Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/High schools in the United States

 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. (No consensus: Keep 9 / Delete 11) -- AllyUnion (talk) 10:53, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

High schools in the United States
The start of a list of high schools, it is actually a list of state-level lists, which I'm also proposing for deletion. This is clearly what categories are for. --BM 19:14, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Agree with BM for this one, categories are enough. --Deathphoenix 19:51, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, as well as all the sub-lists. Categories list only articles that exist, while page can show those that don't. And since there seems to be a disagreement on whether individual high schools should have articles, this list may be all they get. sjorford// 22:09, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * delete, though preferably someone should check the schools have been categorised first; an article on "Education in the United States of America" would be welcome Education in the United States exists however, that page can even list schools (which aren't listed on similar articles related to specific states) if appropriate and where a school requires an article but doesn't have one it can be listed on requested articles why not just merge if we're going to keep Mozzerati 22:15, 2005 Feb 2 (UTC) (updated 20:31, 2005 Feb 3 (UTC))
 * Delete, as well as all sub-lists. There are around 17000 schools in the US, as quoted somewhere above.  The page would be impossible, even split to sub-pages by state.  Catagories do a much better job here. humblefool&reg; 23:44, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep I prefer categories, but it isn't a question of having one or the other. Philip 02:19, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep this and the subpages, but move to List of high schools in the United States, and also rename the subpages to list of... - SimonP 03:27, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Wikipedia is not limited in size as are other encyclopediae; it would be wonderful if a user could (eventually) come to Wikipedia and learn about nearly every high school. I'm agnostic as to the categorization issues.Zantastik 07:39, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. There are lists of prisons, universities, an god knows what on Wikipedia. There's no reason for deletion. (Note: There are many High Schools that are proposed for deletion also) Beta_M talk, |contrib ( &Euml;-Mail )
 * Categories are a (relatively) new feature and the idea is to get rid of most lists and use categories instead. This deletion of lists should make maintainance easier, which is to say the reason to get rid of lists is because if we have them the same work has to be done twice in different ways.  This has nothing to do with the disagreement about whether to keep school articles or not.  The lists of, universities and, prisons and gods should probably go too..


 * Delete. Worthless unless complete; far, far too long if complete. &mdash;Korath (Talk) 13:44, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep and rename as SimonP suggested. bbx 17:22, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. I must respectfully disagree with Zantastik. There just isn't anything worth learning about most high schools.  On the topic of U.S. high schools, one might find various aggregate statistics useful, but a complete list is just overwhelming.  The information on most high schools most properly belongs in an 'Education' section in their parent community's article (or in a related 'Education in Springfield' article.) Wikipedia is not a general knowledge base. --TenOfAllTrades 17:49, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete unmaintainable lists. We have categories for this kind of thing. Jayjg (talk)  22:57, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Wiki is no paper, schools are encyclopedic. --ShaunMacPherson 18:23, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. I see a lot of knee-jerk reactions on this page by individuals that obviously are not considering merits and just voting on preconceived notions.  Deleting this page has nothing to do with inclusion versus deletion.  One can vote to delete this page and still safely vote to include every school in the country without fear of being called a hypocrite.  Back in the dark ages of wikipedia, it was necessary to maintain lists because this was the best way to group similar information.  Now, we have the category, which does a much better job.  I am against including every school, but if schools are all to be kept, I would not object to categorizing them in a variety of ways, but categories are the answer, not unweildly and unmaintainable lists.  I feel that some people are voting here because they see the word "school" in the header and stop their rational analysis at that point. Indrian 19:02, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * Bah, keep it. Unless Wikipedia is running out of disk space.  In that case then, delete.  &mdash;RaD Man (talk) 22:29, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep it, but could someone fix it? For some weird reason, the article is part of Category:High schools in Illinois.
 * Delete. Use a category. Wile E. Heresiarch 08:32, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Use category instead.  Noisy | Talk 10:00, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. The existing category replaces this.--BaronLarf 23:15, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment. The debate rages on. For what it is worth, I tried this with the List of Manitoba School Divisions by first listing each of the school boards, then an alphabetical list of schools in each division. Two words: 1)In, 2)Sane. I hit the 32k wall early. Categories are the way to go with this I think. I created the category incorporating the original division list (which is complete and accurate) and have been removing them from the list as articles are created. A project like every school in the states being listed is just crazy IMO. Creating categories on boards/districts/divisions or whatever term they use in the states seems like a better way to go. Placing each of the 17,000 public schools in one list makes it exceedingly difficult to find any or even a group of them. Categories just make more sense as a way to tackle this, I think. Weaponofmassinstruction 05:44, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't know why some people are arguing about deleting lists of schools. This article is a list of lists.  Such a thing is plainly better done with the category mechanism, irrespective of how schools are handled. The advantage that lists have over categories is that lists can contain redlinks.  A redlink in a list of lists simply makes no sense. Delete in favour of categorizing the individual lists into Category:Lists of schools. Uncle G 12:34, 2005 Feb 7 (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.