Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools

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WikiProject Schools This article is related to WikiProject Schools, an attempt to write quality articles about schools around the world. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page.
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Older discussions starting from March 2004 are archived, a dated list of archives can be found at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Archives.
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[edit] {{WPSchools}}

For those who don't watch the template page, there's been a comment regarding the size. While I don't think it's a big deal I've taken a crack at rebuilding the template and a bunch of examples can be found here. the equivalent of this for the current template is here. I've taken the opportunity to make several other syntax fixes pointed out by the commenter. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Adam McCormick (talk) 05:14, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

So, for lack of comment I think this can be migrated but I'll need an admin's help. User:Alanbly/WPSchools needs to be moved/copied to Template:WikiProject_Schools. I have already created the new categories necessary for the move. Adam McCormick (talk) 21:25, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
I guess I haven't been following this page closely enough, I just noticed this. I went and looked at the template on your talk page and I think it is fine. However I tried adding the "nested=yes" parameter that should have collapsed it to about two lines for a nested list of small templates, and the nested parameter didn't have any effect. I suspect something needs to be looked at before this goes live. Loren.wilton (talk) 01:38, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm looking into it. The example that was added used nested=true though Adam McCormick (talk) 04:53, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
I've done some editing. Now this should reflect the desired behavior? Adam McCormick (talk) 05:35, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Duh. I should know the difference between true and yes, but I guess I don't. Current smooshed version will certainly do the job, but it might be nice to try to get the assessment and maybe importance onto the line also. Maybe something like
WikiProject Schools – Stub, High Importance
I'll play a bit in my sandbox and see if I can build any castles. Loren.wilton (talk) 08:36, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
After playing a bit I see it already does handle Class, and I obviouly can't figure out templates well enough to be able to add anything on Importance. Must be good as is.  :-) Loren.wilton (talk) 09:19, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
It now shows the importance parameter as well. "ye have but to ask and ye shall receive'". Anyway, any more enhancements before I ask an admin to pull it over? Adam McCormick (talk) 04:18, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
I'd actually been thinking about trying to figure out how to do the pretty colored backgrounds behind the words, but words is good! (And it might look bad with blotches of color, for all I know.) Loren.wilton (talk) 07:24, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
(reduce indent) Id like to see a drop-down assessment box, where assessors can leave a detailed assessment. Its done at Template:WP Australia. Im not too worried if it isnt placed in there, i just like it. Five Years 07:07, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Doesn't the info= parameter already do that? Sure it has a boilerplate greeting attached but it's how I leave all my assessments. Adam McCormick (talk) 01:45, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm trying to follow WP:TPT for the colors. and too many colors can get distracting. I'd be happy to do it if everyone wants it though. Adam McCormick (talk) 01:47, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
If its not hard or horribly time consuming to do it might be interesting to try it and we can see what it looks like. I grant it could well be too ugly to contemplate once we saw it. I had been thinking of the color extending a bit more than the height of the font, but not all of the way to the edge of the compressed box when in compressed form. So not as high as the colored boxes in the full-sized box. Loren.wilton (talk) 02:56, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
It's proving harder that i expected. I'm experimenting with table but I'm not having much luck. I've reverted for now. Adam McCormick (talk) 04:17, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
That strikes me as enough reason to not do it. Loren.wilton (talk) 08:55, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] User:BoxCrawler

It seems with the addition of all the schools from Category:Schools in the United Kingdom I'm hit a technical snag with boxcrawler. I'll go into it if anyone cares but regardless I have to do a bit of reprogramming to do. So it may be a few hours before I get his running again (apparently recursion near 400 levels is a bad thing...) Adam McCormick (talk) 02:01, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Our category is now immense. As such, BoxCrawler's current run could take weeks. I'll get back to work when he's done. Adam McCormick (talk) 01:19, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] I have an idea for high school articles

You know what would be cool to put in articles for public high schools? A map of the attendance zone for that school, with the school's area highlighted red within a map of the whole county, just like we have for cities within counties. I have already found several maps like this for counties around Atlanta on the county's official web site, so maybe this could be a new standard for high school articles across the country. This is a map of the high schools in the Cobb County school system (which is a PDF and needs to be converted). This is a PDF of a specific high school in Fulton County with a smaller map of all the high school districts in Fulton County, and finally this is the map of the high schools in Gwinnett County, which is thankfully an image instead of a PDF this time. Obviously, someone will have to do some serious editing with these images and strip off the streets and remove the colors except for the highlighted section (which will be in red), but I think this could be a really cool addition to high school articles. I was not able to change and reformat these images myself, but I don't have any sort of advanced image editing software. Someone with Photoshop or something similar could definitely remake these, I think. Hippie Metalhead (talk) 01:51, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article Completions

After going through the assessment page here, i found a section named "Article completions", where assessors can write which part of the unassessed schools category they have assessed. I looked through the list, and found two (letter A and B) which were actually accurate. The section was last updated 3 months ago and serves no purpose. I propose that we remove it from the page. It is little more than wasted space on an otherwise useful page. Five Years 06:58, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Assessment Talk Page

I have left a note on the assessment departments talk page regarding this Five Years 07:01, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I would like to propse that we redirect the talk page of the assessment department to the talk page of WP:WPSCH. It is left largely untouched and requests/questions often go unanswered as few people seem to look at the page. Having all discussions located at this central page would make it not only easier for project members, but also for outsiders. Five Years 06:58, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I see no reason not to as participation seems to be in a lull. I personally watch both so it's not a big deal to me. My only reservation is that this page has been a good way of communicating about assessments where the rest of the project members probably don't care. Adam McCormick (talk) 05:13, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
It seems to me that almost half of all assessment requests come through this page directly, not the assessment page, and the appear to be dealt with. Five Years 18:14, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I have no problem with it. If WT:WPSCH/A is going to be merged here then the same may as well be done for WT:WPSCH/AG, WT:WPSCH/P, and WT:WPSCH/AL. The page archives for WT:WPSCH/A can be left where they are and simply added to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Archives and short cuts changed to point directly to this page. Camaron | Chris (talk) 18:34, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
Fully agree with that. Five Years 19:26, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, since this has been here a long time and there have been no objections I have carried out the merger as described above. In the event that consensus forms that the assessment section should have its own talk page or similar, it will be quite easy to simply reverse the merger. Camaron | Chris (talk) 18:03, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Category:Schools in (state name)

I have been doing a lot of category work keeping parent categories Category:Education and Category:Schools organized. One section of the categorization plan is a real mess and I would like some feed back on how best to clean it up.

Category:Education in the United States has a subcategory Category:United States education by state that is populated with a separate subcategory for each state.

Category:Schools in the United States now has a subcategory Category:Schools in the United States by state but it is populated by only a hand full of state sub category and they formated very inconsistantly.

I was starting to add the missing categories but would like to know how best to do it.

  • Make them all redirect categories?
  • Use all 4 of the above categories? or only the first two.

We do need some kind of consistancy.

I created a work page for adding the new categories at User:Dbiel/Category:Schools in the United States by state using Category:United States education by state as the guide

Any thoughts on the subject? Note: the previous was originally posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Education#Category:Schools in (state name) Dbiel (Talk) 19:32, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I would support standardizing to Category:Schools in (state) and making those subcats of Category:Schools in the United States and making that a subcat of Category:Buildings and structures in the United States. Adam McCormick (talk) 21:22, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
What about Category:Organizations based in (state name), include it or remove it? Dbiel (Talk) 22:24, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
Not really this project's purview. In my opinion organization is a little too vague to be much use. Adam McCormick (talk) 01:27, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I would support anything as long as it is clear, consistent, and the changeover from the current scheme is planned and doesn't break anything for any length of time. One way to do it is to create temporary redirects with the goal of eliminating redundant categories altogether. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:19, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Actually no redundant categories are being created. The only real change is to move the multiple school categories out of the Education by state category and into a Schools by state category. The goal is the fix the current problem with Category:Schools in the United States by state that only lists a limited number of states. Dbiel (Talk) 19:51, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] US School District lists need cleanup

I filled in the remaining states in Lists of school districts in the United States. Many of the existing articles are incomplete, some woefully so. Those not marked "complete list" need to be checked against official sources and either made complete or marked incomplete or woefully incomplete depending on how sparse they are. Most states have web sites that list all the school districts in the state. I'm pretty sure we are only interested in "typical" school districts - those which actually have a school in them and which have geographic boundaries. In some states it may be appropriate to list atypical districts. For example, List of school districts in South Dakota includes schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Some lists have additional school systems in separate sections, such as charter school systems, defunct school systems, special-purpose school systems, non-geographic schools and school systems, state-run schools for those with special needs, prison school systems, etc. If a list has these, there is no need to remove them, but there's no need to add them either, unless you really want to. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:12, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Numbered schools and school districts

Some US states number their school districts. When the official name is styled as "1," "No. 1," or "Number 1" that's not a problem, but when it is "#1" it created technical problems within Wikipedia. I recommend using "No. 1" or "Number 1" as the name of the Wikipedia article in these cases. Anyone have a better idea? The same principle applies to notable schools, if "Public School #5" is notable, it needs to be named something else.

[edit] DRV for US alumni categories

There's a deletion review of all alumni categories for US schools. I've tried to add it to the deletion pages in WP:Schools but am defeated (as it's not an afd or a prod, for which examples are given). Occuli (talk) 14:59, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject_Schools#United_States

Is that the correct link for the award or should it be linking to the No Child Left Behind-Blue Ribbon Schools Program  ? Joedaddy09 (talk) 15:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

The one posted now is a "this school is really good" kind of award, the one you provide is a "this school teaches to the bottom 25% really well" kind of award. I think they'd both be valuable and should probably both be listed. The one posted now is, IMHO, the more important award. Adam McCormick (talk) 19:12, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
I tried to clarify the two awards on the main page. To be honest, I've never heard of the one originally listed. I was always under the impression that Blue Ribbon Schools referred to the program run by the USDE:[1]. The BRSE program appears to be run by a non-profit organization and seems like a good evaluation process. The only issue I have is that they require an evaluation fee in order to be considered, one I am not sure many schools can afford. --Jh12 (talk) 10:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merge school template

The template for merging schools has been nominated for deletion. If anyone has any strong feelings on the matter then you might like to add your comments at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Merge-school.

  • The result of the tfd was KEEP. --Jh12 (talk) 10:24, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WP:WPSCH/A#R backlog

I have noticed there is a rather large backlog of requests for assessment building up on this page, currently standing at 30+ with some requests dating from February 2008. Some of these requests may have already been done and/or only require quick action, but quite a bit of work is still required here. I would have tackled this earlier but I have had exams, I am now planning to try and deal with some of these requests soon, any help that is available would be appreciated. Camaron | Chris (talk) 19:04, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment

There is/has been a lot of important discussion/polling going on here of certain proposals which will have a big impact on this project if implemented. Of particular internet at this time is the idea of changing the assessment scale from:

Stub -> Start -> B -> GA -> A -> FA

to:

Stub -> Start -> C -> B -> GA -> A -> FA

If this was implemented categories and templates will have to be re-worked, and in the long-term a lot of articles may need re-assessment. We would also need to decide if experienced assessors would be required to list on the main assessment page C-class assessments; currently it is B+ ratings requiring listing. Camaron | Chris (talk) 19:45, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I think there should be another rating below B. I'm not an experienced assessor by any means, but it seems there is something between Start and B. This is just my opinion. — —Preceding unsigned comment added by Calebrw (talk • contribs) 14:47, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
I also support the introduction of a C-class grade, I think Start and B cover a large area and another grade would be appropriate. This may not be implemented however as there seems to be a divide in community opinions on the matter, with the poll currently showing about 65% supporting. There is actually nothing to stop this project introducing a C-grade independent of the Wikipedia 1.0 assessment scale, or on the other hand opting out of using the C-grade if it is introduced. However, looking at the poll there seems to be a divide even within participants of this project on if there should be a new C-grade. Camaron | Chris (talk) 15:44, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] List of schools in the United States

Is List of schools in the United States necessary? Do categories meet this need? Maybe it just needs more attention... :) --216.62.101.13 (talk) 14:38, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

This really should be soft-redirected to multiple articles and categories. I've said as much in my AfD comment. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 16:53, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] If a school meets some notability requirements but needs more sources

What if a school meets some notability requirements (It won a Blue Ribbon) but it needs more sources? Should it be merged into the district article for a period of time before more more sources are found? WhisperToMe (talk) 04:23, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

If the claim of notability is not sourced, it should be tagged {{fact}} then, after a few days, removed. At that point, the school can be treated as if that claim of notability doesn't apply. It is far better to research the issue and cite the claim. If at least one claim of of notability for schools is met, then the article should not be merged without going through a merger discussion. Even if an school article is a feature article like Plano Senior High School, it can still be merged into its district if that is the consensus of a merger discussion. I'm not saying that will ever happen, only that it could.
If a school clearly has very weak notability claims, even if they are cited, and a merger discussion is fruitless, you can try for an WP:AfD. I wouldn't encourage it though: If the merger had no consensus, an AfD likely won't either. An example of a weak notability claim: Acme Primary School was a blue-ribbon school in 2004, one of 543 such schools in the state since the Blue Ribbon program began. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 13:30, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
The notability claim is the Blue Ribbon, and that is cleanly sourced. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:10, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
  • To be fair, only about 5,600 out of over 133,000 eligible schools have ever received the Blue Ribbon Award, recognizing less than 4% of all US schools over a quarter of a century. About 0.2 percent of all schools are selected each year. Each state averages about 5 recipients per year, and the number is even lower when considering primary and secondary schools separately. One may not agree with the selection process, but imho the Blue Ribbon is more notable than any other award covering the United States --Jh12 (talk) 16:37, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiproject Prisons

If anyone's interested, I've proposed a new wikiproject for the creation of articles regarding specific prisons here. --Cdogsimmons (talk) 20:51, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] InterProject Collaboration

Hey there! As you may or may not know. An Afd has been brought up to discuss the notability of Ohio High School Athletic Conferences. It was proposed that WikiProject Ohio lead an effort to get these articles up to par. We are asking for help fromWikipedia:WikiProject Sports as well to help us get these articles uniform. An effort headed by JonRidinger and Frank12 is in place to jump start this process. Any help your project could lend would be greatly appreciated. As a main point for the effort we have the talk page which is located at Wikipedia:OH/HS Football Conferences. Thank you for your time! §hep • ¡Talk to me! 21:59, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Project moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Ohio/HS Athletic Conferences. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 20:46, 10 June 2008 (UTC)