Talk:Hymers College

Work needed
Woah. Major work needed here! I've inserted the table and corrected the intro. I'll upload a picture later and see if I can dig up some more historical facts. I'm sure there's load of stuff we can say. Wiki-Ed 15:20, 15 August 2005 (UTC)


 * It does need major work. Just posting to tell you all that Hymers revamped it's website and has significantly improved content over the past few months so go have a look, there might be useful stuff.

www.hymerscollege.co.uk/


 * If any photos are required of any part of the site, including the newly built areas, I could take some, I'm not sure if permission would be required first though.

The Guy From Ipanema 23:00, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Too much information on ACF detachment?
Does anyone else think that this has got way too much information on the cadets? All the information makes it look like Hymers is a military school. All that is needed is the single sentence that is already under the 'Hymers today' section:

Unlike most independent schools who have a CCF (Combined Cadet Force) unit, Hymers has its own ACF (Army Cadet Force) detachment (Hymers College ACF Detachment).' Who's up for a deletion of this topic? RocketRocketRocketShip 17:15, 6 March 2006 (UTC)


 * If I recall correctly from my "Hymers - The First 100 Years" book, up until the 1970s the CCF was compulsory. [Sorry you don't recall correctly, or if you do then the book's wrong -  I was at Hymers senior school in early 1960s and the rule was 'Boys are EXPECTED to join the CCF' but weren't forced to and there was no pressure to - I'd estimate about half in each year didn't (I did because, like others, I wanted to).] You could edit the topic quite a bit, but I think deleting it as a sub-heading would be taking it too far. The real problem is the comparative lack of detail on the school in general. Wiki-Ed 09:48, 7 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, I agree, it seems like a major chunk of the article - could at least move below the Hymers today section, and IMHO could do with a little shortening. I have a copy of First 100, but it's packed in a box...will have to dig it out sometime to confirm the Wiki-Ed comment. --Fraz 09:22, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

When I was at Hymers in 1945-53, the Cadet Force was about 130 strong, with a signals group and a 25-pounder field gun. I was surprised to mention of "40" as the current size. I have photos of all the pupils over several years. A neighbour here in Sydney is from the 1942-51 period. I doubt Gore was the first Headmaster; in my time Dr Cavell was quite famous apart from his Headmastership. [User: TBWright] 6 october 2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.210.0.73 (talk) 02:01, 6 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Charles H. Gore was indeed the first headmaster, I have The First Hundred Years book in front of me now. I can't confirm your comment Wiki-Ed, the book is annoyingly set out in a way that makes this fact difficult to pin down without an extensive read through. The Guy From Ipanema 23:00, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Removal of a comment
The comment about 40% of Hymers pupils being gay is absolute bollocks (I am a former Hymers pupil - I would know) and so has been removed
 * Thank you. The sentence previously said that 40% of students are female. I have no idea if this is true so will not be putting it back. -- zzuuzz (talk) 19:04, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks former Hymers pupil, it fooled me as a current Hymers pupil. :P The Guy From Ipanema 23:00, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Old Hymerians
I think that people who are justifiably notable, more so than some others on the list, are being removed from the list, for example, a multi-million selling artist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tinned Tuna (talk • contribs) 23:08, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

It may also be useful to give a broader explanation as to what the Old Hymerians actually do, events they hold, the age of them, etc. -- Tinned_Tuna 11/07/2009 —Preceding undated comment added 08:41, 11 July 2009 (UTC).


 * See Notability_(people). If the person has their own article then one can assume they are notable enough to deserve mentioning on the list. That's not to say some of the existing articles meet the notability critieria, but no doubt they will be removed in due course and then they can come off the list too. Wiki-Ed (talk) 09:59, 11 July 2009 (UTC)


 * But those removed do constitute notability by the secondary criterion in that guide. Especially the musian with Sade. --Tinned_Tuna —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tinned Tuna (talk • contribs) 14:16, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Which criterion were you referring to? There are several lists on that page. The paragraph on basic rules says: A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject. If there were multiple independent sources providing in-depth coverage then presumably the musician would have an article. Wiki-Ed (talk) 18:04, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
 * If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be needed to prove notability; trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may not be sufficient to establish notability.
 * Primary sources may be used to support content in an article, but they do not contribute toward proving the notability of a subject.


 * Regardless of them having an article they still need a reliable reference adding to this article to indicate that the person in question is actually an Old Hymerian. As none of the entries on the list have such a reference then all of them could potentially be removed. Keith D (talk) 17:08, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Notability continued
Notability is not solely determined by the presence of separate Wikipedia entries. Let me give some examples.

Firstly, compare alumnus Paul Trynka (repeatedly deleted by Wiki-Ed) with the thirty-year younger Jemma_McKenzie-Brown. A brief search on the web reveals that he is an author and journalist of some national, even international repute, it just so happens that no-one has yet taken the time to create an article about him at Wikipedia. I myself added Graham Binns to the list of Hymers alumni at a time when he did not yet have his own entry, but in the interim someone has created one for him. That's the great thing about Wikipedia, isn't it? It's fortunate Wiki-Ed did not detect Binns before he had his own article, otherwise he would probably have deleted him.

Secondly, take a look at the alumni listed at Hull_Grammar_School where approximately eleven of the twenty-five listed do not -- yet -- have their own Wikipedia entry. This does not make them unworthy of being listed, it simply means that no-one has taken the time to create an entry for each of them.

Wiki-Ed writes: "Removed non-notables. Write an article on the person if they are so important. Then link." Sorry - I don't have sufficient time at the moment to create entries for every name unrecognised by Wiki-Ed. This seems to go against the very spirit of the whole enterprise here at Wikipedia.

Mowerbyte (talk) 03:06, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

The above text was moved from the top of the page


 * It's subjective and while people can be quite "notable" without having articles on Wikipedia, we use subjects that meet the criteria of this encyclopedia to determine what gets listed. User:KeithD makes a further valid point (above). Only three of the names had independent sources corroborating the assertion they went to Hymers. I've removed the rest. If you don't have time to write articles or provide sources for existing claims then don't add material at all. It's better to have an incomplete but accurate encyclopedia than a 'complete' but inaccurate one. By all means add the name in again when you've had time to produce a sourced article to support your claim - in terms of both the notability of the subject and the assertion he went to the school. Wiki-Ed (talk) 12:01, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

With the exception of the one name I tried to add, all the other alumni removed by Wiki-Ed had their own articles on Wikipedia, so notability wasn't the issue here; the problem is that school attendance rarely has cast-iron sources on the internet. Proof of school attendance could be made by reference to "The Hymerian" yearbook published annually by the school, but others with much more time on their hands would have to undertake that work. The irony is that it's almost certain that the reference to Graham Binns at the external website was originally sourced from this very Wikipedia article - but it's out there now and therefore acceptable according to the criteria above.

It would have been consistent for Wiki-Ed to remove all the "unsourced" alumni at Hull_Grammar_School. In the circumstances, rather than adding to Wikipedia, I shall simply follow Wiki-Ed's example from now on and put my energies into deletion, citing this discussion as justification. Let's just say it's been an education.

Mowerbyte (talk) 14:48, 17 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Notability was the key issue. Most of the alumni listed were very recent leavers, some of whom were only at the school briefly. Their claim to notability was playing a couple of games of (insert random sport) and getting their name mentioned in a local newspaper. Hardly the kind of Newton, Nelson, Dickins, or Churchill type characters that one might want to highlight. I'm sure the school has produced hundreds of much more interesting alumni who don't benefit from having grown up with internet-savvy friends/family to publicise their lives. The way to improve this section would be to find those people and independent sources which support the claim they went to Hymers.
 * The Hymerian is not an independent source (it is not publicly available or sold) and could not be used as a reference for this article. An obvious illustration of why if you're an alumnus yourself is that you'll only have copies for the time you were there. Sites that have obviously copied from Wikipedia are not valid sources either.
 * As for your last paragraph: I was not suggesting you should go around deleting material willy-nilly. However, one of the three core policies of Wikipedia is verifiability and if you find debatable material that is not supported by sources then by all means leave a citation-needed tag or remove it (certainly for biographical material). Moreover, I was suggesting you put your "energies" into creating an article, which should not take very long at all if the people you wish to add are truly notable. Wiki-Ed (talk) 15:47, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

As anyone else reading this will realise, this is not about making random or willy-nilly deletions but about finding a sensible balance between inclusion and exclusion. Few would dispute that recent school-leavers needed to be listed, but in your zeal to "clean up" a slew of interesting, older alumni prominent in the sciences, arts and other public fields have been jettisoned to prove a point. In this respect it's interesting that you repeatedly ignore the example of the alumni list at Hull Grammar School which would be decimated according to this approach. In reality it appears that the great majority of biographical articles on Wikipedia lack independently-verified sources for school or university attendance, for the very reason I gave earlier.

"The Hymerian" may or may not be valid; perhaps the most credible independent source of alumni would be in "Hymers College: The First Hundred Years" by Scott F.W., Sutton A., King N.J. (Beverley, East Yorkshire: Highgate Press, 1992). As I do not have a copy nor frankly, the energy to track one down, someone else will have to step in. Given your obvious interest in Hymers, perhaps you would like to volunteer your time?

In the meantime, a much more measured response on your part would have been to leave the list of alumni rather more intact (minus the recent school-leavers) but to have added the citation-needed tags. This would have greatly increased the likelihood of other Wikipedians noticing the issue and jumping in to supply the missing sources. Regrettably, your intervention here has greatly diminished the chance of that happening.

Mowerbyte (talk) 17:41, 17 January 2010 (UTC)


 * As it happens I have a copy of that book and have been meaning to update the historical content of the article for some time. I don't recall it going into great detail on previous pupils, but I haven't read it for fifteen years and one would assume it must contain some details. I will get around to it eventually. As for the alumni, the list has been unsourced for a long time and the only Wikipedians to have looked at it are the ones who've added new names (usually without evidence to support the claims). You may note from the edit history that I usually remove them quite quickly - and actually I have been a bit lax in not paying attention to User:KeithD's comment and removing most of the others until now. I'm not interested in the article on Hull Grammar and the fact that it might have unsourced content does not mean that this article should too. Wiki-Ed (talk) 18:29, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Reconstruction/Major Work
I'm going to go ahead and try to reconstruct/rewrite some of this article to provide some more information. I don't know much about the history, so any help would be appreciated. Gk007 (talk) 13:36, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Keir Mather MP
The article on newly-elected MP Keir Mather (winner of the 2023 Selby and Ainsty by-election) says in its current revision that He was educated at Hymers College ... but no source is cited.

Can anyone find a reliable source to confirm or deny this assertion? Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:46, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
 * That sentence has already been removed, however I still think that this is a good question to raise. Sanmosa Outdia 13:58, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The article on him now cites an article from "National World", but I'm pretty sure the source for the National World is probably just the Wikipedia article in the first place... Gk007 (talk) 08:40, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Confirmed no: https://archive.li/qFFUe (Times Magazine archive link) Gk007 (talk) 11:36, 7 August 2023 (UTC)