Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arland D. Williams Jr. Elementary School

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. 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. – ugen64 05:08, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Arland D. Williams Jr. Elementary School
An article about a primary school so notable most of it is about a plane crash. Dunc|&#9786; 13:55, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Article does look a bit unbalanced and could benefit from a cleanup. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:43, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep or merge with a local school district article. Much of the content focuses on Arland D. Williams Jr., and is redundant with that article. &mdash; RJH 17:27, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep -- Longhair | Talk 17:39, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. This school has a story to tell, although as Tony says, it can use a clean up.  DS1953 17:51, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. The school does not have a story to tell.  A person who happened to live in the same town as the school has a story to tell. --Carnildo 18:38, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keepity and cleanup. Ketsuban (is 1337) 19:57, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. There's already an article on Williams.  Without the duplicate material this is a generic stub. Gamaliel 20:26, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Schools belong in the encyclopedia. "Needs a cleanup" isn't a valid reason to delete.   Un focused 20:48, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, just because somebody may be of questionable notability doesn't mean that everything named for them is notable. RickK 22:14, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep and clean-up by shortening the reference to Mr. Williams. I agree with WP:SCH. Double Blue  (Talk) 22:55, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * keep but it should be cleaned up too Yuckfoo 23:29, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep We should have an article on every school CalJW 05:22, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge into Matton. Vegaswikian 05:41, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Until there is enough to say about an individual school for it to merit its own article (which is NOT the case here) MERGE into an article on its parent school district. Dogmatically voting to keep as an independent article based on the generic subject without regard to the state of the actual content is really revolting.  If all those who claim to care so much about schools would actually spend time structuring these bland posts into useful content, none of these would be placed on VfD in the first place.  Postdlf 06:06, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment. Did you check to see whether those voting keep had done any school editing?  I don't think you did.  I have just looked at every keep voter on this discussion, and failed to find a single one who does not engage in school article cleanup. You're putting the cart before the horse in any case; WP:SCH recommends merge as an alternative to listing deletion, and this is likely to be far, far more effective because no discussion is involved, you just do it and move on. If all those listing for deletion would just carry out that minimal act of maintenance we wouldn't need to have *any* schools listed on VfD.  And that would be a good thing.  It seems that May VfD closings are heading for 100% keep, and I really don't expect June VfD closings to be any different.  Wikipedia doesn't like to delete school articles.  --Tony Sidaway|Talk 09:19, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree with your last comment&mdash;I wish people would just merge these useless stubs rather than listing them for deletion. As to your first comment, my apologies to those who have actually cleaned up school articles, but I so very rarely see it happen during a VfD discussion (if ever).  The typical story is that the "article," containing little more than an address, is listed for deletion and a parade of generic "keep" votes appear that bear no specific relationship to the content of the "article," which remains just as pathetic at the close of the discussion.  More people would vote "keep" if there was actually something worth keeping when they're considering their votes.  Postdlf 16:11, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * To a large extent, the specific content of the article is not relevant to the deletion. The article is being put up for deletion due to a "lack of notability." This is inherant in the topic, not the content of the article. Either the topic is notable or it is not, regardless of the article's content, or so it seems to me. If nominators are here to contest the notability of schools, they can expect repetative keep votes as well as repetative delete votes, because most every nomination is the same debate. If nominators want articles improved, merge them or send them to cleanup. Christopher Parham(talk) 21:41, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)
 * Yes. It's all in Deletion policy.  If only people would read and act on it, we'd see fewer VfD listings that end in "keep" or "no consensus" or "merge" as schools seem to do 98% of the time (and I really *mean* 98%!) --Tony Sidaway|Talk 21:58, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * I think you're being unfair. I think so many people are voting keep (and there do seem to be a lot of them) precisely because the school articles are often cleaned up.  You mean you really think more people would vote keep?  I'm surprised at the idea! --Tony Sidaway|Talk 17:17, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge with Mattoon, Illinois unless expanded. If the school is notable it is only on a local level. I will bite both the deletionist and inclusionist camp here.
 * Biting the deletionists: You know (or should know) that articles about schools will always be kept. So there is not much point in nominating them just so you can make your delete votes. Being bold and merging this immediatetely requires only two edits, as opposed to the three required for nominating this for deletion.
 * Biting the inclusionists: Er... Postdlf has already done this, I concur with a lot of what he says here. Sjakkalle (Check!)  06:24, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Okay, fine. See my reply. I do resent the implication that someone who doesn't agree with deletion of an article should do cleanup on it (VfD is not, or should not be, cleanup) but as it happens those whom you castigate here do not deserve it because they have all cleaned up school articles. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 09:24, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not trying to bite very hard. Sorry if you were offended, and I have think your efforts with school articles are admirable. :-) But I think that very short two-liners might as well be merged, and then unmerged later if someone wants to expand it, and my agreement with Postdlf was that it was not neccesary to vote an outright "keep" on twoliners. Sjakkalle (Check!)  11:58, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete - schools are generally not notable. Cedars 08:12, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Merge with Mattoon, Illinois and delete - Skysmith 08:16, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Quale 21:18, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, for once we have a notable school~! Proto 11:14, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep quite notable school -CunningLinguist 16:32, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Oh well, at least all these trivial articles will provide an object lesson on how an internet project can become hopelessly bogged down in trivia when a more serious wiki-style encyclopedia of knowledge comes along. Indrian 03:56, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
 * changing Keep vote to Neutral. I am the original author of this article, and I need to confess that I did not follow the WP:SCH guidelines. I was working on the article about the plane crash the school's namesake was involved with. As school articles are not my forte, I need to abstain, and will be satisfied with better judgement of others in this matter. Vaoverland 04:42, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
 * This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages.  Please do not edit this page .