Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Batesville High School (Arkansas)

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

The result was Keep. ---J.S ^(T/C) 22:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Batesville High School (Arkansas)

Batesville High School (Arkansas) (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Delete Keep This article has made serious improvements, and I think it is now acceptable. --Adam Riley ^Talk 02:45, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Keep I really could care less about this individual school, but I think all high schools are notable enough to be listed on wikipedia. Many high schools are larger than universities, and all universities (at least all of them I have ever searched for) are considered notable enough. (and if you only consider some high schools notable enough, then what are the criteria for a high school being notable enough? I would think being the only one in a city, as this one is, would qualify as much as a library or any of the other types of things listed here.) If this high school is not notable enough, then there are thousands of high school wikipedia entries out there that need to be deleted too, since it wouldn't be fair to single out one high school over the others. (Cardsplayer4life 05:01, 14 December 2006 (UTC))

In addition to what I wrote previously, the Wikipedia:Schools which was brought to my attention by the nominator for deletion clearly shows that (per item #3) the school (and most schools) are "locally distinctive". I just wanted to add this point to my original statement, even though discussion about it is also included further down. (Cardsplayer4life 21:05, 14 December 2006 (UTC))

Delete per nom; I'm quite comfy with weeding out all those thousands of school entries, thanks. As a side note, since the very largest high schools in the US top out at 5000, that "many" are larger than universities is plain inaccurate. RGTraynor 20:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Depends on what your definition of "many" is, I suppose. There are plenty of universities/colleges smaller than 5000, and plenty of high schools larger than the smallest university, I can assure you. (Cardsplayer4life 20:59, 14 December 2006 (UTC))

As a side note, I have fleshed out the article a bit more, and intend to do so even more in the coming weeks/months, if that is why the original poster was concerned. However, you have to start with a stub to be able to work up to a bigger article as you find more information sometimes. (ok, I suppose you don't have to, but it is easier for me to do it that way sometimes.) The objection raised, however, was that the article itself is not notable, no matter how much information is there, which my original objection above deals with. (Cardsplayer4life 05:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC))

• For a description of what the criteria for notability is, please see Wikipedia:Schools. --Adam Riley ^Talk 06:00, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Under the #3 point, I think is where most high schools on wikipedia (including this one) fit. Especially when it is the only high school in a fairly large (for Arkansas at least) city. I can come up with hundreds (if not thousands) of wikipedia entries exactly like this high school, so my question is: Why is this one being singled out? (Cardsplayer4life 06:08, 14 December 2006 (UTC))

• Keep - appears to be verifiable, factual, and a school. Trollderella 07:50, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• This AfD nomination was incomplete. It is listed now. DumbBOT 17:02, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. High schools are inherently notable. Nlsanand 17:29, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete unless sources are provided to show that this school is the subject of multiple external non-trivial sources that show notability, and that we could use to write a verified encyclopedia article. The only sources in the article now are websites associated or affiliated with the school. After a cursory look at Google and Lexis-Nexis I see nothing non-trivial (this is not a surprise since most schools are not the subjects of external sources). Pan Dan 19:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

On the Wikipedia:Schools page cited by Adam Riley above, it makes clear that high schools (or, schools in general) are considered notable if "The school is locally distinctive in any two of the areas listed under criterion #2, or in any other areas for which it has received local press or other coverage". It can clearly be shown that most high schools in general (and this one in particular) are either locally distinctive or have received local press coverage in one of the following areas (from point #2):"* Academics * Age * Alumni * Architecture * Awards * Events that have occurred at the school * Extracurricular activities, including sports"

Most notably (for this high school) there has been a lot of local press coverage for the sports teams, there are lots of events (sports, musical, and otherwise) that occur at the school, there has been local press coverage having to do with academics, and since the school is the only one in the city, approximately 90% of the people who live or work in the city are graduates, so by default (almost) any local story on a member of the community is also a story on an Alumni. Thus, at the very least 4 out of the 7 stated areas are relevant, and the 3 remaining ones could possibly be included as well, when only 2 (by the wording of #3 quoted above) are needed. Remember, it only needs to be shown to be "locally distinctive" in the case of a school. (Cardsplayer4life 20:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC))

(1) WP:SCHOOL doesn't enjoy consensus approval (and I for one don't approve of it). (2) The press coverage you refer to will in most cases be trivial with respect to the school. Coverage of an alumnus, a football game, a school play, etc. can't help us write an encyclopedia article about the school. You said above that you intend to expand the article in the coming weeks and months; I'm all for that, but there's no indication that it's even possible to do that. The material that's in the article right now is either not encyclopedic (e.g. the mission statement), or doesn't come from external sources that show notability. Do you know of any non-trivial external sources that we could use to write a good verifiable article about this school? That's what notability means at Wikipedia. Pan Dan 20:14, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

(1) Wikipedia:Schools may not enjoy approval by everyone, but it is nonetheless the standard by which the notability of schools is judged. If you have a problem with it, then I would urge you to lobby to have it changed or removed, but until then it deserves at least partial consideration. (2) The press coverage is coverage by local media of the school. If you consider this trivial, then I would estimate 90% or more of all the content on university and high school pages is not notable, because most of the information is only verifiable via local media. Also, how can a building such as a library or a train station or anything else like that which is used less and recieves less press coverage be more of a subject of an article than a school? In short, if this high school page is not notable enough to be on wikipedia, then the thousands of other high school pages which are not any more notable need to be deleted as well, and there needs to be a mass campaign to get rid of all of them.(Cardsplayer4life 20:46, 14 December 2006 (UTC))

No, it is not "the standard", it is a standard some people use. Other people use WP:SCHOOLS3, or their own judgment, or just go with (their interpretation of) wikipedia policies. And I wouldn't mind to get rid of most of the school, library, fire station, train station, ... articles, since most of them have the same problems: only (very) local notability. Wikipedia should decide (perhaps urgently) if it wants to include everything with only local notability (local sports people, local festivities, local schools, and local shops for local people), or if it wants to restrict itself to those things with at least regional or preferable national notability and coverage. Fram 21:22, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I would say according to WP:SCHOOLS3 it still passes, but that is not really the overarching point. The overarching point is that there is sufficient disagreement about whether these types of articles (those showing local or regional notability) should be allowed, and until that is decided and there are sufficient guidelines one way or the other, then these types of articles should not be removed. (Cardsplayer4life 22:02, 14 December 2006 (UTC))

Pan Dan, in WP:N says that "A topic can fail to satisfy the criteria because, though it may be found in reliable, non-directory sources, it is mentioned trivially rather than being a main subject of the published works. ...One common recommendation across all notability guidelines is not to nominate articles on such subjects for deletion but to rename, refactor, or merge them into articles with broader scopes...." I don't see why, if the subject ends up failing to meet notability, we shouldn't instead of deleting, merge it into, for example, Batesville, Arkansas. schi ^talk 18:42, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

In general a merge can be a good idea. In this case, I'm not sure there's any material that's appropriate to merge. The town article already mentions this high school and already mentions that it's the only one in town. The mission statement and athletics sections are verified only at the school's website and other outlets associated with the school itself -- and I think that external sources have to take note of any information before we consider it notable enough for inclusion anywhere on Wikipedia. That leaves us with the school song, mascot, school colors, and administration, which to varying degrees are somewhat likely to be verifiable in external sources. If someone wants to merge this info into the town article, I guess that's OK by me, except that it would sort of knock the town article off balance, because the school song, etc., seems pretty trivial compared to the rest of the information in the town article. Pan Dan 19:28, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

(Adding to comment) I note the school article says "Batesville High School has a long history of success in many different sports." If it's true with Batesville, as with many towns, that high school athletics are a big part of the town's cultural life, and someone can find external sources, e.g. the local paper, that discuss the history of this school's athletic exploits, I think it would be entirely appropriate to augment the town article with a section on sports at the high school. Pan Dan 19:36, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

• Delete unless notability is shown by WP:V sources. Fram 21:22, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Until an official guidelines on schools will be adopted I will not favor the removal of any single school article. And this is one isn't even as bad as hundreds of other still up. TSO1D 21:54, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I have good news for you! We already have an official guideline on schools. And on train stations. And fire departments. And everything else. It's called WP:N. This school doesn't appear to meet it. Pan Dan 23:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • 'Delete and comment on the above. It would make just as much sense to say that unless there is a std I will delete every one, or more realistically put them in there own wiki--TSO1D, who makes the standards? We all do, to some extent in the discussion pages for the policy, but also in what we actually do here, which very much affects what is needed as policy. It is not likely that there will be a policy on this that has consensus enough to stick. In the meantime we can use the criterion listed just above by Pan Dan, or--what ammounts to the same thing--use our judgments as a group. That's why we are posting here--if not to express group consensus, why bother, we could accept every other one using a bot. DGG 02:39, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep It's verifiable; I can check Lexis later, but a Google news search turned up several stories about the high school in the Batesville Daily Guard. You need a paid subscription to read them on the website, but here's the list of search results. schi ^talk 23:29, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Looking at the previews, none of those results appears non-trivial ("Marching band enjoys success," "Student lost his wallet," "Damage to the gym Monday morning," etc.). Pan Dan 18:47, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep All high schools are relevant to wikipedia. (Liveforever22 02:46, 15 December 2006 (UTC))

• Keep sourced, encyclopaedic, keeps with precedents. WilyD 18:43, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Does not show any evidence of meeting any of the criteria at either of the proposed guidelines WP:SCHOOLS3 or WP:SCHOOLS (which to my surprise are nearly identical today). GRBerry 04:09, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. I believce all high schools are relevent and notable enough for Wikipedia. --Wizardman 02:47, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

comment If this were indeed the WP policy the school would not have been discussed here in the first place. Not perhaps a relevant vote.DGG 08:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Nah, this vote is relevant. One of the criteria is well-known sports teams (i'm paraphrasing), and I would think that a high school state title is enough to warrant an article. Besides, if it wasn't the school policy it may have still been discussed here, you can't confirm that. --Wizardman 19:55, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

• Keep All High-schools are inherently notable. -- Librarianofages 03:06, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

comment If this were indeed the policy the school would not have been discussed here in the first place. Not perhaps a relevant vote.DGG 08:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment AfD is not a vote. So every vote ever cast in AfD is irrelevent. Instead, talk about the argument. Although this argument is as good as about half the ones here, especially those that attempt to apply WP:SCHOOLS as though it were policy. WilyD 15:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

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