Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Southwest High School (Fort Worth, Texas)


 * 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, defaulting to keep. Please defer merge related discussion to article talk. Can&#39;t sleep, clown will eat me 06:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Southwest High School (Fort Worth, Texas)

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Non-notable school. Prod removed. — Swpb talk contribs 04:01, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete notability not asserted Josh Parris 04:52, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * weak keep-there are far worse high school article articles, under WP Schools, High Schools at least have the possibility to improve. I'd rather junior highs and elementary schools get nom for del. Chris 04:55, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Please note that Inclusion is not an indicator of notability. An AfD for this article does not preclude AfDs on other schools, and the notability of other articles is irrelevant to this discussion.  Also, the possibility for improvement is not a strong argument for keeping - any subject could conceivably become more notable with time. — Swpb talk contribs 13:57, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * comment 7 of the 12 high schools in the district have articles. Chris 04:57, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. My rule of thumb is to keep high schools with minimal notability, and delete anything below unless there's pronounced notability. This high school article is no better or worse than other high school articles from the same district. YechielMan 06:00, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete nn school. Edeans 06:19, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletions.   -- Part Deux 08:30, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, doesn't have even one external source (other than it's own website). Mathmo Talk 13:12, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete Non-notable school. Soltak | Talk 22:47, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. School articles should be kept so that school AfDs don't absorb editor time that could be better used doing other things. --Eastmain 22:54, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * What kind of ridiculous non-argument is that? I could just as easily say "All editors should have the authority to delete any article because afd discussions are a waste". I wouldn't say that though because it's a stupid argument. Soltak | Talk 23:11, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Strongly, emphatically agree with Soltak. What are we here for, if not to make a better encyclopedia?  Getting rid of content that doesn't belong here is  exactly that sort of work.  And AfD's don't keep editors from working on other articles.  By Eastmain's logic, no article should ever be deleted, because the effort would be too great.  Wikipedia would then be nothing but free hosting. — Swpb talk contribs 00:03, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep - schools are often noteworthy in their own right; this school is noteable. Heck, it even has newsworthy links:, which means it's close enough to notable in my book (and, at risk of people misquoting this as my only argument, what does it hurt if it's a borderline case? - Wiki is not a paper encyclopedia). The argument "non-notable school", the only argument given by several people, hasn't explained why it's non-notable; it's only been people saying "it's non-notable", which doesn't make it true: see Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. Part Deux 23:33, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The burden of proof is with the argument for notability, not against. I see this argument constantly, and it has no merit whatsoever. This article does not assert notability.  Being mentioned in passing in news articles does not constitute non-trivial coverage. — Swpb talk contribs 00:07, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * With regard to the policy you cite, as the policy itself states, the explanation of how the page fails a notability policy is essentially an attempt to prove a negative - the explanation would in this case be "No independent sources presented", something which is already apparent and is almost a rephrasing of "Fails WP:NOTE", making it almost trivial to state explicitly. When claiming an article violates a general policy, an explanation is usually in order, but when a page, such as this one, fails a notability policy, the explanation of how it fails should be evident. — Swpb talk contribs 00:25, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Fort Worth Independent School District. I'm unable to find any claims of notability or any non-trivial sources about the school. However, a redirect is better than outright deletion since that way we will preserve the prior edits in the event that the school does become notable. JoshuaZ 00:23, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The existing content is minimal and would be easy to recreate in the event that the school becomes notable in the future. — Swpb talk contribs 00:26, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete another nn school. Eusebeus 00:30, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * delete no worse than the others is not much of an argument for keep. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DGG (talk • contribs) 06:12, 2 February 2007 (UTC).
 * Has anybody read what I've said so far? As I've said that it's notable, pleas state how it's not notable. How is it not notable? It is listed in news publications, has a fairly large attendance, etc. Part Deux 06:14, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. OK, I'll answer that. For things like schools and churches notability doesn't arise simply from existence. If every school were "notable" this would have the practical effect of depriving the word of meaning when talking of schools: we would have the equation "school = notable school". Rather, notability for schools is like notability for people: we think they are notable when they do something which marks them out from their peers. For schools we might regard them as notable if they consistently educate their pupils to a high level of excellence in Latin, say, or if they meet a special need. A school is not notable simply because it teaches: all schools do that, so it's rather like eating or breathing for a person. Notability arises when a school outperforms ( or, sadly, underperforms ) in its tasks. For example, we have an article on Eton College because, somehow, it's managed to educate an enormous number of successful UK politicians: it does something different, though it's not clear what the "magic ingredient" is. Similarly, we have an article on Harvey Milk School because the school is providing something that virtually no other school is doing. As it happens, I have reservations about the wisdom of the Harvey Milk School approach to education, but I strongly feel we should be documenting their work, and I strongly support retention of its article here. But for Southwest High there is no evidence that the school is doing something unique: it's not doing anything special that marks it out. There's no evidence of sustained academic excellence, nor does it appear to be winning notable awards for its educational policy on a consistent basis. It isn't meeting a need for special educational facilities for a minority group, and although it may be a good school it is pretty much just another normal school. Giving it a Wikipedia entry is like giving an entry to the ordinary guy you see every day: he's a good, honest guy, and he works hard, but he's just like the rest of us. Southwest High is a good, honest school, working hard to educate its students, but it's just like most other schools. Show us something unique and interesting about a school that has relevance outside its local community, and I'll gladly advocate retention: in the past I've advocated retention of school articles for reasons that have varied from being the only military school in its country to entering into a unique business partnership with a federal agency. Notability, it seems to me, arises from doing something different that people might want to know about, not simply from existence. I hope this helps explain the opinion I express below. WMMartin 16:29, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment Well-stated, but not quite right, I think. Although it is true that "notability does not arise merely from existance," the general notability criteria at WP:N make it perfectly clear that the subject of an article need not be exceptional or extraordinary. excellent or abysmal.  Schools don't have to do  something unique or admirable or different, although they are, of course, all different in sufficient detail to result in the publication of official government reports and published news stories about their activities and their performance,  This is all that is needed to make them "notable" per WP:Notability.  The most important sections follow:


 * "The primary notability criterion
 * "One notability criterion shared by nearly all of the subject-specific notability guidelines, as well as What Wikipedia is not, is the criterion that a topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial, reliable published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself."


 * "Notability is not subjective
 * "Subjective evaluations are not relevant for determining whether a topic warrants inclusion in Wikipedia. Notability criteria do not equate to personal or biased considerations, such as: "never heard of this", "an interesting article", "topic deserves attention", "not famous enough", "very important issue", "popular", "I like it", "only of interest to [some group]", etc."


 * "General notability is not judged by Wikipedia editors directly. The inclusion of topics on Wikipedia is a reflection of whether those topics have been included in reliable published works. Other authors, scholars, or journalists have decided whether to give attention to a topic, and in their expertise have researched and checked the information about it. Thus, the primary notability criterion is a way to determine whether "the world" has judged a topic to be notable. This is unrelated to whether a Wikipedia editor personally finds the subject remarkable or worthy."


 * Since there is no consensus guideline on school notability, it seems to me that many of the efforts to delete school articles are contrary to policy, since they are based on subjective personal opinions about what should not be in Wikipedia that go beyond accepted consensus. There is no arguing taste (even if people do it all of the time).  If the deletion-inclined want to prevail, it seems that their discussion should be at {WP:N]], where they could try to build a consensus that to achieve "Notability" in general, any subject must be exceptional and interesting.  Finally, regarding "interesting:" I do not think that every article here should have to be able to catch the interest of any user who drops in and presses the random article button.  Most of the users of this project are not idlers trying to becomed enlightened by Wiki-browsing—they are looking for something specific.  It is much more important that anybody who drops in to look up something specific finds something useful.  Preferably something that is thorough,NPOV, and verifiable.--Hjal 01:06, 3 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep Before I start, isn't there policy here about being civil?  Some editors above clearly did not learn everything they needed to know in kindergarten.  Since I just finished a version of this elsewhere, I will go on at some length:
 * The only way to reach a consensus here would be for everybody to just give up. There have been one or two previous thoughtful posts to the effect that the participants in all of these discussions didn't appear to be heading toward a consensus on what does or does not make schools notable, and the only possible resolution was for the deletionists to accept that all schools (more or less, with a few exceptions) belong in the project, while the school inclusionists should agree to work on developing guidance (probably at WikiProject Schools) about what makes an acceptable school stub and what doesn't.  I think that this is the only solution.


 * We should all also accept that a new school article should not go to AfD unless it has first been prodded and ignored for months or tagged for CfD, if appropriate, and subsequently challenged. If every farm boy that made it to the major leagues for a week in the 1930s is automatically notable; if every English football team playing at a level I never heard of is notable; if every company included in a stock index is notable, then every school is notable (or darn close).


 * All of the school AfDs that I've participated in or looked at have resulted in a keep or in no censensus and keep by default if anybody from WP:SCH participated seriously. The few high schools that have been deleted recently were not only candidates for good articles, some of them were notable by the strictest interpretation.  Look at the AfD for Windward High School and then look at its website for five minutes--it looks like one of most innovative and interesting new high schools in the country, but a dozen people who made no effort to research the school and one administrator sent the article to the void.


 * WP:V is the only test that a high school or other public school article should have to pass, and almost every school could have a good article written about it that meets that policy, just as they could meet WP:N. Good editors will have to revert WP:OR and WP:POV violations frequently, unless posting by anonymous IP are restricted, but that's true of many articles.


 * Every school is the subject of numerous publications by reliable sources. Every school.  The information may not be available online, but it was published and it's out there.  Public schools are planned and built following, in almost every case, multiple public meetings and formal public hearings; for teh past 40 years, most require significant environmental review and documentation; most are the subject of a bond election; many are conroversial, with local disputes by NIMBY neighbors and remote parents, struggles within the district or City for funding, dusputes with state education departments over designs and budgets, and hiring of the first and subsequent principals; followed by bond issues and parcel taxes to replace derelict buildings; sports dynasties and football coaches fired for incompetence; extraordinary teachers and pedophiles; and, however derided because of their universality, the mandatory reports required in the UK, California, and almost everyplace else are, in fact, not just verifiable and, generally, reliable, they are evidence of the "notability" of schools in the eyes of the whole community.  These are not just "records," like a utility bill or a traffic ticket; they are complex, expensive, sometimes comprehensive, "reports."  That we mandate them, pay for them, and dedicate scarce staff resources to them demonstrate the significance that society places on the differences between schools, their faculties, their facilities, and the success of their students.


 * Almost every "notable" person went to school. Their schools get listed in their biographies (almost every serious biography about a modern person discusses their education).  A blue link to their schools makes it easier for editors to write good articles about people, without having to do separate lookups about the person's schools themselves.  It makes it a better article for subsequent readers, who can decide whether they want to know more about the subject's educational abckground or not.


 * Almost every city and many CDPs have schools, and the rest are in one or more school districts or individual school attendance areas. Having school articles to link to allows the settlement's educational system to be discussed in summary or in a few bullets, with detailed information in the appropriate district or school articles.  And, yes, localities provide a good place to list useful information about schools that have not attracted an editor willing to start a serious article about them.  In either case, coverage of local schools makes for a better locality article, while links to separate school articles keep articles about small towns from being overloaded with school information.


 * I realize my discussion is specific to the U.S, in some ways, but I'm sure that similar arguments apply in most other countries. I also realize that many school articles are subject to constant vandalism, but it is usually fixed easily and without getting trapped in endless revert wars.  I realize that the opponents of school articles are sincere in their belief that Wikipedia should include only "notable" schools (by which they usually seem to mean "extraordinary" schools), but I know that they are wrong.  Jimbo has spoken on this issue, and even though it was not ex cathedra, I know that he was right.


 * Finally, this specific article is not even a very good stub. However, it has only been up for two weeks, the information included is useful to interested people, if not interesting to general browsers, and it is not contaminated with POV or vandalism. Make it better or leave it alone.  I'm too tired to bring it up to start class tonight and I'm taking my first grader on a field trip tomorrow moring.  Why don't some of you go fix it up a little?--Hjal 09:44, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * WP:SCHOOL is not the only notability criterion that applies to schools. The general WP:NOTE will do just fine.  To say that all discussions about the notability of schools should default to keep just because the specific notability policy is in flux is ludicrous.  And don't pretend like AfD's don't result in the deletion of bad school articles all the time.  North Side High School (Fort Worth, Texas) is heading there right now.  Nothing is automatically notable, and schools are no exception.  Unless valid sources can be presented, the school should go.  Period. — Swpb talk contribs 13:53, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * See Comment just above.--Hjal 01:06, 3 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Weak keep. Some semblance of notability, and I tend to give school articles a bit more leeway. Realkyhick 09:55, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete. Not notable, and anyway the references/sources are inadequate, which should be enough to require a deletion. WMMartin 15:44, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep, meets all content policies, any notability issues can be resolved with a merge. No case has been made for why it ought to be deleted, rather than merged. Please follow the recommendations in the notability guideline if you wish to apply it to articles (viz., "a common recommendation across all notability guidelines is not to nominate articles on such subjects for deletion but to rename, refactor, or merge them into articles with broader scopes"). Christopher Parham (talk) 16:24, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
 * keep please this article meets our content policies so there is no need to erase it yuckfoo 21:46, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, or merge/redirect. Not enough verified information to maintain as a stand-alone article at present.  If reliable independent sources could be found for, for instance, its claim of being "known for its Student Council" et al., that might be a different story, but those sources do not appear to exist, and the remainder of the article is a directory entry. Shimeru 05:59, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. A merge might be an option but is there anything worth merging?  Notability issues exist and it is up to the editors of the article to assert meeting any notability issues.  Vegaswikian 08:15, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep per Christopher Parham, no valid reason for deletion has been presented. Silensor 20:22, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep per Christopher Parham. --Myles Long 20:49, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. Based on the age and enrollment of the school, the chance of non-trivial coverage approaches 1. --- RockMFR 23:08, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete or merge/redirect. I'm unable to find any non-trivial sources about the school. JoshuaZ 23:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. See http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/special_packages/amie_streater/16102326.htm for an article about the school and its anti-drug policies. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Eastmain (talk • contribs) 23:34, 6 February 2007 (UTC).
 * Keep per Christopher Parham.  ALKIVAR &trade; &#x2622; 00:48, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
 * 'Delete the only references are trivial.-MsHyde 04:39, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep per Christopher Parham. Everyking 05:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep per the arguments above, a cursory scan of LexisNexis returns 125 matches in the past 2 years alone, so sourcing is a non-issue. RFerreira 08:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. Meets relevant content policies, I'm not seeing any notability issues either.  (jarbarf) 19:04, 7 February 2007 (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.