to limit the creativity of others to fit within their own perspectives. WP:Schools was to be a stick to beat unsuspecting contributors, telling them that because of WP:Schools, their article it too unimportant and their sources too trivial. (you may not have meant it that way, but that’s how it looks) SmokeyJoe 04:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

My most serious objection was that WP:Schools would be used to enforce inappropriate deletions. I see no good in deleting good faith contributions without a very good reason. Doing so is authoritarian, patronising and unwelcoming. If necessary, merge and redirect, leaving the history as a reference for future attempts. Anyone can do this and, unlike deletion, anyone can reverse it.

I also have a problem with every use of the word trivial. Despite previous attempts to argue that it is not subjective, I cannot agree. The use of “trivial” is insulting. You, the experts, are telling the new contributor, that their subject is not good enough for you. Where “trivial” is not subjective, a clearer wording could be used.

Also, the tone of the proposal is wrong. It lays down rules and is effectively punitive. It is not encouraging, and is not friendly. There is a good probability that a new contributor will write an article on their old school. WP:Schools should anticipate this and be appropriately welcoming and friendly. Example policies in this regard are Misplaced Pages:How to edit a page and Misplaced Pages:Places of local interest. SmokeyJoe 04:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree with SmokeyJoe, in general. There is no consensus here, unless you see a consensus building among those who would have prefered a stronger (meaning more restrictive) policy, but who are now willing to accept a slightly less restrictive policy. Those who have spoken against the restrictions of the previous attemps at a school guideline do not seem to warming to this one. Once again, I will suggest dropping this proposal and depending on WP:V and WP:N. The efforts expended here would have been put to better use at the schools project.--Hjal 06:00, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Interesting that you should say so, since this proposal says essentially the same thing WP:N does -- multiple independent non-trivial reliable sources. I would have no objection to tagging this an essay, provided a line were added explaining that the operative guideline for school articles to meet is WP:N. Everything here is simply a clarification of that guideline. Shimeru 08:49, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I would be great with just going to WP:N as the standard. This proposal actually makes a couple exceptions (for example, the widespread recognition bit) that's not specifically in WP:N. If we want to tag this as an essay with an explanatory line that the primary guideline should just be used as the standard on schools period, that's great by me. Seraphimblade 09:16, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

WP:N would be fine. Since the primary notability criterion measures triviality by depth (not unrelated measures such as routineness), substantial government reports such as OFSTED reports would be non-trivial sources. The deliberate reinterpretation of triviality to exclude such reports was the main problem with this proposal. Christopher Parham (talk) 10:18, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

OFSTED reports are of course a valuable source of information and are perfectly acceptable when used in combination with other reliable sources. However, as every single school in England, and indeed every single childminder and nursery school in England, is subject to an OFSTED inspection I personally don't think it reasonable to use an OFSTED report as the sole basis for a school article and the sole reason for notability and inclusion in Misplaced Pages. If you include an OFSTED report as a non-trivial source then you could potentially end up with endless articles about childminders and nursery schools which are of no notability whatsoever. I think it would be a pity to abandon this proposal. I think we need to reach some agreement on what we consider to be non-trivial sources for school articles. Dahliarose 11:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I strongly object to this being tagged as {{essay}} - that would be yet another cop-out for the zomg-it's-a-school crowd, who will happily hide behind essay status as a basis for ignoring it and filling WP with more junk from out on teh internets. WP:N is itself a guideline, and that is flouted on a regular basis. OFSTED reports are a good source of information, as they are typically comprehensive, but I agree that they do not count towards our "multiple independent non-trivial reliable" (or whatever it is these days), purely on the basis that schools, colleges, nurseries, childminders, play centres, etc. are all required to submit to regular inspection. That would be roughly equivalent to suggesting that you can get yourself into Misplaced Pages on the basis that you have a driving licence. Chris cheese whine 12:41, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

In response to the OFSTED reports-regardless of their depth (which may well be non-trivial), and their reliability, they are still a primary source. WP:N requires non-trivial secondary sourcing. So no, OFSTED wouldn't satisfy the requirements of WP:N-it's not a "pick any two" basis, sources must be reliable, non-trivial, and secondary. Seraphimblade 01:34, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merger with Organizations and Companies

There is really little here that isn't already covered by Organizations. There is no reason to add another set of criteria to what we already have. With slight modification we can cut the clutter. See WP:CREEP which discusses the danger of growing regulatory codes. --Kevin Murray 03:54, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Nothing at the organizations and companies page has anything to do with schools, aside from affirming that the primary notability criterion applies, which has never been the serious point of contention. So the value of the proposed merge seems pretty suspect. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

• Strong disagree with the proposed merger. The two proposals have little in common. WP:ORG is all about having a national or international impact, which is not a sensible requirement for a high school. Only if there were a section added to WP:ORG which incorporated all criteria in this proposal would that make any sense. A high school is not Sears Roebuck and Company or Tesco. "Cut the clutter" usually means "throw away valuable collaborative editing by replacing a promising proposal with a simple redirect to someone else's favorite guideline proposal which suits the topic like a bicycle suits a flounder." Then in every subsequinet AFd it is easy to simply cite the new irrelevant guideline and say. DELETE. This high school does not have an international importance so does not satisfy WP:ORG.Edison 07:18, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

  People seem to keep forgetting that the "collaborative editing" thing is secondary to that little E-word in the tag-line. If anything, I'm against the merger, because this version does the job rather nicely, and were it proposed right now I'd support it, and urge other right-minded Wikipedians (and maybe left-minded ones too) to do so. Chris cheese whine 08:03, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

• Strong disagree. Schools and companies cannot be compared. The criteria for such articles need to be defined separately. Schools are generally government-run institutions or privately run non-profit organisations with charitable status. The sources used for such articles will be completely different. We need to develop this guideline to get a consensus not complicate matters by merging with another guideline. Dahliarose 17:20, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

• Disagree Agent 86, There is heavy opposition to the proposal on both pages. It is obvious that there is no consensus to merge. It is appropriate to remove the merger proposal from the project page now. SmokeyJoe 23:30, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose There is no need for a separate notability criterion for schools. However, this merger is worse than continuing the fruitless debates at Schools_X, Y & Z.--Hjal 06:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

A Separate Place for Schools?

Has anybody suggested creating a separate wiki for schools and letting them all be included there? That way, Misplaced Pages could be more restrictive but there would be a place for an article on every school.

This approach has worked for many topics. Wookieepedia has over 45,000 articles and is less than two years old.

Think about it for a minute -- 20 years ago, if you wanted information about a high school, would you reach for a general encyclopedia? No, you'd grab a directory of high schools.

Butseriouslyfolks 19:22, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, it has. At one point someone said they were going to set it up. Many consider a new school wiki a near perfect solution. Others consider not having these articles here an unacceptable omission. Personally go for it. Vegaswikian 19:31, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I just filled out the application to set it up. I'll post a notice here when/if it is approved. Butseriouslyfolks 22:03, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
    • I'm still trying to determine if this is a sick joke. Are we trying to set standards to determine which schools are notable or finding a place to dump all the articles off of Misplaced Pages? School articles belong on Misplaced Pages with far more justification than hundreds of thousands of other articles. Alansohn 22:10, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
      • No, it's not a sick joke. Neither is Wookieepedia. It's not dumping, it's a question of what is better off where. If there is a better place for school articles, proponents won't have to worry about being cut out of Misplaced Pages. At School Wiki, editors will be able to build comprehensive articles about primary and secondary schools (and colleges as well) without wasting time and energy on needless deletion debates. Also, schools will sort into categories not only by geography but also sports conferences, academic competitions and the like.

And as for the hundreds of thousands of other articles that are less appropriate for WP than high school articles, I'll be starting on them next. I can only tackle one major issue at a time.  ;-) Butseriouslyfolks 22:43, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

• Allow me to suggest that there is a distinction between a complex but self-contained fictional "universe" and the presence of schools in real communities. Research interest in specific topics in the Star Wars universe is always limited to that context. (Though one could distinguish fictional elements of Star Wars from real-world film-making and publication issues). Research interest in individual schools can come from many angles - geography, biography, history, pegagogy, sociology - which benefit from being able to freely interlink with the rest of the encyclopedia. I don't see any legitimate need for Misplaced Pages to be "more restrictive". 20 years ago the world of references was more limited to paper. --Dystopos 23:57, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

• Rather than turning this into a rehash of all of the pro and con arguments, can we wait and see how the School Wiki turns out? There will never be consensus on a school guideline as things currently stand, which means unless somebody comes up with an alternative approach, we're all doomed to an endless string of prods, AfDs, CfDs, CSDs, etc. Maybe that's what some segments of this community thrive on, but I think most of us would prefer something more constructive. Butseriouslyfolks 00:16, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

• • I wish you the best of luck with your school wiki, but until then, school articles are here to stay. Let's try to find a set of standards that specifies which to keep and which need improvement. Until then we're doomed to deal with an endless string of prods, AfDs, CfDs, CSDs from individuals, many of whom have never edited an article but seem to do nothing but find articles to attack. Alansohn 02:14, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

An absurd comparison

http://starwars.wikia.com/Nebula_Room http://starwars.wikia.com/Senior_officer http://starwars.wikia.com/Renforra http://starwars.wikia.com/Delta-class_JV-7_escort_shuttle http://starwars.wikia.com/Jay_David_Ramos http://starwars.wikia.com/CT-8828 http://starwars.wikia.com/CT-8837 http://starwars.wikia.com/Sibisime http://starwars.wikia.com/Domain_Carr http://starwars.wikia.com/Star_Wars_Infinities:_Return_of_the_Jedi_4

Based on my reading of the above ten random selections, Wookieepedia is a creative exercise of fantasy. The amount of real-world context is negligible. It is almost entirely unverified, making it subject to immediate removal from wikipedia. The comparison with schools is absurd. Schools (articles, or article sections, about schools) belong in wikipedia. SmokeyJoe 00:33, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

• You can make anything absurd if you view it narrowly enough. Wookieepedia was just one example. You might feel more comfortable about some of these:

(14,000+ articles in one year) (1,000 articles in 1st month)

Your right, those make me feel more comfortable. I'll note that the first three aren't compatable with[REDACTED] policies, and so are better suited in a spin-off wiki. School articles are compatable with wikipedia. Schools might be well compared with the fourth. Maybe schools.wiki.com is an idea with merit, and I'll wish it well, but I don't agree with requiring a firm, unusually high, minimum threshold for schools in wikipedia. SmokeyJoe 02:46, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Unless you can think of a better way to approach a workable consensus? Butseriouslyfolks 02:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

The main issue at hand is whether school articles are permitted by Misplaced Pages's core policies (V, NOT). The existence of another wiki elsewhere is irrelevant to the main issue. So it's not clear how this will help us reach a workable consensus. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:06, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Ideas:

• Clarify “desirable standards” versus “minimum standards”. Clarify that failure to meet the desirable standards does not, per se, constitute a reason for deletion. School articles should be improved, not deleted. (see Misplaced Pages:How to edit a page; do you disagree with that policy?).
• Minimum standards should be fairly low, meeting the policies WP:V and WP:NOR, and representing a limited exception to the guideline WP:N.
• Re-write the article for an audience of new contributors requiring encouragement, not as a reference piece for use in AfD.
• An idea supported by many here is that WP:Schools is instruction creep, and that[REDACTED] is better off without it. SmokeyJoe 03:18, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Why WP:Schools should create an exception to WP:Notability

Consider schools as compared to restaurants. Are not schools more likely to be more important to their communities than restaurants? Yet schools are far less likely that restaurants to have independent sources. I have multiple books containing a review, including commentary, on every restaurant in my city. These books are cheap, nearly given away. School reviews, in book form, which I have seen, do exist, but are expensive and are focused on the best high schools, and focus on output measures desired by competitive parents. The way WP:N is written, it encourages a systematic bias towards fine restaurants and elitist schools. This bias is stronger than the bias on background of new contributors (I conjecture), and this is the cause of the dispute here at WP:Schools. The solution is to write policies that are gentler on subjects important to communities, gentler than policies are by default on things regularly called cruft. SmokeyJoe 03:21, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

• I think the restaurant analogy is flawed. A review of a restaurant, even one that includes commentary, is trivial and does not pass muster under WP:N. If a restaurant is notable enough to have a book written about it, it goes in. If schools are, as you suggest, so very important to their communities, there should be plenty of non-trivial, verifiable sources from which to build a WP article. Butseriouslyfolks 03:29, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

That "trivial" word again. It is poorly defined, and amounts to "what I don't like". It is also offensive. Now you seem to be suggesting that "non-trivial" means "at least a whole book". You also seem to fail to take my point that a school can be very important (and not just as a service/utility), but due to being relatively long-lived and constant, it doesn't tend to attract a lot of third party commentary. SmokeyJoe 04:09, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

You may not like the term "trivial", but it's an important part of the official Misplaced Pages guidelines. As I noted above, anything can be made absurd if it is construed narrowly enough. The statement "a whole book equals notability" does 'not' imply that "the lack of a whole book equals non-notability". But you have to give me that the complete absence of 'any' non-trivial verifiable sources 'does' indicate a lack of notability. Butseriouslyfolks 04:39, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Schools are important to their communities. So are garbage dumps, gas mains, courthouses, city council members, police stations, and grocery stores. That doesn't mean we need an article on every one of those things. Just like any of those, we should have an article on a school if and only if it establishes notability like anything else. Seraphimblade 03:40, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with your first three sentences. That's why WP:Schools should remain concerned about schools, and it should not have any relevance to garbage dumps, gas mains, courthouses, city council members, police stations, and grocery stores. My point, which I invite you to address, is that WP:N, while well-meaning, creates a systematic bias if exceptions are allowed for. SmokeyJoe 04:14, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

My point is-if your only rationale is "We should create an exception due to importance to the community", my question is "Alright, why only an exception for one institution of importance to a community, and not all these others?" That question stands. Where we do create a systemic bias is if we allow editors to determine what's to be written about. What WP:N assures is that others, specifically writers and editors of reliable secondary source material, decide what's important enough to cover. We simply source and make encyclopedia articles from their coverage. Whether we like it or not, WP:N prevents editorial bias. Now, of course, if you think a newspaper, magazine, or anything else should be covering a subject more, feel free to contact that publication and tell them that's what you want to read about! But until they decide to cover it, it's inappropriate for us to cover it. We just reflect the real world, we don't seek to correct it. If real-world secondary sources rarely cover schools, neither do we. Seraphimblade 04:23, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Specifically, the words "multiple" and "non-trivial" are the weak points coming from WP:N. There are plenty of secondary sources covering schools (reports of all kinds), but they are susceptible to being called "trivial". SmokeyJoe 04:35, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

They are weak points to you only because they do not support your position. To me, they are critical. Common sense tells me there is no reason for a world-wide encyclopedia to cover a non-descript high school in Indiana. (No offense to any Hoosiers out there.) What are you going to say about it other than what someone could find in a school report that is by WP definitions "trivial"? Butseriouslyfolks 04:41, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

An overwhelming percentage of schools, certainly at the secondary level, do have extensive coverage of events and issues related to specific schools. Schools in all locations win awards and championships that are covered in the press. Almost all of this coverage constitute reliable and verifiable sources. Find two of these real-world sources, and you've got "multiple" covered, satisfying any objective notability requirements. Then let the anti-school crowd come up with excuses to justify that the sources are too "trivial" for their delicate sensitivities. Common sense tells me that a significant percentage of high schools can have articles that meet the arbitrary standards of even the most pompous and arrogant deletionists. Even schools in Indiana. Alansohn 04:54, 21 February 2007 (UTC)