Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/River Oaks Baptist 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   no consensus. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:45, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

River Oaks Baptist School

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Primary and middle schools are not covered by the convention of WP:NHS or the guidelines of OUTCOMES which advises that this article would need a "clear claim to notability" which it fails to do. Consequently the article fails the policy of WP:ORG and appears unlikely to address notability in the near future. Previously PRODded so raising for wider discussion. Fæ (talk) 23:15, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Texas-related deletion discussions.  -- Fæ (talk) 23:17, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions.  -- Fæ (talk) 23:18, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment. I note two things in this article that might set this school apart from the usual non-notable lower-grade school. (1) It has been named a Blue Ribbon School, which (if I recall correctly) has been considered an indication of notability in some past AfDs; and (2) its foreign language program won a significant award from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, which described the program as an "out-standing, exemplary, national model program." (I added a cite to the ACTFL page for the latter.)  --Arxiloxos (talk) 00:07, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment. I think you do recall correctly. At least one school apparently notable only for a Blue Ribbon award has survived its Afd discussion: Crocker Middle School.  However, in that case the AfD was withdrawn, resulting in automatic Keep.  That's not a great precedent, since over 4,000 schools have gotten this Blue Ribbon award, and most of them would probably not be notable for much else.  At this point, per nom, I think WP:SCHOOL amounts to WP:ORG and this AfD should follow that guideline.  Since there's apparently no "deep" coverage of River Oaks, the question become whether there has been multiple independent coverage that's not "[T]rivial or incidental".  WP:ORG's listing of "merely trivial coverage" includes the possibly-applicable "passing mention, such as identifying a quoted person as working for an organization".  Leaving the Blue Ribbon aside, do we have only "passing mention"?  The mentions of River Oaks' involvement in pulling books from its library shelves, and of being the only school in the nation to win a certain award for its foreign language programs, might be considered more than "merely trivial".  In particular, the award announcement for the language program seems to go well beyond "passing mention". Yakushima (talk) 13:55, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The stuff about the school changing its e-mail server setup is "deep" coverage - Information about the school doesn't have to take up the entire article to be considered "deep" WhisperToMe (talk) 20:18, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * And the school library also has significant coverage in an RS (a book). WhisperToMe (talk) 20:24, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 04:20, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * What are your thoughts about the developments regarding significant coverage? WhisperToMe (talk) 23:09, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * keep although they are not automatically notable this one has some sourcing to it, needs some work thoughThisbites (talk) 04:35, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment. I'm still skeptical, but its library does get more than a page's worth of treatment in a book about library design, and the google scholar results suggest that its award-winning language program owes something to a willingness to bring in researchers in EFL linguistics. Yakushima (talk) 14:13, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete, per nom.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 01:09, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment: What are your thoughts about the developments regarding significant coverage? WhisperToMe (talk) 20:24, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep per my replies to Thisbites and Arxiloxos, above. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yakushima (talk • contribs) 14:17, 30 January 2011
 * Week Keep Keep - There are at least two reliable sources now which provide significant coverage to aspects of the school (e-mail servers, and the school library) WhisperToMe (talk) 20:24, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * After finding the magazine article about the 2004 award, changing to "Keep." WhisperToMe (talk) 01:16, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete The article about email servers refers to River Oaks Baptist School as an example of an organisation that uses an off-site host to back up emails. However, the essential focus is about the email backup system, and the school is, as I said, merely used as an example. It is true that the example gets a significant mention, but it is not primarily about the school, and this sort of coverage does not establish notability. Any other school that uses this system could equally well have served as an example. Likewise the passage int eh book about library design merely uses this school as an example, and no doubt there are thousands of other school libraries that could have served the same purpose. If a particular school is included in a book because the author thinks the the school has some particularly significant feature then that is an indication of notability. If, however, the school is chosen just because it is a typical example and the author wants a typical example for illustration then it does not indicate any notability of that particular school. Or, to put it another way, "the school library has an exceptional and interesting architecture" is a reason for notability, and a book mentioning the school for that reason is evidence for that notability, whereas "this school has a quite typical school library" is not a reason for notability, and a book mentioning it as a typical example is not evidence of notability. As for the other references apart from those, they are the usual brief mentions, a newspaper report on the head of the school retiring, etc. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:24, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment I think the reporting on the school's e-mail system makes a big deal over very little, and in general, the article seems like a grab-bag of media mentions.  But that's not the issue here -- the issue is WP:N and specifically WP:ORG (since WP:NHS doesn't apply.)  You make no mention whatsoever of awards won, when these might actually be pivotal to the Keep case.  You also don't establish that the ROBS library was given as a merely "typical" example.   It might have been singled out as an example of good library design practice.  And by putting "this school has a quite typical school library" in quotes, you might lead some editors here to think the book actually says that (or some such thing).  It doesn't.  The subtitle of the book ("Drawing on Function and Appeal"), and the lack of any particular criticism of ROBS library in the book's discussion, suggest that this library actually was selected on the grounds of distinctive "function" and "appeal".  The library coverage, together with details on its (soon retiring) chief administrator and its awards, is part of a case that this is a notably excellent middle school.  Can you supply more detail on how you believe ROBS fails WP:ORG? Yakushima (talk) 04:03, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. School has received several prestigious awards (normally considered a strong claim to notability in AfD discussions for schools) and it has been written up by multiple reliable sources independent of the school. Although the article is lame and some of the sources are trivial, the combination of multiple national awards and that article about the school library identify this to me as a school that people outside the local area may have heard of and would expect to be able to read about. --Orlady (talk) 16:05, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I am unsure how this would work in practice, if recipients of awards given out by ACTFL are considered automatically notable then presumably we ought to have articles for ACTFL-award-winning people like Clarissa Adams Fletcher (and her school) but then also winners of any other ACTFL awards such as the ACTFL Video Podcast Contest, the Nelson Brooks Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Culture, the ACTFL-National Textbook Company Award for Building Community Interest in Foreign Language Education and so forth (see )? Fæ (talk) 16:37, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Reply I can sympathize -- but WP:ORG seems, if anything, a bit looser than some notability guidelines for award-winning people (depending on what they might or might not be notable for). If so, that could be a problem with the guidelines.  I'd prefer more consistency among them, but am also reminded that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds."  In this case, we've got multiple awards for the school -- "automatic notability" from a single award (the issue you seem to raise above) isn't really on the table.  So what do we have to settle, and what do we have to go on for settling it?  WP:ORG doesn't mention "awards" per se, but it does say that "[o]rganizations whose activities are local in scope (e.g., a school ....) may be notable if there is substantial verifiable evidence of coverage by reliable independent sources outside the organization's local area."  The award notices certainly count as "substantial verifiable evidence".  But do these notices also count as "coverage ... outside the organization's local area"?  "Coverage", to me, implies coverage by news organizations of some kind, but is it really that narrow?  Well, let's look at the policy that WP:ORG links at its phrasing "substantial verifiable evidence of coverage": WP:NRVE.  And it says "significant independent coverage or recognition"  An award certainly counts as "recognition"; whether it's "significant" might be subject-dependent.  If the subject is middle schools, maybe national Blue Ribbon and/or Melba foreign-language program count as "significant"? Yakushima (talk) 15:58, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I would suggest the following interpretation as a rule of thumb - (a) notable awards are only notable if they have their own (long term) stand-alone articles (hence Blue Ribbon Schools Program is okay as it is an article about the award but ACTFL is not, as the article is about the organization rather than any particular award) and (b) an award-winning organization is either notable for winning multiple notable awards or if a single award winner, then winning the award should have caused sustained significant impact (such as attention from national newspapers). Note, sustained is important in the latter case otherwise the article may fail WP:1E. Fæ (talk) 16:47, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * WP:1E is entitled "People notable for one event", not "Organizations notable for one event". The subject here is an organization, not a person.  Should organizations be given more slack?  Arguably not, but WP:ORG is the applicable guideline here.  I like your attempt at an interpretation, and in fact I would support a WP:ORG guideline change like that.  A wave of AfDs would certainly follow.  But maybe that's just me -- after all, I'd prefer that high schools fall under WP:ORG.  The present WP:ORG may be unacceptably imprecise, but it says nothing about the required "recognition" being "sustained", or having a "significant" impact, only that the admissable "coverage" (which can apparently include "recognition") be "substantial".  (Whatever that means.)  I think the place to settle these issues is on the WP:ORG and/or WP:SCHOOL talk pages, not in AfD at the moment.  Until the uncertainties can be cleared up, I'd prefer a WP:PRESERVE approach to this article.  (Which could include a Redirect and Merge so long as it was accompanied by good faith efforts to support a clearer WP:ORG guideline).  Please note that I'm hardly a rabid inclusionist about anything, much less about schools.  (See, for example, my position in the ongoing Afd for Crocker Highlands Elementary School, where I see WP:ORG as unambiguously indicating deletion.) Yakushima (talk) 04:11, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. There are verifiable facts about this school, thus WP:V is satisfied. Then there is the notability guideline. There we have The ACTFL Melba D Woodruff Award for Exemplary Elementary Foreign Language Program. Apparently, the ACTFL took note of this school. We also have the Blue Ribbon. Now the main contributer of this article seems to have twisted in all sorts of curious curves, to warp the article around the reliable sources about the cloud email service, which isn't about the school, but about the cloud email, and the article ends up all lopsided. Let's not do that. Lets just have a nice small article, with verifiable information about the school (where it is, how large it is, history), and have the awards that show notability in the lead, and pretty please, let's not include a long story about why, how, and how sucessfully the school employs a cloudbased email solution. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 21:16, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment: From my understanding, reliable sources dictate what we say about the article. If the reliable sources make a big deal about ROBS's e-mail service, then we make a big deal about ROBS's e-mail service. If the article looks lopsided, then it has to look that way, until we get more information. Once we get such an abundance of information that we then have to editorialize, then we can start chopping things out. Until then, we aren't in a position to do that. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:05, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm sure there are plenty of reliable primary sources about the school. They don't help with the notability issue, obviously, but if they are reliable, then we can use them. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:33, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment: I just found a journal article about ROBS receiving an award from another foundation. I think now we have enough sources to solidly say that it is notable as per WP:ORG. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:16, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete. This article has some references, however not enough to satisfy the general notability guidelines. The article itself doesn't give any indication of sufficient notability. Polyamorph (talk) 11:02, 5 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.