Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allerton High School

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep. No serious attempt seems to have been made to justify the proposal to delete this article. Any sourcing problems seem to have been solved. --Tony Sidaway 14:43, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Allerton High School

The references for this article all point to a single primary source http://www.allertonhigh.leeds.sch.uk/ which appears to be the school itself. Two of them are in disrepair at the time I write this. There aren't any reliable secondary sources to provide any notability to this school on a national scale. Therefore, this article fails WP:VER, and is complete original research. Ste4k 06:37, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

• Keep I've observed that high schools are usually considered notable. There are plenty of google hits to provide verifiability. The article certainly needs improvement, including referencing. --Jacknstock 06:49, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
• Abstain. I'm staying out of this, as I know where this is headed, but I'd like to mention that WP:SCHOOL is not policy, and "all schools are notable" is a POV statement. --Coredesat talk. o.o;; 06:51, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Nobody in this discussion has said "all schools are notable." What is your point? Are you trying to say that you think the article should be deleted without really saying it? Be bold! --Jacknstock 07:11, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
    • All right, all right. Delete, for the reasons I previously stated. --Coredesat talk. o.o;; 07:16, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
• Abstain. I abstain. --Jewbo Wales, LOL 07:15, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
  • We should all abstain. Who cares about a high school? My parents both did fine without high school. What makes this high school particularly notable? I should have abstained. --Jacknstock 07:22, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
    • That troll has been indefblocked. I struck out its vote. - CrazyRussian talk/email 07:52, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep from a schools deletionist. Old, large, more notable than many others. - CrazyRussian talk/email 07:52, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, after reading the website and retrying a Google search. Does indeed seem to be notable. Article needs to be cleaned up, though. --Coredesat talk. o.o;; 08:26, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-07-02 08:42Z
• Keep we keep high/secondary/senoir schools here. I've added a link to the school's OFSTED report for some external NPOV info. Inner Earth 09:18, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. WP:SCHOOL did not succeed, the creation of a wikiproject does not automatically confer encyclopedic value on any given article within that project, schools are not inherently notable (but an individual school can be notable), and "precedent" is meaningless because stare decisis does not apply to wikipedia. There is insufficient encyclopedic value for this particular school. Agent 86 09:26, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
• "Delete' 1901 is not an old school in countries with actual history. -- GWO
• Comment regardless of arguments, lets be pragmatic. How many secondary school articles actually get deleted? (see Schoolwatch) As such, why even bother, unless articles are so badly written (e.g. attack pages) they need to be speedily deleted? SM247^{My Talk} 10:45, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Clear past precedent on including any real high school articles of reasonable quality. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:58, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
• Comment This seems very contradictory to me (the nominator). If this school has so much notability, then why isn't it spoken of on the page, and why aren't any external references spoken of. Should a High School the size of Columbine be listed? Should Columbine be listed? Those are two different questions. My own High School isn't listed on Wikipedia, and I doubt it should be, but it services an area of over 60,000 people sharing that with only one other school. It's huge. So what? I have nothing against schools and this isn't personal. I base my nominations strictly on the quality of the article at hand. Two of the references were broken, and all three were to the same primary source. Is there anything else in the world that points out that this school is somehow notable above other schools? I see many say yes, but, the article disagrees. Ste4k 17:31, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I corrected the links several hours before you made this comment, and another link has been added to provide verification from another source. Have you looked at the article since you nominated it? --Jacknstock 18:58, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I just took another look. There is one reliable secondary source that says the school is "very good". Aren't there any sort of notable publicity ads, or articles, or newspaper refs, or did anyone die there, ghosts, visits from the Queen, any kind of "Hey this school was THAT one!" sort of thing? I don't mean to sound unfair or against schools, but there are literally hundreds of thousands of schools in the world. I think that this article is safe from being deleted from the looks of things. About the comment below about templates, though, they're a joke that start edit wars, get reverted and ignored. They haven't any policies written on their enforcement, they perform a good job when an editor is applying the tag to their own article to attract help from the general environment, but that's about it. Ste4k 23:22, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Does it help that the current location was opened by Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, CI, GCVO, GBE, RRC, LLD, Dr (honoris causa) de l’Université de Lille? --Jacknstock 02:43, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

• Delete Nothing in the article even hints at notability. Existence isn't notable. Having tennis courts and a lot of Jewish students isn't notable. It's poorly referenced and not even useful to anyone looking for information about the school, since most of the content comes directly from the website anyway. Opabinia regalis 17:52, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep — Obviously I disagree with the usual arguments for deletion. But notability is a relative term anyway. I find nothing abhorent in the idea of Wikipedia including encyclopedic articles on High Schools. For a substantial portion of the population it is their last formal education, and high schools often form perhaps the most notable institution in many smaller towns. There are many pages on wikipedia I find profoundly trivial, so I have no difficulty in continuing to support the existence of articles on valid high schools. They are substantial institutions with character and histories that influence a significant number of people over the course of their existence.
• As for the original premise for the deletion, these sort of issues should be handled through appropriate templates first. I don't see by the history that any such attempt has been made. The deletion policy section titled "problem articles with alternatives to deletion" should have been utilized in preference to a deletion attempt. — RJH (talk) 19:31, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per anyone above who made a cogent argument. --JJay 21:21, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Very old and notable high school. Carioca 21:41, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete nn. Wikibout-Talk to me! 22:37, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
• Reluctant Weak keep schools are usually non-notable, but most institutes with over a houndred years of history can claim some notability. --Eivind^t@c 23:06, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep This is an important article for the people that live in the place where the school is located. Ramseystreet 03:49, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I know this is getting stale, but every time I see this argument it baffles me (not just picking on Ramseystreet, or this article, either). The post office down the road is important to the people down the road, but not to anyone else. My left foot is important to me, and I'm guessing the most ardent school inclusionist doesn't think my left foot is worthy of an article, but that's the extreme of this argument. Opabinia regalis 06:22, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

You might be on to something there, maybe that is why Wikipedia:Notability is an essay and not an actual policy or guideline. Although I do not live anywhere near this high school, I believe that it is noteworthy, moreso than a small town with a population of 8 would usually ever be. Every once in a while someone tries to dispute that too (the "notability" of a small town). Silensor 16:31, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

It is odd that you would mention that, since Wikipedia:Notability is also only an essay. The article is up for deletion due to original research since it's content at that time hadn't any reputible resources (guideline) to establish any verifiability (policy). Ste4k 16:49, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

• Keep as this school is evidently notable. Silensor 16:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep First, Wikipedia includes thousands of high schools with no apparent requirement for notability. Maybe this should change, but until then, this high school should have its article. Second, we've all seen much worse articles than what I'm seeing as of 7 July -- improve it, don't kill it. Finally, it's been around for almost 2 years and seen over 50 edits by multiple editors, including over a dozen with named accounts (note: I'm not including vandalistic edits and reversions in these numbers). I just don't even see why this article has gone to AfD when Wikipedia has 1000s of much worthier potential candidates. We could have collectively fixed, even perfected, this article and written two more for the all time spent on the AfD process.--A. B. 04:38, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.