Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-19/WikiProject report



This week, we're hitting the books with WikiProject Schools. Started in February 2004, WikiProject Schools has built up a collection of 11 Featured Articles, 5 Featured Lists, and 27 Good Articles. School articles are frequent targets for vandals, requiring the watchful eyes and verification resources available at WikiProject Schools. The project maintains lists of articles that need emergency attention, infobox corrections, general cleanup, and merging. We interviewed CT Cooper and Kudpung.

'''What motivated you to join WikiProject Schools? Do you focus on a type of school, a geographic region, or only schools you have attended?'''


 * CT Cooper: WikiProject Schools was one of the first projects I joined when I became a significant contributor to Wikipedia back in 2007. I have historically focused on schools in Hampshire, England, since that is that is where I am from, and I have made significant to improvements to The Petersfield School, a school I previously attended. However, I have also contributed to school articles for places I have never visited or even previously heard of, often in response to the poor state of some articles I come across, such as Savannah Country Day School.


 * Kudpung: I'm a retired teacher, teacher trainer, and lecturer, so  'schools' is naturally a major  area of my  Wikipedia interest. I started contributing  to  schools by  writing some articles about schools in my  home county  of Worcestershire, England, in particular Hanley  Castle High School which I attended as a boarder when it  was still a selective grammar school. I  then set out  to  improve and expand other articles on schools in the county, then the rest  of the UK, and finally through participation  in  WP:WPSCH other school and education related articles, including  many  in  the USA and other countries.

'''Nine schools are the subjects of featured articles. Have you contributed to any of these articles? What are some of the challenges of bringing a school-related article to featured status?'''


 * CT Cooper: Most of my direct contributions have involved bringing up poor quality articles to a reasonable standard, rather than to FA. However, I have for years assessed articles as part of the assessment department, and that has frequently involved giving advice on how to improve articles to B-class and beyond. From my experience, probably the biggest challenge with getting a school article to featured status is with referencing, and a lack of it is usually the biggest criticism I make when assessing article quality. Getting a good breadth of sources for the details necessary for an FA, particularly on the history of older schools, needs more than a Google search, and often involves a lot of work offline.


 * Kudpung: I'm not  aware of having  contributed to  any  school FA. Contrary to what  is generally  believed, it's very  difficult  to expand many  school  articles to  a reasonable size beyond  'start'  or 'C' class; the requirement  for independent   published reliable sources is generally  only  met  by  the most  ancient and/or prestigious of all  schools. American schools appear to base much of their notability on reports of their sport and athletic results. This is not  the case of the UK where school  reputations  are made mainly on  academic achievements that  don't  necessarily receive heavy press coverage.

'''How does the project handle the notability of schools? Are there any clear cut-off points for primary and secondary schools?'''


 * CT Cooper: By far the most controversial topic of school articles is the application of notability, with schools being a key battleground in the war over deletionism and inclusionism. The issue has literally been discussed endlessly for years, with much bitterness on both sides.


 * Kudpung : The answer is: It  doesn't handle the notability  of schools.  It's interesting  to  note however that  schools are exempted from Speedy deletion section  A7 - An article about a real person, individual animal(s), organization (e.g. band, club, company, etc., except educational institutions), or web content that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant.  The topic is the source of  much  invective and bad faith between  inclusionists and exclusionists who do not necessarily  address pragmatic solutions for  school  notability. Comparative school  performance tables, good school guides, and government  inspection grades  are not awards and  are therefore probably  not  sources of notability, although  they  are often cited at  AfD. Guidelines for notability are based on  an interpretation  of a statement  made by  Jimbo  Wales in  2003, and which  has become an unofficial  precedent for tens of thousands of school  articles. In  2011 Jimbo  made it  clear that  the interpretation of his earlier comment  is no longer applicable.  The quandary  is now greater than ever, with  decisions on  notability  being  based more on  emotion than on  common sense and policy. It's very  difficult  to help  the creators of school  pages understand that  their article is not  notable. As an admin, I  now largely  avoid school AfD because it  is absolutely  unclear on  what  basis I  should vote and/or close them.

'''Is neutral point of view an issue when writing school-related articles? In what ways does the project keep POV edits in check?'''


 * CT Cooper: Yes definitely. School pupils often like to write negative, even libellous, remarks about their school on Wikipedia, but this is often simply dealt with as vandalism. More problematic cases include the schools themselves, or even the local authorities in some cases, taking it upon themselves to re-write their school articles.


 * Kudpung: It's as important for school  related articles as it  is for all  Wikipedia articles. Most  school pages are written and edited  by  single purpose accounts and often contain  a lot of  puffery, promotion, and rivalry. The creators of these pages are mainly  teachers, school administrators, and local authority personnel who are unlikely  to  read up on guidelines and policies just  for creating  one article; they  are even less likely  to  return to  the article later, or their own talk  page, to  see if  it  has been tagged.  They need to be  encouraged  to  revisit  Wikipedia to follow up on  their articles. Repair and improvement  of these articles is carried out  by  a tiny  number of   WP:WPSCH gnomes who  patiently  slog  through  the lists  of school articles requiring  attention.

'''Does the project collaborate with any other projects? Is there any overlap between WikiProject Schools and WikiProject Universities?'''


 * CT Cooper: There is no formal collaboration between WikiProject Schools and any other project, though school articles inevitably overlap with many different WikiProjects. Our main parent project is WikiProject Education, though this is not very active at this time. WikiProject Schools avoids overlap with WikiProject Universities by only covering institutions that do not award degrees in their own right – regardless of if "college" or "school" is in the name, which means that WikiProject Schools does cover further education colleges and sixth form colleges. However, the issues faced by both projects do still overlap, with essays such as Avoid academic boosterism, which was originally written for universities, being cited for school articles as well. Content about schools also extends to sections in locality articles, which inevitably means working with local, regional, and national WikiProjects for many different countries, including country by country education WikiProjects such as WikiProject Education in Australia.

'''What are the project's most pressing needs? How can a new contributor help today?'''


 * CT Cooper: WikiProject Schools is always looking for new contributors, and there are plenty of things that can be done to help. Articles in need of emergency, short term attention is used to identify threatened articles, and users are welcome to help keep on top of this list. The article request department lists missing articles, alongside WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/High schools, since there are probably thousands of notable schools still to be written about on Wikipedia. There is also the assessment department which deals with the momentous task of assessing the quality and importance of thousands of school articles. The number of articles in both Category:Unassessed school articles and Category:Unknown-importance school articles is dropping, but both are still backlogged.


 * Kudpung: The most pressing  needs are attention to  the backlogs of school  articles for improvement. The project has over 300 participants, but  in reality, fewer than ten are truly active and most  of those are the project  coordinators. Most editors added their names to the project  because they  believe it  is a requirement  for creating  or editing  school articles. A special welcome message  has been added to  the repertoire of welcoming  committee templates, and a dedicated help  desk  for school  articles  has been created in  the hope of encouraging  new editors to  seek assistance with school articles. New solutions need to  be found to  channel  new school article editors and creators to  the schools project pages before they  start  work. Urgently  needed improvements  to  the New Article Wizard could be brought  into  play.

Next week, we'll poke around the showroom before taking a test drive. Until then, polish your hubcaps and visit the archive.