Wikipedia talk:Schools3

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Contents 1 Opening comments 2 Cognitive dissonance 3 Notes still hosed 4 Re: deletion 5 Comment from an irregular 6 Seems like a good start 7 One criterion 7.1 Re: #5 7.2 Comments on merger 8 Criterion #4 9 Alumni? 10 Time for a rumble? 11 Criterion 1 12 Criterion 1 is all that is needed. Why the other criteria? 13 Another issue 14 Criteria #2 15 Excessive narrowing in Criterion 1 of the "multiple non-trivial published works" standard 16 An example of what I'm looking for... 17 Good proposal 18 Previous discussions 19 Discussion at WP:SCHOOLS 20 A thought on criterion 1... 21 Just one? 22 Proposed battery of modifications 23 Question 24 kudos 25 We seem to be getting there 26 School Awards & criterion 4 27 Another idea from the other proposal... 28 Commentary 29 WP:SCHOOLS plug 30 Rewrite

[edit] Opening comments

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

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

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

[edit] Cognitive dissonance

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Notes still hosed

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

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

[edit] Re: deletion

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Comment from an irregular

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

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

As for notable alumni, I don't believe that this is a sufficient criteria. If for multiple notable alumni there were independent (of the school and of the alumni) coverage discussing the significance of the schooling on what they did to become notable, that would be worth having an article on the school. On the other hand, [1], [2], and [3] show that three notable people went to Gosforth High School, but don't say anything at all about the school. So these sources are of no help in writing an article about the school that adheres to our fundamental policy. In the case of biographical subjects, we don't consider being married to someone notable enough reason to have a seperate article on the spouse if there is no coverage primarily about the spouse. Marriages are a lot more intimate, influential, and normally long lasting than any individual's time at a school. So I can't see why notability by association would be legitimate for schools but not for people. GRBerry 03:45, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

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

[edit] Seems like a good start

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

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

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

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

[edit] One criterion

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Re: #5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Comments on merger

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

[edit] Criterion #4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Alumni?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Time for a rumble?

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

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

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

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

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

        • In some (most?) countries, every accredited school (and nurseries, kindergartens, ...) have official government inspection reports. In some (most?) countries and regions, every restaurant (after a minimal time of existence of course) has official inspection reports by government agencies. As I have debated at length in a recnt school AfD, these are published as well (just like the school reports). Still, if someone wanting to have a non notable restaurant included would point to these inspection reports as evidence that the restaurant meets WP:CORP, he would be laughed away (or hopefully gently shown that he or she is wrong), even though it would fit the letter of the guideline. So, Uncle G, do you propose that we include every restaurant that has official inspection reports (for the US, e.g. accessible through this site[4]), or do you agree that inspection reports can be disregarded as trivial (other options may be given as well of course, I'm not trying to create a false dilemma, just trying to show the untenable position you seem to have)? Fram 15:55, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
          • The untenable position is yours. In your very first sentence you repeat yet again a canard that is demonstrably false, and base your argument upon it. Moreover, accepting government reports as published works that go towards demonstrating the notability of cities, towns, and villages and not accepting such reports for schools is inconsistent.

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

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

            • First, saying that something is a canard doesn't make it so. So you are claiming that there are absolutely no countries where every accredited school has an inspection report? Bizarre...[5] And then, you are changing the goalposts. First, inspection reports were enough. Now at once, they have to be lengthy and in prose. Why? Facts are facts, no matter if they are bulleted or in longer sentences. The inspection report of a restaurant (and there are often a whole series of them) shows existence, and is independent coverage. From WP:V: "Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Reliable: check. Third party: check. Published: check. Fact-checking: check. Accuracy: check. I don't see a mention of prose, length, ... There is nothing in WP:V about any of your sudden requirements: what you rry to do is crete an arbitrary rule. No problem with that, but then be upfront about it instead of trying to act as if I made some terrible error against WP:V by including food inspection reports. You consider them non trivial because they are more lengthy and detailed: I consider them trivial because they are mandatory and don't indicate notability of any specific school, even though they of course provide information. It is because these things are not clear cut that we try to develop a guideline. No need to attack the person presenting his arguments or to falsely attack the arguments themselves. 06:28, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
              • No-one has attacked you. And no-one has put forward an example of such a country. (Your URL doesn't work, by the way. So what point it was intended to make is lost.) It's certainly untrue for the United Kingdom, the only country that editors have asserted has an inspection report for every school. There was a U.K. school at AFD only last month that had no inspection report.

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

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

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

[edit] Criterion 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you insist.

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Another issue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Criteria #2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] An example of what I'm looking for...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Good proposal

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

[edit] Previous discussions

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

[edit] Discussion at WP:SCHOOLS

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

[edit] A thought on criterion 1...

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Just one?

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

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

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

[edit] Proposed battery of modifications

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

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

Thoughts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Question

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

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

[edit] kudos

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] We seem to be getting there

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] School Awards & criterion 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Washington Post 2006 Challenge Index

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

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

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

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

More criticism of Newsweek's rankings.

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

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

• Edward R. Murrow High School Journalism Awards

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

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

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

• California School Recognition Program

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

• Blue Ribbon Schools Program

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

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

[edit] Another idea from the other proposal...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] WP:SCHOOLS plug

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Rewrite

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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