Wikipedia talk:Schools/Archive 2

Time for a rumble?
Now that we have an alternative proposal, how 'bout we have the two alternatives WP:SCHOOLS and WP:SCHOOLS3 offered to the masses for a face off and see which one wins a majority as a consensus guideline. Given the narrow group that has worked on Schools3, it has far less credibility than the original, regardless of the failure of the original proposal to reach agreement. Several of the criteria have been worded so narrowly -- especially the unintelligible criterion 5 re alumni and efforts to sharply restrict the general Wikipedia standards on non-trivial coverage in criterion 1, combined with complete removal of a number of the WP:SCHOOLS criteria -- that this proposal may be unlikely to win over any of the supporters of the original WP:SCHOOLS, without gaining the full support of those opposed to it. Alansohn 02:23, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Charming suggestion. I would rush to point out that voting is evil and that if neither has a consensus then it doesn't make sense to make them face off. Furthermore, this one is still a work in progress. JoshuaZ 02:28, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with you. This proposal is still being developed.  It will be a proposed guideline for a while.  This is not a contest with another proposal, but an attempt to achive consensus in a difficult area.  Lets not be forced to formally decide if we have a consensus here until we feel ready.  Vegaswikian 02:58, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * "Let's put my favourite, more inclusionist, proposal against this more deletionist one right now. The winner becomes the guideline. Oh, and mine wins because yours is still very new and thus has not had so many contributors." Is that a fair summary of your suggestion, Alansohn? As for the restriction of the general wikipedia standards on non-trivial coverage: local newspapers are almost never accepted as non-trivial coverage, or else we should include every sporting event, concert, fair, ... "The yearly fleamarket of Smallville-upon-Tweed was a great success, with 50 sellers and more than a thousand visitors. In an unlucky incident, the vicar's wife broke her ankle, but a merry day was had by all others". Hey, it's in the paper, let's turn it into an article! Coverage in local newspapers = trivial coverage. If something is covered in large, reputable newspapers (or books, ...), then the coverage in a local newspaper can be used as an additional source, to give more detail or so. But to accept subjects (any subjects) because they are covered, even regularly, in local newspapers, is similar to dropping all restrictions and saying that WP:BIO and WP:CORP are equally invalid because they are more strict than an inclusionist interpretation of WP:V allows. Fram 09:34, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Our Verifiability policy, in all of its three main incarnations, says nothing about excluding local newspapers, and rightly so. The important qualities of newspaper sources are that they have names and reputations for accuracy and fact checking that can be consulted, and that several (at least two people) are involved in a process of review prior to publication.  Those qualities are not determined by whether a newspaper is local or national. Uncle G 15:19, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Right now we have many of the same people who denigrate WP:SCHOOL using the barely developed, minimally discussed WP:SCHOOLS3 article as a basis for justifying deletions. Unlike the many deletionists who post AFDs for article just hours or days old, I am more than willing to allow this alternative proposal an adequate opportunity to develop. Furthermore, SCHOOLS3 was not developed on a tabula rasa, but was developed by cutting, pasting and modifying the original SCHOOLS proposal, and shouldn't need too much time to be completed. I agree that there are many articles in local publications that would not meet the "non-trivial coverage" aspect of criterion 1. However, as drafted by JoshuaZ and others, and based on your wording of its meaning, huge swathes of coverage will be eliminated, solely because the newspaper it appears in is not sufficiently national in coverage. As I have constructively suggested, Some definition must be developed to define what qualifies as "non-trivial", and the proposal as it exists now is a non-starter. Which publications would be included? I'm not proposing a more inclusionist version of the coverage requirements of WP:BIO, WP:CORP and WP:V; I'm merely suggesting that the actual wording of these universally-accepted Wikipedia guidelines are far more inclusive than the deletionist-targeted narrow version proposed here. It's amazing what is acceptable when one actually follows what the relevant Wikipedia policies say, and not what people insist they have to mean. I strongly encourage expanding this SCHOOLS3 concept into something that might actually appeal to some of those who favor the original SCHOOLS guidelines. Pick the amount of time needed and let's see put it to participants to see which alternative can demonstrate the greatest consensus, and agree that we will all accept the chosen option. Other than that, we will see more of this nonsensical rejection of use of WP:SCHOOLS while others are simultaneously appealing to a WP:SCHOOLS3 standard that has made only the barest attempts at being a consensus guideline. Alansohn 17:28, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Disagree. At the moment, I don't think it makes sense for anyone to really be citing either this or WP:SCHOOLS but I agree that discussion about criterion 1 does need to occur. JoshuaZ 17:48, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Discussion about this criterion 1 certainly does. It's different to the primary notability criteria everywhere else. Uncle G 15:19, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
 * This is not a 'deletionist-targeted' proposal! It is an attempt to find a middle ground that consensus can develop around. It is an attempt to 'actually appeal to some of those who favor the original SCHOOLS guidelines' since they need to be a part of any consensus.  The problem is that consensus needs to find a middle ground, probably at a place were many editors are not happy.  If we include too many concepts from the previous proposal, then this one will fail for the same reasons.  Yes, editors have been using this in AfD, but other editors have been using the previous propsal in AfD forever.  The bottom line is that we need to reach consensus.  This proposal seems to be moving forward so lets try to keep it moving to a point where it can reach consensus.  Vegaswikian 19:44, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Alansohn, many inclusionists refer to the discredited WP:SCHOOLS proposal when discussing their reasons to keep. What is different?  Yes, it's a couple of months older -- but consensus was not reached, so it's no more valid than this proposal is, on its face.  Yes, this one clearly needs further refinement -- but it's obviously more attractive to some than WP:SCHOOLS, or they wouldn't be referring to it.  The point here is not to put this up against WP:SCHOOLS in some bizarre contest; it's to take it and adjust it in the hopes of finding a better consensus on methods for determining the notability of schools.  Right now, WP:SCHOOLS is far more inclusive than the equivalent policies covering biographies, bands, corporations, etc., and there are many of us who see no reason it should be so.  By the same token, it shouldn't be significantly more strict than those guidelines.  But "let's vote and discard the loser" is not the appropriate way to reach a consensus -- I would be very surprised indeed if the losing side (and I'm not so certain that would be the "deletionist" side) simply gave up.  No, what's needed is a compromise both sides can live with, though probably neither will be truly happy with it. Shimeru 22:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Wrong on several counts. WP:SCHOOLS is not discredited, and Alansohn has already explained that the primary criterion in WP:SCHOOLS is the same as WP:BIO, WP:CORP, WP:WEB, et al..  It is largely the same wording. It is this proposal that employs a criterion that is different from all of the others, not WP:SCHOOL.  And the reason that it does so is that a small minority of editors are wholly ignoring the word "multiple" in the primary criterion of WP:SCHOOLS, WP:BIO, WP:CORP, et al. and are arguing against employing reliable, independent, in-depth, sources such as government reports because it is a convenient disguise for an old "stuck record" argument.  Editors should discard the "stuck record" arguments, disguised or otherwise, and focus upon sources.  The only reason put forward for discarding these published works that are detailed, published, reliable, and from sources independent of their subjects is, in summary, that "we end up with a lot of articles".  That argument doesn't wash for towns, whose notability is demonstrated by the fact that they are the subjects of government reports (e.g. census reports) as well as local histories, local news coverage, and so forth, and it doesn't wash here. A very few editors are also making the false assertion that "every school is the subject of a government report".  This is demonstrably false.  There's a ready example of a school with no government report given by JzG on Wikipedia talk:Schools, and a few such schools have come up at AFD over the past month or so.  This fundamental error has been pointed out several times, now. That this proposal is different to all of the other notability criteria (whereas WP:SCHOOL is, in contrast, the same), and attempts to exclude perfectly acceptable sources because of a wholly erroneous premise and as a proxy for a different argument altogether, makes it a bad proposal. Uncle G 15:19, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
 * In some (most?) countries, every accredited school (and nurseries, kindergartens, ...) have official government inspection reports. In some (most?) countries and regions, every restaurant (after a minimal time of existence of course) has official inspection reports by government agencies. As I have debated at length in a recnt school AfD, these are published as well (just like the school reports). Still, if someone wanting to have a non notable restaurant included would point to these inspection reports as evidence that the restaurant meets WP:CORP, he would be laughed away (or hopefully gently shown that he or she is wrong), even though it would fit the letter of the guideline. So, Uncle G, do you propose that we include every restaurant that has official inspection reports (for the US, e.g. accessible through this site), or do you agree that inspection reports can be disregarded as trivial (other options may be given as well of course, I'm not trying to create a false dilemma, just trying to show the untenable position you seem to have)? Fram 15:55, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
 * The untenable position is yours. In your very first sentence you repeat yet again a canard that is demonstrably false, and base your argument upon it.  Moreover, accepting government reports as published works that go towards demonstrating the notability of cities, towns, and villages and not accepting such reports for schools is inconsistent. Finally, I suggest that you actually read some of these restaurant reports that you are using to support your argument.  They don't support your argument at all.  I've just looked up KEANI-EAST MCDONALDS, 1900 W SLAUSON AVE, LOS ANGELES, CA 90047 in the Los Angeles list.  The report comprises solely a bare table of violation codes and a bare table of dates and grades.  There's no prose content in the report at all.  It's hardly an in-depth document.  It's not even a whole page.  Depth is what the triviality qualification is all about, as WP:SCHOOL clearly states and as this proposal gets entirely wrong.  For comparison, the reports on schools that you are erroneously asserting to be on an equal footing with this restaurant report are tens of pages of detailed prose.  The one linked to from Sidney Stringer School, for example, is 49 pages of detailed prose discussing a wide range of aspects of the subject, in 193 sections.  To say that both are trivial, and to assert that to accept the latter is to accept the former, is to completely fail to understand the triviality qualification. Your argument appears to be based not only on the aforementioned canard, but upon not actually looking at the reports that you are suggesting are non-trivial published works.  I strongly suggest actually looking.  You'll find that your argument, and this entire proposal, is built on an completely erroneous foundation.   WP:SCHOOL explains what triviality is about.  That this proposal, in contrast, gets it wholly wrong is a reason to reject this proposal. Uncle G 02:58, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * First, saying that something is a canard doesn't make it so. So you are claiming that there are absolutely no countries where every accredited school has an inspection report? Bizarre... And then, you are changing the goalposts. First, inspection reports were enough. Now at once, they have to be lengthy and in prose. Why? Facts are facts, no matter if they are bulleted or in longer sentences. The inspection report of a restaurant (and there are often a whole series of them) shows existence, and is independent coverage. From WP:V: "Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Reliable: check. Third party: check. Published: check. Fact-checking: check. Accuracy: check. I don't see a mention of prose, length, ... There is nothing in WP:V about any of your sudden requirements: what you rry to do is crete an arbitrary rule. No problem with that, but then be upfront about it instead of trying to act as if I made some terrible error against WP:V by including food inspection reports. You consider them non trivial because they are more lengthy and detailed: I consider them trivial because they are mandatory and don't indicate notability of any specific school, even though they of course provide information. It is because these things are not clear cut that we try to develop a guideline. No need to attack the person presenting his arguments or to falsely attack the arguments themselves. 06:28, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * No-one has attacked you. And no-one has put forward an example of such a country.  (Your URL doesn't work, by the way. So what point it was intended to make is lost.) It's certainly untrue for the United Kingdom, the only country that editors have asserted has an inspection report for every school.  There was a U.K. school at AFD only last month that had no inspection report. No, the goalposts have not changed.  "non-trivial" has always been a part of the PNC.  It's you who asserted that "inspection reports were enough".  This is your straw man &mdash; no-one else's.  I just expended 3 paragraphs pointing out to you that government inspection reports are not necessarily non-trivial, and here you are still asserting that all government inspection reports are non-trivial.  Once again, with emphasis: You are getting triviality wrong.  These proposed criteria get triviality wrong.  It's clearly explained what triviality is in WP:SCHOOL and our other notability criteria, which differ from these proposals.  The only reason that you think that the goalposts have changed is that your idea of what they actually were was wrong in the first place. Furthermore, these are not "sudden requirements".  These requirements have been part of notability criteria, in one form or another, for years, now.  I also point out that verifiability is not notability, and that we are discussing proposed notability criteria on this talk page. Uncle G 20:03, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
 * As I recently said at Wikipedia talk:Schools, "You'll know you have consensus for a guideline when both "keep" and "delete" opinions refer to it and the disagreement is about whether the article meets the guideline, not about whether the guideline is relevant." GRBerry 04:46, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * You have attacked me by repeatedly saying that I haven't read or even looked at things I'm discussing, which is patently untrue and is a weak effort to discredit my arguments by trying to make me look uninformed. From above (and there is more in another section): "I suggest that you actually read some of these restaurant reports" and "Your argument appears to be based not only on the aforementioned canard, but upon not actually looking at the reports that you are suggesting are non-trivial published works. I strongly suggest actually looking. ". Then, back to the argument: you said above that "arguing against employing reliable, independent, in-depth, sources such as government reports because it is a convenient disguise for an old "stuck record" argument." I said that this isn't true, I'm arguing against government reports because they are trivial (as evidenced by the fact that they don't distinguish between schools, being used for all schools in some countries and by most schools in some other countries (which you have not shown to be a canard that is demontsrably false: you have shown that in the UK, not every school has a government report, which I have not denied or contradicted)). I asked that, if you consider government reports as WP:V sources, you would also include all restaurants that have an official inspection report. This was the logical conclusion of you argument. You then shifted the goalposts by adding that school reports are in prose and lengthy, and that that somehow implied WP:V. I can't find anything in WP:V that distinguished between short bulleted reports and long prose reports, so you are just desperately trying to fix the criterion so that schools are included while other things like restaurants are excluded. I have not used a straw-man, I have taken the logocal conclusion of your argument and shown that it is untenable. But it doesn't matter anymore, it is rather clear that no consensus is possible here, so I'll continue merging non notable schools where possible, and supporting their deletion when they come up on AfD, using common sense and my interpretation of the policies instead of some never ending discussion and not accepted guideline effort. This is such a waste of time, only to include extremely non-informative and banal articles which are utterly useless. Fram 08:44, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Criterion 1
People may want to read Articles for deletion/David Brearley High School and the discussion there about criterion 1. The criterion may need to be modified and/or made more explicit precisely what counts. JoshuaZ 16:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Criterion 1 is all that is needed. Why the other criteria?
If a school meets criterion 1, then they are worthy of a wikipedia article. Criteria 2+ only serve 2 purposes:
 * 1) They are reduntant to criterion 1 (for example, schools with unique programs to the level that such programs appear in reliable sources already meet criterion 1)
 * 2) They overextend notability beyond what will allow us to write an extensive, well referenced article about the school in question. This is the whole POINT of notability: If a subject does not meet notability, it does not have enough reliable sources to make good references for a good article.  (for example, a school may win a national award, but such an award may not merit more than a single passing 1 line mention in a single newspaper article about the award ceremony?  Kind of a flimsy thing to build an entire article on).

So again I ask, why include all of the other criteria??? The extra criteria in OTHER notability guidelines (for example, in WP:CORP) are there for a very specific reason to solve a unique problem and are narrowly included. For example, the requirement that all corps that are members of a notable stock index (like the DOW) that are not otherwise notable exists SOLELY to for the completeness of the article about the stock index, not for any other reason. It is a unique problem that cannot be adequately addressed by the Criterion 1, and so is there, But it is a narrowly defined solution to a unique problem. Does wikipedia consider the North Dakota State High School Division AA Men's Field Hockey Tournament to be a notable competition? If not, then why do schools that win it become notable by extension? Most high schools DO recieve substancial press in reliable sources, and so become notable by that standard, BUT we cannot assume they will recieve that coverage simply because they meet an arbitrary criterion we set. This entire guideline should be reduced to 1 statement:


 * 1) The school has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the school itself.

All other criteria are redundant(and are unnecessary) or in violation of this statement (and thus plainly wrong) and so must go. --Jayron 32 05:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Schools are no more or less special than anything else in Wikipedia, and should follow the standard notability criteria. No free passes. Fagstein 07:39, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * And that will result in a no consensus decision. The goal here is to try and reach consensus.  Vegaswikian 07:44, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't know that I agree with that; I think it could easily reach consensus with the criteria being #1 only. It all depends on what these are criteria for. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:56, 11 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, it might be worth a try. Criterion 1 is the most important of the lot, as coverage by multiple independent reliable sources generally shows the school's done (or been) something noteworthy.  I suspect the point of contention would be what counted as valid sources -- mandatory inspections like OFSTED, local coverage of regular activities such as athletics or musical/dramatic performances, and directories really shouldn't, as they say nothing more than that the school exists and functions as a school.  Focusing on defining valid vs. trivial sources should perhaps be our priority here. Shimeru 10:04, 12 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Reliable sources could include ANY published edited newspaper, I would think. The size of the circulation is irrelevant.  If the source undergoes any editorial process, it should count.  Most schools end up qualifying ANYWAYS.  Consider the following, and see which would be covered by a local or regional paper in something resembling indepth coverage:
 * School plays in a state championship sporting event
 * School scores well (or poorly) on the SAT or other standardized test
 * Teachers at the school are in a contract dispute
 * School has lots of fights
 * Fire in the science lab
 * a human interest story on top teachers or students from the school
 * a history of the school and its founding
 * While any ONE of these would not necessarily qualify a school as notable, then entire set taken as a whole SHOULD make it qualify. Most schools receive this kind of coverage in the press all the time, and such become quite notable, simply by the Primary Notability Criterion.  WP:RS as a guideline does NOT restrict it to national coverage, the fact that these stories are published in an edited newspaper is all that is needed.  The fact that nearly EVERY aspect of the school is part of the public discourse (student performance, teacher performance, athletics, extra curriculars, history, etc.) would make it notable.  --Jayron 32  16:59, 13 November 2006 (UTC)


 * If you insist.
 * No. A national championship, though, certainly.  A state championship, I would want to see something more than local coverage for.  The question is whether it is of wider interest, or purely local interest.
 * No. Not unless scores are truly exceptional in one direction or the other.  Nearly every student takes such a test, and most scores are, not surprisingly, within a few hundred points of average, so such scores are trivial.  Also, individuals with exceptionally high scores (not so much low scores) tend to attract blurbs, but if the school is for the most part average, these individuals' scores clearly do not reflect the quality of the school itself.
 * No, unless the dispute has attracted wider attention. Local news is not sufficient.  Encyclopedias do not cover every dispute or strike.
 * No, unless the fights have attracted wider attention. Local news is not sufficient.  Encyclopedias do not cover every altercation.
 * No, unless the fire has attracted wider attention. Local news is not sufficient.  Encyclopedias do not cover every fire.
 * In local news, this is likely a puff-piece. Sometimes they are even written by people associated with the school, which means they are not independent sources.
 * Yes. An in-depth story on the school's history or founding is exactly the sort of thing local sources are good for.  Even better if it's in a publication of wider interest, of course.
 * As you say, most schools receive the first six types of coverage in local media frequently. That's why they're trivial sources.  Just like mandatory government inspection reports are.  Their existence does not indicate that the school is notable on more than a purely local level, and a purely local level is not sufficient to support a full article.  (It is, however, sufficient to support a mention in the articles relating to the appropriate localities -- school district, town, etc.) Shimeru 20:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)


 * As I have pointed out before, small local newspapers often do much less in the way of editing fact checking so it is only just barely that they squint by as being reliable sources, especially for school related articles almost no fact-checking occurs. The most blunt example would be a "human interest story on top teachers or students from the school" which very often are nothing more than a few random quotes from the relevant people and their colleagues. Furthermore, none of these demonstrate actual notabiilty. Almost by defintion if these things were at all notable they would be picked up at more than a local level (heck even a newspaper on the other side of the state(if we are talking about US schools) might indicate some notability, especially for larger states). JoshuaZ 17:14, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
 * It is not just limited to small papers. More and more papers and broadcast news seem to be using press releases.  The articles are not reporting but advertising.  Vegaswikian 23:40, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Which is why the primary criterion in WP:SCHOOL, WP:BIO, WP:CORP, and elsewhere already excludes simple re-hashes of self-publicity. There's no reason to employ "published in a local newspaper" as a proxy for "reprint of a press-release".  It's simply not true.  Excluding local press coverage is a lazy generalization when what one should actually be doing in this regard is looking at the specific source, reading it, and seeing whether it is re-hashing the subject's self-publicity.  Uncle G 16:14, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
 * What constitutes local or national seems a red herring also; a nationally distributed newspaper in say, Liechtenstein would have far less distibution than say, my local paper, the Raleigh News and Observer; yet one is national and one is local? Readership is hardly a requirement for notability, neither is mass-appeal; there are scientific journals with readership in the thousands, and with an appeal limited to a small techinical field; and yet THEY are good sources for any article here.  To place any restrictions based on distribution, readership, or scope of appeal for any acceptable published work is to exclude reliable sources.  A general indictment of the entire newsgathering industry also does us no good.  We are left with what we have, and as long as its not Weekly World News, it probably a fairly reliable source.  Perhaps to simplify and clarify my above arguement: Schools (as a collective) are open to public scrutiny, and also part of the constant public discourse.  Insofar as schools (in the individual) receive copious press coverage as to their performance, are open to criticism, and are part of the public discourse, there is copious independant sources to write a neutral article about the school.  --Jayron 32  04:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Unlike scientific journals, local papers are not always thoroughly peer-reviewed, fact checked, and edited. Unlike local papers, scientific journals focus narrowly on a chosen topic.  And an article in a local paper is not necessarily written by anyone with general expertise regarding the subject of the article.  The size of the audience isn't the only factor that makes a source reliable, and to suggest that any published source short of the most sensationalist tabloids is reliable is, I think, setting the bar a bit too low for useful purposes. Shimeru 06:20, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I'll put in my two cents from experience here. I've been quoted in a newspaper at least four times, at least three from my local paper because of stuff I did/was doing while in High School.  Two of those three articles misquoted me, at least in part.  (The third time, the reporter asked for and got a copy of my speech, so they didn't misquote me.)  I certainly received no calls for fact checking about any of them.  This however, is not my real concern with using local press coverage; they were close enough to right, and our policy is verifiability, not truth.  The issue is that routine local press coverage does not constitute notability for an encyclopedia, even one that is not paper.  GRBerry 16:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
 * While verifiability not truth is our concern experiences like that make it hard to see local newspapers always as reliable sources which does go to verifiability. Agree in any event with the last sentence. JoshuaZ 17:01, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
 * On the contrary: It does, as long as one does not conflate "routine" and "trivial". An article announcing the dates of forthcoming sports events is routine.  There will be such articles on a regular basis.  It is also little more than trivial, in that it doesn't supply very much knowledge about the school except that it has sports events.  That's a sentence in the article, at best.  An article reporting a fire may also be routine, in that local newspapers report fires on a regular basis.  But if it goes into depth about the property damage, the resultant financial implications, and what temporary and permanent effects the fire has on the future teaching and other activities of the school, then that is not trivial, even though it is routine.  It supplies a lot of knowledge about a significant event in the school's history, and can potentially form the basis of one or more whole paragraphs in a "History" section of the article on the school. And that is how "fire in the science lab (2 beakers destroyed)" doesn't confer notability whereas "fire destroys school buildings, estimated $1million rebuilding cost, pupils forced to attend alternative school" does.  Coverage of the first won't be in-depth.  Coverage of the second most certainly will.  All that we, as encyclopaedists, need to do is look at the depths of the specific sources covering the subject in question, i.e. to see that they are non-trivial. "Published in a local newspaper" is not equivalent to "trivial".  "The sort of thing that local newspapers routinely report on" is not equivalent to "trivial", either.  Uncle G 16:14, 16 November 2006 (UTC)