Talk:University High School (Los Angeles, California)/archive 1

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Contents

reverting driving school edit

Btw, if the history got confusing for a second, I did a minor grammar edit and then decided to revert so I reverted back past my edit and re-did my minor grammar edit at the same time.

Now...

What? Uni high offers driving courses? Since when?

And either the newspaper is award winning or not. If it's award winning, there should be a source for it. If it isn't, remove the award winning. And if it won awards in 1980, then make the sentence more specific.

This may be an article on a high school, but it shouldn't be that hard to actually find sources.

I've also added a notes section and fixed the references. TStein 12:17, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

major edit

Just dropping a note here to let everyone know that I performed some major surgery on the article. Because the stuff about the spring and the mascot kept growing, what started out as a small intro got really big, so I sectioned that stuff off, kept the intro introductory, and put everything in its proper place.

Some notes:

I've changed the language on the article from Indian and Native American to American Indian when referring to the mascot issue because that is what everything we cite uses. The official documents tend to use both (Native American/American Indian), but there are cases where only American Indian is used or just "Indian", so we are sticking with that. However, I've kept the terminology "Native American" when refering to the Gabrielino/Tongva people because that is what they use. Most of the time...

Also, I've hesitantly added this page to the "California Historical Landmarks" category. The school isn't a landmark, but the spring is and there isn't a page for the spring and the school contains a landmark so, I figured this made sense. I don't know exactly what being a California Historical Landmark means, but I believe it has certain protections or provisions or both, and those would definitely apply to the school as well. TStein 11:19, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

March 2007

Hello all, and thank you for contributing to this school site. I'm part of the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Schools/Assessment team, and I'm reviewing this page, I'm currently giving it a grade of B on the Wikipedia 1.0 Assessment Scale and an importance of Medium on the this importance scale. I will be nominating it for GA status.

My reasoning is as follows: This article is well written aside from a few minor problems with pagination. It also shows good WP:NPOV and a is well refferenced. It is also includes the only information about a state landmark which increases its importance Adam McCormick 20:49, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Picture request

I would like for people to upload a picture of UHS so that it may be displayed in many articles. WhisperToMe 23:29, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Uni High's new website

Uni High's new website has lifted large parts of this article for their history page.

DO NOT post a copyright vio tag on this article page. This article does not violate copyright, the Uni High website is violating GFDL and is claiming copyright they obviously don't have. Miss Mondegreen | Talk   08:02, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

That is so funny! We're doing UNI's publicity for them!  :) Badagnani 08:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, not really. Though I'd like to know how this happened. No matter. Appropriate legal notices have/will/are being sent and this matter should be taken care of soon. Miss Mondegreen | Talk   10:31, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Uni ought to mention all of the neighborhoods that it serves; hey, we list them. WhisperToMe 22:35, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
reverting the cap mention. we can't use the uni website as a source while their in copyright vio of us. and I've gone through a lot of other lausd docs and can't find a source. I know uni gets in cap students, but i can't definitively say from where and the program has changed over the years so we need a reliable source. If you want to put the statement back in unspecific to freemont and sourceless, that's fine with me, but I'm not ok with using the site for a source. Miss Mondegreen | Talk   11:14, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Megan Follows

I understand that the entire notable alumni section isn't sourced--a major problem. But removing someone because they grew up in Canada is almost as bad. A quick look at the Megan Follows article shows that she was indeed acting in America by the early 80s, and 86--the gradution year listed by whomever added her would likely have been her graduation year as she was born in 68.

I can find nothing to show that she was in Canada at the time--and as we are not removing the entire section as unsourced, I've reverted the edit removing her. Miss Mondegreen | Talk   00:38, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Though it doesn't mention this school, Follow's IMBD bio says:
  • After her parents' divorce at the age of 11, Megan moved to Los Angeles to attend school and act. [1]
It appears very possible that she'd have attended Uni. -Will Beback · † · 00:50, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
My own concern is that often kids will add their own names or the names of their friends to various pages on Wikipedia, and they "link" the name such that if there's already someone by that name elsewhere on the 'pedia, it'll look like a valid link. When I followed Ms. Follows' link, I saw a Canadian's bio with no mention of Uni, which is why I assumed it was one of the "hoax" additions, and removed the name. If other editors want to revert me and say, "Well, we're pretty sure she was in L.A., so maybe it's true," I'm not going to fight it to the death, but I'm uncomfortable because it's either original research, or just plain wrong. I'd be happier if we could find a source. --Elonka 02:08, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
I watch scores of school articles. Nobody ever sources the alumni lists. Probably we should. We routinely remove "redlinked" names, but disputes about "blue links" are rare. Unless two schools claim the same person there's little reason to doubt any particular entry. -Will Beback · † · 09:07, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm fairly sure that almost all of the notable alumni are not OR--there were, or possibly still are multiple editors who would occasionally come and add alumni, and they got them from various online database sites that wikiprojects schools has found to be fairly accurate, or, I suspect that one of the editors was getting their information from the school itself.
The problem we have at the moment is that the entire section needs sourcing--and while I have sources for some of it, many of these are not sources I will link to in a wiki article. The alumni sites for example are run very well and would certainly meet sourcing requirements, but also have individuals personal information on them and I'm strongly against linking to those as sources, especially as the new website does not provide links to the alumni pages, but let's alumni voluntarily provide information about themselves.
I had planned to go up the school at somepoint soon and use the library copies of old yearbooks and check and cite those--I also think that the school does have alumni information, I'm just wrong about where it is kept.
But from what I could find on Megan Follows didn't give me any reason to remove it that I didn't have for every other alumni who isn't cited.
I also think that removing all alumni who are redlinked is a bad idea. A redlink is a tip-off that it should be looked into, but redlinks are one of the ways that people know that something hasn't been written about and they do it.
If someone wants to start working on sourcing things, please, go right ahead. It will probably take me some time to get to--this article is a harder article to source and very time consuming. Miss Mondegreen | Talk   09:09, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


I was using "redlinking" as a euphemism or shorthand. Most redlinked names fall into two categories: people aggrandizing themselves or their friends[2][3][4][5][6] and people denigrating other people[7]. More rarely there are folks for whom there's no obvious claim to fame.[8][9] In theory I agree we should give redlinks the benefit of the doubt, but in practice they've been uniformly non-notable. -Will Beback · † · 09:24, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
In my experience, redlinked names are usually non-notable individuals. If someone's genuinely notable, then a bio can be created about them first, after which the alumni list can link to it easily enough. But we shouldn't hang onto a redlinked name in the hope that there might someday be an article. If, however, someone were to add a redlinked name, and include a source proving that the subject was notable, then I'd say yes, in that case we should keep the name. --Elonka 17:26, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Replies and update

Providing two sources for redlinked names--a source to prove they are an alum and a source to prove notability is a good idea. But keep in mind that red linked names are to be held to no different standards than blue linked names and the criteria for keeping them and throwing them out is no different. We don't not check the blue linked names to see whether they are notable/real/etc and we still check the red linked ones before throwing them out.

"I was using "redlinking" as a euphemism or shorthand."

That's NOT ok. Red linked means that there is no article at this time on Wikipedia at that namespace. Not that the item in question doesn't meet the criteria we're discussing. Those are false edit summaries that completely mislead people. It means that if someone had sources and was watching the article that they didn't revert and source and bring up talk page discussion because they disagreed with you--after all, we all agree that those pages were red linked. We just didn't know that by redlinked you mean a plethora of other things.

"in practice they've been uniformly non-notable"

Bull. I know they haven't been. In fact, I added a red-linked alum and the system worked--someone created an article for her. I've been watching this article for a while now, and there have been a few people who regularly add accurate alum information. But their redlinked alum information wasn't accurate or notable? They stuck in vanity listing? I find that hard to believe. In fact, it's been shockingly easy to find information on several of the red linked people--I'm going through one by one and I'm not doing them all tonight but it's not hard to tell the difference between reality and not, and notability and not.

Just in case anyone doesn't know or remember, having a Wikipedia article isn't the definition of notability. We have a wiki definition for notability (WP:NOTABLE) and it doesn't say "anything that's red-linked". Wikipedia articles are living--they are constantly being written and edited and yes--we will link to articles that don't yet exist. Because we don't get instant alerts to their creation to let us know to wiklink, to get someone to create them--for dozens of reasons.

I'm concerned, upset and annoyed by the way this was done. All this has really generated is more work--because people were watching the article and especially additions of alumni and redlinked alumni and did removed alumni when it was clear that they didn't belong. Because ones that do belong have been removed, I or someone else now has to resift through things we've looked at before.

Also, for whomever mentioned alums being listed at two school pages. People attend multiple schools. Alum doesn't mean graduated--simple attended. In fact, several of the ones we have now sourced did attend multiple schools. Miss Mondegreen | Talk   10:18, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Native american heritage

I've added a request for citation on the section about a several thousand-year-old grave on campus. I was actually a student at Uni during the time that the grave was discovered, and can confirm that there was great excitement about it, but I don't remember anything about them saying it was thousands of years old. At the time, the theory was that it was much more recent, like 150 years old. It was also relatively shallow. If there has been new research that has dated it much older, I would be very interested in seeing it. --Elonka 02:20, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

baseball! and redlinks

I found a source not just for Damon Farmer but for a whole list of baseball players that went to Uni High. [10]

Which on the surface is great--source for both attendance and notability. But I have zero idea how notability standards apply here. I've left a comment at WikiProject Baseball and I'm waiting for a reply there. I've gotten a good start on the alums and the redlinks as well, but there's more to do. There are some old redlinked ones that I know are notable but I haven't gotten a source for them yet--I've just spent hours doing this much, so if someone else wants to go through the history and look at recent alum additions and removals and do some googling...

Please, leave a comment here if you do the research and find that they wen't to another school or aren't notable or whatever. Leaving a diff on the talk page for the next person who picks up the research means that less (or hopefully nothing) is repeated. Miss Mondegreen | Talk   12:31, 21 April 2007 (UTC)