Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dodgeville High 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 was keep. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 16:31, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dodgeville High School

Dodgeville High School (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Appears to be a relatively non-notable high school in Wisconsin. Ryanjunk 20:25, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I am also nominating the following related page about a coach and teacher from this school:

John "Weenie" Wilson (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletions. -- Noroton 03:01, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment this is the weirdest high school article I've ever seen. It's essentially an article about high school sports at Dodgeville, and apparently the article was started after information was moved from an article with a name something like "Dodgeville school sports", but I can't find that original article on Wikipedia, even as a redirect page (was it at the losing end of some old deletion decision?). If the single editor who's put so much time and effort into this indends to keep up the massive (34 kilobyte) ongoing collection of school sports coverage, I don't really have a problem with it, so long as he cleans up after himself (or herself) after graduation. I'm sure the school's received local sports coverage, so the article should be notable. But the information should go into the original name -- something to do with sports needs to be in that name. Right now it's misleading. Noroton 03:12, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, OK, it used to be a part (a big part) of the Dodgeville, Wisconsin article. Noroton 03:17, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Weak Delete for Both Nominated: This high school is just another high school article, which is non-encyclopedic, and has no sources. It violates WP:A, therefore it should be deleted. Chickyfuzz14^{(user talk)} 03:15, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete both per WP:N and, at the moment, WP:A. Notability must be asserted in every article per Wikipedia guidelines and confirmed by cited reliable sources. There is no consensus that schools do or do not have inherent notability, as evidenced by the fact that many school AfDs close with 'no consensus'. --Butseriouslyfolks 04:59, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
• Strong keep High schools are notable. There are tens of thousands of articles about schools. The deletionists have lost and continuing to make these nominations is disruption to make a point. Cloachland 15:02, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm certainly not trying to make a point, please WP:AGF. Also other articles existing is not an argument to keep this one. This article is currently unsourced and at any rate needs massive cleanup of the extensive detail of this high school's recent sports record. I find it very unlikely that the fact that the Dodgeville boy's basketball team was 8-13 under coach Tank in 1999 is either encyclopedic or of interest to anyone outside of Dodgeville. Ryanjunk 16:12, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep School District and Relist Wilson (Keep Wilson if no Relist). This article was always about the District and never about the School so I have moved the article to Dodgeville School District. The four schools in the District play under the same sports banner so the High School teams represent the District as well as the School. All School Districts, as government establishments, are inherently notable. The article, as Ryanjunk rightly says, needs cleaning up but that is an editorial matter; AfD is not a clean up squad. Coach Wilson needs to be considered separately. As a previous college footballer and a triple Hall of Famer as a coach, he has some notability but he needs relisting by himself so that the sports fans can consider him. TerriersFan 22:44, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep I can't say it better than TerriersFan. Ryanjunk's point about WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS isn't quite on point, because Coachland was arguing about precident and the clear pattern that's developing about keeping high schools. Actually, I'm not so sure it's a developing pattern so much as an ongoing one. After WP:SCHOOLS went down in flames, perhaps we should create another proposed guideline on school notability, accepting high schools and school districts and coming up with something on other schools. Noroton 20:52, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep I can't say I've seen too many articles where I would recommend trimming down material, but this article is top-heavy with sports minutiae. The content that is here is adequate to demonstrate notability. I agree with Noroton that we need to revisit a WP:SCHOOLS successor that would clarify notability of school districts and high schools, and then establish criteria for other schools. Using WP:N as our only standard leaves every single school AfD a repeat of WP:SCHOOLS and WP:SCHOOLS3. Alansohn 02:00, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Let me second third that sentiment. A bright line criteria would save us all a lot of time and energy. --Butseriouslyfolks 09:08, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep: I have a bunch of historical information to add about the school district. I should have it added by Thursday at the latest. I have recently found a lot of information about the formation of the school district, early teachers, principals throughout the years, and the dates the school buildings were built and changed. Frydoggnt55 14:18, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep high school, and do a separate relist for Wilson. The school article is notable, but needs cleanup. The only parts of the high school sports records that I find to be encyclopedic are the short descriptions and records in state tournaments. Royalbroil ^T : C 03:01, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
  • changed to Keep for Wilson, as being the member of three halls of fame, even at the state level, is enough for inclusion in my book. Royalbroil ^T : C 23:41, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep school article for my usual reasons, although needs heavy pruning of cruft about sport. Delete article on coach - no doubt a great bloke, but not particularly notable in his own right. -- Necrothesp 15:04, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I read your essay and found it very interesting. I still disagree, though. The main guideline for notability, at WP:N gives the primary criterion for notability: "A topic is notable if it has been the subject of at least one substantial or multiple, non-trivial published works from sources that are reliable and independent of the subject." Regardless of how notable a secondary school is to its students (and I am not arguing that a school does not play a significant role in one's life), nearly none of them are featured in non-trivial works. My grandmother is extremely notable and important to the members of my family, but she certainly is not notable enough to merit an encyclopedia article. The article in question has only one independent source: the first two are merely directories, the next three are created by the school itself, and the one semi-independent source is from the local town paper. Ryanjunk 16:55, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, WP:N is a guideline, and a heavily disputed one at that, not a policy. Just because an article does not meet the particular criterion you quote, it should not be deleted. If we deleted everything that was not "the subject of at least one substantial or multiple, non-trivial published works" then we would delete a large portion of the articles on Wikipedia and lose much information for the sake of the dogmatism and inflexibility of a handful of deletionists who seem to believe that it is better to shrink Wikipedia than to expand it. I'd be the first to say that there is a lot of junk on Wikipedia - utterly pointless rubbish that deserves to be deleted. But I do not think that even the most fanatical deletionist could claim with any credibility that an article about a school was pointless rubbish. And I tire of saying that lack of sources is not a reason for deletion - if its existence is verifiable, which a school's blatantly is, then it is perfectly acceptable to keep it, even as a stub (which, as I also tire of reiterating, is a perfectly acceptable form of article). Incidentally, I fear you didn't read my essay properly - your grandmother is notable to a few members of your family, not to thousands of current and former pupils and to the local community as a school is - I thought I made that point quite clearly with the house analogy. I really wish people would direct their efforts towards what genuinely needs to be deleted and not what a disputed guideline says might be deleted. -- Necrothesp 18:57, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

If you want to be technical about "guidelines vs. policies", we're in a weird place. The official deletion policy lists as a reason for deletion: "Subject fails to meet the relevant notability guideline." So we have an official policy which points to a "heavily disputed" policy. I'm not trying to be "dogmatic and inflexible" here, I just don't know that Wikipedia is the proper place for a school to keep detailed records of its sports program. Assume good faith, please. If we really must have a stub article about every single secondary school on the face of the earth, so be it. Just make it a stub without piles of crufty sports trivia, please. To borrow from John Hodgman, for further details on sports, please consult every other aspect of our culture. As for my grandmother, you don't know how big my family is. If my extended family included thousands of people, would she then merit an article? Finally, lack of sources is definitively a reason for deletion. Just the ability to verify that something exists is not enough to make that something article-worthy. Every single citizen of the United States verifiably exists, but certainly not all are worthy of an article. This is why we have notability guidelines, and why it is an official policy that those topics which are not notable are subject to deletion. If there is a "large portion" of Wikipedia which needs to be deleted due to being unsourced, then it should be deleted, not used as an argument to keep other stuff. Ryanjunk 20:11, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep the article on Coach Wilson is relevent because he is the only coach in Wisconsin history to be named to all three Halls of Fame: Baseball, Basketball, and Football. I am in process of finding more information for that page as well. Hoping to get more of his life information and career info. Frydoggnt55 19:06, 20 March 2007 (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.