Talk:San Rafael, California

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The material on San Rafael High School is a merge-and-redirect from a substub article. Information was as provided by User:Sdw25 therein.

I think city and town articles are the place where knowledgeable editors are most likely to see and review information about schools. People may well have these article on their watchlist, whereas they may not be monitoring NewPages or RecentChanges for specific school names. This is also the place where uneven and incomplete coverage will be most noticeable. When the material on any single school becomes inconveniently voluminous for the city page, it can be made into an individual article and linked. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 12:27, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 Err.... No it hasn't 2 Was some of this written by the tourism board? 2.1 List of neighborhoods 3 The way forward on neighborhoods 4 Bad NPOV on schools section! 5 What is the difference between a high school and an academy?

[edit] Err.... No it hasn't

"San Rafael High School has been cited as the origin of the time and codeword 4:20 in marijuana culture."

The time 4:20 existed long before the school did.

I'm the one who added the paragraph about cannabis consumption. Numerous websites in addition to Snopes cite San Rafael High School as the origin of the term "420" in relation to cannabis culture. Obviously the time of 4:20 P.M. existed long before the 1970's, but San Rafael High School is where the trend of smoking pot at said time and finding humor in various sightings of the number "420" originated. In my opinion, this is probably one of if not the most signifigant and important things about San Rafael. Spazik007 23:48, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

• "Most significant and important" thing about San Rafael? I think not. Just my two puffs' worth. David Spalding ^Talk/_Contribs 23:25, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Was some of this written by the tourism board?

Read some of the descriptions of the different neighborhoods. I scanned the section on the downtown neighborhood and found it not exactly neutral/encyclopedic. Could someone tone down some of this, make it a little less of an advertisement? 134.79.81.157 16:50, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

You're very close: it was written by the City of San Rafael as part of their sustainable development planning. I've removed the copyvio sections (a huge swathe of the article). JDoorjam Talk 05:44, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it was only published by the City of San Rafael; the content was written by the citizens of San Rafael from the respective neighborhoods. If you want to edit the content to more appropriately reflect the nature of the respective neighborhoods, then feel free to contribute... otherwise, BUTT OUT OF THIS ENTRY!!! Skeptinator 19:04, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

That was just way too much detail for an article on a city the size of San Rafael. Even mentioning all of its neighborhoods is skirting the line, imo, and I am from Marin. All that detail was clearly promotional. Rlitwin 19:41, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Please be civil, Skeptinator. I'd recommend you not try to assert ownership over the content and direction of this article. I've sat on councils responsible for creating that sort of content, and I do policy development for a living. I completely understand the level of citizen involvement that goes into documents like that one, and hope you'll understand I mean nothing cynical when I point out the origins of the document. (Perhaps it's more accurate to say it was produced by the City of San Rafael.) The document is definitely valuable in serving its specific purpose, but as I've pointed out, that purpose is not to serve as an encyclopedia article about San Rafael and its neighborhoods. I think it's a good external link, but simply copying and pasting it into this document is in line neither with what is good for the article, nor with Wikipedia's general pursuit of original content (which is different, of course, from original research... but I digress). I also agree with User:Rlitwin about the size of the article. So let's reference the plan, talk about planning efforts underway in San Rafael, mine it for all it's worth, but let's avoid inserting giant chunks of it into this article. JDoorjam Talk 19:54, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

If the goal of Wikipedia is "not to serve as an encyclopedia..."(- DoorJam, 30-Jul,2006), please enlighten me as to its purpose?

The authors of the article have already formed a consensus to merge San Rafael City Schools with The City of San Rafael entry. If you disagree with this decision, please state your reasons and create a new entry for the schools of San Rafael, CA. Following that logic, it makes sense to also create a separate article(s) for the neighborhoods of San Rafael. You can simply copy and paste the individually customized neighborhood sections, because I have further I edited them from their original form, completely re-writing some (19-Jul-2006 at 1904). This is a natural process that will occur. If you believe there is POV or confirmed copyright infringement in any particular section, change it! That is the nature of Wikipedia and enhances its value to the everyone in the world - not just theresidents of the neighborhoods from the City of San Rafael in the State of California in the United States of America!

Except for world-renown neighborhoods like Georgetown, Washington, D.C. and the Five Boroughs of New York City, I suspect most Wikipedia users will expect to find information about a municipality's neighborhoods within the municipality's entry. To include a 30-200 word entry for each of the 30 neighborhood regions that comprise the city seems highly relevant for a suburban city... especially when compared with increasingly broad, yet biased, standards for a citizen to be deemed "notable" in this wikipedia entry.

As you assert to be the Wikipedia guru, please take the lead. Do we include the neighborhood information here, or is it better to recreate 30 new entries under a section entitled the "Neighborhoods of the City of San Rafael from the County of Marin in the Great State of California in the United States of America". Skeptinator 03:54, 02 August 2006 (UTC)

Information about all the neighborhoods in San Rafael is just too much detail. It shouldn't be included in the article OR in separate articles. There isn't nearly enough notability. You won't find articles on the neighborhoods of similar sized municipalities. It's not important enough. Rlitwin 02:58, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

The primary components of this article (ie, the neighborhoods of San Rafael and their characteristics) are not considered to be noteworthy enough to even receive mention in the article, yet Wikipedia has alloted separate entries for such topics/persons of potentially contentious notability as:

* Peter Siggins

* Square root day

* Trashspotting

* Les Anderson

While all of these entries seem quirky and interesting, I suspect that few, if any, of these entries would qualify for Encyclopædia Britannica. Wikipedia is not EB and that is one of its benefits. As long as articles have standards of verifiability and notability consistently enforced across the entire project (instead of seemingly authoritarian control by users like DoorJam who assert seemingly arbitrary standards), then the potential utility and integrity of Wikipedia's information will be enhanced. "Imagine a world in which every person has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." As to the alleged Copyright violations... read Wikipedia's copyright article on use of material in the public domain: "makes material reusable under current policy... [if it] is inherently in the public domain due to age or source." Skeptinator 06:23, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't talking about Wikipedia. The purpose of the planning document you are plagiarizing is not to serve as an encyclopedia entry, which is why it doesn't read like one. Stop putting huge passages of it into the article. Don't paraphrase them and put them in the article, either. JDoorjam Talk 03:28, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

"inherently in the public domain due to age or source" ^[1] makes the material "reusable". The neighborhood section was written by several citizens and historians from San Rafael, CA, and subsequently ammended with significant additions &/or deletions by me. If you have facts to dispute these claims of authenticity, please cite them. If, as Wikipedia policy suggests, San Rafael editors elect to err on the side of a lengthier and richer (unabridged) drafts while article is in its formative state of development, then history suggests that eventually more users with diverse expertise and interests will exert influence to improve the content and quality of this Wikipedia entry. No single editor is allowed to be the Führer of the Content Nazis! Skeptinator 00:23, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of neighborhoods

I put the list of neighborhoods into three columns; less dead space. It can be dropped to two columns if people have trouble at lower resolutions, but IMO three columns looks good.Talk

Arranging the neighborhood listings into columns did look more organized, but Rlitwin feels that the neighborhoods of San Rafael, CA do not meet the notability test to merit a separate Wikipedia entry. Thes information on these neighborhoods meet the verifiability test, the notability test and the public domain test. More people live in many of these neighborhoods than comprise the entire populations of multiple counties in some states of the US. If an editor disagrees with the Wikipedia policy of the Three-revert rule, he/she should take it up with the Mediation Cabal, because it is unacceptable to vandalize an article or discount the contributions of a single editor becuase one disagrees with them. Skeptinator 01:10, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

None of us has come close to violating the three-revert rule. You do not have consensus to copy and paste that text into the article. You are ignoring Wikipedia's consensus guidelines and your edits are becoming disruptive. Please review What Wikipedia is not: "Wikipedia articles are not mere collections of public domain or other source material such as entire books or source code, original historical documents, letters, laws, proclamations, and other source material that are only useful when presented with their original, un-modified wording." Stop inserting raw text about the neighborhoods. Even beyond that, you do not have consensus to paraphrase each paragraph and include such content. Instead of calling us "Content Nazis," try rationally discussing the issue here. JDoorjam Talk 14:51, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The way forward on neighborhoods

Clearly, the productive way forward on dealing with the neighborhoods issue is not in copying and pasting the disputed text into article space. However, I must respectfully disagree with User:Rlitwin: I believe that at least some of those neighborhoods have enough content to be written about in a separate article or articles. I believe the way forward here is to choose one neighborhood and develop a full article — i.e., more than a stub — about it outside of article space. There is currently an article about The Canal but it's pretty weak. I suggest that, in user space, we develop a well-sourced, content-rich article about the Terra Linda neighborhood and post it as an article. Terra Linda has multiple public and private schools, a large residential area, a shopping mall, and other points of interest, and is as likely as any other neighborhood to be able to stand on its own. Once that article is ready for prime time, we can move it into article space. If it works as an article, we can move on to another neighborhood and do the same thing. Skeptinator, if you're willing to collaborate to develop one, then I will pitch in. But you must be civil, on this and any other page you work on. JDoorjam Talk 15:24, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bad NPOV on schools section!

The statement about SR's losing streak should be deleted! --Aussie Evil 20:16, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What is the difference between a high school and an academy?

According to Marin Academy's website, it is a high school. Why does the article separate academies and high schools just because of their names? Mmeyers 23:24, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Don't ask me, but I can tell you this much: I live in San Rafael, and I know for a fact that Marin Academy IS a high school. Zhane Masaki

I know, I attend Marin Academy! It's certainly a High School. Can we list it as one? Mmeyers 00:52, 1 December 2006 (UTC)