Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Benjamin Cory Elementary School

Merge
Please discuss. - brenneman (t) (c)  03:20, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Merger of schools by area (or some other criteria?) could easily solve many problems. was a list of schools in Twickenham, and I am extremely interested to know in what ways it is inferior to a seperate article on each of the schools contained therein.

For reasons it is superior, many of the schools had a link to Twickenham Museum: Schools, and to Timeline of schools in Twickenham. By combining the articles, only two links are needed instead of twelve. Combining them also alleviates the need to say X school is a school in Twickenham, as the opening paragraph establishes they are all schools in Twickenham. The list contains infant schools, often not thought of as notable in themselves, but can be contained in such an article, probably with very little hostility.

So: the benefits are 1) removal of large amounts of duplication, improving the context 2) a place holder for infant schools and possibly even pre-schools. 3) Redirects on the school names point to the article for users searching by that method. --TimPope 17:11, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * At best, merging is just a temporary measure. These are articles that have an intrinsic tendency to expand over the decades, so I regard merging as a tactical move in the face of misguided attempts to delete school articles. --Tony Sidaway Talk  19:41, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I personally would be very happy to see school articles merged. In fact I've always maintained that they should be merged into the towns in which they are located. The editors of the town article sare in a good position to judge whether the schools are important in relation to the town and how much detail is worthwhile.
 * What, exactly, is the supposed benefit of separating the school from useful context about the town? After the school description grows, it can be broken out.
 * Another advantage of this is that it becomes much more obvious when only one school has been written about in a town that has six.
 * I just don't see why it is considered so important to have these things in their own articles. I think it's often done out of a vain preference for creating new articles rather than improving existing articles. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:13, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I think the fact is that we have several different kinds of people writing Wikipedia articles--people with different focuses. Someone whose primary focus is a town will tend, as you suggest, to focus on how important a school is in relation to the town. But by and large this isn't the perspective of the people who write primarily about schools.  This is similar to the problem that would occur if we wrote about major towns in a country only within the country article.  A town may have intrinsic features that simply aren't important at national level: the Sunderland Wintergarden and the statue of Jack Crawford are insignificant within the contect of the history of the British nation, whereas they have a local historical significance that places them just within the purview of Sunderland history (though not as important as Bishop Wearmouth, the Venerable Bede, and the ship building industry).  Likewise, the academic performance and history of a single school is unlikely to be of important to a town, but they will be one of the main subjects of an article about that school.  Shoveling school entries into the article about a local town is fine if you only have a couple of lines, but sooner or later people will want to add stuff that isn't strictly relevant at town level but would be perfectly useful in a school article. --Tony Sidaway Talk  20:55, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Aren't the points you make here academic performance and history of a single school is unlikely to be of important to a town, but they will be one of the main subjects of an article about that school already catered for by, for example, the OFSTED databases. It seems to me that those databases are always current and vandal free. Why wouldn't wikipedia just link to those from the town article? David D. (Talk) 21:22, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * To add to this point, if the only thing that is reported for a school is academic perfomance from a government database why not just link directly to the free database? This can be done from, for example, the Fleet, Hampshire page that would note the fact that there are two secondary schools Court Moor School and Calthorpe Park School and link to the relevant database. David D. (Talk) 21:41, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Why have individual articles on film titles and music albums? Why not just create a small number of articles on film and music genres and then link all the titles from the genre articles to IMDb and AllMusic or another database?  Silensor 21:44, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I have to admit that I have not seen any of these pages. Ii suspect my argument would not change and I'd agree with your idea above. I'm just not sure what kind of content these pages normally have. Can you point me to a page that has similar depth of content to the article under discussion here?David D. (Talk) 06:35, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Merging schools for the most part is pointless as per Tony Sidaway, above. In fact, the new tactic of trying to merge school articles seems to be almost the last ditch effort as deletionists are trying to fight the mounting tide of decent to excellent school articles which are now been kept via the VfD/AfD process. For the last 9 months, the only school articles that are actually being deleted are elementary schools and preschools (and even these are not universal deletes). As Wikipedia continues to grow, it is inevitable that elementary schools (and perhaps even preschools) will have decent to excellent articles and an increasing number of editors will see the merit in preserving them - ultimately under the same old rubric that "schools are inherently notable". I already know that deletionists do not subscribe to that idea - that is why this proxy discussion/argument for "merging" exists in the first place - another attempt to resolve an issue which has been clearly demonstrated as irresolvable. Those who believe that schools are inherently notable will not simply change their minds. Those who believe that a school is no more than four walls and a roof unless something they subjectively deem to be "notable" has taken place there will likewise not be convinced. Forget about merging schools into cities or towns - the only tool we have to resolve these issues for now is the AfD process - all previous attempts to reach a concensus have failed miserably, we aren't going to get one now by proposing to "merge" school articles out of existence.--Nicodemus75 22:22, 7 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I believe that the reason why more secondary schools are being kept than a few years ago is not because of power plays or any change in consensus, but because the quality of high school articles is better now than it was a couple of years ago. This in turn is because a number of editors have started to put in some real, honest work on them. Even though many people will assert that the quality of an article shouldn't affect the decision as to whether it should be deleted, in practice (and very sensibly IMHO) it does. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:18, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Nicodemus, rather than say merging is a deletionist tactic, please state why schools should not be merged. To Tony Sidaway I reply that you say schools will expand to be too big for a list, but as the school expands in length it will duplicate information which is true about the other schools in the list. You can expand school X by saying it gives after School Ancient Greek lessons, but if schools Y and Z also offer such lessons then you are increasing duplication. We should be discussing how to improve Wikipedia, and whether information could be presented better in a list or table rather than a dozen articles saying School X does A,B,C and D, School Y does A, B, C and D, School Z does A, B, C and D, oh and famous celebrity Joe Bloggs attended it, how wonderful! --TimPope 17:15, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * In all silliness, perhaps we should merge your comments into the others on this page since they all use the exact same letters. We could set up a table...
 * Silliness aside, what I really don't understand is the near obsessive need that some people have to remove real, verifiable information about public institutions. We have articles on less relevant towns and even counties with populations under 100 people that go unmolested.  Some people are very interested in having school coverage.  Others aren't, but does that mean they should interfere with those they disagree with?
 * I see schools as distinct, separate entities within a larger system. Leave it to categories, lists, and interlinking to connect them where they need to be connected; that's what those features of Mediawiki are for.  In this case, a merge is just using a manual, human effort substitute for something that a database does far better.  Although not stated in our article about him, a primary lesson of John Henry is "never compete with a machine at the task for which the machine is designed."  Merging competes with the database for connecting interrelated articles.  Why do you even care if schools have a separate article?   Un  focused  19:46, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Because schools by their very nature are all very similar (within a given locale), and articles of any length about schools will tend to contain a lot of duplication, which if merged need not be the case. I also see schools as entities within a larger system, so I think we should describe that system, not its smallest components. Otherwise, we might as well take today's featured article Anarcho-capitalism, and split it up into half a dozen smaller articles about each particular point made within it. Why not break everything down to its smallest component? Don't bother with schools even, write an individual article about each classroom, teacher and pupil!--TimPope 20:03, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I made a similar point to someone (User:Silensor)who said let's just have one article called Earth and be done with it. That's obviously a strawman argument since no people in favour of mergers are looking to merge schools beyond a school district. The other extreme would be to document each period in a particular classroom as well as which pupil sits at each desk in each period.  I would also like to get some information on the types of educational posters on the back wall the front wall as well (two wiki pages there at least).  Where are the windows? Is there a clock? Obviously those arguments are ridiculous, nevertheless it is no more ridiculous than article Earth.
 * I see one advantage of mergers as showing how schools relate to each other, possibly in a hierachial list, without havng to click through categories. Once an individual schools start to expand from the basic info, i.e. they have notable and distinct characteristics, then a single page would be appropriate.  David D. (Talk) 21:09, 9 September 2005 (UTC)


 * "Schools are similar" is still a very fragile argument in my opinion. We don't see school pep rallies where the cheerleaders chant "Go North-Central Consolidated School District students, let's kick the other North-Central Consolidated School District students' butts!", they chant things like "Go Northwood Lions, let's kick the McArthur Panthers' butts!", even when Northwood and McArthur are in the same district.  Those IN the schools see themselves as distinct and separable.
 * When you see what school a famous person has attended, you don't see the district, nor do you see the individual classrooms; you see the schools. This IS the appropriate level of detail, proven by common use in society years after people have left their schools!  Just because we're almost always looking at it from the perspective of "distant outsider" doesn't mean the detail isn't there.  Those who aren't interested have even turned down the magnification on their "interest goggles" to deliberately gloss over differences that those who are interested easily see.
 * QUICK, what school district did you attend? Maybe you know, but 90% of people have no idea.
 * Further, I don't believe I've gotten an answer to why you care if there are separate school articles.  Un  focused  21:35, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
 * The whole famous alumni thing is a distraction, it really has nothing to do with the school, it is a fact related to the person . Everyone went to a school. We are trying to discuss why merged articles would be better than individual school articles — in most cases the only real pertinent facts in any one school are 1) it's a school 2) its geographical location, and because you have several schools in one location one can make a better article by putting them together. If a town has six schools, you need six schools, one list and one category - how is that better than one reasonable length article? Clearly if there is one school which is so famous by its reputation and the myriad of amazing things that happened there it can have its own article, but that is not the case for the majority of schools. Why do you care if they are merged? It's all there and easy to find because of that other great mediawiki feature, the redirect! --TimPope 09:56, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Schools are obviously distinct and separate in almost all sectors of our culture; see Alma mater. That is why they should be separate articles.
 * I see "Famous alumni are a distraction" as an excuse to not recognize that others find this information very interesting. It is very interesting to see what famous alumni can be tracked to each individual school, and the easiest way to do that is to include mention of their schools in their articles, and mention them in their alma maters, unless we make a list or category for each school's attendees.
 * In short, schools should be separate articles because that's the way culture recognizes them. Alma mater, cheerleader example above, magnet schools within the same district, etc.  When's the last time you saw a school district with a distinct mascot?  Recognition of the value that culture already places on this information as separate and distinct really is the only NPOV treatment of this issue.   Un  focused  13:25, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Why would merging the articles breach NPOV? In fact if anything merging would help to enforce NPOV because it would be more obvious what context the school is in because we have its neighbouring schools to compare it against. Any mascots can go on a merge page if they are considered to be of worth. --TimPope 13:41, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
 * The prevailing view of society is that schools are distinct, individual, and more recognizable as individual units than as school districts. As I asked before, what school districts did you attend?  Most people don't know.  The lack of a quick answer from 90% of people proves that the schools are the important dividing point.  Any breach of NPOV due to grouping in a manner generally not recognized by the public at large is very minor, however, it does impart the view of the article writers to merge items generally recognized by the public as separate and distinct, and is therefore a POV action.  Context of the district is brought by application of appropriate categories, and linking from and to the district.   Un  focused  15:42, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
 * The prevailing view of society is that people know of the schools in their town, maybe a few in their neighbouring towns and a few nationwide or world famous schools. Yes you are right I do not know which school district my school was within, I apologise for not answering that the first time as I imagined it was a rhetorical question. However, people do know which town their school is located in. I have not advocated merging by school district, rather by town, and others on this page have said with the towns themselves. So your POV problem isn't going to happen. I don't think that people recognise schools outside their knowledge as seperate entities at all; in fact if I told someone which school I went to, and they were from a different town, region or country, they are extremely unlikely to have heard of it. This is distinct from say Universities, which in general have reputations which permeate the whole country and possibly internationally. A category does not add context to an article, and is inferior way of writing about a subject. If for some reason I was lookiong for a school in New York, it would be easier for me to find out about it from a an article describing maybe all the schools in Bronx, rather than ploughing through a dozen articles in a category. The category is just adding a layer of abstraction which really isn't very helpful at that level. You would therefore also need a list, and once you have that you might as well as put the information in the list and have it straight away, rather than going through layers of categories to get what you want. --TimPope 18:41, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Since the Court Moor School deletion vote, I have reorganised the Hampshire schools listing in the United Kingdom school list. This new format allows lists of schools to include stub like school pages with out necessarily needing their own page. On the List of schools in Hampshire area1 I have attempted to maintain the more familiar references to town names but, nevertheless, preserve the school district grouping too. An advantage of such a page is that it is easy to see how the schools relate to each other. The Court Moor info box includes all the info on the Court Moor School page, in fact, more. I prefer this format since it is obvious from the list which schools act as feeder schools as well as giving a guide to the number of missing school pages or info boxes.  The advantage of the info box is that when a school really does have enough contributions to be 'notable' enough to have it's own page then it is easy to change the format of the info box in the lists by changing it to the info school template that is used on school articles.  Such a change is trivial, in this case just substituting the word 'day' to 'school' (I know day was a stupid name for the info box, it can be changed once we reach a consensus.). This is my interpretation of the compromise that the deletionists are proposing. Having looked at the wiki school project it is also similar to what they recommend as well as conforming to the template they appear to endorse (I could be wrong on this?).  Since this is the case merging should not be such a contentious issue. David D. (Talk) 16:59, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Why not link to OFSTED or similar databases?
I don't think it is a good argument to say that because they are not voted out of wikipedia they are worth keeping since one only needs ten active people to stop a deletion. This is a minor percentage of wiki editors and an even smaller fraction of wiki users. This is all about information versus knowledge. Those that wish to keep schools seem to be in favor of the inclusion of information. Imagine if all that energy was put into adding knowledge?

The Fleet page used to mentioned the area schools in this manner :
 * The town has a number of schools including Heatherside, All Saints, Velmead, Calthorpe Park and Court Moor School.

Rather than linking all these schools to their own page such as Court Moor School. It is much simpler to link to the OFSTED data set. The Fleet page could more easily, and informatively, address the schools in this manner :
 * The town has a number of schools including Heatherside, All Saints, Velmead, Calthorpe Park School and Court Moor School.

Obviously if one of these schools has something exceptional to expand the 'knowledge' in wikipedia beyond the 'information' in the OFSTED database then it warrants it's own page. There is nothing in the current Court Moor School page that can be regarded as knowledge over information. If information is the priority for wikipedia then bus timetables etc. should be acceptable. Even stock prices that change on a daily basis.

Why is it better to link to schools that do not add to the information already in the OFSTED databases? This has the advantage of being vandal free and up to date. Note that the main reason would be for the information to be current. One might argue that the links will be vandalised. This is true but it is still preferable to having the actual information on a wiki page. If I vandalise a link it is clear since the link will not work. If I change a data point on the page from 15% to 25% it is not obviously vandalism and might even be considered a legitimate update. Once the Court Moor School page has more than OFSTED and DFES data on it's page then it will be worth keeping. For now I do not see the problem of having it associated only with the Fleet page. i.e. merge or redirect to that page. David D. (Talk) 23:56, 7 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I knew it was only a matter of time before the argument from deletionists would be "oh the VfD/AfD process is no good", based on the idea that it only requires a small number of editors to keep an article. Frankly, this position is absurd as an instrument of combating school articles. If you don't like the AfD process, go and debate it in the on-going debates that are taking place about that process. If the VfD process was allowing for majority deletions of school articles, I daresay that deletionists would have absolustely no problem with the process. The only reason the process is being attacked in this way is because deletionists are continuing to lose the votes. Those of us who want to include all schools do so in large measure because we hold that schools are inherently notable - we believe that entries about schools contain both information AND knowledge (and that school stubs have the potential to contain both knowledge and information) - this difference in opinion is precisely why this impasse exists in the first place. Even Jimbo supports the inclusion of school articles and the existing mechanism of VfD/AfD has led to a long-term and hardfought concensus (and not a few excellent articles) that at least secondary school articles are now routinely kept. The fact is, that there is no real concensus on this issue and AfD/VfD remains the only tool we have to continue "fighting it out".  I fundamentally disagree with your subjective assertion that "There is nothing in the current Court Moor School page that can be regarded as knowledge over information."  I regard the entry itself as knowledge, with more specific knowledge being it's history, being an example of a magnet school and look forward to the expansion of the article. I recognize that my characterization of the article and the information contained therein could also be subjected to the criticism that it is only knowledge by my own subjective standard - so be it. As far as I am concerned, deletionists are applying nothing more or less than their own subjective standards in the first place. --Nicodemus75 01:08, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Mmm, You are putting words into my mouth here. Also you did not comment at all on the constructive suggestions and comments that I was trying to make above.
 * I would not regard myself as a deletionist but I do know Court Moor School, since I grew up in Fleet. I am giving you feed back based on my knowledge of the school.
 * It's interesting you say that Wales agree's with your point of view. I looked up his quotes and he says paraphrased from.
 * I could write a decent 2 page article about my high school, citing information that can easily be verified by anyone who visits their website. People should relax and accommodate me. It'd be a good article, I'm a good contributor, and so cutting me some slack is a very reasonable thing to do.
 * Well I agree with that statement. Then he continues:
 * That's true *even if* we'd react differently to a ton of one-liners mass-imported saying nothing more than "Randolph School is a private school in Huntsville, Alabama, US" etc. ad nauseum. The argument "what if someone did this particular thing 100,000 times" is not a valid argument against letting them do it a few times.
 * Doesn't it sound like he is against people creating school pages with no content? He's saying decent school articles should be given a break, NOT, Keep every school article. Are there are any other quotes out there?
 * Also, you should have noted that I am rarely in the school section trying to delete everything that passes through. Your desire to keep regardless of content is reminiscent of the famous Apple advertisement. To Quote Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!  Fine, you win, who really cares, there are more important things to do. David D. (Talk) 04:21, 8 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Sounds to me like he is against exactly what he says he is against, that being "a ton of one-liners mass-imported saying nothing..." Most AfD nominated schools are not "mass-imported", and simply because a stub has not yet been developed, does not make it a viable candidate for AfD. Every stub that has the potential of being expanded needs time to be expanded, not immediately AfD nominated because it has little information as of yet. As far as putting words in your mouth, I just quoted what you had stated, to wit: "There is nothing in the current Court Moor School page that can be regarded as knowledge over information." A statement I disagree with based upon my position that schools are inherently notable. With respect to your "constructive" suggestions, I find them neither useful nor germaine. My position, (along with many inclusionists) is: Schools are inherently notable, therefore schools are deserving of seperate articles on Wikipedia as the "sum of all knowledge".  Any attempt to merge, redirect, delete or otherwise impair the integrity of the existence of individual articles about schools is contrary to the position I hold - therefore, I find your suggestions and comments merely grist for the deletionist mill, even if you yourself generally stay out ofthe school articles debate. No offense to your experiences at Court Moor school, but I couldn't care less if someone who went to Oxford tried to tell me it wasn't notable because it is (probably by most English-speaking standards, anyway).  The real problem that exists with this ongoing debate is that the previous years attempts to try and reach a concensus have failed so miserably and dismally that a lot of these re-hashing of various arguments to limit, delete or impair school articles are merely proxy fights between the two positions (and those moderate positions in between) that either hold that schools are inherently notable versus schools are not inherently notable.  All this being said, I should apologize if my previous response seemed too caustic - I hope this response more clearly enunciates my position and my previous comments. --Nicodemus75 07:13, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * You didn't put these words into my mouth "oh the VfD/AfD process is no good"? Not to mention I am not a deletionist as you claim. Your position of "schools are inherently notable" is, and was, noted. David D. (Talk) 14:40, 8 September 2005 (UTC)


 * As a general guide please try to focus upon the content of the articles and not upon personal perceptions of other's motivations. It would be good if we could generate more light, less heat.  That probably means less bluster all around, ok? -  brenneman (t) (c)  02:36, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * With all due respect, to hell with that. Plenty of articles have been deleted and nominated for deletion despite hours of editors' time and effort to create fine, encyclopaedic content - simply because deletionists do not believe that schools are notable based on some foggy, deletionist, subjective standard of notability which seems to escape definition. All efforts over the months to reach a concensus on this issue have failed miserably. There is simply a never-ending repetition of "schools are inherently notable" versus "schools are not inherently notable" with different ways of re-stating that argument. Motivation is now the argument, not the content.--Nicodemus75 06:40, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Which are the school articles that have been nominated for deletion and deleted despite hours of editors' time and effort? My impression is that the school articles that have been whipped into shape have been kept. I'm not aware of any exceptions. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:57, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * The inherent problem with arguing the contributer, not the contribution is that it's easy to get it wrong. Labelling a person and then responding to that label as opposed to their arguments is a recipe for more arguments and less consensus.  brenneman (t) (c)  22:52, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Current arguments against merging

 * 1) Articles would be too big.
 * 2) *Rather than more hot air all around, how about we try ang get short and sweet answeres to these questions:
 * 3) **How big is the average school article right now?
 * 4) **How many schools per town/county/district/state do we have now?
 * 5) **What's the "growth rate" for school articles?
 * 6) **How big can they actually get while remaining encyclopedic?
 * 7) *With this information we can easily determine if there is anything inherently wrong with the idea of merging school articles based upon article size.
 * 8) *Please provide links/diffs to support any claim that is made.
 * 9) * For actual arguments against merging, see other sections above this one. To my knowledge, nobody else has argued against merging on the grounds that it would make articles too big.  A wildly inaccurate attempt to summarise arguments is worse than useless. --Tony Sidaway Talk  23:41, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * 10) **At best, merging is just a temporary measure. These are articles that have an intrinsic tendency to expand over the decades, so I regard merging as a tactical move in the face of misguided attempts to delete school articles. --Tony SidawayTalk 19:41, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
 * 11) ** You read that as "Articles would be too big"? I shall leave you to your increasingly inventive interpretations of the words of others. --Tony Sidaway Talk 01:02, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
 * 12) ***Hi Tony, I just read it and the implication seems pretty logical. And if your problem with merging is not because the town articles become too big, then why does the fact that the school articles expand over the decades cause the merging to be temporary? Since you wrote it, clearly you did not mean "Articles would be too big", but I can see why others might interpret it that way. David D. (Talk) 01:32, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
 * 13) **** My point was precisely the opposite. That, merged, the item would not tend to expand. I don't have a fundamental problem with merging, I've done it myself. I don't think it works that often, though. It's rather unpopular and, when AfDs have been attempted as a means of enforcing a merge, they have tended to fail, which suggests to me that consensus can be hard to find for a school merge.  --Tony Sidaway Talk  02:34, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
 * 14) *****OK, I can see that now. Sorry for not catching that to start with. You know what's strange, now I have looked at a few of these school articles, some are larger than the article for the home town. May be people are keener to write about their old schools than their home towns?  Or the WP:SCH/Schoolwatch project promotes an active interest. You may have stumbled on a good approach to get people active in improving stubs (since I'm new I probably don't know about the rules against such an act). David D. (Talk) 03:19, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
 * 15) *****Tony, can you give an example of a merged item that has failed to expand? I will meanwhile be looking for an example of a merged item which has expanded, see you later :) --TimPope 17:02, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
 * 16) ***** I'm currently looking at Shadow Hearts, which is an article about four video games in a series. It does not appear unduly stunted by not being four seperate articles. --TimPope 18:12, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
 * 17) Content would not be relevent to towns.
 * 18) *Possible arguement against merging into town articles.
 * 19) *Not argument against merging in general. Eg. List of schools in Foo where Foo could be a town, county, state, or country.
 * 20) ** We've been here before. WP:SCH recommends merging to school districts, LEAs and the like, which I endorse where there is insufficient material for a good stub. --Tony Sidaway Talk  02:36, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
 * 21) ***We don't need a big hoohah about merging. If editor X wants to merge school Y into list Z, he/she can go ahead and do it. If editor X1 doesn't like it, he/she can unmerge it. They can then bicker in an ungodly way, leading to an unseemly and bitter dispute, just like they do in every other section of Wikipedia. The truth of it is, the inclusionists will oppose merging of decent stubs, and will not fight for the rubbish, and the deletionists will tire of wasting their time trying to enforce their norms against opposition, just as people do in every other area of the encyclopaedia. I haven't seen anyone argue "don't merge crap articles"; only "don't delete schools". Grace Note 03:09, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Comments

 * I've taken my sigs off the above. It's meant to be an NPOV summary.  brenneman (t) (c)  00:24, 9 September 2005 (UTC)