Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/The Pembroke Hill School

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Pembroke Hill School was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was keep

Non-notable school. RickK 22:40, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)

• Delete -- Graham ☺ | Talk 22:41, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• Keep - SimonP 23:26, Sep 26, 2004 (UTC)
• Keep -- Necrothesp 00:50, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. There's nothing currently in this article that indicates notability to me - what major contributions has this school made that others haven't? Is this school a leading light in the region, or 'just another prep school'? Are it's alumni a list of the great and good, or just a cohort of anonymous businessmen? Average Earthman 12:45, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Although the article doesn't say so (yet?), Pem-Day is among the leading prep schools for hundreds of miles; many of its alumni and parents are among KC's movers and shakers. Bbpen 17:06, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Intrigue 21:23, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• Delete no evidence of notability.--Samuel J. Howard 22:19, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. Non-notable. --G Rutter 13:03, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• 'Delete unless notability is established in the article. —Rory ☺ 20:19, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)
• Delete unless notability established or article enormously improved before expiration of VfD. BEEFSTEW points A, B, D, just possibly J (renovation), BEEFSTEW score 4/10.
• Keep in present form. However,
• Keep an interesting school. The Recycling Troll 03:15, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. Not notable. --Improv 11:57, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• Delete all articles about non-notable high schools. Notability score 0/1. -- WOT 21:10, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Ambi 09:23, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. Just another school as far as the article indicates.Jallan 16:49, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• Keep Pembroke as an institution as well as it's beautiful campus are Kansas City landmarks. It's an elite prep school that produces many of the best and brightest from the area. Unfortunately the article would be better written by an alum or someone who knows it better than me.Pocket Rockets 21:02, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with articles about high schools. Actually, a good working definition of notability for a school might be: Can someone who is not an alum write a good article about it? And is someone who is not an alum willing to do it? Are Pocket Rockets and/or Bbpen willing to step up to the plate? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 22:26, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • Well put -- and well-challenged! Alas, I don't know enough about the school to write a piece off the top of my head. But if people will stipulate that the school would be proven notable if the article were fleshed out, why not leave it as a stub until a proper piece can be written? Bbpen 23:46, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Delete as it currently is written. Dpbsmith's comments are very germane here: is this school notable?Keep. Tom Watson is enough for me. Thanks for adding to the article! --avnative 09:40, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

(I love how Dpbsmith provides a good working definition of school notability, too. . . and I agree.) Bbpen and Pocket Rockets mention facts that sorely need to be in the article. There's gotta be some famous alums of more than local note from it, and maybe there might be something educationally or architecturally of note. If these could be included and referenced, I'll be happy to change my vote. --avnative 17:51, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

• Keep - RustyCale 19:35, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Don't wait until it gets notable before someone decides to write it again from scratch. It's a stub that needs more info from an alum or current student. --Andylkl 07:52, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Delete - non-notable. RedWolf 07:59, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. -- J3ff 17:25, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Delete -- Nothing of note. User:MartinSpamer
• Comment Article has been improved out of all recognition by 24.124.101.141 and I changed my vote to "keep," see above. The anon also removed the VfD notice which is a great big no-no, please don't do that again. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 11:56, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Yes, that's substantially better. Keep it. DS 21:32, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep I improved the article to such a degree that it ought to remain. Sorry about removing the VFD; I am relatively new to Wikipedia and did not know that. It will not happen in the future. 24.124.101.141 21:46, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Evan S. Connell went there? And how come we don't have an article about him? I loved "Mr. Bridge" and "Mrs. Bridge." Those are great novels. One of which was made into a pretty disappointing Merchant-Ivory film. And he wrote a great book about Custer, um, Son of the Morning Star. Didn't they make a movie out of that, too? And "The Patriot," a weird and scary book about a guy who is undergoing naval aviation training, which apparently at the time and perhaps now is extremely hazardous in itself. He is definitely a notable alumnus. I couldn't get into "Diary of a Rapist" or "The Alchymst's Journal," I should probably give them another try. A fine writer. Judging by "Mr. Bridge," he's sort of bitter and satirical in a gentle way about his boyhood. I wonder if the Pembroke Hill School appears in a fictionalized form in any of his novels? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 22:39, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Your "improvements" consisted largely of copyright violations [1] [2]. They have been removed. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:05, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • They are not copyright violations. Nothing in the other websites' fair use policies precludes using the text for Wikipedia. But if you feel that strongly, write the history yourself. I still vote to keep; the histories were obviously enough to justify the inclusion on Wikipedia. Until you write what you feel is better, leave the article as a stub. 24.124.101.141 04:05, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • Copyright law by default disallows us from using their material unless they explicitly allow us to. -- Cyrius|✎ 04:50, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, 24.124.101.141. You're having a rough time. You made a common mistake. It's not a big deal, try not to be offended by the short, brusque replies. What you probably should have done was to put a link to these sources here in the discussion and/or on the Talk page of the article as evidence of notability, but not to copy them verbatim into the article.

Under current U.S. copyright law, since the late 1970s I think, everything is "born copyrighted" whether it has a copyright notice or not and whether or not anything is said about copyright. The short story is that it's not safe to copy a more than about a paragraph unless what you're copying was published before 1923 or says specificially that it is released under GFDL, in so many words. See Wikipedia:Copyright FAQ and Wikipedia:Copyright to learn more.

"Fair use" is a minefield. A lot of people will casually say something is "fair use" which may or may not be. I've read a number of online guides by university libraries, which need to deal with this constantly since professors always want to photocopy things for class use, and the only thing that is clear about fair use is that it is never ever ever clear what is and is not fair use.

There's only the tiniest of chances that the Pembroke Hill School would have ever cared even if they found out about it. I'd certainly take the risk of photocopying something like this to hand out to twenty people, or putting something like this on my personal website, because there would be a 99% chance that nothing would happen and about a 99.99% chance that the worst that would happen would be that a lawyer would ask me to remove it. But Wikipedia is a fairly well-known website that is easily searched online, so we need to be careful. With hundreds of thousands of articles, if we're casual about copyrights violations there could be a real danger that someday we'd run into a copyright holder who would care and wouldn't be satisfied just by having the material removed.

Unfortunately, I've found that when I have specifically written to people for permission to release their web material under the GFDL the answer so far has always been "no;" most writers don't understand the GFDL and are scared of it. And, unfortunately, the GFDL does not allow us to include material with a statement that it remains the property of the copyright holder and is "used by permission." [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 13:14, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• • Yikes. Sorry if anything I said or did encouraged the copyvio. By the way, where did the item about Evan S. Connell attending come from? He should go back on the list of notable alums if it's verifiable. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 00:05, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like other '/delete' pages is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.