Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Sunset High School (Portland)

comments taken from kingturtle's talk page
I've been looking for the Votes for Deletion log showing where there was a consensus to blank Westview High School (Beaverton), Southridge High School, Sunset High School (Portland) and redirect them to Beaverton School District. Were they nominated for deletion, or did the discussion just take place at Talk:Sunset High School (Portland)? Thanks much. --BaronLarf 17:34, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)
 * The discussion took place in VfD and is archived in Talk:Sunset High School (Portland)]. I am using that discussion to justify my actions of the other two high school articles in question. The general question regarding such schools is listed in [[Wikipedia:Deletion policy/schools and Are high schools encyclopedic?. Kingturtle 20:36, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't see a consensus to merge here; I count 3 deletes, 4 keeps and 1 merge.  Either way, when there is a lack of consensus, the result should be to keep.  I realize that merging and redirecting isn't considered deletion by some, rather just a form of being bold.  I don't believe that the two articles you reference are wikipedia policy. Since I doubt that we can come to agreement on this, and since these articles are being blanked and redirected, reverted, then reverted back, etc, perhaps this should be brought to VfD again for community comment.  Cheers. --BaronLarf 01:43, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * That VfD discussion culminated on 29 Nov 2003 with Martin saying The "result of the debate" (read, what I decided to do) was to redirect it to Beaverton School District, which already had most of the info from here.. I recently came across the Sunset High School (Portland) article while doing some Random Page edits. I read the TALK page and saw that the redirect had been removed, and so I put the redirect back. Kingturtle 01:48, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

the issue of school articles
I have given up on the school issue. Schools are not inherently notable and should be decided on a case by case basis, but the radical inclusionists have won, and I've stopped voting. RickK 02:13, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

I voted on the issue you left for me. --Spinboy 02:29, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I am not so interested in simple votes either way. I want us to put together a policy that we can all agree on. Kingturtle 02:31, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure why this school issue has dragged on for so long. Most other subjects that were major and contentious VfD issues a year ago (lists of trivia, recipes) have largely been settled and now rarely appear on VfD.  For schools this has not been the case. There was even a poll done awhile ago that had a large turnout, for the time, and reached a strong consensus that in general articles on schools should not be deleted.  This poll led to only a temporary cease-fire and by last fall schools again began appearing en masse on VfD with some of them getting deleted. It would be great to establish a broad consensus (or even revive the old one) but it is pointless if it only lasts a short while. - SimonP 02:53, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)


 * I would like to create a consensus on this, but efforts to do so in the past have failed. SimonP is the only person who thinks that said poll establishes a clear consensus (the article in question clearly explains why it isn't consensual). In general, people judge articles on their merit - for instance, articles on people can clearly be sorted into noteworthy and vanity, and the latter deleted (with some discussion on VfD). For reasons that elude me, people react very angrily and strongly to anything related to high schools, resulting in polarizing factionalism which seems to make discussion impossible.
 * Thus, several people vote an automatic 'keep' on high schools on general principle, and other people react to that by voting an automatic 'delete' on general principle. Both are not particularly useful. The end result is that school articles are kept or deleted not on their merit, but on whoever happens to be voting that week, and whatever admin happens to be closing the vote. That is unWikiPedic. Someone has reacted to this by attempting to gather as many votes in his favor as possible, but thankfully that person has now been blocked for disruption. Votes are not discussion. WP:WIN a democracy. Polls are evil. Etc.
 * Anyway to get back to the policy issue - what I'd suggest is that 1) you wait a couple of weeks until the current hotheadedness has boiled down a bit; then 2) create a Wikipedia page to discuss this (by which I specifically do not mean vote on this) (and also this shouldn't be a VfD article but rather something like Wikipedia/School discussion) and 3) advertise this page on the Village Pump, on WP:Watch, on Wikiproject:Schools and on VfD, and wherever else you think is appropriate.
 * Hope that helps. Yours, Radiant_* 09:57, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually after the poll many users felt that consensus had been established . There was then a period of several months when few schools were listed and pretty much none were deleted. (See the earliest section of Votes for deletion/High schools). By the time schools began to be relisted, however, the cast of characters on VfD had largely changed and the poll was mostly forgotten. - SimonP 12:04, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)


 * In other words, the consensus has since changed, and thus said vote is no longer relevant, and you cannot hold current people to a past consensus. Radiant_* 12:19, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * That would be true if VfD was an accurate measure of the general consensus. As I recall the era before the first poll was similar to how it is now with a fair proportion of nominated schools getting deleted. I was thus quite surprised by how clearly the outcome of that poll was pro-schools.  VfD, not unsurprisingly, tends to attract those people interested in deleting things. Polls brought to the attention of wider community (e.g. those on recipes, fame and importance, and schools one) tend to get a more liberal outcome than the many smaller polls on VfD. For instance see the votes on Talk:List of recipes/Delete, it shows several standard votes that had unanimity in favour of deletion and the main poll that saw an even split between keeps and deletes. - SimonP 21:06, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)


 * Point is you can't generalize and assume that something that was true two years ago still holds true now, or that something applying to recipes necessarily applies to schools. That is called a false cause. By the way there are a number of strong inclusionists that frequent VfD - such as yourself, Kappa, and David Gerard. So it's simply not true that VfD is obviously biased towards deletionism. By the way why are we discussing this on Kingturtle's talk page? Radiant_* 23:04, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * I personally would not describe myself as an inclusionist I agree with 99.9% of deletions and for long periods I was the person who did much of the deleting. I also don't think I vote much on VfD. At most I comment on one or two articles per day. Also that there are people doing yeoman's work such as Kappa and David Gerard does not disprove that there is a bias. I did an analysis of VfD over a period of a few days back in January. I found that a group of ten users cast 49% of all VfD votes. These were Geogre, Improv, Bill, Siroxo, Dpbsmith, Nadavspi, RickK, Mandel, Wile E. Heresiarch, Chriscf, and Meelar. Of that group there was only one person who consistently voted to keep disputed articles (Siroxo) and five who consistently supported deletion (Geogre, Improv, RickK, Mandel, and Wile E. Heresiarch). This conversation is getting off topic, however, and we should probably stop bombarding Kingturtle's user page. - SimonP 05:18, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Sorry to bother you, Kingturtle. Consider this the modern version of Plato's Dialogues :) Radiant_* 07:53, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)