User:Pigman/High Schools

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(This may be an awful mistake but I'm going to venture an opinion on the question of the notability of all schools vis-a-vis Wikipedia. May the deities have mercy on my soul.)

Contents 1 A Common School: An Ontological Inquiry, Including Quantification of Arguments Against the Universal Inclusion of All Schools on Wikipedia 1.1 The problem of verification 1.2 The problems of automatic inclusion 1.3 The problems of topicality 1.4 Wikipedia is not a directory 2 Conclusion 3 Disclosure

[edit] A Common School: An Ontological Inquiry, Including Quantification of Arguments Against the Universal Inclusion of All Schools on Wikipedia

I've tried to stay clear of the great School Inclusion debate but I'm moved to make a stab at it after reading Noroton's bit on this subject.

While I don't view Wikipedia as an exclusive resource (that is, needing to exclude information), I feel there is value in choosing what information to include. While specific notability remains a somewhat subjective target (despite the existence of fairly explicit guidelines in several areas), I'm somewhat against large general groups being included automatically and without discussion.

Noroton's arguments seem thin to me for a number of reasons.

[edit] The problem of verification

The biggest hurdle to me to universal inclusion of all schools is verification. Noroton argues this is, at least in part, also a social/income/class problem. Poorer schools are less likely to be written up in community newspapers in poorer communities.

However, my argument is that there is a deeper problem with verification if there is no available sources: The exceptional difficulty in maintaining these articles by the common Wikipedia editor. Anyone who has done substantial antivandal work knows that these articles often have unverifiable commentary and names of students or teachers. The violation of biographies of living people is particularly worrisome to me.

In my opinion, the solution is to mercilessly prune school articles to a very strict interpretation of the attribution policies. Every list of "notable" graduates should be sourced by individual. Any and all names in school articles need to be verified, from the Principal to the sport coaches to honor students to sport team lists of athletes/members. To fail to do extensive verification fails a central tenet of any encyclopedia: accuracy.

[edit] The problems of automatic inclusion

Noroton argues that schools are automatically notable by virtue of their importance and central position in any community. By this argument, any roadway is notable because it is important to the commerce and mobility within a community. Everything and everyone is important to large groups of people. My interpretation of the notability guidelines is to try to parse and discriminate (in the older sense) the importance of different objects and concepts.

Automatic inclusion bypasses the reasons for notability guidelines. It removes any ability for editors to discuss and reach a consensus opinion on notability based on verifiable sources.

[edit] The problems of topicality

There is a question in my mind as to what information is realistic to include in a school article. Any student names will inevitably be transient, needing constant re-sourcing. In theory, while this is not much different than say the officers of a corporation, in practical terms it is more difficult to consistently update a non-notable school. A non-notable school will have fewer reliable sources, perhaps even none because of the so-called "automatic" notability of any school.

[edit] Wikipedia is not a directory

The automatic inclusion of all schools, regardless of notability, turns Wikipedia into a directory of schools rather than a collection of verifiable information. I can see instances where almost no editors can verify that a particular school even exists, much less whether more specific information is accurate. Yes, many articles have citations and sources that are difficult to obtain or specialized. However, when the only option is to travel to a local town newspaper and look up information, this is an order of difficulty beyond what I think is reasonable for Wikipedia editors. Then the information becomes a matter of trust rather than being independently verifiable. This is an exceptionally bad precedent for an encyclopedia, even a user-edited one. It puts a class of entries beyond normal Wikipedia standards, granting them a form of immunity from the common editor's opinions and judgments.

[edit] Conclusion

I have no firm or absolute conclusion or solution. I wanted to raise a few of the problems I see with a broad standard of absolute inclusion of a group which presents certain difficulties in verification. I'm also not keen on the inclusion of every town and village but at least basic facts about them can be verified through an atlas or the like. Automatic inclusion of schools does not demand any substantial and verifiable sources. This is a flaw.

[edit] Disclosure

Like many adults in the USA, I went to schools. The two schools I went to from grades 7-12 both have Wikipedia articles and I've done some work on both of them. Unfortunately for any semblance that I am impartial, both schools are notable by general Wikipedia standards. In other words, they would probably not be deleted from Wikipedia even with the application of stricter standards to school articles. I don't believe this has affected my arguments here but in the interest of disclosure I thought it worth mentioning to reveal a potential bias.