Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Highland View Academy


 * 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. – GorillaWarfare talk • contribs 14:51, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Highland View Academy

 * – ( View AfD View log )


 * Delete No reliable non-trivial sources. Also, I looked through images on hallway of graduates a few months ago, I did not see the "Notable Alumni" listed there and a google search with the name and school's name does not bring up reliable sources that I could see. The lone mention with a Google News site is a report of an athletic activity at the school however the article is reporting on the opponent, not HVA. The local newspapers do not list HVA's athletic activities in their sports section. If it's not notable enough for the local newspaper to report on, it probably isn't notable enough for wikipedia. Clearly, WP:ORG is not satisfied. WikiManOne (talk) 05:42, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Links to claim above: local MSNBC has no results for school name, neither does "the Picket", another local news source. WikiManOne (talk) 06:00, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Another note, I delisted this school from the Cavalier Athletic Conference page as well as Template as there were no sources for it belonging to this league (which does not seem to have many sources either...) and CBS News' MaxPreps.com lists HVA as freelance. WikiManOne (talk) 06:22, 24 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep. 60 hits at Google News, including a Washington Times article about a student group that grew into a church as well as coverage in local papers. Also multiple mentions in books shown at Google Books.  No reason to diverge from the usual result that verifiable high schools are kept.--Arxiloxos (talk) 22:45, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Hits are great, do you have any links to non trivial mentions? I looked through the first few pages on the books and they all appear to be either lists which are trivial or published by the school's parent organization which would then make it a primary source. Similar issues remain with the Google News hits. WikiManOne (talk) 22:55, 24 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions.  —Arxiloxos (talk) 23:04, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Maryland-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:18, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep - Grade 12 school, de facto notable per WP:WPSCH. Kudpung (talk) 15:17, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * What does it say at the schools project (which I am a member of) that applies here. Schools are not exempt from the WP:ORG requirements which require multiple non-trivial sources. WikiManOne (talk) 16:06, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't see your name listed at WP:WPSCH/P. That's probably  why  you  don't  know about  WP:WPSCH/AG. Schools are actually  exempt from several things.Kudpung (talk) 16:23, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No, I haven't taken the time to list myself in every project that participate in since every project seems to count its participants differently. I had seen that guideline, however, just because the "schools" project claims that some schools are exempt doesn't mean it is. Also, I note this guideline on the very page you posted:
 * It is recommended that editors only create a school article when its content shows that it already passes the notability guideline by displaying significant coverage in reliable sources.
 * This article clearly does not display "significant coverage" in "reliable sources." I don't understand why some editors are so intent on keeping articles without satisfying the notability requirements. If a school is actually notable, then it will have enough sources in reliable places making it very easy to establish notability. WikiManOne (talk) 16:41, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * WikiManOne is right, schools are not de facto notable; articles on schools should show how the school has made an impact in the world. This is easily done with most schools, but schools that are especially new, minor, or in regions without much media coverage are tougher cases. Just because most schools are notable doesn't mean they all are. Recommondations by a WikiProject do not take precedence over sitewide policy. No opinion on the present article, just a note that the school's small size might be a reason why coverage is hard to find.  Them  From  Space  13:15, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Keep - It's a high school, and high schools are generally presumed to be notable because they tend to get coverage in a variety of sources. Moreover, this one is a boarding school, meaning that it enrolls students from far and wide -- not just local kids. I searched Google for information on this high school, and I found a diverse variety of ghits. The school competes in a variety of sports, and its name shows up in newspaper articles and sports websites covering a large part of Maryland. They aren't a member of any league (so there's no sports league article to link to), but they compete against a number of other unaffiliated private schools. Other ghits I found include online bios for several alumni (not a source of notability in itself, but an indication of the school's impact in the world), this article about a public school superintendent who formerly taught at the school, a strange item about a group of students who supposedly aim to set a world record for jet-skiing across the Atlantic Ocean, this article about Dorothy Bush Koch (George W. Bush's sister) giving an interview to the school paper, and a Google News teaser about a paywall-protected news article from 1975 about some sort of scandal involving a pretzel company that was somehow related to the school. I didn't find any monographs about the school (which seldom exist for schools), but I found plenty of less significant items that collectively lead me to conclude that it's notable. --Orlady (talk) 21:14, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Provisional delete until better sources are shown. As of now most of the article fails WP:V and the bare-bones assertion that this is a high school doesn't make the cut for me since nothing is inherently notable. If the sources found above are good enough for a keep then our notability standards for high schools are way too low.  Them  From  Space  21:38, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It appears to me that your support for deletion does not mean that you disagree with Notability (high schools), but rather is because you haven't seen third-party sources that convince you that this is really a high school. Is that correct, or am I misinterpreting? --Orlady (talk) 21:59, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No, I worded that badly. What I meant to say was that I don't want articles that only say "X is a high school" and have no further evidence of notability. I do disagree with the ideas behind the essay and I hope consensus shifts away from this lax attitude in the future. The question to ask when evaluating high schools isn't "is this a high school?" but rather "is this a notable high school?" A basic idea behind our notability guidelines is that we don't offer significant coverage of subjects that have never received significant coverage in the past. If the school has received coverage then I'd support keeping it. Most schools have, but that isn't a reason to include schools that haven't.  Them  From  Space  22:18, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * we have had long-standing agreement otherwise--no high school has been deleted on that rationale for about 3 years now. The basis of the agreement was the realization that it wasn't worth sorting out the few that might not be notable. Do you really want to challenge that and go back to discussing dozens of them a week, one at a time? Would that really be worthwhile in terms of benefiting the encyclopedia , or are there other things that need doing more?    DGG ( talk ) 07:10, 30 January 2011 (UTC)


 * NOTE: user:WikiManOne was banned from  editing  he Wikipedia on  30  January  2011 for sockpuppetry. Note banned, not  blocked.Kudpung (talk) 17:57, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It appears that the user "banned" himself (see diff), apparently as a joke (a bad joke) related to getting his account renamed. He's never been blocked, much less banned. I am going to remove the "banned" notice from the user's page because that kind of misleading template is disruptive to the smooth operation of Wikipedia. --Orlady (talk) 18:09, 31 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep per WP:WPSCH, it's a high school and therefore has notability. It has a fairly good chance to be expanded if we allow it the opportunity to do so, particularly in light of what Orlady has found with a relatively quick pass over Google. Plus it's a much more sizable article than some schools out there. I agree and echo the opinions expressed above that sorting truly notable high schools from non-notable would be a little arduous. - danjel  (talk to me) 22:05, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep, verified high school, de facto notable.--Milowent • talkblp-r 02:07, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've asked this before, I'll ask again: where in wikipedia policy do we find that all high schools, with or without non-trivial reliable sources have de-facto notability? Where is it? WikiManOne 02:26, 1 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep To answer your question, WikiManOne, it's not a formal policy, but rather a consensus. It's listed at WP:Common outcomes, which summarizes deletion discussions that have tended to have consistent outcomes. "Most elementary and middle schools that don't source a clear claim to notability are now getting merged or redirected in AfD, with high schools being kept except where they fail verifiability." It's based on the assumption that almost all high schools get significant news coverage. --MelanieN (talk) 05:22, 1 February 2011 (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.