Wikipedia talk:Schools

• Please re-read the "notes" section carefully. They contain meaningful content that may affect consensus votes.
• One or two weasel-words e.g. "resemble."
• Ummmm, OK if everyone else in the world thinks cheerleading competitions and band competitions have a whiff of notability, I can gracefully bow to the inevitable... if that's the case, I mean.
• "Province" or "regional"? Should wedefine those or link to a def? What about "county"? What about "surrounding two or three counties"? I mean.. there's room for interpretation.
• Not sure how significant the diffs are b/w this and original; if your only prob was the few things you changed, why didn't you say so?
• --Ling.Nut 00:55, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

They aren't the only problems I had. This is more inclusive than I would have ideally. And note that the change to the first criterion does change things a lot. Most schools that are kept "per WP:SCHOOLS" were kept under that condition. Under the newer form that's much more difficult. As to the other points, they are good and I will look at them in detail momentarily. JoshuaZ 02:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've dealt with most of the above, as for province etc, it might make sense to link or define those turns, but I would think they are normally somewhat self-explanatory. As for the whole keeping if they have succesful athletic teams and such, I'd rather not keep those but I would rather get a compromise that has some chance at passing and isn't totally ridiculous. In so far as that, it seems like that's a reasonable thing to compromise on. JoshuaZ 02:57, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Cognitive dissonance

Oh... I was experiencing Cognitive dissonance. --Ling.Nut 02:49, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Huh? JoshuaZ 02:57, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

That was supposed to be a joke. I have been accused of being cryptic before. I dunno why. I certainly understand myself. --Ling.Nut 03:01, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, you are being cryptic. I still don't get the joke. JoshuaZ 03:03, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

<Emily Littela>Never mind.</Emily Littela>. (It wasn't all that funny anyhow.)--Ling.Nut 03:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Notes still hosed

• Body has a 6, notes section has an 8, and the two don't match. I'd change it myself but I'm not sure which you wish to keep and which you don't.
• Will continue looking at it.--Ling.Nut 04:26, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, ok. If there are no more gross stupidities on my part or other issues, I'm going to wait until morning and then move it into Wikipedia space as a proposal and see what happens. JoshuaZ 04:32, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Re: deletion

This proposal could use a stronger clarification that the solution for articles that don't meet the criteria is not deletion. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

• This is already covered in WP:LOCAL which is included in the proposal. I think adding deletion would cause another vote that will not reach consensus. Vegaswikian 22:47, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
• WP:LOCAL supercedes this? Why are we doing this then? Suggest this page superceds WP:LOCAL for all and only the set of school articles. --Ling.Nut 22:57, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
• Agreed with Ling.Nut here. Also note that in practice WP:LOCAL isn't applied to schools much anyways (for that matter, WP:LOCAL seems to be almost completely ignored on AfD). JoshuaZ 00:40, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment from an irregular

I only engage these discussions periodically, because of how pointless doing so is. I generally know the outcome will be no consensus, but believe the answer usually should be delete. It happens that I am engaged right now, and this looks a chance to actually establish meaningful standards. The ultimate test of a standard will be if both sides of the conflict can say, "yes, that is a reasonable place to draw the line."

One of my personal tests for coverage is whether or not a published source is local to the school. The local paper will, almost automatically, comment from time to time upon various issues that arise in the school districts in its publishing area. Such coverage, no matter how much of it piles up, does not constitute encyclopedic notability in my eyes. If there is coverage from outside the area, that is a stronger sign of notability. The example I've had on my user page for a few months is St. Charles East High School, which had the misfortune of becoming the poster example school for the mold crisis of a few years back. It was covered in the Chicago paper, but Chicago is the closest big city and is only 40 miles away, so that doesn't tell us much. The coverage it got in the national school specialty press, like this cover story is a lot more compelling evidence of notability.

As for notable alumni, I don't believe that this is a sufficient criteria. If for multiple notable alumni there were independent (of the school and of the alumni) coverage discussing the significance of the schooling on what they did to become notable, that would be worth having an article on the school. On the other hand, [1], [2], and [3] show that three notable people went to Gosforth High School, but don't say anything at all about the school. So these sources are of no help in writing an article about the school that adheres to our fundamental policy. In the case of biographical subjects, we don't consider being married to someone notable enough reason to have a seperate article on the spouse if there is no coverage primarily about the spouse. Marriages are a lot more intimate, influential, and normally long lasting than any individual's time at a school. So I can't see why notability by association would be legitimate for schools but not for people. GRBerry 03:45, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The notability conferred by alumni is more because I want this to have some chance of getting acceptance and without that clause in it the chance is close to zero. As for your observation about coverage having to be from outside the local area- this seems highly reasonable to me and would again be reflected in what it would have were this my opinion on what we should include and not an attempt at a compromise. I think the restrictions on news coverage already added goes a fair way to making the news coverage criterion more reasonable. JoshuaZ 03:52, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems like a good start

As a school deletionist, I must say that I am rather pleased with this proposal. My only reservations so far:

• Criterion 4- Some further explanation/examples should be provided regarding the "significant awards or commendations have been bestowed upon the school or its staff".
• Criterion 5- I am very reluctant to accept this criterion. I believe that notable alumni/staff should only grant notability to their respective schools if there are notable achievements carried out by these people related with the school itself.

Anyway this proposal seems promising. Good work.--Húsönd 03:59, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

• Again, I'm in agreement there but the inclusion simply of 3 notable alumni was meant as part of what I see as the necessary compromise that will need to occur with the inclusionists. However, Vegaswikian has just made it more exclusive a long the lines that you and others have suggested so we'll see what happens. JoshuaZ 05:55, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

One criterion

• Can someone give an example of a school that passes criteria 2, 3 and 4 but not 1? Perhaps those three should be eliminated, or used as examples instead?
• As for #5, if three notable people graduated from Nanny Miss's Preschool, would that make it notable by default? I don't like the sound of that. Why is this criterion necessary? Fagstein 05:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I had just tweeked this criteria. Does the new version work better? Vegaswikian 05:53, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The addition of criterion 5 was because many inclusionists seem to think that notable alumni are enough and there was some attempt at compromise. Vegas actually just modified it to be somewhat more restrictive (possibly too much to make the more inclusionist editors happy). The main inclusion of criteria 2,3 and 4 wasn't for any really good reason other than I guess that I was using the old proposal as a template. I wouldn't be surprised if one can find a school that meets one of those but not condition 1 but it would probably take some effort. I wouldn't object to their removal. JoshuaZ 05:54, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll toss in my agreement that Criterion #5 (having notable alumni) should be kept. --Elonka 07:29, 7 November 2006 (UTC)