Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kent-Meridian High School

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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 was Okay, I'm being WP:BOLD here and closing this as a keep. The nominator withdrew her nomination and the article is significantly different from where it was at the beginning of the nomination. User:KarenAnn was far from acting with bad faith in nominating this and was not trying to prove a point, she nominated an article that she felt did not assert notability. Now I am closing this as it has spilled into a discussion filled with sarcasm and personal attacks with the opinions on the article long accomplished. I know I'm not an administrator and that I was involved in the discussion, but I don't see anything productive coming out of this anytime soon. So, keep. If anyone feels this is out of line, take it to WP:AN or WP:AN/I Metros232 20:35, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kent-Meridian High School

High school and graduates NOT notable. (Sorry, patience is getting thin back here in March 2006 wikify bin!) KarenAnn 14:14, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete as per nom. Dionyseus 14:20, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep per high school inherent notability. If someone really wants, I'll write out my opinion for the 1000'th time, but if not you can assume it to be a well-grounded opinion. AdamBiswanger1 14:58, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
    • I'd be very interested in a link to a Wikipedia policy page that says high schools are inherently notable. Not WP:SCHOOL, please. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:39, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
      • With all due respect I'd be interested in one that said they aren't. Are there any guidelines restricting this type of article? Can't we just agree to disagree? You don't think high schools are inherently notable, and I do. AdamBiswanger1 18:21, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
        • Well, would you mind changing your statement to "Keep because I think all high schools are inherently notable?" I misinterpreted per to mean that you were referencing a Wikipedia policy or guideline. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:00, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep, all high schools are notable. NawlinWiki 14:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete, only a school, or merge into a list somewhere if you wish to note its existence. Catchpole 15:05, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. While I happen to disagree, the longstanding consensus is that high schools are inherently notable. Delete - if the consensus is actually changing, I'm all for it. Let's start whacking public school articles Wikipediawide. RGTraynor 16:31, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
    • People keep asserting that such a consensus exists, but so far nobody has pointed me to any policy page that says any such thing. The fact that secondary-and-lower schools are always hotly debated in AfD suggests that there is no consensus that all high schools are notable. Lack of consensus to delete does not imply a positive consensus in the other direction. It just means... there is no consensus. Each school nomination should be discussed on its individual merits. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:38, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
      • Comment:Part of the problem is that, while there isn't a consensus to speak of, there is precedent, because handfuls of high schools have survived AfDs with votes of "(Precedent says) all high schools are inherently notable". Indeed, some people are of the opinion that any and all high schools are on their own merits notable, which I find sketchy, but I'm willing to live and let live if someone's willing to take the time to write an article about it. While there isn't an official consensus, Wikipedia has been acting as if there were an "unspoken consensus" for a while now. - Che Nuevara: Join the Revolution 20:18, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
        • Since I became involved in 2003, it has been frequently asserted that "high schools are always kept" and therefore there's a de facto precedent. Back in 2004, I wondered whether this was true, so I spent some time tracking high school VfDs and the actual results can be found at WP:VFD/HS. It was not even close to true. I don't mind disagreement about high schools, but I do mind misrepresentations by people attempting "proof by repeated assertion" of each others' inaccurate statements of nonexistent policy, nonexistence consensus, and nonexistent precedent. I really wish these discussions would address the individual articles. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:55, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep — Nomination proximate to WP:Point. — RJH (talk) 17:34, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Yeah... doing thankless maintenence work. A favorite task of people trying to disrupt the project. --W.marsh 20:08, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Absent claims of notability high schools are not automatic keeps. No indication of WP:POINT. ~ trialsanderrors 18:09, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete since WP:SCHOOL failed we should be following WP:N, nn. --Eivindt@c 01:14, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Oh no, not this again. WP:SCHOOL is a failed policy, so we need to use WP:N instead. The school has no claim of notability (and no, the words "high school" are not a claim of notability). Nomination is not bad-faith or a WP:POINT violation - the accusations might be. --Coredesat talk. o.o;; 03:11, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Just another high school. -- GWO

*Delete I'm borderline when it comes to if schools are notable or not (I'm a member of the Wikiproject Schools WP:SCH) but I don't see anything worthwhile in this article that asserts notability. To me a school should have to have notability in the form of a newsworthy event occuring there, a noted program, or something of the like. To simply say when it was formed and some "famous" alumni is not doing much. And that's not to say I don't give them a chance, I've cleaned-up a lot of articles to a few lines worth of stubs in hopes that someone more familiar with them could give them notability, but this has been around since March with few improvements made. Metros232 15:30, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Keep now that some notability has been asserted in the form of the court case. Metros232 23:14, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Had no claim to notability. Per WP:NOT, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. This means that in every topical area, we need some basis for discriminating, and in specific for schools that we need some school specific reason for keeping. This article gives us no reason to believe that anything noteworthy ever happened there or that it was the beginning of any noteworthy movement larger than itself. Contact notability is suspicious as best - being the spouse of a notable person does not automatically provide notability, and that relationship is a lot more significant (and usually longer lasting) than attendance at a school - so even if the graduates were notable that would not necessarily make the school notable. GRBerry 15:57, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Keep and expand Article now has a claim to notability. Needs some time to work in the court case material before we can judge notability, let's give it that time. GRBerry 02:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep Wikipedia is an encyclopedia but it is different from many other encyclopedia. If we maintain that a High School is not notable because it is a High School, then the same should be said of a great many articles from certain TV programmes etc. Perhaps we should just leave these articles be, as they do not cause harm, they share information which may well be relevant to educational researchers, local communities and other persons not yet known. It would certainly be interesting for me to see pages on all the High Schools in Coventry, England and know that wikipedia was such a useful repository. Davidkinnen 16:45, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Comment But what can you feasibly see someone getting out of this particular article? That it's a school in Washington that was founded in 1951 and that a couple of Miss Cornucopia Days graduated from there? Metros232 16:54, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Comment There are no 'high schools' in Coventry, England. Catchpole 21:01, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment User:RJHall just posted a notice on at least 20 different user pages (including mine [1]) alerting people of this discussion using the member list at WP:SCH. Metros232 16:50, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Yup I did. The delete High School discussion is a recurring theme in AfD, and I was hoping to use the latest rallying cry of the deletists (the "failed" WP:SCHOOL policy) to prompt a new discussion specifically about High School notability. Thanks. — RJH (talk) 22:21, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep and improve. High schools are notable in and of themselves. --BaronLarf 16:54, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Redirect and merge to Kent, Washington unless and until there is sufficient material to (1) demonstrate notability and (2) merit an article of its own. My own view is that many high schools have the potential to merit articles, but there is no value to stubby articles like this.
    • Side remark: my own high school has more than its share of famous alumni—rapper Flavor Flav, entrepreneur and EFF founder Mitch Kapor, musician/songwriter Lou Reed and Nobel Prize laureate Harold Varmus among them—but it is (appropriately) lumped into Freeport, New York because we just don't have much to say about it. If someone could write a well-cited history of the school—there would be a lot to write about racial tensions there over the years, for example, and there probably is decent documentation in the local newspapers' archives—then a spun out article would be merited. I don't know if there is real article potential for Kent-Meridian, but if there is then let's reach that critical mass within Kent, Washington before spinning out a separate article. - Jmabel | Talk 16:59, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep or merge into an article on the school district. -- Seth Ilys 17:01, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete as this article fails A7 of WP:CSD (I'm not saying the school is inherantly nn, but there is no current evidence in the article). There is no assertion of importance or notability so while I feel high schools can be notable (Caulfield Grammar School, Hopkins School, Stuyvesant High School, Plano Senior High School) there needs to be an assertion of importance (not just "This is a school"). Staxringold talkcontribs 17:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. This article is simply a stub just like 90% of the articles on wiki and I don't see a crusade to delete 90% of the website. Just click random article a few times to prove my point. There doesn't have to be a claim to fame to keep an article. I feel that for any article three or four sentences is fine and for a high school -date founded -where it is -anything interesting -etc works. It will be years or decades before even half of the stuff on wikipedia is actually "good" but if someone walks in off the net and types in this school they'll know a few sentences about it. If you delete this article watch out for the slippery slope Andman8 17:17, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Keep, I completely agree with the above. Phoenix2 18:37, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete high school with no other claim of notablity Jaranda wat's sup 18:38, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep per basically all above, and because me, friends, and teachers have written a relatively long article on our high school that took a lot of work, and I don't want to see all these articles of high schools get deleted. They are valuable articles. Another reason to keep high school articles is that they act as gateways from their students to Wikipedia. When students find out that their school is on this big, free, editable encyclopedia, they edit it. Point taken, some of this is vandalism and not notable stuff, but they really are gateways that can bring in valuable contributors. There really isn't any reason to delete this. -zappa.jake (talk) 18:48, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment This is not a vote on all high school articles but on this specific one. The point is that merely being a high school is not enough notability so the article must give some depth to be worthy of an article (In the same way I couldn't write a "James Ringold" article just because I'm a human being and other human being bios exist) Staxringold talkcontribs 19:32, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep High schools are notable. Osomec 20:14, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep I agree that every high school merits an article. Casper Claiborne 20:22, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep. obvious keep at every level: well written, notable alumni including a congressman, ACLU lawsuit. Nothing really to debate here. --JJay 21:21, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. The school has multiple notable graduates and the article is well referenced. RFerreira 00:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. Deleting this article will set a bad precedent for allowing other school articles to be wiped from the face of Wikipedia. High schools and alumni are notable. --Ted 00:42, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • keep please secondary schools are notable we can document them Yuckfoo 01:24, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep - Public high schools are finite, verifiable government entities - and are notable by nature. Any worthwile encyclopedia of public schools would have an entry mentioning Kent-Meridian High School. Furthermore, this particular high school also would be included in any complete annotated encyclopedia of gay rights as it could be of use to scholars and researchers of the development of human rights of sexual minorities. If it's not your cup of tea, may I suggest you ignore it and move on to a different article; or better yet, improve it. (Although as I write this, the article in question is better cited than the vast majority of Wikipedia articles.) One of the main goals of Wikipedia, according to Jimbo Wales, is to bring forth the "sum of human knowledge" for free, this includes articles that are trivial to some of us, but vital to others. - Davodd 02:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - I withdraw my nomination. I don't want to be responsible for User:RJHall spamming other people as demonstrated above. I don't condone that kind of behavior and to prevent it I promise never ever to look at, wikify, copyedit, or in any other way have contact with an article on high schools ever again. KarenAnn 02:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Speedy keep, we have not once deleted an article about a verifiable high school in over a year, and the nominator has withdrawn his request for deletion. Silensor 05:04, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Speedy Keep (as per Silensor), really, the basis for this deletion is whimsical. This article should not bear the brunt of the ideological qualms of a certain number of deletionists. Sure, there needs to be a standard of WP School articles. But there is necessarily a gradual process in achieving this aims, otherwise the project will be unable to thrive and develop in its evolutionary way. To delete such an article purely because it has not achieved "Good" or "Featured" article status is ridiculous. The notability of such articles has been asserted previously and held by admin precedent. Bad faith nomination. Jpeob 05:38, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. There's no need to go into "any high school is..." arguments; this was flatly is, fo reasons explained enough. The article's even well-referenced - I'm impressed. TheGrappler 11:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I repeat above comment made several entries above . . .
  • Comment repeated from several entries above - I withdraw my nomination. I don't want to be responsible for User:RJHall spamming other people as demonstrated above. I don't condone that kind of behavior and to prevent it I promise never ever to look at, wikify, copyedit, or in any other way have contact with an article on high schools ever again. KarenAnn 02:59, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Further Comment: The page is cosiderably improved than the state it was in when it was nominated. It was only a stub before - no sentences, no pictures, no references etc. I'm glad the nomination spurred you into make something of your page but you could have accomplished the same objective without spamming and ugliness. Pages that have been nominated before, which the creator and/or others support and want to keep, have been kept on the basis of the statement of that wish and a promise of a good faith effort to improve the page, without the unsavory use of spamming and making an ugly issue out of a mere nomination. You could have done the same. I have already indicated I will never ever touch a high school page again for any reason. Note: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kunio Okawara shows that when there is a good faith effort to improve, spamming and politics and attacking the positions of others becomes unnecessary as most people (I thought previously) on Wikipedia are basically thoughtful and encouraging.
      • Please read comment above Please..." KarenAnn 12:28, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Personal attacks - I very much resent the personal attacks on me that this was a WP:POINT and a "bad faith nomination" or "ideological qualms of a certain number of deletionists." Examples:
*"Nomination proximate to WP:Point . . .Yeah... doing thankless maintenence work. A favorite task of people trying to disrupt the project."
*"the basis for this deletion is whimsical. This article should not bear the brunt of the ideological qualms of a certain number of deletionists."
*My personal belief, and I state it as such, is that User:RJHall's spamming brings out the worst in people. I have no point of view about high schools at all -- didn't even know this was a hot-button topic, and anyone who says it was a bad faith nomination did not take the trouble to look at it's history (or even read this discussion) to learn that the article was a stub when it was nominated and since has been improved and merged with Kent School District article. Doesn't Wikipedia say something about civility and assume good faith? KarenAnn 13:16, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
* Here, I completely object to the use of the word Spam. My messages were specifically directed at active members of the project that is dedicated to the improvement of school articles, which I thought was entirely apropos. Also how is asserting wikipedia policy a "personal attack"? Since you brought up stubs, the wikipedia policy on deletion states that the stub-nature of an article is not necessarily a problem requiring deletion. The recommended solution is to expand it. Thank you. — RJH (talk) 16:00, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
* See Wikipedia:Spam, specifically Section 3 - Internal spamming. Once of the issues addressed is exactly what you did -- spamming to get votes for an issue. KarenAnn 17:05, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
* Fine, I stand corrected. In the future I shall discuss the matter through the project talk page instead. — RJH (talk) 17:52, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Could we please have this page limited to votes on the article, rather than accusations? I don't believe this is the place. Cheers --BaronLarf 17:12, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep High schools are important. Ramseystreet 21:03, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep and allow for organic growth, possible bad faith nomination. Bahn Mi 01:43, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. Agree with Ramseystreet. PedanticallySpeaking 12:22, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong delete Not notable high school, questionable notification and personal attacks. Hipocrite - «Talk» 14:25, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Speedy keep -- No basis for deletion at all. Atlant 15:37, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep - I usually consider high schools to be non-notable, but the court case here is making me vote keep. TomTheHand 15:57, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep - I've been away for a week, don't know how long this discussion has been going on so excuse me if it's dead. -- SmthManly / ManlyTalk / ManlyContribs 19:23, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - Hm. I'll have to remember this debate the next time someone claims that there's no general consensus about the notability of high schools. RGTraynor 19:03, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep - It's unAmerican to even be having this discussion. Our high schools are the backbone of this country. No one should ever suggest such a thing again. Please keep a list of all who signed this page so that no one will ever dare to nominate another high school. I concurn completely with RGTraynor. He is definately on the right track and a good American. - Capit 20:20, 14 July 2006 (UTC) 19:25, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - Furthermore, as suggested above, the motives of the person that nominated this wonderful high school definitely need to be questioned. It has to be a bad faith nomination and WP:POINT as has been pointed out above. It would be a huge farce if this, or any high school were to be deleted. Capit 20:26, 14 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.
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