Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/West Point Elementary School

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 of the debate was Keep. Whilst the case to delete this article hasn't been made. I certainly recommend that the editors consider merging it to a suitable target, or perhaps expanding it to discuss the other school in the area. Any work done in expanding it, in lieu of merging, would also be welcome. --Tony Sidaway 21:58, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] West Point Elementary School (Pennsylvania)

Notability in question (West Point serves approximately 250 students) --NMChico24 01:34, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

• Keep per precedent of established notability of public schools. hateless 01:37, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
  • There's a notability precedent for high schools. There's no precedent for elementary schools, except that very few are notable. -- Kicking222 02:57, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep with major clean-up, By reading the article, you can't really determine anything about the school , such as where it is located besides being in a no-name township. Arod14 01:46, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete for lack of real content. Deletion should deter people from putting up half-finished entries that cannot even be considered stubs. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:58, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete There is nothing notable about an upper elementary school of 250, and no notability is even claimed. This simply has to stop. Ted^Talk/_{Contributions} 01:50, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Just because it's a public school does not mean it's a notable school. Unless something else can be added to the article that would make it stand out among elementary schools, this article is unnecessary. joturner 02:08, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete As I commented above, few elementary schools are notable, and this one doesn't state why it's any more important than any other elementary school. -- Kicking222 02:57, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Delete. Here's that slippery slope we were assured wouldn't happen. Even if high schools are inherently notable (which is a dubious concept made "true" only by repeately saying it is so), there is nothing inherently notable about an elementary school. This is an encyclopedia, not a directory. Nothing in this article demonstrates why it is encyclopedic. The concept of "precedence" is a myth. WP:SCHOOL did not succeed, the creation of a wikiproject does not automatically confer encyclopedic value on any given article within that project, and schools are not inherently notable. Agent 86 03:06, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per above, College=notable, High Schools=for the most part notable, Elementarys=Unless something amazing is involving it, not notable. There is nothing notable to this and there is no assertion of notability. Yanksox 03:13, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Strong delete. High schools are one thing, but unless there's something absolutely astonishing about them, elementary schools aren't notable at all. WP:SCHOOL is not policy. --Coredesat talk. o.o;; 03:27, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete I'm a school inclusionist, but elementry schools need to be pretty special to actually be notable. --Pboyd04 04:00, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Elementry schools Need to be pretty special. This one is not. (IIIV 04:17, 4 July 2006 (UTC))
• Strong delete per above. High schools as a matter of course should be kept, elementary schools should not for the reasons articulated here and in many other places. SM247^{My Talk} 04:24, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Inclusion of elementary schools is going too far. AdamBiswanger1 04:27, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Schools are important. Ramseystreet 04:28, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree that high schools are important. Many, many people go to their high school reunions. But there's a reason there's no such thing as an "elementary school reunion." Elementary schools just aren't that notable. --NMChico24 04:31, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Delete get something notable to happen at the school and then we will talk -- MrDolomite 04:50, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete the local elementary school is not notable. Why did this an-article-for-every-school meme get so popular anyway? Opabinia regalis 05:15, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Merge with Hempfield Area School District which the school belongs to. Not very notable on its own, and the article is very short, but some information on the school might be of interest to some readers in the context of the entire district. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:04, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete for the usual reasons for deleting schools. Artw 06:05, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Not schoolcruft. It ought to be expanded or face deletion.--Tdxiang 06:53, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
  • If you're going to cite my personal BEEFSTEW guideline as showing that the article is "not schoolcruft," note that BEEFSTEW does not say anything about "schoolcruft..." And please note too that by my count, in its current state, this article gets points A (barely... it's three sentences long), B (I don't really think it's coherent as a paragraph, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt), and D, for building and renovation dates, for a total of 3 out of 10. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:14, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Dpbsmith, how have I missed your tasty-sounding set of criteria? My compliments to the chef for such a well-thought out set of guidelines. I may have to steal the recipe for myself. Agent 86 17:19, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Weak delete, I see Sjakkalle's point, and maybe a merge would work, but really it seems like too much trouble when elementary schools are non-notable by wikipedia definition. HumbleGod 06:57, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. I don't buy the argument that high schools (sic) are notable, yet elementary schools are not. Just because there is a tradition of attending high school reunions in the USA does not make high schools more notable. All schools are notable, each have a profound impact on 1000s of people over the years, equiping them with the ability to enjoy wikipedia, for one. Markb 07:26, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: and to concur with Markb and add to my Keep vote above: All public schools are public institutions no matter the grade, and are administered by the same authorities. Enrollment in elementary schools is mandatory whereas not as much in high schools traditionally, and probably have a greater impact on the development of a person than high schools do. They also tend to be institutions as old or older than high schools. High schools granted are larger institutuions, but it is one factor among many to compare notability. I do not see the obviousness of how high schools are inherently so much more notable than elementary schools. And in my eyes, the reason why notability has any concern to a non-paper encyclopedia is because of WP:V, and as public institutions there should be enough information available via these public agencies to ensure verifiability. hateless 08:03, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
    • The problem is that most of the borderline school articles have no source citations but the school's own website... while easily obtained official sources usually contain only basic statistics that would be better presented in tabular form than as a stubby paragraph. As I write this, this article cites no sources at all and thus is not in accord with the verifiability policy. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:06, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. High schools may be notable, but the majority of elementary schools are not notable enough to deserve articles. --Musicpvm 08:15, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Just another unspecial elementary school. -- GWO
• Delete. Utterly non notable, like most schools are Fram 09:32, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:03, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - nn school. --WinHunter ^(talk) 14:31, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per above. Green caterpillar 15:57, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per other delete votes. --Metropolitan90 16:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - WP:NN. -- Alias Flood 19:47, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Merge per Sjakkale- Elementary schools... not so much. FCYTravis 21:19, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete elementary schools are not inheirantly notable Ydam 21:49, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. WP:NN is NOT POLICY, what is more, notability is not a valid criteria for deletion of a school article. Over FORTY elementary schools survived the AfD process last month alone, how can it be consistent to delete this one? 68.144.102.170 23:46, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment What happened with other articles has no bearing on what happens to this one. And it is quite accepted by the community at large that an entry should be notable in order to be included. Nothing that is happening here is outside of Wikipedia policy. --NMChico24 00:04, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
  • WP:NN may not be policy, but it's generally accepted that not everything can be included. People and bands must have done something notable before being included, and words must be in common use before being worth listing. Schools should be no different. Scores of articles are deleted because they lack content on a daily basis. Again, schools should not be treated any different. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:28, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, no assertion of notability, and none seems possible (there is no inherent notability associated with four walls and a roof). Proto///type 10:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete just another boring school. Catchpole 11:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete No verifiable information avaliable to expand article beyond substub Hipocrite - «Talk» 13:26, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
• Merge/Redirect into Hempfield Area School District works for me. — RJH (talk) 16:04, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

* comment. The problem with merging schools into some local government/administrative department is that the essence of the school, it's huge life-long impact on pupils, becomes subsumed into a bureaucracy. Would you suggest, for example, that the achievements of Olympic athletes, should be covered by an article on the file-keeping abilities of the International Olympic Committee ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Markb (talk • contribs) 21:36, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - How does one encyclopedically explain the essence of an elementary school? I mean, honestly, what can an elementary school article ever be but a list of teachers, the school mascot (if there is one) and the day the school was founded? What else is there possibly to be said? FCYTravis 01:31, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

• A few elementary schools are certainly notable. Froebel's original kindergarten (which literally included a garden... there I've seen cute pictures of little German kids working in it), the original Montessori schools, Summerhill. These would be encyclopedically explained by reference to the unique, pioneering and controversial educational philosophies of their founders. It is very unlikely that West Point Elementary School falls in this category. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:49, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. There are a number of elementary schools by this name and it is completely reasonable that someone would expect Wikipedia, the sum of human knowledge, to document them. Verifiability issues within the article have already been addressed and resolved. Silensor 21:49, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, "the sum of human knowledge" is Britannica's slogan. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:41, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Is that a fact? "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." --Jimmy Wales Silensor 02:31, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Boston Daily Globe, Jan 25, 1903, p. 34

Yes, it's a fact. They've been using it in various forms for at least a century. AFAIK it's not trademarked or anything. I don't believe for a microsecond that Jimbo is unaware of it. I don't know for sure but I rather think Jimbo expects people to catch the reference. "The sum of human knowledge" means "something sorta-kinda-vaguely-like the Britannica, not some whole totally 'nother thing." Dpbsmith (talk) 03:21, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

It's a fact that the Britannica used it as a slogan, but I was wrong about Jimbo intentionally referring to it. I emailed him and he said "I had no idea actually. It could perhaps be that I subconsciously got it in that way, of course." He credits the line as you quoted it to Erik Moeller and himself, when preparing his first public talk about Wikipedia in Berlin circa 2003. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

• Keep, but leave the merge/redirect that User:RJHall put in place. I support an article on this school, but one hasn't really been completed yet. There's no harm in leaving it as is (with the redirect) Also, since there's been a merge, we can't delete without undoing the merge (which would be rather odd). When somebody has time/interest, they can make a full stand-alone article. --Rob 21:52, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep as a useful redirect to West Point Elementary School while retaining the edit history in the event that this will be expanded at a later date (and for GFDL purposes). Bahn Mi 04:55, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep all schools are notable, and worthy of inclusion in Jimbo's big bag 'o trivia!  ALKIVAR™ 11:36, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per bag o' trivia. --Aguerriero (talk) 19:58, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, almost all schools are notable. bbx 22:05, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
• Kepp per Bahn Mi and others. --Myles Long 22:45, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
• keep please this school is important and we should document it here Yuckfoo 00:50, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
  • You say this school is important. How is this school any more important than any other? --NMChico24 02:01, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as non-notable elementary school. Also note that the AFD tag was vanished for two days by a well-intentioned reidrect of the article. -- nae'blis _(talk) 20:05, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete no assertion of "notability". RN 21:16, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - while I buy that high schools are inherently notable because of the strength they have in their local communities the same arguement does not apply to elementary schools. This one does not assert any notability. TerriersFan 02:48, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
• Redirect to the school district. It is not the most notable of elementary schools, but still could be searched for. Yamaguchi先生 04:28, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

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