Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Martin Luther King Middle School (Berkeley)


 * 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   The consensus was Redirect''. Already redirected.'''. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:33, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Martin Luther King Middle School (Berkeley)

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No exceptional claim to notability; per school article guidelines and common outcomes at historic AfD discussions, middle schools are assumed not notable. The only claim (outside of claims any school could or should be able to make) to notability is that it's name was changed to honor Dr. King, but so were hundreds of other schools all across the country and around the world. Gtwfan52 (talk) 05:38, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

This particular MLK may have been the first to be so named. It's also been the site of a notable garden, the Edible Schoolyard. Apart from that, there is the other issue of the intent of the guidelines re: notability. These are aimed at reducing trivia, but not factual information. If a non-trivial article is deemed insufficiently notable by itself but has factual value nonetheless, then the proper thing is to transfer that information to another article, not to blot it out of existence. If followed ad absurdum, Wikipedia would become very small indeed.Tmangray (talk) 05:55, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Berkeley Unified School District, per long-standing consensus as described in WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES. As for speculation that it may have been the first school named after Dr. King, we have no evidence of that. Other schools in other cities may have been named after him: three, two months, or even one month after his death.  Cullen 328   Let's discuss it  06:08, 23 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment Please note that redirecting it was exactly what I tried to do, only to have Tmangray revert it. That is why we are here.  A redirect to the school district is appropriate even if it was the first school to have its name changed to honor Dr. King, as the changing of the name is an action the school board did to honor Dr. King, and really isn't about the school at all.  As for your "Ad absurdum" argument, There are numerous places in Wikipedia policy where bright lines are drawn over notability.  A corporation must be discussed in sources that are not all local; a musical group must have charted a song (or one of several other criteria), a professional athlete must have played in the big leagues, not just signed. An author must have a best seller, a professor must be at least a department chair.  The Edible Schoolyard project has a wiki page, and seems a very good project.  But that doesn't give the school notability either.  The elementary school I attended as a child had a GMC bus.  That didn't make it notable. Gtwfan52 (talk) 06:27, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

To re-iterate from the article discussion page, I'm not that wedded to keeping this an independent article, but I do wonder why Wikipedia would wish to constract and constrict. I always imagined that it would be a wide open communal encyclopedia right down to the most trivial facts. But perhaps it comes down to server space, so trivia is out. My suggestion is that, if conformity to the letter of some policy is required, that some of the basic factual information about the school be transferred to the district article, attached to the listing for this school. I would be happy to do the editing.

One last thing...could you point me to the specific pages where the policy(ies) you cite are discussed? As to both this particular (schools, notability) and the more general one pertaining to permissable degrees of triviality, and also as to liberality of application of policies. I'm not about to engage a debate about them, I'm just curious to see how these things operate. Thank you.Tmangray (talk) 06:57, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:31, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:32, 23 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment As the party that had initially objected to the redirect has stated that he no longer objects, I have again redirected the article to the school district and would ask that any uninvolved person that comes by here please close this discussion. Tman, the applicable links are WP:SCH/AG for the school article guidelines, specifically the section on notability; and historic outcomes at WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES.  Thanks! Gtwfan52 (talk) 19:41, 30 September 2013 (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.