Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Kendriya Vidyalayas


 * 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. No arguments for deletion aside from the nominator. Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:58, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

List of Kendriya Vidyalayas

 * – ( View AfD View log )

This is a very large list of schools only one of which has a Wikipedia article. Wikipedia is not a directory. SQGibbon (talk) 19:51, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions.  —• Gene93k (talk) 22:20, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 22:20, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 22:20, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
 * This is some novel definition of "only one" it seems. By my count (and I might have missed some since I counted quickly) there are at least nine schools on this list with articles of their own. Uncle G (talk) 17:24, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Really? Some of those articles are for towns and some are school districts but I really only found one that went to a specific school. I only skimmed so it's entirely possible I missed some. If there is more than one then I guess reducing the article to just those might make it similar to any other number of lists on Wikipedia. SQGibbon (talk) 19:19, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
 * All those 'nine' articles mentioned by Uncle G are not for towns or districts, they are specific to schools. Salih  ( talk ) 19:32, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, I went through it again and I found eight (as a side note, it doesn't look like most of those would survive AfD). Whether the article should be kept I think is still a legitimate issue, but for now I'm going to open up the discussion on the article's talk page suggesting the list be reduced to only what's notable. SQGibbon (talk) 19:41, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The general consensus is that all high schools are notable (may be inherently) and articles can be made if they are verifiable. Kendriya Vidyalayas (KV) being public high schools, this list is in accordance to WP:LISTS. We may remove those schools which are not verifiable. Salih  ( talk ) 03:37, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, so the articles pass notability, but what I take from WP:LISTS, and correct me if I've missed something, is that a list is supposed to point to Wikipedia articles. So even though most/many of the schools in this list would hypothetically be notable enough for articles should we have a list that is just redlinks/links to websites?  I know we can keep redlinks for things that should have an article but when an article is over 99% redlinked that seems to be a problem, at least an aesthetic one.  Since there are only about nine links to articles, those could easily be merged into the main article about these schools.  If that list ever expands then maybe breaking it out into its own article would be appropriate.  SQGibbon (talk) 04:31, 28 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment. I think if this were a list of public schools in the U.S. instead of India (however subvidided: by school district, municipality, etc.), it would be a snow keep.  So we have to be careful of systemic bias. The fact that many or most of the schools do not merit their own articles does not necessarily mean that there is no encyclopedic value to listing them, either in furtherance of the topic of Kendriya Vidyalayas, or for information on the public services provided in the Indian states or populated places where the schools are.  Looking over the list, however, it looks like these may not have much in the way of individual identity, if they are simply named Kendriya Vidyalayas #1 or whatever.  I don't know if this is incompleteness on the part of the list, or the reality of these educational units.  But even if it's not useful to list every school because there's really nothing to say about it other than the fact it exists, it may be proper to list what communities have them and how many; in other words, summarize the information in this list.  Just throwing some thoughts out there about how to analyze this list; I have no firm conclusion as to its fate, except that WP:NOTDIR doesn't help us come to a decision here.  postdlf (talk) 20:13, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not at all convinced that such a list of US schools where only 1.3% (in this case 9 out of 715) were notable/had their own articles would survive but I'm fairly certain it would not be a snow keep (if for no other reason the issue would be contentious enough to bring out all sorts of people on either side of the deletionist debate). You say that this is not a situation for WP:NOTDIR but this does appear to be a case of listing things just because they exist or, in maybe half the cases, are links to official websites (which is awfully close to just being a list of addresses and phone numbers) and one blog post(!).  If the article is reduced to just the notable schools then I'm still not sure how a list of 1% of the schools (according to Kendriya Vidyalaya there are just over 1,000 of these types of schools) would be useful as it would just be a pretty arbitrary list.  I do agree that summarizing the information might be a good approach but then I'm thinking that such a summary would be better placed in the parent article (which, frankly, is in need of help also).  SQGibbon (talk) 21:13, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
 * My point is that WP:NOTDIR is not specific enough to dictate results in and of itself. As far as lists are concerned, "directory" really doesn't mean much more than "lists we don't like," even where there are probably much more relevant policies are guidelines (the oddest application I've seen was regarding a list of fictional weasels; what exactly is a fictional weasel directory?  is it a section of the Yellow Pages?)  We always need to take the time to understand the subject matter and how a particular list might relate to it and further understanding of it.  The deletion principle underlying WP:NOTDIR is only that some lists of real things are not encyclopedic; beyond that, it's necessary to explain where the list under discussion falls.  The nom did not do that, and so we just had a WP:VAGUEWAVE.  postdlf (talk) 04:07, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure, the original nom (me) was a bit vague, but hasn't the point been expanded upon now? The article lists over 700 of the 1,000 schools of this type and only 9 of those have articles.  Perhaps merging that little bit of information into the main article would be an improvement?
 * It seems to me there are four options, 1-Keep as is, a mess that's not particularly useful and asserts the existence of a lot of schools without anything to support those assertions. 2-Get rid of all the schools that don't assert anything that verifies their existence, which would leave about half the article (still a mess but a bit more navigable). 3-Get rid of everything that doesn't have an article which would easily comply with WP:LISTS but not be a terribly useful article. 4-Merge the schools with articles into the main article until such a time as that list becomes too large for the article and then split it out. SQGibbon (talk) 04:44, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
 * You're repeatedly confusing "notable" with "has its own article". We don't use Wikipedia to determine notability. There seems to be an informal consensus that all high schools are inherently notable. So ideally, each of the schools here—and they're all high schools, going up to Class 12 (12th grade)—ought to have a separate article. The reasons they don't are numerous: lower internet access in India, lower Wikipedia participation in India, lower availability of Indian sources online, lower tendency in India to obsessively document all aspects of culture, the much greater population density in India so schools are numerous enough to get scant individual attention — all of which are just factors in systemic bias. Observe that Category:Schools in India has less than 1000 articles in total, for a population over 1 billion, while Category:Schools in the United States has (how many?) articles, for a population only about 300 million. Whatever the fate of this list, arguing that these schools aren't notable won't do. Shreevatsa (talk) 05:54, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I do believe that for the sake of determining whether an item should be on a list "notable" is equivalent to "having its own article" otherwise lists would be overrun with redlinks. While I'm sure I don't have every single list in my watchlist, the ones I do have, have long operated (i.e., before I came around) using this method. When I started this process I wasn't aware that all these schools were high schools or else I would have presented my position a little differently.  That the schools on this list that do in fact exist (about half of them do nothing to satisfy that requirement) are notable by general community consensus is fine with me and I am not now arguing  about notability with respect to the articles about specific schools.  What am I doing is offering up suggestions to improve what is a rather poor article where one of those suggestions involves merging the information into the main article (please see my other posts on this page). SQGibbon (talk) 06:33, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Assuming that all of the schools are notable (I don't know), then there's nothing wrong with having lists of redlinks; in fact, these would assist with article creation (a valid function of lists) by showing which ones need to be done, and by providing ready-made disambiguation links (if the schools don't have unique names, then separate articles on them will need some kind of parenthetical). In that case, I'd recommend subdividing the lists by state or whatever geographic division, or by governmental administrative division if that's how the schools are run.  One list of 1,000+ entries is rather unwieldy.  postdlf (talk) 14:28, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, if I understand what you're saying then I think that makes sense. I know very little about India but it looks like these schools are divided by region or state, see here.  If you click on those links (I only tried three) you're taken to lists of schools.  Here's an html one (one I tried was a .doc and the other never opened).  Taking that all high schools are notable (and noting that not all the schools listed at that link reach high school) then it would be tedious but trivial to create a list for each of these regions.  Fortunately it appears that  all most of them have unique names so that helps.  Just to make clear, are you suggesting that this article just consist of links to the 14 school regions and then each of those articles contain the links (mostly of the red variety) to the schools?  I think that's a good plan and it does make each article more manageable.  It's a lot of work but I'm definitely willing to help. SQGibbon (talk) 15:30, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm basically saying that this would probably best function as a parent list for sublists by smaller divisions. postdlf (talk) 15:32, 29 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep If these are secondary schools, they are independently notable individually, and this list is an appropriate first step towards eventually making articles. Given the WMF initiative in India, having this list of potential articles ready for expansion is an important step--whether they are used for article in enWP or in the other WPs also.   Even if they were primary schools, we keep  lists of such schools, usually divided by school district or other administrative unit, and this seems to me to be the equivalent. A totally incomprehensible AfD nomination, to my way of thinking.    DGG ( talk ) 05:41, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep As per the suggestion from Postdlf, this article should list the 14 regions with links to new pages for each of those regions. Then those articles will list all of the schools in that region.  I have suggested this at the article's talk page as well. SQGibbon (talk) 19:27, 2 January 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.