Wikipedia talk:Notability (schools)/Archive 5

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What now?

I'm seeing some comments indicating that there aren't many inclusionists left actively engaging in debate. So, I'd just like to take a quick headcount of who's here. Are all sides of the argument still represented? Or should we move on to formulating some sort of conclusions? Given the apparent lack of input from one side of the debate, I propose that we assemble a policy proposal and then try to get more outside opinions on what we come up with. Also... can someone archive the page? We're running rather long here. flowersofnight (talk) 22:50, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I think it's pretty clear from the discussion above that people are not ready to reach concensus on new policy yet. Personally, I don't think we need it, enforcing our current policy would solve the 'problem'. Trollderella 23:00, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
It seems to me that some people want special policy for schools though. AFD results point that way, at least. flowersofnight (talk) 23:18, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
If someone with some time and good summarisation skills could refactor this page rather than archiving it that would be a good idea, so that the salient points are still here. Also perhaps a little time for everyone to reflect?
brenneman(t)(c) 23:04, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Personally, I'm ready to go ahead and start merging substubs. AfD has been freeped, and it is clear from the discussion here that any hope of a compromise is a distant one. Denni☯ 02:27, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd like to again urge a bit less haste. I'd suppose that we'd see a repeat of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of schools in Wadsworth, Illinois if we don't approach this very carefully. I'd started some discussion with Hipocrite which I let lapse, and I'd hate this to actually get any more factionalised. I do understand that it's frustrating when it doesn't seem like any progress is being made. But there really isn't any rush, is there? I propose that we spend a week working on High Schools in Bronx County, New York, USA and move from there, rather than firing off half-cocked in a few different directions.
    brenneman(t)(c) 03:28, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
I agree that people aren't ready to come to a consensus, and I fear that any particular proposed policy will be taken as hostile action by some, however well intentioned and reasonable it is. I think the first step is to make a table that people are willing to come to. Then we should bring people back to the table. Only if you get all sides represented in reasonably amicable discussions will you be able to get consensus around a policy, even if it's the exact same policy proposed today. --William Pietri 05:00, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
I've been sitting things out lately, because I was feeling profoundly unwelcome after Rob left WP, but I'm willing to accept a no-content-lost merge proposal, as long as it's practical and accounts for the many schools that don't fall into a US-style district. It's not what I'd like', but, well, life isn't always about getting what you'd like. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 06:20, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to make a proposal. Given that none of the 'sector specific' guidelines (bios, companies, schools etc) has recieved sufficient support to become actual policy, that we have a try at bringing existing policy to bear on this. Is there anyone who would disagree strongly with the outline I gave above? Rather than try to make school specific guidelines, that are clearly very controversial, we may get more concensus on the application of existing policy. Anyone willing to give it a try? Trollderella 17:57, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Those are only guidelines so that they can be more flexible; I never saw it as a matter of a lack of support.
Personally, I don't think what you're proposing above is a good idea. As I see it, what you're is suggesting opening this up to include the entire inclusionist/exclusionist debate, and I don't think that's a good idea (for reasons I think are manifest). I think using existing policy as a guide for making a set of school guidelines is a good idea, but broadening this issue isn't. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 18:03, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't think I mean broadening the issue as much as just treating school articles the same way that we treat any other article. Trollderella 19:11, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
The problem is that the application of policy is in dispute. I thought that much was clear. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 19:15, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't know, I thought it was that people felt that it was the application of principles that are not policy (like notability) that was the dispute. Trollderella 22:59, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Please, don't. Notability is not encoded in prolicy because its relevance and applicability (and, hell, meaning) is a subject of much debate. Meanings of "notable" include but are not limited to...
  • The subject is sufficiently analyzed in other venues for the subject to have a non-stub article that is verifiable. Cited policies, here, include the general verifiability policy and the specific mention in deletion policy that unexpandable stubs should be merged or deleted.
  • The subject is of sufficient interest/importance for people not directly affected by the subject to be interested in it. (This is often derisively referred to as "Never heard of it, don't care" non-notability, but it goes have a basis in NPOV and WP:NOT, as inclusion in an encyclopedia implies that the subject is of some significance, and if the subject is not actually significant, Wikipedia is not the place to advocate its importance.)
  • The subject is not of transient importance. (I've heard this referred to as "Will anyone care 30 years from now?")
  • The subject is of interest to someone other than the author. (I'm not sure I can cite a specific policy for why these things aren't appropriate for Wikipedia, but it's a good example of why interpretation of policy is and should be tempered with common sense.)
As you can see, there are a number of common definitions of notability based in policy or extrapolations of policy; appeals to (lack of) notability are not necessarily just making up new policy on the spot.
I'd be happy to civilly debate the definition and appropriateness of the issue of notability on Wikipedia with you, and I'm sure other users might be interested as well, but this is not the venue. The notability question, for now, has been set aside in the hopes of forming a compromise. Please don't bring it up again here, though, unless something other than a no-loss-merge proposal is mooted; it will only serve to inflame the debate. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 09:10, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Model pages

Aaron Brenneman made an excellent suggestion above: let's try working on a page and establish a sort of model that we should pattern our school coverage after. I've made a start in my user space: User:Flowersofnight/Schools Right now the coverage is skeletal and brief, but I hope it does show one possible way to organize things. Please feel free to edit these pages, rearrange them, make them better, etc. Let's see what we can come up with. Anyone interested? flowersofnight (talk) 16:05, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Added another page with the beginnings of district coverage. Has anyone had a look? flowersofnight (talk) 19:52, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes i have looked and will have some input and help when i have some time. Good job on geting this going. David D. (Talk) 19:56, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Very nice work! I especially like how you've handled individual schools. I believe this provides a useful framework to organize school articles as a group, and brings a much more encyclopedic tone to the whole thing. Denni☯ 03:54, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

The "keep" tenets

Nicodemus has explained that despite his use of the arguments layed out in Wikipedia:Schools/Arguments#Don't_Merge, he believes they are all strawman arguments. It is now clear that the central tenets that Nicodemus holds dear, with regard to school inclusion in wikipedia, are these, quoted as follows.

"The only reason to come up with some new policy is to create a means of deleting some school articles. Those of us who think all the articles should be kept will never accept such a policy"
Comment:- Deletion implies removal of a page and loss of information. This was not the case with the merging proposal that people tried to discuss on this page.
"We believe, as a fundamental principle, that educational institutions possess an encylopedic noteworthiness due to the very characteristic of being an institution of learning"
Comment:-The merging proposal discussed here did not conflict with this view point especially since it proposed organising ALL schools.
"Thusly such institutions warrant and deserve inclusion within Wikipedia."
Comment:- The merging proposal discussed here included ALL schools.
"They should have their own articles as distinct institutions important and relevant to their own communities and societies and beyond."
Comment:- The merging proposal discussed here proposed ALL schools have a page, either a redirect or an article, depending on whether the article was more than a micro-stub and ready for breakout.

In summary, merging school articles as proposed by Hipocrite, does not challenge even one of these strongly held opinions above. So for me it is clear there is a compromise that could go to the table for debate. I wonder how many other users, if any, agree with Nicodemus that Hipocrites compromise is a non starter? To remind you of the comments by Hypocrite at Afd for Grove School

I would be happy to help. I assume the intention is to take a bunch of stubs from a geographic district, create an article "High Schools in x,x,x" and then replace the individual school articles with redirects - for example, where I live now: "High Schools in Brooklyn, New York, USA?" Can I suggest that notable schools with longer articles be shortened and included in stub-format in the list, with a link from their name to their main article? Suggest a starting location! Hipocrite - «Talk» 13:10, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

This is already the case for quite a few school article. A case in point is for the Charlotte High School micro-stub that was merged to Charlotte Public Schools. The Charlotte High School page still exists as a redirect and is earmarked for someone to write a good article. What are the benefits of such a merge? First, no information was lost. Prior to the merge the Charlotte Public Schools article, itself, could be described as a stub. Now there is a lot more information especially for the middle and elementary schools. The elementary and middle schools also have their own pages, as redirects, ready for expansion as well as being useful for users that just type in the name directly.

Let's assume that I am moving to Charlotte, Michigan and want to find out more about the local high schools wikipedia. Or I am a former alumni and I want to edit the Charlotte High School page. Would merging this information make it harder for me to find this information? Would merging this information mean there is less information in wikipedia? Answer is no and no.

Along with completely missing the point of this discussion Nicodemus makes comments that effectlively accuses those who would like to see micro-stubs merged as being deletionists and being disruptive

"David D., while claiming to be "neutral" and "not a deletionist" has voted (when he has voted) rather consistently to delete school articles and has been highly critical of school inclusionist positions, while not being conversely criticial of "those who routinely nominate and/or vote to delete school articles". Nicodemus75 13:27, 13 November 2005 (UTC) see Comment from Nicodemus
"The lack of critical approach belies the claim of neutrality, and also ignores the implications of deletion policy." Nicodemus75 18:04, 13 November 2005 (UTC) see Comment from Nicodemus

And responds with less than constructive comments such as:

"I am not interested in debating the question any further" Nicodemus75 23:22, 13 November 2005 (UTC) see Comment from Nicodemus
"Congratulations in convincing yet another school inclusionist not to participate in these inquisitions." Nicodemus75 18:04, 13 November 2005 (UTC) see Comment from Nicodemus

And finally ends with threats?

"Many, many, many school inclusionists (including myself) will violently oppose any such mass-merge, mass-redirection action and it will surely be met by an equally wide-spread mass-reversion of any articles unjudiciously treated in such a fashion." Nicodemus75 23:22, 13 November 2005 (UTC) see Comment from Nicodemus

I have been very impressed with Hipocrite and Rob who came to this table early and tried to find compromise. I have been much less impressed with Nicodemus who is so busy looking for a conspiracy that he completely misses the points that are being made. I thought the intention of Wikipedia was that it is not to be run by those who have the loudest voice, not run by bullies. In general this seems to be the case, EXCEPT in the school debate. Frankly it is pathetic and a bad precident. David D. (Talk) 18:57, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Let's not bother with Nicodemus anymore. He's bowed out of this discussion and frankly he didn't contribute that much in the first place. I have faith that he doesn't represent the majority of "inclusionists"; let's just continue our work without him. flowersofnight (talk) 19:06, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I would support the proposal as I understand it, to follow existing policy, and keep articles with substantial verifiable material, merging and redirecting those that do not yet into higher level articles until there is enough material to break them out. Isn't this what our current policy already says? Trollderella 19:15, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Ironically, it's the way I have always thought it worked. And it seems to work very well in other areas of the encyclopedia. David D. (Talk) 19:21, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) I consider myself an inclusionist and I also disagree with him. I say merge and redirect the substubs and keep anything that is of decent quality/length. As to elementary/middle schools, so long as they're decent articles then fine (wiki is not paper) if not, merge. Preschools, redirectand mention very briefly in the redirect target. --Celestianpower háblame 19:19, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
  • So, is this a peace? No more deletion of actual schools with verifiable information - redirects and merges to deal with stubs? Trollderella 19:25, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I can only speak for myself, but this has been my proposal from the very start of this LONG discussion. I saw what Hipocrite had to say and thought it made sense. I still have no idea why Nicodemus is so strongly against this suggestion. I suppose we'll never know. I am encouraged that other people that consider themselves inclusionists (such as Cel above) are not as dogmatic. So may be the real discussion should be focused on finding example stubs and deciding objective (I know this will be hard) criteria that need to be met before an article replaces a redirect. For me it occurs when there is too much inofrmation to be held in a typical table. David D. (Talk) 19:37, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Harder still is the question: what about schools that currently have an article, but shouldn't? There are a lot of school articles that are very long but don't really have much useful information - they are puffed up with trivia about mascots, colors, etc. What's to be done with them? I suspect that this will be a point of potential conflict; I'm not ready to declare the problem solved just yet. flowersofnight (talk) 19:47, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, we need to hammer out a practical proposal. Then, we need to sell it to anyone who is not yet willing to concede that school articles don't need to establish individual notability and anyone who isn't willing to merge school stubs and substubs. Also the quibbles over what is and is not a stub, per flowersofnight. I think we've got the basis for a workable compromise, though. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 19:51, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree, in principle, with what you're saying, and am sort of shell-shocked (in a good way) that people agree to this! Could Wikipedia:Stub help us here with how to decide at what point a sub-stub should be merged into a parent article? I just feel that if we could get the discussion away from schools in the particular, and onto how we deal with articles in general, it would be more productive. Trollderella 22:56, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, WP:STUB is certainly going to be relevant, but I'm not sure how it clearly solves any of the forseeable disputes. I'll let people who are a bit more prepared or inclined to discuss the particulars of a merge proposal describe their views, though; I'm not much bothered about the specifics. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 23:03, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
So what (to folks in general) would happen if we said, somewhat arbitrarily, with reference to Wikipedia:Stub, that any school with 3-8 sentences of verifiable, factual material got its own article (we can fix the number of sentences if we need to, I'm not bothered about how many) and anything with less got merged until there were that many? Trollderella 23:08, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
  • If you applied a limit only to schools in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand I could probably live with that. Kappa 00:29, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
What do you mean by a limit? My understanding is that this is the current practice for practically all articles? We are not talking about anything un-reversible - if the section in a page grows, it can be made into an article. Am I mistaken? Trollderella 04:16, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Demanding a complete stub is not standard practice, all that is normally necessary for something to have an article is establishment of notability - nobody goes around merging stubs about universities or villages. Frankly things are much less likely to grow when they are in the wrong place, with no stub tag and no category. In the interests of consensus I'll accept that for schools from rich Anglophone countries because information is relatively available to expand them, but if the same standard is applied to poorer or non-English speaking countries it will lock in systemic bias. Also articles on school in non-Anglophone countries are more likely to have interwiki links to other language wikipedias, these would be lost if merged. Kappa 06:47, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Erm, notability is not part of deletion policy, and does not appear on stub guidelines. Villages in the US I'll give you, but that's more of a RamBot thing, but people do sometimes merge one sentence stubs of universities and villages. I take your point about stub tags and categories though. That's an interesting one. Trollderella 08:51, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Demanding a complete stub is a standard practice. It's even mentioned in CSD; CSD A1 recommends redirecting or deleting articles with insufficient content or context.
    In general, when we don't have an article or even a stub, it's a good idea to redirect to what relevant content we do have. To use an example on AFD today, TED school should redirect to the article on the TED system as a whole, rather than just say "Well, there's a school here." Your point about interwiki links is a salient one; any school detailed on another Wiki is likely to be one definitely worth documenting, as most of the other Wikipedias haven't started documenting schools with no particular significance other than existance. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 07:15, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    Of course a stub has to define the topic, and establish notability if necessary, but that's enough. It is not standard practice to demand 3 sentences on anything. If there's a stub about a Ted college in Eregli it should moved to Ted College (Eregli) and left in peace. I don't want deletionism to impose any more systemic bias than necessary and I will fight it to the best of my ability. Kappa 08:40, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    You refer to "deletionism" as if it's a philosophy or as if someone is keeping score of deleted articles. It's in black and white in CSD: articles that merely restate the title should be redirected to a relevant topic if available, and deleted if not. This isn't a matter of whether schools in Turkey deserve an article; if someone wants to add some non-trivial information, they are free to do so. Until then, the reader deserves a redirect somewhere where Wikipedia does have information.
    This applies to villages, schools, Pokémon characters, trains, people, roads, species, historical events, bands, websites, philosophies, languages, events, or any other possible subject, whether notable or non-notable; redirects to actual content are preferable to one-sentence microstubs. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 08:49, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    Wow, that's what I've been talking about - criteria that can apply equally to a school, or anything else! Trollderella 09:03, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    OK, "does more than restate the title" sounds good as a criterion for non-rich-Anglophone-country schools. Kappa 08:56, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    That bar is a bit low for my taste. At the article "ABC Middle School, Urkington:
    "ABC Middle School is a middle school in Urkington."
    Would be merged in both cases but at the article "ABC Middle School:
    "ABC Middle School is a middle school in Urkington. It has one hundred students."
    Would be merged if it were in the West but if it were in the Third World, it would be kept. Celestianpower 09:03, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    Sounds good to me. We probably have very few or no articles on middle schools in that country, so the enrollment at one of them is much more informative than the enrollment of a random school in the US. Kappa 09:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    Part of the reason I so strongly advocate these merges is because no article on Wikipedia can't absorb a one/two-sentence not-even-a-stub merge. Kappa, I have an alternate suggestion more in line with the usual treatment of such subjects; tag the not-even-a-stub for speedy deletion per CSD A1, then take the nascent content from the microstub and transplant it into the parent article along with a redlink. Now, the information is preserved, and you've got a redlink that encourages people to make a proper article if the subject does indeed have enough relevant information. Just in case it isn't expandable, though, we don't have pages that can't be expanded cluttering things up. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 09:25, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    That is not at all the "usual treatment of such subjects", the usual treatment of stubs which adequately define the topic is giving them a stub tag. If they are being speedy deleted that is clear abuse of the criteria. If we follow your suggestion: 1. Speedy criteria are abused 2. the original contibutor can't find his/her contribution and has no idea what happened to it 3. no-one will find the information that has been "preserved" because it's not in the right place or category 4 we have just increased systemic bias Kappa 09:47, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    I feel very strongly that the suggestion that not merging bare not-even-a-stubs in poor/non-English-speaking areas does a disservice to people interested in these schools, while not actually reversing the bias of available information. Additionally, you're proposing a subjective element (What's a poor country? Which non-English-speaking countries is the English Wikipedia biased against?) in a compromise that was made specifically to be objective. Please reconsider standing on principle on this point, or at least soliciting some opinions from the CSB Wikiproject before doing so. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 10:07, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    Describing them as "not-even-a-stub" is false. Hiding and stifling them obviously increases the bias of available information. "UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand" is not subjective. Another objective possibility would be "countries that don't have enough articles for their own stub tag" which would leave out New Zealand. This compromise cannot be just be "objective", it has to win hearts and minds, or we will be fighting over words like "verifiable", "factual" and "sentence". Articles about schools in other countries aren't even a significant issue, it's precisely because there are so few of them that they shouldn't be punished for the large number of US/UK school stubs that annoy deletionists so much. Kappa 17:29, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • That is a compromise I could support. With flowersofnight's fine template, I believe we could have a starter here. Denni☯04:00, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Bravo for the friendly and hopeful tone! Part of my day job is getting people to agree to try new things. I don't know how relevant my experience is here, but in case it is, two things I've noticed: 1) Ppeople like things better if they have influenced it, and 2) people are much more willing to try things as a time-limited experiment than they are as an indefinite change. Y'all may have thought of this already, but I was thinking you might want to shop a rough draft around before it's a formal proposal, and you could consider offering this as a temporary cease-fire agreement rather than a permanent solution. --William Pietri 07:42, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

  • I believe you would also agree with me that compromise is much more likely when people are not being beaten over the head with intransigence and negativity. Three cheers to Trollderella and flowersofnight for demonstrating how to make peace. Denni☯ 01:46, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Are we saying here then that any school article (regardless of it being a middle school, elementary school, primary school ...etc) should be kept if:

  • It has 3 - 8 sentences of verifiable, factual information.
  • It has an interwiki link.

And that it should be merged if:

  • It has less than 3 sentences of verifiable, factual information.

I would like to add "If it has one or more pictures" to the keep criteria. Otherwise, I like this as it isn't based on opinion but quantifiable criteria - you can count sentences, you can't (easily) count notability. Celestianpower 08:28, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

That's why it's not part of any policy! Trollderella 09:03, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
True. I would add that colleges and universities will also be held to this standard if everyone agrees with me. And yes this would count for all schools from K-Post Grad if everyone agrees. However I don't anticipate any colleges being merged in the end since they are rare institutions with easily excessible verifiable data. Preschools I don't think would fit this model we've created since they have very little verifiable info available outside their own websites and for that reason alone are almost all delete candidates unless something extrodinary has happened there.Gateman1997 02:37, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Analysis

I've now got all AfD results from 1 January 2005 to 20 Jun 2005 in a flat file. I'll keep collecting the data up to 1 November, but it's tedious so I'll begin parsing what I have, and expect some results in the next couple of days. Are there any metrics and/or questions in particular that anyone is interested in?
brenneman(t)(c) 06:20, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it much matters. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 06:34, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Did you want some perl magic to aid either the collection or the parsing? I'm glad to help. The only question that I personally would like beyond your own analysis is a list of participants and their frequency of participation. It might be nice to have one that doesn't mention tendency at all, so that some relatively outsider like me can try to wrangle participation without any worries of unintentional bias. --William Pietri 07:29, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
One thing I was wondering is how many people always vote "keep" versus how many people always vote "delete". I think these individuals, whoever they may be, are one of the reasons we cannot come to consensus. Denni ☯ 03:20, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
I know that's the reason we've had trouble finding consensus ;). Gateman1997 03:25, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Comment - I'm not too interested in exactly what happens on AFD. I think we all know that AFD has failed in resolving the schools debate. Trying to break it down by participant etc. just smacks of finger-pointing. We've had some good progress here; let's focus on that with an eye toward the future rather than analyzing past deadlocks. flowersofnight (talk) 03:34, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Archive?

Hi! Something Denni said above made me realize that archiving some of this material would be helpful. I've never done that before on Wikipedia, and given the potential for contention on this page, I'm not quite ready to be bold. Is there anything I should read beyond Wikipedia:How_to_archive_a_talk_page? And an I just take everything up through item 22 or 23 and put them on Archive 3? Thanks, --William Pietri 07:50, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I'd archive up to point #17, "Top and Tail". But other than that, you're on the right track. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 07:53, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Done up to Top and Tail. Celestianpower 08:33, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Summary, proposal

If a school article meets one or more of the following criteria, it should be kept:

  • It has 3 or more full and complete sentences of verifiable, factual information that is not published solely by the school itself, or already included/better located on a district or city wiki article (ie: phone book information does not count toward the sentence total, that includes city, address, district, or phone number(s)). Such information can be included in the article but will not count toward the sentence total.
  • It has one or more interwiki links (e.g. another version already exists in another language)
  • It has one or more PD/GFDL/free pictures

If it meets none of these criteria, it should be merged into the appropriate district (or other higher-level article such as city or education in that city or region, if private), preserving all relevant content, and be redirected.


Every article should earn it's place on wikipedia by the notability and merit which the subject achieved. Trying to earn a place in an encyclopedia "by the meter" isn't at all the sanest proposal. The school articles should earn their place in wikipedia based on objective and unquestionable merit alone and not on how many KB the article occupies on the server. --Mecanismo | Talk 14:25, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
NOTE - PAGE WAS ARCHIVED WHEN ABOVE COMMENT WAS ADDED AT TOP OF DISCUSSION.
I think these are good, reasonable criteria for what stubs should be, indeed, the first one is lifted directly from the WP:STUB guidelines. I would suggest that we simply add the other two to the stub guidelines, et voila, we're done. Actually, I went ahead and added them to WP:STUB. Let me know what you think. Trollderella 09:22, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Considering you qualified them with guideline-like language (may, often) in WP:STUB (as I've seen microstubs on non-subjects that would actually meet one of the latter two criteria), I think this is appropriate. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 09:31, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose for reasons given above. Kappa 09:50, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Hi, Kappa. Although I read your comments above, I couldn't figure out how you'd change this to make it suit you. Could you say more? --William Pietri 22:09, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
      • I'm withdrawing my opposition for the moment because I believe that the proposal can be reworked into a 'soft' guideline which means every merge will have consensus. Current probems include a "should be merged" recommendation, being too harsh on info from school websites and being a cause of systemic bias. Kappa 01:00, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Suggestion "and either an interwiki link or a picture." Pictures are hard and sometimes take time to get. Please note the vote in AFD for the sub with 3 or less sentences is not "delete" it's "merge, preserve all content and redirect." Persuant to the developing consensus, any verifiable school on AFD is a keep. Hipocrite - «Talk» 13:39, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    • In between those points are "ors"; Trollderella is suggesting that any one of these things will make a stub not a....well, not something less than a stub. What's being suggested is that anything less than a stub be merged or redirected, as appropriate (assuming there's enough to make verification possible).
      Basically, what you described is what Trollderella is suggesting. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 13:55, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    • The problem with merge votes is that they are counted as Keep. So voting merge for a school is basically the same as voting keep. The result is that the article is kept and not merged. Vegaswikian 19:35, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
      • Ahh, ok. I believed they were ands and was concerned. Or is perfect for me. Hipocrite - «Talk» 16:34, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Support - very good compromise. Celestianpower 15:47, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Support - i think this is great, moving along fast to a good compromise. Glad to see Kappa has joined the debate to give his perspective too. David D. (Talk) 16:42, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Support as a start as long as the information excludes yellow pages type of data. I can write an article that meets the first point by opening a phone book or reading an advertisement for a school. Which says that verification should also exclude material from the school. Vegaswikian 19:08, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Conditional Support per Vegaswikian - we need to have some sort of constraints on the quality of the information in the article. Other than that, good proposal. Support the new version. flowersofnight (talk) 19:30, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Support if we make sure the information is verified and there is enough of it, no more of these "This is such and such a school in Anytown USA" articles then we're good and ... then they should be kept, otherwise merged.Gateman1997 19:35, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Do you not think that this is covered by the three content policies: Wikipedia:No original research, Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and the guidelines: Wikipedia:Reliable sources, Wikipedia:Cite sources? Trollderella 19:44, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Definitely, but I also think it needs to be spelled out in relation to school articles. I think the fact that Wikipolicies that are for ALL articles also apply to schoola articles gets lost on school editors. So restating it in relation to a final school guideline would be helpful.Gateman1997 19:53, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, I'm not opposed to that, but I do think that reitterating that the policies we have apply to all articles is better than making policy for each type of article... Trollderella 19:57, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Normally I would agree with that. However with School Articles it's something I think needs to be restated because people often forget with school articles in their zeal to create and/or delete them. Plus as you pointed out there are alot of WP Policies that are applicable and most school editors or deletion nominators aren't usually stopping to check them all. So centralizing them for this particular topic should prove advantageous. Gateman1997 20:03, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Here's a sample article. "Anytown Academy is a public school located in Anytown, USA. It offers instruction in grades K-8 and the enrollment for the 2003-2004 school year was 500. Anytown Academy is part of Anytown Unified District 4." These four pieces of information are cited from a government website or from the school's official site. Under a strict reading of the current proposal this article would be kept. I think that's not really what we were going for. Similarly, take my example page here; one could very easily generate (useless) 4-sentence stubs from each table entry. flowersofnight (talk) 19:58, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Actually that doesn't meet the 3 sentence criteron as many of your sentences can be combined and the district sentence would disappear after a merge. I think we should make it clear that district info does not count toward the overall information of the article since that would be easily retained through a merge, the same can be argued for location. The information rule should apply to actual information about the school (ie: staff, cirriculum, mascot, sports teams, notable students, awards, notable events, etc...)Gateman1997 20:03, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Right, that's my point - we need to make it explicit what kind of information counts. Maybe just something like "information not already covered in the district article"? (but what if no one's written an article for the district?) As for the sentences, I'm not sure how we can enforce a "combining sentences" rule though since that's at least partially a matter of style. flowersofnight (talk) 20:13, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Then let's hammer that out. Maybe bump it to 4-8 or 5-8 and specify "complete" sentences. In addition we should specify that school location and school district (if a public school) do not count toward that total.Gateman1997 20:15, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, and there's always going to be some discretion involved with the 3-8 sentences. If more could be added, then a stronger argument could be made not to merge, if not, I don't think many would argue against a merge. I think it would have the practical effect of making someone who really wanted an article on the school to research more good quality information about it. Disputes would be hashed out on the talk page of the article, just like any other, but the stakes would be relatively low (merge or keep), and so, I hope, less acrimonious... Trollderella 20:08, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Agreed. I think that comes down to the crux of it. Making editors create actual school articles where possible, not stubs. Granted stubs are an acceptable part of wikipedia, but not when they sit for years on end with no improvement which many school stubs have. And a merge does not mean an article cannot be recreated and expanded later should an editor want to spend the time to create an actual article, which should also eliminate much of the acrimony from inclusionists as well (with the exception of Nicodemus).Gateman1997 20:13, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Does the modification to the proposal address these concerns? Vegaswikian 20:42, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I believe so. I just put a clarifier on there. But for all intents and purposes I believe it is complete. If we were to write a new WP:SCH we could add examples of what qualifies as I mentioned a few sentences up.Gateman1997 20:49, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
It does indeed. Changed my vote to support above. :) flowersofnight (talk) 20:49, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm a little concerned about this "This excludes material published by the school itself" At the very least, I think this should read 'not published solely by the school itself', and made clear that this information is often allowed in the article, but that it would not count towards the 3-8 sentences. Trollderella 21:00, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I agree with this addition as it adheres to the verifiability requirements of WP. How's that look?Gateman1997 21:02, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Support but make it four or more lines and forget about the links thing as a article may have 5 words and a link and that will meet that proposal so cross off links --Jaranda(watz sup) 21:06, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    • The link requirement is OK because it's an interwiki link. In other words, that means someone else has already written an article about the school in another Wikipedia. I think it's reasonable that if another Wikipedia has the school, so can we. flowersofnight (talk) 21:09, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
      • I added a small addition to the "merge" section for clarity. Let me know what you think?Gateman1997 21:15, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
        • I changed the wording to make it broader; let's not nail down exactly what higher-level articles we will do for private schools just yet. flowersofnight (talk) 21:25, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I can see this discussion is going way off the rails, it doesn't really look like an attempt to merge by consensus any more. Codifying rules you can use to override opposition is not the way forward. Kappa 22:00, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    • How do you mean? I think the framework they've proposed is both reasonable and proper (it preserves ALL schools having some info on WP and note most will remain as independent articles and keeps school articles within WP Policy and Guidelines like WP:STUB, WP:NOT, and a number of other policies and guidelines brought up earlier).Gateman1997 22:10, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
      • I accept that school articles can be merged when other articles wouln't be, but I don't accept some mechanistic system to force merges regardless of objections, which is what this is turning into. Kappa 22:18, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
        • I don't see how this is forcing anyone to do anything. If someone like Nicodemus sees a school article that doesn't meet the criteon he could expand it as he sees fit to meet or hopefully surpass the keep seperate criterion. Alternatively if I saw such an article I would merge it with the appropriate higher article. But we get to choose how we respond to an article that is incomplete in a way of our choosing and at the same time we avoid the AFDs which is the ultimate goal.Gateman1997 22:36, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I actually don't see these guidelines as being school specific - in working on these, I have tried to imagine how they would sound if you applied them to other articles, and think that most people would not object to similar criteria being applied to most articles. It's not an attempt to force anything - perhaps you could suggest some alternatives? Trollderella 22:24, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose Sets the bar far too low. - brenneman(t)(c) 22:38, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Would making it 4 sentences be something you could live with? Because as Kappa did point out to me earlier often times articles on borderline notable individuals and small unimpressive villages are kept with even lower thresholds then we are suggesting here (granted as I told him they're often deleted too). I think we've found as close to as happy middle as is possible.Gateman1997 22:43, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
      • Find one that's been deleted. Kappa 22:50, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
      • My strong desire is that is would not be necessary to haggle at this stage on the exact number of sentences (indeed, this is open to gaming from both sides), and that 3-8 would be a guideline that would guide judgement calls on individual articles. There may be other factors that influence the specific decision. Trollderella 22:48, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
      • It's not a quantative measure I'm looking for, it's a qualitative one. Three (or two, or four) sentences about what? As it looks, I'm imagining that this will change nothing. Can we perhaps have some examples of articles that would be at the bottom end of this proposed no-merge limit? - brenneman(t)(c) 22:53, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
        • This would be my example of the bottom limit.Gateman1997 23:13, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
          • I also added what i invisage the representative school district merge for such an entry could look like. Feel free to move it out if you don't like it on that page. David D. (Talk) 23:42, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
            • That would be a fine merge, IF, the last sentence in the independent article didn't exist. That's why we've set it at 3 sentences. Note two sentences of independently verifiable info is easily merged, however 3 or more is harder and oftentimes things can be lost.Gateman1997 23:52, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
              • Maybe I am missing your point here. What is it about the last sentence that makes this merge unmanageble? In this case it seems that no information was lost. David D. (Talk) 23:56, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
    • OK, what would you need to have changed? Would this proposal, if implemented, be an improvement on the current situation and if so could you at least conditionally support it? Vegaswikian 22:54, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
      • How would this proposal be a change from the current situation? It would simply shift the field, from "expand the article during AfD" to "expand the article so it's not merged", wouldn't it? If I write X+1 lines about Earache High School, it's still just five lines about an ordinary school in an ordinary town. For example, if I find an article with ten paragraphs about a tertiary character in a television series, I don't say to myself, "Gee it's big so it must stay," I say to myself, "What here actually belongs in an encyclopedia?" Then I trim out the fat, I'm left with perhaps three lines, and I merge those into the propoer article. As it stands, this proposal doesn't adress the basic questions of why should a school have an article of it's own. - brenneman(t)(c) 23:11, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
        • The problem with using qualitative measures on schools as we see is that it doesn't work. On one end you have Yuckfoo and Nicodemus who think EVERYTHING about schools is notable. And on the other end you have users who think nothing but a university is notable unless it's Columbine High School. Using qualitative measures we'll never find a resolution. However quantitative means are something I think we can work with.Gateman1997 23:16, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
        • OK. It does not solve the bigger problem. However we are not likely to get any form of concensus on that for a while, so I look at this as a start. Vegaswikian 23:23, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I think that the difference here is that the stakes are lower. The afd debates seem so acrimonious because information is being lost, with this proposal it is not lost, it's just in a defferent place, and can move back at any time. I think that this will make the debate more likely to reach concensus, because inclusionists will be more likely to say "OK, merge it until we provide more information", and deletionists (if you'll excuse the labelling) will be more likely to say "OK, split it out", because the redirect is already there. Trollderella 00:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Support. There's a lot of work in ,making sure we link split-out articles back to the main, and use the right template and a short summary of the split-out ones, but it's a workable compromise to end the sterile arguments. - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] (W) AfD? 22:51, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Support - The wording is changing, so I think a final wording is needed before, a binding vote happens (as nobody knows exactly what they're voting for). But the basic approach is valid, and can scale to handle mass-sub-stub creation. Also, I suggest there be an explicit distinciton in verifiction between government-run and private schools. A government site for a school is a valid source, but a private school's web site, always needs an outside verifier (e.g. regulartor/accreditor). --Rob 23:40, 15 November 2005 (UTC) There's been a lot of time and though on this, and yet nobody has anything that works for large districts, or any place outside of the US, or non-district schools. I looked at what was given as a "good" example of a merge, Clark County School District and now realize this proposal will just bury vast volumes of data where nobody will ever find it. I won't oppose this, as I do hope for a compromise, but I'm not supporting something that hasn't bee thought out. The idea of merging/redirecting isn't new, so I don't think there's going to be much improvement. --Rob 14:55, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment I have been asked to join this debate. Realizing that this is very late in the process, and having read this entire page, I have a few observations:
    • This discussion has been very specific to North America. Some of the ways in which it is specific may not apply well globally.
    • Do you classify Community Colleges with secondary education or with university level education? I realize American custom is to group them with higher education. Community colleges have no corrolary in most of the world. However, secondary education runs for 13 years in some countries. Considering that most of the arguments raised for distinguishing high schools from universities might also apply to community colleges (standard curriculum, little original research), where does the voting stand? Have voices from outside the peculiar American system been heard?
    • Does Wikipedia have enough editors to handle this task? Looking ahead five years, could this project grow beyond capacity? The text of the summary proposal makes me fear it can. To paste something I've written on the subject:
      • There are approximately 6 billion human beings on earth. Conservatively, estimate that 1 billion of those are of primary or secondary school age. Again conservatively, estimate that only half of those actually attend school. If every school has 1000 students, then that presents 500,000 separate article candidates for the schools category alone. This number is equal to 60% of the total current English language articles and nearly seven times the entire Spanish language Wikipedia. In order to keep such a group updated it would take 685 editors each verifying and editing one article every day without holiday for two years. Durova 08:29, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
        • I can't see any logic to limiting English Wikipedia because it is bigger than Spanish, and I don't think that 700 editor is unreasonable by the stage these articles are added. After all - who added them? The number of editors will scale with the number of articles. Trollderella 16:37, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
          • I posted those numbers to illustrate the vast scope of the schools category, as the inclusionists propose structuring it. Take a look again at those calculations and estimate how conservative they are. Durova 23:29, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
            • School stub numbers have not been climbing in any kind of consistent manner. Virtually all the school articles on Wikipedia have been added in the last year. I believe (and have evidence that) this is because there has been a concerted effort on the part of a small number of editors to add school stubs in quantity. Recently, in checking the new articles page, I have noted the number of school topics dropping off. I don't know whether this represents a trend or not, but I really think that in the long term, the rate of creation of school articles will level off to be consistent with the rate of creation of articles on other general subject areas such as towns and cities, and a vast army of editors will not be required to keep up with the load. Denni ☯ 04:05, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
        • As a practical matter, if there's not enough attention to go around, lots of these articles will remain stubs and get merged - assuming many of them are even created in the first place. Additionally, it's not like thousands of school articles would appear simultaneously. We can give them attention, merging as appropriate, as they appear. flowersofnight (talk) 17:07, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Friendly amendment: raise the bar to 12 lines of text for a unique school entry. Durova 03:18, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
      • I don't know if that would work well. 11 lines is a lot to do a no-content-lost merge into a district article with. I might support a slight increase in the lower limit of the bar, but that seems like a lot. flowersofnight (talk) 04:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose three sentences too low a bar. Marskell 10:12, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. Looks good, I think 3 sentences before being merged is a bit on the low side, but it is certainly reasonable. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:33, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose Deletionists are negotating in bad faith. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/St. Stephens High School, Hickory, North Carolina. Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:38, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Hipocrite, you were the one that got the ball rolling on this in the first place? I checked the link and the only votes i could find from people on this page were:
  • Comment Some very productive discussion is going on at Wikipedia talk:Schools. Please join us and help shape future policy regarding school articles. Denni 05:15, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete nothing to see here. Fine school, I'm sure, but not encyclopedic. - Aaron Brenneman 06:23, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge with Hickory, North Carolina. See Wikipedia:Schools/Arguments#Merge. Sjakkalle 08:09, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Bear in mind that I have abstained from voting, as have several others here, so those good faith votes do not show up on the Afd's. I thought that Denni's vote (comment) is very much in good faith. Obviously Aaron's is a delete but he has not been a huge contributor here to date. Let's get on with this and reach a proposal that we can agree on, please don't let a few individuals railroad a very productive last few days. David D. (Talk) 16:32, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Agreed; let's not let one AFD sidetrack things at this point. I too have been abstaining from school AFDs as a good faith measure. flowersofnight (talk) 17:07, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
I was the one who got the ball rolling on this in the first place - my loss of trust should be telling. The deletionists are opposing based on the lower limit of three sentences and voting delete or merge on articles that would clearly pass the criteria presented above, and driving away people who routenely vote keep via agressive behavior and sockpuppetry (ComCat). It will take something to convince me that this is not DOA and that the best course of action to preserve all school content written is not to just remain in constant school warfare. If we reach agreement to merge shorter articles without the loss of content, what is to convince me that deletionists will follow the guideline instead of trying to sneak a few deletes past the inclusionists while we're not watching AFD like hawks? Hipocrite - «Talk» 17:11, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
I feel once there is a solid proposal here the school Afd's will be much less common. Thus, one, you won't need to be a hawk, and two you'll have more time to enjoy productive editing. It seems you win by staying to help get this done your input is important since you were the one who invisaged this workable compromise. Is it somehow different to what you were originally expecting?
I suspect many of those voting delete in Afd have no idea that this discussion is on going, or it is too convoluted for them to sort it out. If we can get this proposal worked out it will be easy to post it on all school Afd's. Reasonable editors are unlikely to vote delete when they see there is a policy on the issue. This too will allow reasonable editors to go ahead and expand or merge as appropriate. By staying here and helping to get this finalised you will be creating allies, can that be such a bad thing? Please ignore those who you feel are disruptive and work with those of us who are trying to reach a solution. David D. (Talk) 17:26, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
This is exactly the situation. I've just come here from that page, having previously assumed that all attempts at discussion were inevitably doomed to fail. Now I see that this is not actually the case. Why is this page not listed under "Centralized Discussions" on the main AfD page? I had assumed from its absence that there was no debate on schools ongoing. — Haeleth Talk 20:45, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Agree with David D; it's not fair to expect people who aren't part of this discussion to be aware of the latest developments and the temporary agreements we've hammered out back in the archives. I have faith that once we establish a final proposal and give it a good public airing, we'll see things start to change. Let's continue to do all we can to avoid "constant school warfare", based on the principle that WP:NOT a battleground. flowersofnight (talk) 17:32, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Hipocrite please don't let their current AFd vote patterns dissuade you. Remember what we have here is non binding until we present it fully to the community. I'm sure they'll change their vote patterns once we've presented this proposal formally to the community. Breneman does not speak for all deletionist, just look at my vote patterns since the discussion resumed, and I'm a pretty steady delete voter normally. Gateman1997 17:36, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Hipocrite, you mention that it will "take something to convince you". Could you say more about what that would be? E.g., would doing this as a 30-day trial make you more amenable? Or would a tool help? For example, I could build an RSS feed of all AfDs that might be schools, so that you could track it in an RSS reader, MyYahoo, your Google homepage, or whatever RSS-friendly tool you use daily. --William Pietri 18:07, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Define "deletionists" and "bad faith". Do you count mergists (i.e. me) as deletionists? If so, where is your evidence of bad faith (note that I was not involved in the AfD you linked). - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] (W) AfD? 17:39, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Your definitions are contained here. Hipocrite - «Talk» 19:29, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't see a single contribution from User:Just zis Guy, you know? on that page? Is this really an example of a bad faith nomination? I'm not sure Pete Hurd has been involved in the debate here? I don't find it surprising at all that the article was put up for Afd. It was truely awful.
Re: Gatemans vote which you quoted, would a merge and redirect be appropriate for this school? I notice that the school district page was created a while back in August 2005. Is Gatemans vote being bad faith, surely merge vote is equivalent to a keep vote. At least that is how i have seen it counted before, so he was not voting to remove information. I'm not sure why you don't see that as a compromise vote? David D. (Talk) 20:24, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Gateman voted merge and delete. The vote per whatever had been hammered out here was merge and redirect. Hipocrite - «Talk» 20:39, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. This isn't what I want - I'd prefer to see the bar for individual articles set a lot higher - but it's a compromise I'm willing to give a chance. — Haeleth Talk 20:45, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Ok, I'm not trying to be obstructionist, but how is this a compromise? This in fact looks like a list of ways to stop the merging of an article that has no other redeeming features. If I find an article that does have information that is unencyclopedic or would be "better located" somewhere else, am I than free to make that change and merge the (now sus-stub) article? We seem to be agreeing just for the sake of agreeing here. If what we're saying is "it's ok to merge in some circumstances" then I agree, but this looks dangerously like "it's ok to merge, but it will never happen".
      brenneman(t)(c) 00:09, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. I would support any proposal that would get us off dead center. I confess that I am hopeful that a trial of a proposal like this one would help the keep-at-all-cost faction see that a redirect from the school name to a district or town article is all but as good as the article itself, and that the delete-at-all-cost faction would see that, once merged into a district or town article, a reasonable school description would be no problem. Remember Rodney King-- "Why can't we all just get along?". -- Mwanner | Talk 00:22, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
    • I don't think there is a Delete at all cost faction of any significance. The lack of merge votes is because they get counted as a keep and that is not what the merge voters want to see. They want the merge with the redirect. They want to keep the information and they don't want it in a article on the school. Vegaswikian 00:30, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
      • Perhaps once this becomes and official guideline we can educate those who regularly close school AFDs to count Merges as MERGES not keeps. Or since a merge is not a delete, a few of us could volunteer to do the merge/redirect on any AFDs that do come up in the future that have majority merge.Gateman1997 02:15, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose All schools have at least 3 sentences of information that could be written about them, so any merge may (and in the long term, will) eventually be undone and turned into its own page. This does not mean we should automatically create every school on the planet vis a vis the villages, but we should keep ones that someone has taken the trouble to create, mark it as a stub, and move on. Otherwise, any arbitrary number is just going to be used as a new guideline to prevent merges, by having school supporters ensure the article has N+1 verifiable sentences. Even if that does not happen, the guideline above means that a school may move from stub page, to merge, then back to its own article when more information is added. Contrast that with simply keeping the page in the first place. A separate page also has the advantage of encouraging more expansion than keeping it buried inside of a larger article: not only is it less daunting to new editors (99% of our users), but it also highlights the need for expansion by framing in its own area. Turnstep 02:17, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
    • While I won't disagree that your points have merit, they also forget three important facts. 1. Many school stubs have a history of never being developed, to even 3 independent verified sentences (5 if you include a location and district sentence as this proposal suggests), even while seperate articles. 2. This proposal has the potential to cut down on AFD debates. The alternative is that we keep going as we have with animosity on all sides and 2-5 school AFDs daily popping up. 3. Consolidating substubs into a district article will make them MORE accessible for later expansion, not less and requiring a reasonable minimum of information will ensure that school editors don't just throw out substubs and claim they are articles any longer.Gateman1997 02:29, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
      • Counterpoints: 1. A lack of expansion does not mean it won't be expanded in the future. As Wikpedia grows and reaches a wider audience (and as the percentage of people comfortable/capable of editing articles also grows), the rate of expansion should increase. 2. I think the 2-5 schools popping up in AfD daily is one troublemaker in bad faith. A devil's advocate counter-proposal of "keep all schools" would also cut down the AfD debates. :) But it's a fair point. However, not one I think we should honestly consider here. Basing policy based on inconvenience to the AfD crew that is. 3. Not sure I even follow your reasoning on 3. Editing a large page, or even a section, is not as easy as editing a page. Or are you suggesting that raising the bar would be a good thing? Either way, the district article will still exist: it's just a question of whether the schools are inline or links to their own pages. Turnstep
        • Counter Counter points??? Anyway. 1. While this may be true in theory, it hasn't proven true in fact with many school articles that have lain fallow for over a year with no new activity or additions. 2. I'd disagree. Granted ComCat makes alot of them but that's because many deletionists who add school articles to AFD regularly such as myself and others have held off to engage in this discussion. And "keep all" won't happen because at least 50% of editors do not think all schools are worthy of articles, myself included, but I'm willing to go halfway and work within this framework. 3. While editing the large page may not be easier, FINDING the school articles for later editing and expansion into their own articles will be easier if they are centralized on one page. Centralizing them on a higher level article with reasonable minimums will ensure that the author who finally seperates them out will write and actual article, not some stub, while also giving him an easy reference to find similar articles he/she may want to work on later. For instance if I were to go to Moreland School District and see two small entries for Country Lane and Rolling Hills Middle School I would know that BOTH eventually will need articles even if I only went there looking for Country Lane. Gateman1997 03:35, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Strongly Oppose as currently written. Three sentences is far too low and isn't much more than presenting telephone book information. If it was rewritten to say five sentences of verifiable information besides the info that one could get from a phone book, then I would support. BlankVerse 11:20, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
    • We already do exempt the "phone book" kind of information from the sentence count, as it would form part of the content that would be better presented on the district page. Perhaps we need to rewrite this part of the proposal to make that clearer, but the intent was to make the sentence count apply only to stuff beyond name, location, etc. flowersofnight (talk) 11:31, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Current voting stands at 11 Supporting 5 Opposed to the new proposal
    • Is this a vote or a discussion? I don't know that numbers are really meaningful at this point. Just my own opinion, I'd say the same thing if it was 4-11, honest. :) Turnstep 02:55, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
      • It is both. We're simultaneously discussing and preparing to present this proposal if it has support. Which so far it does.Gateman1997 03:35, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Support any consensus decision that ends all the current badness, but it must emphasise that those 3 sentences are cogent, verifiable, encyclopaedic and (above all) full sentences, or we will have "Foo School is a school. It is in Footown. It has X pupils." failing to be merged - this should be one sentence - "Foo School is a school in Footown, and has X pupils." I would hope people will have the good sense to apply this criteria in good faith, and not try to wriggle around it (in either direction) by making a four sentence article into one long sentence, or vice-versa. Proto t c 12:14, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose, this is an m:instruction creepish way of saying "keep all schools". There is no reason why any topic should have a policy forbidding its deletion. Writing three sentences is very easy ("X is a school in Y. It was founded in Z. It has Q students and R buildings.") and if there's that little to say about a school, merge it already. Information does not want to be alone. Also, nothing actionable is being proposed here so this vote is really just a re-hash of the common AFD debate. Radiant_>|< 12:21, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
"if there's that little to say about a school, merge it already"?? Isn't this what this proposal says?! Trollderella 15:13, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
    • I think the goal here is to find a compromise that, in the interests of promoting civility, will avoid the common AfD debate. What changes would you want to see to make this acceptable to you? --William Pietri 18:44, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Reluctantly oppose. I've explained my reasons below, at #Directories of schools. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 15:03, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose There is no reason why a one sentence stub can't be valuable. This is just another attempt to get more schools deleted than are deleted by free voting at present. CalJW 10:43, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose This is just giving all schools a free ride. While I agree that some sort of policy would greatly help on this issue, this is way too liberal. --InShaneee 03:58, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Reluctantly support. With the goal of promoting civility, avoiding AFD's, well this suggestion sounds like some progress to me. But the main issue remains: none of the suggested criteria force a minimum significance into a school article. Still such an article can be void. To my opinion, many schools article could plainly be speedied. I also feel this suggestion is rather liberal. But, seing that no progress has been done on the notability question, feeling that none are actually possible for the very subjective nature of notability/significance, I support this as some progress. Gtabary 11:56, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Currently this proposal has fallen to 12 support 9 opposed. Gateman1997 01:38, 22 November 2005 (UTC) (note: If I'm not mistaken that has also fallen below a full consensus threshold sadly).

Yes, it looks like the concensus is to keep the status quo - no deletion of schools, no merging or redirection, but lots of futile listing of them on AFD. Trollderella 01:48, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Do you need a consensus before taking it to a final vote? I think this straw-poll isn't really representative of how much support it would get, if there was a simple up-down-vote, taken to the broader community (it may well get consensus there). I think there's enough support, that if supporters wish, they could put it on the main page, and then have an official up-down vote. I retracted my support for the proposal, but I don't see how anybody could object to having an official vote, if supporters wish that (when they feel the wording is finalized). I think lots of people would do a simple vote on it, who didn't wish to take part in this length debate. --Rob 01:55, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Support official vote that is widely promoted/advertised. I want a final proposal (as is or based on what's here) brought to a wider community, and the largest number to vote on it, so the regulars (me included) are not decisive in its success or failure). I think the majority should prevail here, as we're not yet setting policy. --Rob 15:09, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
    I think that due to all the opposition this has got, an official vote is untimely. --Celestianpower hablamé 23:36, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. Given that several of the Oppose votes are concerned that three sentences is too low, why not change it to 7? Would that cause any of the supporters to change their vote? It would appear to convert some of the opposition. Vegaswikian 22:52, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
    7 possibly makes for a very long article. I don't understand opposition on the basis that 3 is too little. Surely it's better than no deletions at all. --Celestianpower hablamé 23:36, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose anyone can come up to wikipedia and create a new article with more than 3 sentences, insert a "free" picture and insert a few wikilinks. Therefore the metrics which were proposed are irrelevant and redundant. --Mecanismo | Talk 14:21, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Please continue

I'm unilaterally adding a break here because the thread has become impossibly long to edit. Please also note that this page is 164 KB long, and someone more proficient than I should archive some of this discussion, please?

To reply to a comment by Turnstep regarding expansion of school articles: it will not happen. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I will review the findings of a school article study I did. As of about a month ago, there were 110 school articles for schools in the states of California and Texas. Only 11 were more than a year old. Of those 11, nearly half had undergone no expansion at all since their creation, and had received at best some cosmetic attention. I do not expect the picture will be any different a year from now; as a matter of fact, thanks to the rapid proliferation of substub and stub articles in the past year, I expect an even smaller percentage of articles to be properly attended to.

I am neither supporting or opposing at this time. I would like to see the bar raised higher (twelve sentences works for me) but at the same time I see Hipocrite gritting his teeth and must sympathise with him. What I will say is that I'm very pleased with the progress we have made and I encourage everyone to push this through to a form we can take to the general membership. Three cheers to all! Denni ☯ 04:22, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

  • I too would like to take a second to congratulate everyone who has been participating in making this work and everyone from both sides for making concessions. I would also like to point out my extreme disappointment with any users who have not been endeavouring to compromise (from both sides of the debate). Holding a hard line is not going to solve anything and is counter productive.Gateman1997 07:15, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Actually, holding a hard-line will acheive the status-quo, where all schools are kept and no schools are merged into districts. Since the alternative is schools being deleted, I have chosen the hard-line. It's a shame that a perfectly good merging proposal was torpedoed. Hipocrite - «Talk» 19:59, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
      • Why do you say the proposal was torpedoed? It seems to me that it is still actively being worked on. flowersofnight (talk) 20:14, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
      • It looks like Hypocrite is taking the Nicodemus route. I've invited him to continue to discuss with us, but only in a constructive way as statements like he's just made are not constructive and counter to consensus building (as is taking a "hard line" and not what wikipedia is about.)Gateman1997 23:38, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't think that measuring progress in the last year is really a good indication. Wikipedia is growing exponentially. Two years ago, practically nobody I knew had heard of it. Now it's gradually becoming well known. Not a google level yet, but getting there. When we do, I'm confident the schools will fill at a faster pace than they are. After all, they are a very important part of the daily life of people under 18.

    Note that if a consensus is reached, I will happily support it and follow it. While I would prefer to see most schools kept, I'd not mind merging if there was a good guideline. Seeing schools not show up at all on AfD would be ideal: someone could follow the perhaps-soon-to-be guideline, be bold, and do the merge, or just leave it be. After all, I think we can all agree that regardless of the outcome here, no school is going to go to AfD and be deleted anytime soon. Turnstep 03:27, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
Who cares? If a school topic is a stub, it will be merged under this proposal. If it never grows, it stays as a redirect, if it does, it grows. What's the problem? Trollderella 16:20, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation

This is a major issue. I actually discovered this when doing the Charlotte Public Schools page experiment with regard to both Charlotte High School and Washington Elementary School. One advantage of emphasing merges into school district pages, with redirects, is that the disambiguation pages can be established early in the process. For example, despite the the school page for Washington Elementary School being named Washington Elementary School (Charlotte, Michigan) there is a need for the disambiguation page too.

Here is an example to high light the current problem. Recently i just checked my local madison high schools on the massive list of 22,000 schools that the school project is using to create more school stubs. I looked at the list of schools in Madison (my area). Listed on the sub page Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/High schools/US/Wisconsin are the following five high schools:

It's a good start but after looking through this list I realise that the red/blue links can cause confusion with regard to disambiguation. The east and west high schools are pointing to the the wrong school. Memorial is a red link but, in fact, that is the one school for which wikipedia does have a page (James Madison Memorial High School). These are issues that need to be addressed. It may well be the case that there are different pages for the same school in wikipedia. This is another reason that district pages are useful to try identify and consolidate these similarly named pages. David D. (Talk) 17:41, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, disambig pages, brings up a problem with redirects. It's a defacto policy to "bypass/fix" redirects. So, if you have a disambig page, that has links to all schools with the same name; if those schools are redirected into the district article, somebody will "bypass" the redirect, to point to the district article. When, the school info grows, and is ready for its own article, the link from the disambig page to the district may reamain.
I think we should still go ahead with the proposal in terms of merging/redirecting the mass of existing sub-stubs, but I think we should be quite cautious about creating a flood of new disambig pages and redirects, if there was no pre-existing school article. --Rob 17:52, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Agree with your sentiments, of course there will be plenty of other examples such as East High School and West High School. I solved the issue by using the [Washington Elementary School (Charlotte, Michigan)|Washington Elementary School] in the district page. David D. (Talk) 17:58, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
This barely scratches the surface of the disambig problem. There are literally hundreds of elementary schools in the United States named "Washington Elementary School." Durova 04:49, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
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