Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/City of Portsmouth Boys' School


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result was keep. Can&#39;t sleep, clown will eat me 08:11, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

City of Portsmouth Boys' School

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Non-notable school - not referenced by independent sources Adam 20:36, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Strong KEEP I am the principle author of the page and though I have a vested interest in the article, I firmly believe it should not be deleted. The page links to the Portsmouth article, whereby articles exist for all the citys largest and most notable schools, all of which would fall under the same "non notable" reason given here (indeed I believe thousands of articles on schools would, the Hampshire schools category (of which this article is included) has hundreds of schools with no references).

I have recently edited the article, improved its layout and added some external links as well as two references. However If the question of this article is that it needs more referencing, then I suggest that a tag be added asking for more references and the deletion tag be removed. If after a time, no more references or independant sources can be added, then the page should be reconsidered for deletion then, and only then. LordHarris 21:52, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete What about this school is notable. "There are lots of non notable schools with articles on WP" doesn't seem to be a reason to keep this one Jules1975 22:08, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * In response, I would argue that this school is notable, firstly because it is one of the largest three schools in the City of Portsmouth. Secondly it meets one of the criteria for schools which states "A school may meet the criterion of being the principal subject of multiple reliable independent non-trivial published works in several ways". In this case number two: "The school has gained national recognition for its curriculum or program of instruction, or for its success at the national level in extracurricular activities such as art or athletics. For example, the school has been recognized with a notable national award, has won a science competition at the national level, or its athletic teams hold a nationwide record. Or, the school has gained recognition at the regional level in multiple such areas" In this case, the school recieved in 2003, the nationally recognised Investors in People award. LordHarris 22:32, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment The Investors in People award is given to hundreds if not thousands of schools every year. Many local education authorities insist that secondary schools apply for it. (According to the page, 37000 organisations hold it in total) EliminatorJR 23:57, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
 * More importantly the article states, for example, "The school has gained a high level of achievement academically" when the links to the DfES stats quite clearly show that it hasn't, low GCSE pass rate and more importantly its CVA (contextual value added score) is well under average. The links to the stats are out of date too. Unless this can be fixed and sources found, Delete I'm afraid. EliminatorJR 00:09, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I do believe that this article deserves it existence. But I have to say that I actually agree with you arguments EliminatorJR. I just wish that the user who nominated the article for deletion had explained as well in his reasons. I would also like to add a few things in defence of principle. I think when it comes to wikipedia deletion policy on schools, its wrong for articles which contain more than just an address, to be deleted, even if it is by consensus of frankly, a small group. There are after all thousands, upon thousands of school articles that have even less than this one but I dont see a genuine effort by the deletionist community to get rid of them all! It just seems a shame to delete information, in whatever the context, even though in this case the sources are out of date. The information on the history of the school, although unreferenced is the only existing source accessible in an internet search, especially since most Portsmouth schools dont yet have web pages. I cant help but feel that deleting the odd school page here and there, is more about personal opinion, than it is about the pursuit of spreading knowledge around the world. Except for tidy up, legal reasons and for joke articles, deletion should be wrong. Thats my two cents anyway. LordHarris 00:44, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes - I agree there needs to be a more coherent policy on schools. EliminatorJR 01:40, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * As the user who nominated the article for deletion, apologies for not making my reasoning more clear. I'm a little new at this AfD thing.  Fortunately, others stated my reasons fairly well.  I do agree that we need a more coherent policy on schools, but I don't think most primary and secondary schools are notable.  Also, I'm not part of the "deletionist" community; I came upon this article on the list for WP:WIKIFY and I wasn't convinced that cleaning up the article would make it notable.  Adam 16:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * weak Delete - Lord Harris, if you can provide proper citations of qualifying sources, that might help your case. -Pete 22:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Strong KEEP I have no vested interest in this school but I feel that these articles in general are worthwhile. I feel Wikipedia's criteria for "notability" are being applied far too narrowly here. If this is done to schools, it should also be done to many other areas where not very notable things are being recorded. (For example, individual railway stations, or biographies of individual lower division footballers - which are also of interest to some!) Wikipedia is becoming (or has become) a major source of useful Internet information, often of material that is of historical value but not accessible elsewhere on the web. Schools publish written histories, so why should this material not be included on the web, and made readily accessible for all? Information about its history, founding date, previous schools etc is of value. I found the information on this particular school useful (and corrected some of it!). If it is felt that the article and other similar ones does not meet Wikipedia's current guidelines, then I strongly suggest such guidelines are now outdated and instead of deleting this article, I call for a debate first on the whole question of notability in schools. On several occasions over the last year people have tried to get school articles deleted en masse and this has been rejected. With over 1.6 million articles on Wikipedia, there is surely room for description of any school where the people involved are interested enough to contribute something. Hyperman 42 01:42, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, one source is primary (evident from "we" pronoun), others are statistics lists, which are largely primary and pretty trivial. As to school articles in general-if you want to prove that most schools are notable, quit just repeating it, and start writing a bunch of articles on schools with nontrivial secondary sources cited. Every school I see up for AfD (and most I run across random-article patrolling) have a lot of howling about how "all schools are notable", but the one thing that could settle any AfD definitively and on the side of keep (citing multiple nontrivial sources) is never done! Repeating something often enough does not make it true. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 05:19, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, largely per the reasoning of Seraphimblade and EliminatorJR. WMMartin 14:21, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete I don't think that the usefulness of an article to one person justifies keeping it; that seems to me to be close to WP:ILIKEIT (I know that's an essay, not policy). Furthermore, Hyperman 42's argument that 'there is surely room for description of any school where the people involved are interested enough to contribute something'. Furthermore, I suggest that failure of mass deletion is not a reason to keep individual schools; mass deletions are inherently different from single deletions. User:Seraphimblade also makes an excellent argument, as does User:EliminatorJR. Veinor (talk to me) 19:19, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment Frankly it does seem to me that double standards are being applied here. On the one hand seemingly all sportsmen who play in any professional league are considered "notable", even when the articles about them lack any sources other than automatically generated statistics. On the other hand, the background and history of schools that have educated and strongly influenced thousands of people are considered to be worth deleting (especially if they are state schools).  Granted, there is a need for better citing of sources; on the other hand, plenty of evidence is available in school archives, local authority records and local/national media (all of which can be quoted as bibliography). These are not generally published or accessible and it is a useful service to present them on the internet. The origin and development of schools in Portsmouth (or any other location) is a significant factual item. There is obviously a difference between deletionists and inclusionists here, but I fail to see why the former seem to have such particularly strong views against schools articles.  If they are mere vanity articles ("I went to this school and it's great") then yes, they should be deleted, but this article, though possibly over-long and too detailed, does not seem to me to fall into this category. Hyperman 42 01:19, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Hyperman, there is no double standard. In order for there to be a double standard, there would have to be a unified body of editors - and there's not! If you think there are railway stations or sportsmen who are non-notable, and whose articles should be deleted, nobody's stopping you from recommending deletion. As to this article, two questions. (1) can the useful information you mention be incorporated into a subsection of a related article? (2) will those voting "keep" improve the article's quality, and address some of the concerns in this discussion? If so, that might be a reason to change my position - but as it stands now, I stand by "weak delete." -Pete 01:50, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * You slightly miss my point. I would not want ANY of these articles deleted.  They are all of value.  I guess this makes me an inclusionist :-)   I feel the same way about, for example, keeping articles about obscure rock bands which seem to miss all notability criteria and are of zero interest to me but nevertheless seem to make a reasonable case that they had a significant place in developing one particular genre. Hyperman 42 22:27, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Also I take your point (1) - it would be useful to have the basic historical information for all Portsmouth schools in a single article (probably based on a wikitable) but it will take some time to get this written. Hyperman 42 22:30, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Keep Ive seen articles for deletion for a lot of American High Schools which are just one liners. They are the ones that should be nominated for deletion. This is a nicely written article with a fine layout - as was said above I too have no interest in this school as I live 200 miles away from it but it should be kept! You cant just delete an article as it contains no reference by independent sources. The school does exist - usually you ask for independent sources where the article may be a hoax --PrincessBrat 12:59, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment Actually, we ask for independent sources in all cases. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 13:01, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep per PrincessBrat, Chesdovi 13:03, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. The United Kingdom Department for Education and Skills is a reliable third party source for this rather well written article (especially so for a school article).  (jarbarf) 00:20, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Yes, but there's a DfES entry for EVERY school in the UK - even for my little village school with 15 students. There *has* to be per Government guidelines. EliminatorJR 13:20, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. This is a substantial, sourced article. All schools are notable. AntiVan 05:49, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Actually, only those subjects which receive nontrivial secondary reliable source coverage are notable. If such source coverage exists for this school, please cite it and this debate is over. If that does not exist, this school is not notable. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 14:11, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Notability page is only a "guideline", it is not absolute. LordHarris 15:02, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment If it's going to be kept, the false information about the school's achievement rate (see my note above) needs to be deleted, though. EliminatorJR 13:22, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * As mentioned above, Ive just removed the phrase about "high" academic achievement. LordHarris 13:30, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I just did a Google search for the school, and the first hit - a BBC report - appears to say that the school has a very low academic record.
 * I'm rather astonished that the "keep" advocates would spill so much ink on this page, but do so little to address the concerns raised here. Lord Harris's deletion is the only edit to the page since the discussion began. While the "notability" guideline is indeed not policy, it is an oft-cited principle that at least merits an attempt at compliance. I'd suggest starting off by linking the BBC report I found, or any other sources a Google search comes up with. My vote, though I would love to see a reason to change it, remains "weak delete." -Pete 19:32, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I have just added the BBC link and mentioned the low academic achievement record. I have also added a link to the schools ofsted report in the external links section and also found the schools official website, now mentioned in external links (with the newsletter referenced to the main article). In a search I was also able to find mention of the school and its design of a new prominent local statue. Have incorporated that into the article with a reference. I also found a link to some of the schools building history, as well as a reference to the engineering department and a donation made by BAE. Both of these have been referenced in the article as well. I would like to add that I think this article has improved dramatically since it was nominated for deletion. LordHarris 03:21, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed, Lord Harris. That's a great improvent - vote changed. Keep. -Pete 08:25, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep - a significant school whose notability is underscored by being a Foundation school. TerriersFan 00:43, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep as all secondary schools are inherently notable, as I so eloquently and convincingly state here Noroton 04:26, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletions.   -- Noroton 16:59, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. The current version of the article is adequately referenced. --Elonka 22:21, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep What makes this school non-notable? -FateSmiled&amp;DestinyLaughed 00:35, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep I can't see anything wrong with this page in its new state to substantiate deletion. I would have thought it was in the public's interest to keep articles about anything of factual worth, and pages about schools may be of use to people moving into an area thinking about choice of schools. -Artybrad 01:07, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment That information should go in the article about the area; each school doesn't require a separate article unless the school is notable on its own. I have actually used Wikipedia for a similar purpose (although I was looking for synagogues rather than schools). Adam 04:46, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.