Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harbour View 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 was No consensus. There is not a clear consensus that the article meets relevant notability guidelines. The article could be merged and/or re-directed to another article, but that is not really supposed to be in the scope of AFD, so I will leave it to editors to create a consensus elsewhere if it is still felt that a merge/re-direct should occur. Camaron | Chris (talk) 19:18, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Harbour View Elementary School

Harbour View Elementary School (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Delete nothing to indicate that this elementary school is notable. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 22:55, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

• Speedy Keep How could you possibly know if this school was notable or not? the page has been in existence for less than 3 days! -- Librarianofages (talk) 22:57, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

• Delete Only one sentence, no description to the school at all. If it is notable, someone should write a new article on it. Wooyi^{Talk to me?} 23:11, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

• Redirect to List of Nova Scotia schools#Dartmouth Centre - Albro Lake- Harbourview. Verifiable [1] but highly unlikely to be notable [2]. Similar treatment should be applied to many other articles on that list. cab (talk) 23:55, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
• Redirect per c.a.b. Nothing in the article to indicate notability, other than all the students go on to Dartmouth, which can refer to a good Ivy League college. Mandsford (talk) 00:18, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
• Delete and Redirect. Per CAB. Non-notable elementary school. Malinaccier (talk) 00:23, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
• Speedy Keep (for now): I call bad faith nomination, as the article has just been created and is certainly verifiable insofar as what exists in the article. Let it stand for a reasonable period of time before calling judgment on its notability. -- Masterzora (talk) 01:15, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
• Where's the bad faith? Sure, it's verifiable, but which part of this article suggests notability? The debate won't close for another several days, which is reasonably enough time for anyone to improve upon it. Let us know if you do, but it's not going to improve on its own. Mandsford (talk) 01:22, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
  • The bad faith is in the newness of the article, meaning it's had no chance to get anywhere. By the time AfD closes, the article will be barely a week old, which is hardly enough time to expect anything significant. The "verifiable" bit was thrown in to differentiate this from the deletion of, for example, a hoax, wherein it really doesn't matter how long it's existed. -- Masterzora (talk) 02:08, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
• There was a time I might have agreed with you, but I've come to the conclusion that articles need to have some meat on their bones before they're posted. In addition, the reason that "new" articles get nominated is that each day's new articles are posted for anyone to review, thence to edit or nominate for deletion. Some articles are tagged within minutes, which I think is unfair, though not necessarily bad faith. I like your spirit... I prefer to avoid deletion in favor of alternatives like a merge or redirect. Bear in mind that if this article does get deleted, it's just as likely that someone else at Harbour View will write another (and better) article about their school. Schools get written about a lot, usually because Wikipedia is often used in schools. Mandsford (talk) 03:32, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
• Delete The article has only one sentence. It is not a notable elementary school. Masterpiece2000 (talk) 02:53, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
• Delete as a typical elementary school with nothing to demonstrate its notability. Nyttend (talk) 03:50, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions. —Noroton (talk) 04:47, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep for now, because a few days is too soon to delete. The creator of the article appears to be a newbie and should be welcomed rather than have a first edit deleted. There is no need to act this fast. Noroton (talk) 04:54, 8 January 2008 (UTC) (For additional reasons, see "Additional sources added" comment below. Noroton (talk) 20:53, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
• Comment, the article was written by an eleven year old whose sole other input to Wikipedia was to deny that 50 Cent got shot. Has anybody found anything on the school? So far I haven't. AnteaterZot (talk) 13:00, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
  • You know the age of the creator? How did you find that out? To answer your question, yes, somebody has found something (multiple, reliable, independent sources) on the school, and it didn't take much checking in Google to find it. Noroton (talk) 20:47, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
    • I inferred it from his/her username and the fact that s/he said she is a student there in the first version of the article. AnteaterZot (talk) 21:58, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
• Redirect to district. CRGreathouse (t | c) 13:50, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
• Delete, a article on a normal elementary school? Seems a bit irrelevant, redirect it to wherever the school is located.--Him and a dog 13:51, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Actually, not especially "normal". "Troubled" might be a better word. Noroton (talk) 20:53, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
• Additional sources added. This article now meets WP:N criteria, and is in fact a different article than the one voted on previously. About 5 percent of the current article information was there before I started working on it. It now has multiple, reliable, independent sources giving nontrivial information about the school, specifically the two sources from the provincial General Assembly. In addition, I've added information from the school's own Web site and from a minor source. Concerns about the school actually go somewhat beyond the people directly invovled with the school, making this school more notable than most we've considered in AfDs. Noroton (talk) 20:53, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I've done a bit more searching and added a bit more. "Harbour View School" seems to be the more common name, and that produces different search results. There have been two murders at or very near the school in the past decade. One of the victims was found by students. Not a "normal" school at all, nor "typical" or "average" or "run of the mill" or ... "non-notable". Noroton (talk) 22:06, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Comment, I'm not sure what you found is especially notable or actually directly about the school. Let me give an non-school example; a firehouse. There would be local news stories, to do with firefighters putting out fires, "Engine company 9 responded to a house fire on Leesville Rd..." and a few local news stories such as, "The firemen at stationhouse 9 have kept a Dalamatian dog for 50 years, but Spotski is the oldest..." and even, "A newborn baby was left in a basket outside firehouse 9 early Saturday morning, and was taken to the hospital...". Now suppose somebody has created a Wikipedia article which compiles all these news stories. Meanwhile, there isn't even an article on the fire department for that city. This is the situation we find ourselves in with schools. If Firehouse 9 was here in AfD, one could argue that the sources do not demonstrate notability, because the sources describe the ordinary operations of a fire company. One could argue that the local nature of the sources is not enough to demonstrate notability either. And one could argue that maybe, if one merged all the articles on the firehouses to a fire department article, one might have achieved notability. AnteaterZot (talk) 22:19, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
      • Reply: One might also argue that WP:N is a guideline, not a policy and that actual content policies, ie WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, WP:NOT, are actually satisfied. -- Masterzora (talk) 23:57, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
        • One could argue that, but people rarely do. AnteaterZot (talk) 12:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
      • Reply: One could argue with Wikipedia policy or against it, but closing admins are instructed to discredit arguments against policy. Under Wikipedia's definition the local nature of sources is not relevant. I don't think it's contrary to WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS to point out that as you're arguing to keep out school articles as a class (other than schools that are notable on a more than local basis), tons and tons of new articles are flooding Wikipedia on: railroad stations, bus services, small companies, registered historic places, bus stations, video games, episodes of television programs -- and in each category all or nearly all articles that come up at AfD are kept. In some of these categories, the articles aren't even nominated. I think Wikipedia is better off for having articles on WP:N-notable elementary schools where we have enough sources to describe at least prominent features of the school. Also, frankly, it seems a bit disingenuous to say early on, Has anybody found anything on the school? So far I haven't. and then to say later, when something is found, that even higher standards haven't been met. Someone not familiar with your position might have wasted his or her time trying to meet the standard implied by that earlier statement. Noroton (talk) 00:17, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
        • Why don't you take a look at the various high schools I have researched and saved at AfD before you impune my motives? I'm not arguing to keep out school articles as a class, I argue each school on a case-by-case basis. There are at least 92,000 elementary schools in the US, 10,000 in Canada, and 1,000,000 in the world (possibly 2,000,000). Nearly all such schools will meet WP:V. AnteaterZot (talk) 12:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
        • When I looked for sources, my goal was to find things that met my definition of notability. I saw some of the information now in the article, but didn't think to include it. For example, there is a sentence in the article that says the school has 12 English classes. How is this encyclopedic? The students have an outdoor exercise program followed by a healthy snack? Not encyclopedic. Nearby murders suggest the neighborhood is bad, but is not directly about the school. What if an article was about a laundromat, and a couple of murders had been committed nearby? WP:N might be a guideline (but it is one that everybody believes in), but WP:NOT#NEWS is a policy. AnteaterZot (talk) 12:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
          • I don't see how it's not encyclopedic. Removing the traditional boundaries of space (Wikipedia's storage capacity is effectively unlimited) and time (print encyclopedias should be more wary about things that easily change, like the number of English classes, but it is in Wikipedia's very nature that the article can change as easily as the number of English classes at a school), there's nothing about this information that screams unencylopedic. Also, I suggest you be careful about the word "everybody". I think you'll find a nontrivial number of editors (myself included) that don't believe in WP:N. -- Masterzora (talk) 12:37, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
            • I'm not going to engage in any further conversation with anybody who doesn't agree with WP:N. AnteaterZot (talk) 22:39, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
        • I believe it is unfortunate that AfD has become a playground for people to nominate a school for deletion and get to watch people scramble to find sources to rescue them. Not to say that this article was not nominated in good faith; the fact is that many people feel that a member of a class cannot be notable for doing things that are expected of the members of the class. AnteaterZot (talk) 12:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
        • What I was getting at with my firehouse example was not WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, which you somehow use to argue for the retention of school articles, but that the vast majority of schools will have a few sources that mention something about the school. This means that each and every time a school is at AfD, the debate will center around the encyclopedic value of that information. Figuring out what is "encyclopedic" is very hard to quantify, and no written policy or guideline will cover it. AnteaterZot (talk) 12:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
        • So, my contention is that this situation is untenable. I am not alone in my belief that for something to be notable, such as a Dungeons & Dragons monster, it must have some significant coverage demonstrating notability outside its community, whether that community be the community of Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts or a city in Nova Scotia. Just as every character that has ever appeared on TV is not notable, some schools must not be notable. AnteaterZot (talk) 12:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
          • (more or less tangential) Question: I would like to know, why is it that some schools *must* not be notable? I can certainly understand the statement that some schools *aren't*, but why *must* sume be non-notable? It's surely possible that all school would be notable, after all. -- Masterzora (talk) 12:37, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
            • Of course some schools are notable. AnteaterZot (talk) 22:39, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
• in the community depends on how you define it. A state senator must be known outside the state? a UK minister outside the UK? ,or on the other hand, a school outside its own school district but elsewhere in the city? a restaurant where--outside its block? outside the neighborhood? outside the city? A Linux distribution--outside users of that distribution? outside of Linux users? outside Unix users in general? outside computer programmers? A high school athlete--outside his high school, his city, his state? There is no universal rule. DGG (talk) 16:32, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Each of these can be addressed, however. Restaurants that have any claim to fame, even a hot dog stand in Chicago, are featured on the Food Network or other secondary sources as notable to the folks who generated the secondary source. It's not about this one school, it's about avoiding allowing such weak articles to become an established precendent for notability. AnteaterZot (talk) 22:39, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep clearly notable. --Pwnage8 (talk) 18:50, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep article asserts notability and is certainly more than a single sentence now. In fact, it's better than a stub. JERRY ^talk _contribs 03:21, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
• Delete or Redirect to List of Nova Scotia schools#Dartmouth Centre - Albro Lake- Harbourview. Clearly the references are about the area that the school is in and not the school. That does not appear to meet WP:V and WP:RS. I also don't see how this meets WP:ORG. Clearly does not meet any of the generous past proposals of WP:SCHOOLS. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:27, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

There isn't a single factual statement in Vegaswikian's comment. Just to look at the title of the article about one of the murders and to follow the link to the police Web site in the other shows that the locations are identified as being behind the school, with one of the bodies found by students at the school. Whether or not the corpses were discovered within or just outside the school grounds is, let's say, a tad irrelevant when what's important is the proximity, and potential danger and trauma to the children. Is it trivial that murders take place either in or close by the place where 240 primary/middle school kids get their education? If so, perhaps Vegaswickian would like to nominate Ford's Theatre for deletion ("Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"). Since not having the information on the murders would amount to an NPOV violation, it seems to me the information on the murders is important enough to mean that the school has received more than trivial coverage. And what on earth does WP:V or WP:RS have to do with this article when the sourcing is as reliable as it gets on Wikipedia? There are more footnotes here, all of them reliable, than on most Wikipedia articles. To reiterate: WP:ORG and the current WP:SCHOOS proposal guidelines on notability, along with the basic WP:N guideline have each been met by any fair reading of them. The school has received "significant coverage".Noroton (talk) 21:50, 11 January 2008 (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.