Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oberlin Academy Preparatory School


 * 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. (non-admin closure) ––Redditaddict69 (talk) (contribs)  06:15, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Oberlin Academy Preparatory School

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This article was instigated through the Articles for Creation process, and was declined for having no independent sources. The nominator immediately resubmitted without any changes, and was again declined by. It was then resubmitted *again* in less than twelve hours, and this time accepted by, who stated that he watches out for this nominator's submissions so he can approve them, without engaging with the reasons it had been twice declined. It was then redirected to Oberlin College by a third editor,, and undone by the nominator. Two more editors, and, endorsed Justlettersandnumbers' decision on the talk page, but Legacypac has reverted any merge.

The entire AfC process breaks down if users can have an article that doesn't meet basic notability guidelines, get declined twice by two different reviewers, and then just keep resubmitting without making changes until they get an answer they like. A couple more links (to Oberlin College's Tumblr page and the school newspaper) have been added since, reinforcing that there appear to be no sources for this whatsoever outside of the school. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 03:21, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete I agree with what you said. -- It's  Boothsift  03:27, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * A core point of this statement is incorrect. I saw the decline by Boothsift (because I watch FloridaArmy's talkpage) and on review, disagreed with the decline so I resubmitted and accepted the page not FloridaArmy. FloridaArmy is not trying to game the system he works hard to improve pages, usually on very historic topics. There are now plenty of sources outside the school's own records. Since the school has been closed for 100+ years none of the weblinked sources are actually self published qnyway. Legacypac (talk) 21:10, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions. Sheldybett (talk) 03:32, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Sheldybett (talk) 03:32, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ohio-related deletion discussions. Sheldybett (talk) 03:32, 3 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep Bad faith nomination by an editor that flat out lied about my interaction with the article here . Follow the link to my comment which they blatantly misrepresented on the talkpage and may have made this nomination to make a point against my acceptance of the page after they declined it.


 * This school opened in 1833 and closed in 1916 (over one hundred years ago). Not a short period of time. There is zero possible promotional value to anyone or thing in having this page. No one except the interested reader benefits from it. No one who even attended the school is alive to enjoy having their school get a Wikipedia page. So the normal reasons we shy away from having pages on organizations are not applicable.


 * Is it notable? It admitted African American and female students in a time when this was very unusual - its sister college (which it started as a department of) being one of the first post secondary schools to admit African American and female students in the United States. The US battled through desegregation 130 years after Oberlin opened ad a school that accepted all colors and both sexes. That certainly makes this an unusual and notable institution. The town of Oberlin is named for school (the college and academy later split). Numerous alumni have articles.


 * Perhaps there is a case to merge in the history of the academy with the college since they were the same entity for some years, however the College page is already fairly long so there is also a case to WP:SPINOUT an article on the school that was spunout of the college in real life.  Frankly, if a historic school can't have a page, but we accept all kinds of athletes and cartoon charactors etc what are we trying to build exactly with Wikipedia? Legacypac (talk) 03:47, 3 February 2019 (UTC)


 * There doesn't appear to be any sources about the school's admission policy - we only know they admitted African American and female students because they have some notable alumni and there are actually-decent sources about the alumni that reference where they went to school. The inability to reference any sources about the school's actual policy (considering that notability is being largely staked on it) illustrates how little there actually is in the way of reliable sources for this topic. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 04:20, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * WP:NOHARM is an argument to avoid. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 14:54, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Oberlin College does have good sourcing for admission policies around African Americans, and this school was a unit of the College for the first few years in question. Pretty obviously the inclusive admission policies of the College applied to it's prep school too. Some refs could be transferred over. Legacypac (talk) 07:24, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
 * If we have to operate under the assumption that references to the college apply to the academy because none exist for the academy, that's yet another argument for merging, not keeping. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 07:28, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The College had groundbreaking admissions policy which obviously it's high school division followed. Do you have sources showing the math departmemt or the english department had groundbreaking admissions policies or do we accept that the college policies applied across the school? Legacypac (talk) 21:26, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * But if no one wrote about the high school division specifically, which given the effort that has been belatedly put into finding sources appears to be the case, then there's no basis for it to have an article separate from the college. We don't have articles on the math department or the english department of the college either. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 21:44, 10 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Comment By the criteria we use for judging high schools if this high school were open today with this level of sourcing, which let's be clear includes quite a few clearly notable alum, this would be a slam dunk notable topic and is never going to get deleted at AfD. The fact that it's historical means further sourcing is going to be harder to come by than a contemporary article but this doesn't change the notability of this topic. It is, clearly and indisputably by current Wikipedia standards, notable in my mind. However, that does not mean that a separate article is the best way to serve our readers this information. I will make a formal !vote sometime before the seven days are up. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:05, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes a merge might be a good way to serve our readers but instantly redirecting without a merge is not serving anyone nor is removing the title via AfD Legacypac (talk) 04:19, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I have no objection to a merge either, obviously. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 04:21, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Merge I have now spent what I consider a fairly indepth amount of time researching this and all mentions are fleeting. I think it should be merged to Oberlin College but I hope some history or education professor takes the time to go through the archives at the College and write a paper on this because it definitely seems like there is an interesting history to be written - we just don't know what it is yet and might not ever so having its own article is not in the best interests of our readers. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 05:27, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I can't quite get to keep given the lack of any sources which really cover this in SIGCOV but have struck my merge !vote as I am less convinced given the effort editors has put into this that a merge would be in the best interests of our readers. Best wishes, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:58, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep Mission Matters and Schooling the Freed People listed by Roy below are the SIGCOV I'd been hoping for. Best wishes, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:31, 12 February 2019 (UTC)


 *  Keep  Merge to Oberlin College. The topic is interesting, but I fear the school itself fails the GNG, and there's way too little written about it for it to be its own article. All of the sources that I can find mention the academy within the context of the college, and there's nothing that suggests that it's independently notable. However, the fact that this is not mentioned at all within the college article is a situation that needs to be rectified, which is why I'm voting to merge rather than delete or redirect. Bradv 🍁  05:20, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Changing to keep. While I would still prefer this be part of the larger college article, there appear to be enough sources now to consider this independently notable. Bradv 🍁  00:32, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Merge/redirect, fails WP:NCORP – which has absolutely nothing to do with COI, and to which it is not less subject because it closed in 1916 (some fairly fundamental misunderstandings there). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:25, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * WP:NCORP under schools references WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES where we have "Most independently accredited degree-awarding institutions and high schools have historically been kept except when zero independent sources can be found to prove that the institution actually exists." Legacypac (talk) 07:24, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
 * And right below it it explicitly states that high schools should not be presumed to be notable just because they exist, and that WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES is an argument to avoid in deletion discussions. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 07:27, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Everything is an arguement to avoid in deletion discussions. I'm not making SCHOOLOUTCOMES as a stand alone arguement either. You can't just dismiss our policy statements amd guidelines when they go directly against your opinion. We have sources that show the high school existed. We have kept lots of pages on high schools that are a heck of a lot less historic with fewer notable connected people. We follow precident at AfD. Legacypac (talk) 21:26, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * And the most recent RfC reached no consensus. I think that everyone posting here so far knows the score on this matter as would any potential closers. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:12, 4 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep. Sourced and notable.  And if merged, merging to Oberlin, Ohio is a better target, but one that also shows why it's silly to merge - it'd be a disproportionate amount of coverage about one school.  SnowFire (talk) 00:37, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep or Weak Merge The sourcing isn't fantastic and wouldn't customarily be sufficient to pass NCORP, however, we've generally presumed notability on secondary schools subject to the minimum criteria of its existence being verifiable. Based on the sources, I have no reason to believe this school didn't exist. Chetsford (talk) 07:10, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep exceptionally notable college preparatory high school that educated African Americans and women including the founder of the ANC in South Africa, artists, authors etc. Many notable alumni, faculty, and administrators. A merge would not make sense and would be undue. FloridaArmy (talk) 12:06, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * It's better to search for for "Oberlin Academy" rather than "Oberlin Academy Preparatory School":
 * Phil Bridger (talk) 13:11, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * , I agree. Thanks for putting the find sources toolbar for that name on the page. I will note for the closer that this is how I did the overwhelming bulk of my searching and my thinking on those results are reflected in my !vote above. Best wishes, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:23, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * , I agree. Thanks for putting the find sources toolbar for that name on the page. I will note for the closer that this is how I did the overwhelming bulk of my searching and my thinking on those results are reflected in my !vote above. Best wishes, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:23, 6 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep notable old time secondary school. It it changed names a couple of times, but it was an accredited secondary school that closed in 1915  - and  that would be enough to make it a keeper.  This, however, was a notable secondary school because it prepared "negro" youth to enter university.  It is covered INDEPTH in scholarly books including Elusive Utopia: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Oberlin, Ohio, Gary Kornblith, Carol Lasser, LSU Press, 2018.E.M.Gregory (talk) 20:36, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm a somewhat reluctant merge for the other reasons you've distressed. What do you see that suggests INDEPTH coverage in Elusive Utopia? I spent time looking at what I saw and it didn't suggest that level to me but perhaps I was missing something or analyzed it wrong. Best wishes, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:53, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * My point was more that I find sourcing everywhere I look. Page has enormous potential for improvement, for example, I just searched a different way and found Fanny Jackson Coppin, added her and what I found about her to the page.E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:13, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * This is quite an exaggeration: editors have failed to find sources for even basic things about the school, such as who it admitted, and the tiny amount of sourcing that has been turned up is inevitably in internal college sources. Turning up yet another alumni (or staff member) because enough sourcing exists about them to list a passing reference to where they went to school doesn't mean that the school is notable. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 21:48, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Drover's Wife, I'm just doing the sort of routine checks I do at AfD, such as searching JSTOR for Oberlin + "Preparatory department".  That search got 136 hits.  They won't all be valid, let alone INDEPTH, and I certainly haven's had time to read that many papers.  But this, along with the many hits on gBooks, most of which, as you say, are brief mentions of individuals who attended.  Nevertheless, I am confident of notability. For one thing,  Not  many 19th century secondary schools have this impressive a  list of notable alumni.  For another, we really don't delete secondary schools that have sourcing.  Even though there is not that much SIGCOV of most American high schools.  Here, I can't help but think that someone with the patience to read those JSTOR hits - or Fanny Jackson Coppin memoir - would find material form which ot build a pretty good article.E.M.Gregory (talk) 23:17, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't know if we found exactly the same JSTOR hits but I spent about an hour and a half looking through what I found and was underwhelmed with what I found. I think there is enough documentary evidence between what I found and what is clearly in the Oberlin archives for something to be written - an interesting something. And if this ends up as keep, well great. There's no question for me that this school was real and was notable at the time. However, does our tying together these crumbs help our readers gain more insight and knowledge or does making a more concise version of it that emphasizes what we do know best, help them more? I came down on the side of the latter but have great sympathy for those who came down on the side of the former. But I think we should be honest and not say that's what we're doing not that there are great sources that we just haven't found. Best wishes, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:27, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Different perspectives, just as you say. My experience is that when a separate article exists, people are quite likely to expand and source it.  At least, it is something I often do. Cheers.E.M.Gregory (talk) 23:56, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ad Orientem (talk) 02:10, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment Moseyed here from DRV. Two points. 1) Can one of the keep !voters explain which the WP:THREE best sources for keeping this article are? I leaning merge, but these are difficult sources to sift through. 2) The article has expanded quite a bit since it was nominated per WP:HEY, but I'm distressed this was moved from AfC before it should have been. We should not be accepting or denying articles based on who created the article, but rather on the content of the article. SportingFlyer  T · C  05:02, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I am a merge/redirect !voter, but the apparent notability (or not) of the article hasn't changed since it was accepted in any meaningful way. I would not have accepted at AfC personally, but the criteria for AfC is Article submissions that are likely to survive an AfD nomination should be accepted and published to mainspace. Considering this is likely to be a borderline AfD either way it goes the assessment, especially given general general outcomes at AfD around high schools, that it would likely survive AfD seems like an entirely fair reviewer judgement and thus well with-in policy and procedure. Best wishes, Barkeep49 (talk) 05:15, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I accepted it because it is a notable old high school. As school articles go it is fairly long with quite a bit of info that will help the reader searching for more imfo on the school (pointing at offline sources for example). We know when, where and why it started. We know it (as part of the College) had groundbreaking admission policies. We have one of the longest lists of Wiki notable alumni I've seen on a school article. We knew about the historic building it operated in. We know where to find it's archives. We even link to (and could upload as it is out of copyright) a photo of a graduating class collected by the new Smithsonian Museum of African American History. My highschool has a long standing article but lacks notable alumni, any interesting admittance policy, has way fewer sources, and no museum cares about it's class photos. Absolutely the page could be expanded but that is not a reason to delete what we have put together already. Legacypac (talk) 05:28, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Adding my 3 cents. 1.) I agree with points made about about the need to disallow end-runs around rules made by The Drover's Wife.  2.) However, when declined at AFC, this was a page  about an American High school reliably sourced to the archives of Oberlin College but lacking SECONDARY.  Nevertheless, it was always going to be a KEEP at AfD because we keep high schools, because it was already had some reliable (albeit not SECONDARY,) sources, and because many additional sources exist.  3.) WP:HEY, Barkeep's assertion that "the article hasn't changed since it was accepted in any meaningful way." out of date.E.M.Gregory (talk) 13:04, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm now no longer leaning merge but am voting keep based on the sources presented by RoySmith. I still think it was improperly accepted from AfC, but it's been greatly improved since then now there's been a spotlight on it. SportingFlyer  T · C  00:34, 12 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Strong Keep. I don't agree with our policy of always keeping secondary schools based only on WP:V, but that does seem to be our policy, and this meets that in spades.  As for WP:THREE, I'd put forth:
 * "Mission Matters: Mount Holyoke, Oberlin, and the Schooling of Southern Blacks, 1861-1917". History of Education Quarterly.
 * "Antebellum Black Coeds at Oberlin College." Women's Studies Newsletter.
 * "Oberlin's Catalogue". New York Times.
 * all of which I found by examining in detail the first 6 of the 27 references in the article. So I don't think there's any question of meeting WP:N as well.  For the complaint that this is tied to the university, we've got plenty of those.  We suffer badly from WP:RECENTISM; for a historical subject such as this, you need to keep in mind that the Oberlin Preparatory Department wasn't prescient enough to have their own web site indexed by the search engines.  That means you need to dig a bit harder to find sources, and re-calibrate your notability meter to account for the information processing and archiving technology that existed in the 1830's.
 * That being said, I agree that the history behind this wasn't AfC working at its best. When a draft is rejected, immediately resubmitting it with only trivial changes is not what you should be doing.  But, there's other fora for debating that.  Here, we're just concerned with whether we should keep this article in it's current state, and the answer to that is clearly yes.  -- RoySmith (talk) 18:36, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I hate to violate the "three, but no more than three" rule (especially since that's my own essay), but Schooling the Freed People has pretty good coverage. Oberlin Academy is called out as one of the two major secondary schools for black teachers (the other being Institute for Colored Youth) in post civil war America.  -- RoySmith (talk) 00:24, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 * An extensive treatment of "Oberlin Institute" is in Oberlin, Hotbed of Abolitionism. They seem to use the name to refer to the entire college, but there's a fair amount of material about the preparatory department, including a 1855 class photo. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:48, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I found another excellent source: A history of Oberlin College from its foundation through the civil war. If you download the full PDF from archive.org, be patient.  It's a 41 MB file and their servers are pretty slow.  It'll take a few minutes.  It looks like the full text (as plain text) is also available at https://www.gospeltruth.net/oberlinhistory.htm.  Chapter XI is mostly about the preparatory school.  There's a copy of the original announcement in the PDF, on an unnumbered plate sheet between pages 122 and 123.  For those keeping WP:N score, this is not an independent source, but it's still a good one.  -- RoySmith (talk) 23:34, 12 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep, per basic common sense. This is clearly a much more notable school than many currently existing ones. It appears that some editors have lost sight of the basic fact that this is an encyclopedia, and that this is obviously a topic that an encyclopedia should cover. This is the type of ignorant deletion nomination that made me give up editing with my userid years ago, and, after I was persuaded to start editing again a month or two ago, makes me think that this place is even more being run by people with no understanding of common sense than it was then. The nomination statement describes a broken WP:AFC process, by which one editor's opinion becomes the last word on whether an article is acceptable, rather than anything wrong with this article. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:39, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep A lot of notable people went to school there. I agree all the coverage in books adds to its notability.   D r e a m Focus  04:43, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep - Appears notable enough. Orientls (talk) 04:08, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep: per the excellent research done by . I'd also like to note that the statement  linked in the nomination from  does not demonstrate that  watches 's talk page so he can approve them [FloridaArmy's drafts].  That implies that, as an AfC reviewer, exercises favouritism, when in reality, tackling the huge AfC backlog is often best done by reviewing articles by the most prolific article creators first.  It's a common practice at both AfC and NPP, we even have tools to aid us in identifying the most prolific article creators (this and this) and if we didn't do it, the backlog would most likely be twice as big.  I often search by keywords to spot advert drafts such as "renowned" or "legendary".  I strongly advise the nominator to retract the statement regarding this.    SITH   (talk)   09:05, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
 * It is a clear statement of favouritism. Two reviewers rejected the article with clear reasoning, validated by the fact it took about 500% more work than the author put in at AfC to swing the AfD away from merge (i.e. it could never have survived AfD in the form it was submitted to AfC in), and the only justification given for accepting it was that the author was who he was. Articles need to be assessed on their merits, not on their author. I don't care if you do it too: it's still favouritism. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 09:11, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree that the draft should have been declined, in my opinion it wasn't in a mainspace-ready state. However, tracking trends in order to keep the backlog down in an unbiased fashion is not favouritism.  I see no evidence that suggests  has been biased towards .  Why don't you knock it off with the arguing against the perceived character of your opponents shtick and focus on the content of their actual arguments?    SITH   (talk)   09:49, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Just to be clear, I agree that there's no way this should have been accepted from AfC in the state it was in at the time. At that point, it clearly failed WP:AFCR.  Notable, yes.  Reliably sourced, no.  More specifically, it had just been declined twice in a row, by two different people, for exactly that reason.  -- RoySmith (talk) 15:30, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Pages on Notable topics don't need to be fully developed to be placed in mainspace for improvement. The test is "will the page survive AfD?" which this one was always going to do. At very worst, this page was a merge candidate with the College, which is just an editorial decision or talkpage discussion not a delete discussion. Given we tend to keep high schools that can be verified to exist - the page passed V just fine. The ill considered attempt to delete page has nicely helped it along onto something quite nice. Legacypac (talk) 20:31, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree. This is a good demonstration of why pages about notable topics should be in mainspace, where they can undergo the wiki process of collaborative improvement, rather than hidden away in draft space where nobody apart from the author can find them, something that goes completely against the principle of WP:OWN. The way that WP:AFC is used to prevent this process is disruptive to the development of this encyclopedia. It's just a pity that you don't apply the same principles to other clearly notable subjects. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:47, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Quoting from the reviewing instructions, If what is written in the submission meets the notability guidelines, but the submission lacks references to evidence this, then the underlying issue is inadequate verification and the submission should be declined for that reason. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:05, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
 * That's exactly my point. The instructions for WP:AFC are not conducive to the collaborative building of this encyclopedia, and encourage a sense of ownership. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:27, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
 * That may or may not be true, but it is a topic for another forum. Some poor admin is going to have to plow through this already badly bloated AfD. The issue here is whether or not this article meets our guidelines and should be kept, or not. That's it. -Ad Orientem (talk) 23:25, 17 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep Notable (now), if only for the unusually early US racial mix. Johnbod (talk) 10:55, 17 February 2019 (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.