Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Milken Educator Award


 * 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 no consensus.  MBisanz  talk 00:46, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Milken Educator Award

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non notable award. Article by ed.working almost exclusively on Milliken family articles, but with an adequately declared COI. No refs except for local notes about he award being given to a local teacher. No reason to really expect anything Part of an series of promotional POV articles about the man and his charities. I'm trying to fix what I can of them, since he himself is unquestionably notable & some of his charities may be also. This one is unfixable because the award is simply not important enough  DGG ( talk ) 13:59, 24 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep. Numerous reliable-source articles turn up, including this Washington Post one.  The award is extremely unusual because it is set up to be a surprise award, and the $25,000 amount of unrestricted funds is substantial for the teachers who are recipients.  It is like their winning a lottery, because there must be a high degree of random chance in these particular ones being selected to win.  This is brilliant in terms of garnering publicity, and for having impact.  The intended impacts, I presume, include 1) to promote the idea that teachers (these ones, and others) are valuable contributors to society and are worth rewarding, and 2) to encourage other committed teachers by in effect putting them into a lottery each year that they might win.  This seems to me comparable, marketing-wise and news-wise, to the various publishers' Sweepstakes awards during the 1950s/1960s that delivered news on TV (exciting at the time) or at homes of winners. These included awards by American Family Publishers Sweepstakes, Publishers Clearing House and Reader's Digest Sweepstakes, and were all great marketing programs but were all eventually determined to be illegal lotteries (though the marketing benefits were so good that at least one persisted and simply paid the fines that accrued).  I don't otherwise know about any surprise awards nowadays.  Perhaps for good reason, as bringing cameras and regional or national attention to unprepared "winners" can easily be a severe invasion of their privacy, and in fact be hurtful psychologically and literally putting them into danger of being robbed or otherwise victimized, laying them out like targets for police to enforce any prior escaped criminal justice system penalty, etc.  Maybe the $25,000 amount is not so much, and maybe the school assembly-type settings here are less intrusive, so this is okay.  It may be that the intended impacts, per my guesses here, are not explicitly stated, but that does not mean they are not real.  It would be interesting, no doubt, to find a learned research article in Marketing Science or other academic journal which evaluated this program, but we do not need to find such an article before we recognize by our own reasoning that this is a program notable for its clever marketing.
 * Anyhow, it is unusual, and it is garnering frequent hits in newspapers, and Wikipedia needs to have an article explaining what this is. Kudos to the brilliant family foundation/charity schemers who back us into that position. -- do  ncr  am  17:04, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 00:15, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Education-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 02:31, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 02:31, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, — Sam Sailor Talk! 23:01, 7 August 2016 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, jcc (tea and biscuits) 21:00, 14 August 2016 (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.