Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Archive 12

Notability of Valedictorian question
I watch the article on Pequea Valley School District and a new user has just added the 2006 valedictorian with a reliable source, but the valedictorian herself does not appear to be notable. An IP user has added this repeatedly over the past few months and I have reverted it each time, but I want to ask here about this (as I assume this issue has arisen before). Are valedictorians automatically notable? Should this person be included in the article or not? Please comment on the article's talk page, thanks Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 03:06, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * IMHO, I'd say that they were not at all notable, definitely less than any teacher, and they rarely meet notability standards. Adam McCormick (talk) 06:06, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I agree normal notability guidelines should apply and am copying your comment to the school district's talk page. Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 11:50, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Please do not apply the notability guidelines to the content of an article. The guideline itself is explicit on this point ("These notability guidelines only pertain to the encyclopedic suitability of topics for articles but do not directly limit the content of articles.").  --ElKevbo (talk) 12:11, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but it also says there that "Notability guidelines give guidance on whether a topic is notable enough to be included in Wikipedia as a separate article, but do not specifically regulate the content of articles (with the exception of lists of people)" (emphasis added). At Notability (people) it says "Several articles contain or stand alone as lists of people - for instance, usually an article on a college includes or links to a list of notable alumni. Such lists are not intended to contain everyone (e.g. not all people who ever graduated from the school). Instead, inclusion on the list should be determined by the criteria above." I read this as a valedictorian with no other notability asserted does not meet the criteria for inclusion in the school district (or high school) article, either as an entry on her own or as part of a notable alumni section / list. Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 13:56, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with the conclusion reached in this instance but that particular section of the guideline seems...off, to me. Too heavy handed.  To subject every person in every list in every article to the full notability criteria seems misguided.  But that's an issue for another time; all seems well here.  --ElKevbo (talk) 14:35, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed, but the problem I have seen otherwise is that "notable residents" sections in municipality articles become link farms - lots of people of questionable notability (no wikilink or red link) with an external link after their name to justify their place in the section. Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 17:25, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * To answer the original question, status as a high school (or college, for that matter) valedictorian does not automatically confer notability as Wikipedia understands "notability". Neither does presidency of the student body, senior class, or glee club :-)  Now, if some major news organization (the NY Times, USA Today, Time magazine, etc.) had something to say about the glee club president, that might establish notability.  But as ElKevbo has noted, the "notability" standard is intended to limit the article population, not the content of those articles, so it doesn't matter in this specific case. RossPatterson (talk) 17:03, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * But as was immediately noted (in response to ElKevbo), the notability criteria do apply to people in articles, thus a valedictorian does have to meet the notability guidelines to be included. Adam McCormick (talk) 18:53, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks again for all of the feedback Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 19:13, 1 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I think that you should also consider Notability people. As an example, an athlete that went to my high school was the first person to cross the Golden Gate Bridge on its opening day.  I confirmed that there was such a person in the Alumni Directory and which year he was identified with, but haven't found out much else about him.  If there was a separate article about the Bridge's history or the opening ceremonies, I'd mention Miller there.  But it doesn't seem important enough for the already large and near-GA GGB article,  So, I added him to the list of "Notable alumni" in my high school's article.  The list now has 31 people with their own articles, 15 with redlinks (of whom at least half should have articles, perhaps more, including several MLB and NFL players and the guy who co-wrote I Left My Heart in San Francisco), and 15 others who are not linked.  Besides him, this last group includes elected officials, a Pulitzer Prize winner, musicians who played with notable bands, identical twins who skated in Ice Follies, journalists and other media people, all featured in at least one news article.  So, any valedictorian who has done something that a reliable source found worthy of note should be included, but not every valedictorian.  I just went looking for valedictorians to add to my list, or to put in a separate list, and instead found that Tam discountinued naming valedictorians in 2005--so I'll add that to the article instead.--Hjal (talk) 22:02, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

AfD nom Coffee High School
Opportunity to comment here: Articles for deletion/Coffee High School. Coffee4me (talk) 00:45, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Mass Talk page tagging
Hi there! I want to start mass tagging geology related article's talk pages so we can identify them. Any objections?   CWii ( Talk  22:03, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Why would we tag geology? This is a project concerned with Secondary schools. Adam McCormick (talk) 23:53, 5 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Assuming, per your BRFA, that you mean schools, what are you using to identify new pages? What are you tagging them with (as far as text)? Adam McCormick (talk) 23:57, 5 March 2008 (UTC)


 * It appears that the articles have already been tagged. Looking at the *-Class school articles categories, there are several thousand of them categorized.  RossPatterson (talk) 00:27, 6 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your feedback. Yes, by looking at those cats there are several thousand of them categorized. But there are more. To tag them I will be using AWB with the KingBotK plugin. I will be using categories like New York school stubs to locate article talk pages that still need tagging. I will tag them with the WPSchool talk page banner.   CWii ( Talk  00:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Ok, makes sense, just know not to tag any colleges and to use WPSchools to avoid the redirect. It would also be best if you list which categories you intend to run through if it's not too much trouble. Adam McCormick (talk) 04:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, I will when the bot gets a trial.   CWii ( Talk  21:12, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Alright. The bot is now approved and flagged. the list of articles is available here. It is created from the following categories:

Any objections?   CWii ( Talk  01:28, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Category:Middle schools in New York
 * Category:Education in Suffolk County, New York
 * Category:New York school stubs

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chinook Middle School (Bellevue, Washington)
If anyone would like, they may add their input to Articles for deletion/Chinook Middle School (Bellevue, Washington). Thanks --DerRichter (talk) 00:58, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * As an aside after the fact, you could also use the Template:Mergeto template to initiate a merge discussion on an article talk page.  Zedla (talk) 06:43, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Crow Island School
Does anybody feel like adding to the stub article for Crow Island School? It's an elementary school in Winnetka IL that happens to be a U.S. National Historic Landmark, but the page creators didn't even mention that it was an operational school. Thanks, PatrickStar LaserPants (talk) 09:55, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Archiving
I have been bold and reformatted the archiving for this page. I have moved the list of old discussions to a separate page as the entire list was getting to long for this page, and it is easier to read if the dates can be in long format with the extra space. You can find a similar set-up at WT:RFA. Camaron | Chris (talk) 15:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks better, Thanks Chris. Adam McCormick (talk) 01:44, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Oddly, I've always been more of a numbers person myself. But it definitely looks less cluttered now. If it's all right, I'd like to keep a link to the archive index on the box so I can more easily access it. Thanks,--Jh12 (talk) 14:08, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for catching that, I forgot to re-add the index list when I was doing the reformatting. Camaron | Chris (talk) 16:00, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Where to point wikilinks on "elementary" and "secondary" (United States)
I'm cleaning up tiny details on an article and noticed that there seem to be multiple pages that "elementary" and "secondary" could be wikilinked to, including: Maybe I'm being picky, but none of them seemed like a great fit, so I thought I'd ask here for some expert opinions. Maybe those articles just need to be cleaned up and improved? (I'm working on an article about a US school district...feel free to talk about the situation for other countries but please say which country to minimize confusion.) --Hebisddave (talk) 21:23, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Elementary school
 * Primary education (or Primary_education)
 * Secondary education
 * Secondary education in the United States
 * Education in the United States
 * I think that while there is a little overlap those are all distinct concepts and need separate pages. But that's just my opinion. Adam McCormick (talk) 22:53, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

School Slang
I having a little trouble believing that (per WP:DICT) pages such as Notions (Winchester College) (and corresponding article sections) should exist as I don't think they meet any notability criteria I can think of. Does anyone know of a general stance (As it only seems common for British schools I'm not sure) on this? Adam McCormick (talk) 07:11, 16 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Although I helped weed out a slang section at Sir Francis Drake High School, I think that this one should stay. If there's a Wikiproject on slang, this article would probably be worth a Mid rating. It should have outside references added, which the old boys may not find necessary, since the school has so many internal publications. But, for NPOV editing, there are some available that demonstrate notability:, , , .--Hjal (talk) 16:56, 16 March 2008 (UTC)


 * My problem with those references is that they come from the "Old Boys" of the school for the most part (The first two do, and I'm not sure of the forth) and I suppose it's not the article that bothers me but the vast array of dictionary definitions. I have less problem with the level of coverage in the third ref (more of a case study and less of a glossary). I just see major issues with posting the definitions themselves, less-so the concept of these "notions" and the part they play in the school. Adam McCormick (talk) 02:53, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

King's Grammar, London
Hi, as a participant of the project Unreferenced articles, I've been trying to find some sources for King's Grammar School as it has been tagged as unreferenced since June 2006 (see here) and as such does not meet at least the barest minimum of verifiability. I cannot find any references at all, which would seem unusual for a school that has the Prince of Wales as a patron. I'm just checking here (as I'm no expert on schools) to see if anyone knows where sources can be found, or if it is better known by a different name? I've already tried the links on the WikiProject Schools page for UK schools, but still nothing. Any help in providing sources would be appreciated, thanks, ascidian  | talk-to-me  20:25, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, I'm having trouble even verifying that this school exists too. There appears to be a King's G.S. in Lincolnshire  but nothing in the London area remotely having "King" and "Grammar" in the name.  Considering the status of the original editor this may be a hoax. – Zedla (talk) 23:59, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It seems to be a hoax. I've found one in Ottery St. Mary founded by Henry VIII, but that's it. Adam McCormick (talk) 00:27, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks to both of you for looking. I've tagged it as a suspected hoax. That was my gut instinct too, but I like to assume good faith if I'm not 100% sure on the subject matter. ascidian  | talk-to-me  02:24, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Notability (schools)
I thought I would bring to general attention that this proposal is back and active again. The original version has been heavily changed into a new version based on the work of a few editors. If this is passed it will have a rather large impact on this project, though the the talk page documents a lot of evidence that this version will still not gain consensus. Camaron | Chris (talk) 16:42, 22 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with almost all of that page, and I'm certainly weary of the widespread view that all schools are notable. But I do have an objection to one of the 'Alternative criteria' - "A school will be regarded as notable provided one of the following criteria can be reliably sourced... The school is located in a building of architectural importance, for example... a school in England which has been designated as a listed building by English Heritage." The problem with that is that a non-notable school merely needs to rent or buy a notable building to become notable, an option which isn't open to schools of all kinds. And I can think of at least one worse-than-mediocre school which occupies a listed building. If it's only the building which is notable, then the Wikipedia article should surely be about the building and not the school. Perhaps that section should require more than one of the three Alternative criteria, or perhaps the third should be taken out. Xn4  17:21, 22 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The alternative criteria did when that was added require two criterion to be reliably sourced in the article to be considered notable, in the cut down of the alternative criteria it seems to have been reduced to one. I personally prefer requiring two criterion while having a few more of them. Camaron | Chris (talk) 18:30, 22 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Then we agree and no one has disagreed, so I think it should go back to two. Probably the change to one was made by someone acting without a consensus. Also, if no one has justified the notable building criterion, then I suggest that needs to come out. Xn4  12:56, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Not sure I agree with that -- if the building is notable, such as Glemsford County Primary School (by nature of being listed), then there is justification that an article sh/could exist for it; why then should we not cover the school? I'd have thought that notable (school) buildings would have some coverage over why they were built and how they've been used, which sounds distinctly like there would need to be some coverage as a school (even if it is biased more towards its architectural than scholastic merit)? -- Ratarsed (talk) 13:34, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * "...if the building is notable... (by nature of being listed), then there is justification that an article sh/could exist for it" - sure, clearly so. "Why then should we not cover the school?" - Oh, dear. You can only mean 'Why then shouldn't the school have its own separate article as well?' Because if its only, repeat only, claim to notability is occupying a listed building, then it simply isn't notable. "I'd have thought that notable (school) buildings would have some coverage over why they were built and how they've been used..." - sure, but this can be done in the article on the building which contains the non-notable school. Xn4  07:24, 26 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I didn't mean for it to be separate articles, unless the school can demonstrate notability by other means; I meant more that if the schools building are notable, then include the school information into that as a combined article (In the example I gave, the building gained notability for being a good architectural example of that kind of school, and that use continues to this day. So I'd suggest a single article with a lead section written as if it were a school, mentioning it's listed status, with a UK school infobox, with a discussion on the architectural importance of the building; After all, as is the case with listings, you may get a group of buildings making up a school, with independent buildings being classed as notable, but you may still only have one article on the group, for example Royal Hospital School (which in turn barely mentions the architectural importance of the school). -- Ratarsed (talk) 12:32, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * When we had 10 criteria then requiring 2 being met was reasonable. With the present three, having one is essential otherwise few if any schools would be included. The point about the listed building is that certainly the building should be covered. If a school occupies a listed building it is illogical not to mention the school. I actually think the present version has a good chance of acceptance; there seems to be reasonable acceptance. Frankly, any standard is almost better than none; we can then move on ... TerriersFan (talk) 16:04, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * This version certainly has a good chance, especially now the introduction and the page overall reads like a guideline. Though concerns such as if schools really should be covered under WP:ORG, and if a notability guideline on schools is really needed were brought up in the past and never really resolved, these may come back-up again. Past experience of mine has shown that it is difficult to tell if a guideline is going to get acceptance and compromise will continue until the actual final debate on putting the guideline tag on it. Camaron | Chris (talk) 21:22, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * 1) "With the present three, having one is essential otherwise few if any schools would be included." I don't think that stands up to careful thought. This question is about additional criteria, a kind of last chance saloon for non-notable schools. It's nothing to do with notability to say that all schools meeting only one of these additional criteria must be considered notable "because otherwise few if any schools would be included" - clearly, a large number of schools really are notable without needing to scrabble about for thin qualifications, of which they can find only one.
 * 2) "The point about the listed building is that certainly the building should be covered." - Groan. The building can be covered in an article on the building itself, which merits an article as a building and not as a school.
 * 3) "If a school occupies a listed building it is illogical not to mention the school." - Mention it where? In the article about the notable building, of course, but that doesn't mean that the article about the building can become an article about the school. If the school has no other claim to notability, it isn't notable, the building is. Compare with an individual who owns or occupies a significant building but isn't notable himself/herself.
 * 4) " Frankly, any standard is almost better than none; we can then move on." We don't need any old standard, we need a good one which stands up to examination. With a bad standard, we move on to the wrong place.
 * Xn4 22:55, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Worthington Christian High School (Ohio)
Someone may want to have a look at this article while considering 'undue bias'. Someone has recently sourced a bunch of notable alimni, all of which are claimed to be sexual criminals of one sort or another, and has included citations. I don't have the time to track the citations to see if they support the claims, but even if they do, is htis appropriate? Loren.wilton (talk) 21:28, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The alumni don't have any articles so I would say remove them. Eóin (talk) 03:47, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
 * What does that have to do with anything?
 * Back on topic: It depends on just how "notable" these persons are and how that notability is documented. If their only notability derives from their supposed-criminal status and it's not made significant headlines then I don't think we should consider them notable.  Further, I don't know what we'd want to tie them to this particular article unless there is very credible and significant coverage from outside sources that links these persons to this institution.  In general, I don't think it's at all acceptable to list in any institution's article, including a school's, petty or non-notable criminals unless there is a damn good reason to do so (and simply being verifiable doesn't cut it).  --ElKevbo (talk) 04:47, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

AAA Liberty District
I added a wpschools box to AAA Liberty District talk page. I am honestly unable to determine if this is a school district or perhaps some sort of sports conference from the article content, but it does appear to be school or possibly highschool related.

If anyone wants to look at this and decide whether the box is appropriate I would appreciate a second set of eyes. Feel free to remove the box if you don't think it belongs. Loren.wilton (talk) 02:25, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The article is about an athletics conference. Are high school sports conferences under WikiProject Schools? Eóin (talk) 03:47, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Clement Middle School
After the most recent edit, this school has an identity confusion. It can't decide if it is Clement Middle School or Cope Middle School. The change doesn't appear to be complete vandalism; or if it is it is quite creative. If anyone know anything about this perhaps they could help. Naturally nothing is sourced. :-( Loren.wilton (talk) 03:19, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The page was just changed by an IP and now moved to E.M Cope Middle School. Identity crisis solved. Eóin (talk) 03:47, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Schools of unclear notability
Hello, on Wikipedia, there are currently about 250 school articles with their notability questioned. Based on a database snapshot of March 12, I have listed them here.

I would encourage members of this project to have a look at these articles, and see whether independent sources can be added, whether the articles can be merged e.g. to the corresponding locality articles, or possibly be deleted. Any help in cleaning up this backlog is appreciated. For further information, see WikiProject Notability.

If you have further questions, please leave a message on the Notability project page or on my personal talk page. (I'm not watching this page however.) Thanks! --B. Wolterding (talk) 11:31, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Foundation schools
Just a request for help in populating the category Category:Foundation schools that applies to some schools in England. TerriersFan (talk) 18:35, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Musings on school article format
I've been spending a fair amount of time recently killing IP vandalism, and not too surprisingly a lot of it shows up in school articles. Also not too surprisingly, a lot of that is adding completely non-notable people to the "notable alumni" sections.

I've got to thinking that maybe we should be treating school articles as a wikipedia learning experience, rather than as full-fledged articles. Not that they can't be full-fledged FA or better articles. But the vast quantity of them aren't, and frandly a whole lot of them aren't even good stubs at this point.

My current thinking is along the lines of eventually making some "standard article templates" for various sorts of school articles. These templates would have a collection of section headings in a reasonable order, and a pre-formatted infobox with identifiers for the more likely things that a student at the school might know or be able to easily figure out by asking a teacher.

Each section heading would be followed with an indented section that describes the sort of stuff that should be under the heading, and would have a wikilink to a page that gave a fuller, but still simplified explanation, and had links to the standard wikipedia pages on the subject. The idea is that these tutorial "how to format this section" links would generally stay in the article, so that when next semester's yearbook class is working on the article the rules are still available.

For instance, the notable alumni section might be formatted something like:

Notable alumni
 * Before you add a name to this list click here to see if they are notable. Add entries in the following format
 * * Person Name (graduation year) - why they are notable (if they have their own page on Wikipedia)
 * * Person Name (graduation year) - why they are notable (if they do not have a page on Wikipedia)


 * George Washington (1712) - school was named after him
 * Bill Gates (1976) - invented the computer

(The above formatting isn't quite what I want, I'll have to do some digging into the more esoteric wiki markup to get things right. But it is close enough for discussion sake.)

The here link above would go to a page that was a simplified version of the Notability page, and was tailored for use in school articles. It would say not to add yourself or your girlfriend or worst enemy, but only add someone if they had their own Wikipedia article (their article, not just someone with the same name), or if you had a reference to an article in the local or national newspaper (not the school newspaper). The page would also have a link to the actual notability page.

What do people think of this sort of "tutorial page" concept? I think it might result in better school articles for a couple reasons:
 * 1) There would be pre-existing headings, and people just had to hunt around and find some info to put under the heading
 * 2) There would be a short instruction under most of the headings describing what -- and what not -- to put there, and giving a link to a fuller description page
 * 3) there would be an infobox that already had tags for the more commonly available info, and again, a link to a 'how to fill out this box' page that also listed all of the possible lines and what should -- and should not -- be put on each one.

Opinions? Loren.wilton (talk) 19:21, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd have to see how templates like this could handle the other issues (manual of style, copyvio, fair-use, unencyclopedic content, ext links, etc.) to really say. My experience though with leaving HTML maintenance comments in notable alumni sections (i.e. "keep the list alphabetized", "refer to WP:____", etc.) is that there will always be a subset of newcomers editing school articles who miss or ignore the advice.  As an aside, names with articles should still have a ref if their article doesn't verify association with the school and editors should always be wary of original research.  Doesn't WP:SCH already cover a lot of this?  Writing a quality article requires effort and learning the process, doing the right research, etc. is the best kind of learning experience one can get from WP. – Zedla (talk) 01:36, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * There will always be vandalism, and this kind of template won't stop it any more than anything else will. I think a visible "Hint: do it this way" as opposed to HTML comment tags will help in a few cases where someone in a school honestly doesn't realize that his friend isn't notable for winning the swim meet, or the first article he has seen is his school article and doesn't have a clue that article guidelines exist.
 * There's a ton of articles on how to do things right. I've been here maybe five months; I figure in about three years I may know most of the important rules.  You average 5th grader or even 11th grader in journalism class probably isn't going to spend three years reading article guidelines before making his/her first edit, and as a result the first edit will probably be wrong.
 * Thus my basic thought about making school articles "self annotating", so as you get to each section there is a small hint, with a link to a simplified but fuller discussion, and that article in turn has links to MOS and BLP and NOT and Notability and the other important things. My idea is to not necesarily have a school article start off as a class A article, but rather to have it start off as a self-guiding learning experience.  By the time they have filled in some of the school article with the hints on how to do it, they should have an idea where to look and what to do on articles that don't have hints.
 * I'm not so much concerned about them getting all of the rules right, but with getting the basic rules right, at least in a simplified or relaxed form. (For instance, I'm willing to forgive Notability for a middle school.  If they can find a newspaper article about their school, great.  But I'm not going to AfD or speedy the school article because they can't find a citation that it exists.  If they can fill in some of the basic stuff in the infobox without obvious sillyness I'm willing to believe they aren't making it up in most cases.)  I'd also be willing to let them have a couple of sections about topical subjects, since mostly they will put the topical stuff in anyway.  If you think about it, they are in the school for <= 4 years in most cases -- they aren't likely to know a lot of long-term history of the place, and what happened last year is notable -- to them.  Learning that you don't put that in other articles can be a second step, later. Loren.wilton (talk) 04:12, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


 * If you haven't seen WP:UPLOAD, creating something like that could be useful in limited areas (notables, external links) to engage the good-faith newcomer. Admins and experienced users have great tools on wp, it can be discouraging for the newcomer in finding all the relevant policy/help. – Zedla (talk) 19:59, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd say this could be a helpful proposal, so long as it didn't develop over time into a set of straightjackets which all school articles were expected to fit into, and I rather think it would tend to do that. I can't see a way to agree for all time at the outset that that wouldn't happen, and in a world-wide project like Wikipedia one size doesn't fit all.
 * On the suggested format for listing alumni (a word hardly used at all in schools in the UK, by the way), it seems to me too simplistic and it also doesn't fully comply with the guidance at WikiProject Schools. I can mention that in the UK - and in many other English-speaking countries - young people don't graduate from schools (that is, from what we call schools in the UK, which are what this Wiki Project deals with). More universally, according to our existing guidance (which I agree with), what Americans call alumni should be included in such lists even if they only attended the school the list refers to for a few weeks. It follows that it doesn't work to require "graduation year". The Project guidance I've linked above says "After a description, state when they graduated or what years they attended. After that, list any school awards or positions e.g. School Captain." Xn4  20:08, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Request for help with Madison Middle School.
In the course of my disambiguation work, I have come across Madison Middle School. In its current state, it does not meet the requirements to remain a dab page as none of the entries on the page actually exist as articles for schools.


 * Could articles be created for the entries that would survive afd?
 * Is there a notable school by this name that should receive this link as a redirect?
 * Should this particular page be speedied as an unnecessary dab page?

Any thoughts/actions would be appreciated. Gwguffey (talk) 22:03, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it should be deleted - it serves no purpose other than telling people where the schools are, which the person probably already knows. Bsrboy 22:10, 28 March 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bsrboy (talk • contribs)


 * How about a 'see also' or 'also refers' to the rather messy James Madison Middle School dab or the schools therein? Zedla (talk) 22:49, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the input. I appreciate the thoughts. Gwguffey (talk) 04:56, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Same problem with James Madison Middle School, which I resolved by gutting the unwieldy semi-DAB article in stages then turned it into a redirect to the one remaining school, a barely-notable magnet school. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  19:22, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

New city school
Some project participant may want to help out at User talk:Newcityschool, where a new user is falling afoul of various policies and being bitten hard. Bovlb (talk) 22:17, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Unfortunate it came to that, you left excellent advice, hope they take it. I'm trying to avoid a similar fate for User:Nowaynotme – Zedla (talk) 23:36, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Is there a Rapid Response Team for new school pages? Bovlb (talk) 00:34, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * There's WP:SCH though it tends to get clogged with non-emergency requests. Zedla (talk) 01:12, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Bookmarked, thanks. Bovlb (talk) 15:12, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Automatic notability of high schools
Can someone please point me to the page which says that high schools are more or less automatically notable? Thought I had it, but I can't find it. Please respond to my user page. Thanks! - Realkyhick (Talk to me) 05:55, 30 March 2008 (UTC)


 * It's Notability (schools)‎, but it isn't accepted policy yet and may never be. RossPatterson (talk) 19:24, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Have you looked at the infobox at the top of that page? It claims to be an accepted guideline, not a proposed guideline. Loren.wilton (talk) 03:36, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, I have. I've also been following the discussion, and I believe the change from a  proposal a few days ago is premature.  It's died before.  RossPatterson (talk) 00:50, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * FYI, one of the participants in the debate just restored the "proposal" status, with the comment "rv change. Still a proposal. Where is the discussion and consensus to support this being a guideline?". RossPatterson (talk) 02:07, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Also the edit comment did not say what the change was. That may be why no one noticed and reverted it earlier. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:59, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * More discussion is needed on this proposed guideline. In my view, its most unreasonable feature is that it would make a school notable which simply occupies a notable building, even if it has no educational or other claim to notability. That is surely as misguided as claiming that all individual owners of notable buildings must be notable: notability becomes purchasable! Xn4  06:40, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[unindent] Same reply as at the school notability page: Architecture is only one of four criteria looked at when deciding whether to list a given school (or any other location) on the National Register of Historic Places. See the criteria at NRHP. If a non-descript garage in Silicon Valley was the place where HP began, it might make the list. Same for an otherwise typical adobe house that happens to be the oldest structure in Fremont. Design and execution are not always the issue--for schools, it is frequently based on being the first permanent high school or public school in an area combined with some archictural merit, which may only be that it provides a good example of buildings of a specific historic period more than 50 years ago.--Hjal (talk) 15:52, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * With all due respect, the above has nothing to do with justifying the one of the four criteria objected to, and the argument offered is about the notability of buildings. Hjal uses the phrase "based on being... combined with architectural merit", but the present draft doesn't require anything to be combined with architectural merit, it offers 'probable' notability (and the right for a stub to remain, which effectively confers notability) to a school which has no claim to notability except architectural merit. Xn4  19:45, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

List articles
Does this project have a policy about large lists? See the discussion at Australian_Wikipedians%27_notice_board/Archive 29 Paul foord (talk) 09:34, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I am somewhat new to the project so my word is probably not authoritative. However, I have not seen any guidelines on length beyond the standard en.wiki suggestions on reasonable page length in bytes.  The page you reference is 180KB, so by standard length guidelines it is suggested that it be split.
 * My half pence on the specific page would be to treat it as a list of lists. Do an A-Z page and separate sub-pages for A, B, etc.  Other than the length I see nothing to complain about and I applaud the work that has gone into it. Loren.wilton (talk) 03:43, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Bot assistance?
Would it be worth getting a bot to occasionally go through all the articles in Category:Schools in the United Kingdom (and sub categories). For each article, if it has a infobox UK school (or its Scottish counterpart) and the closed parameter is set, and add the article to Category:Defunct schools in the United Kingdom? I guess it would also be useful to have a list of articles in that category tree that do not have that infobox so that it can be added (A task I've been doing manually for a while for state maintained schools in England (and Wales)) -- Ratarsed (talk) 12:17, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


 * In addition, whilst I think of it, it would be nice if it updates the "needs infobox" parameter on the talk page appropriately -- Ratarsed (talk) 11:24, 2 April 2008 (UTC)


 * User:BoxCrawler is running and is including Category:Schools in the United Kingdom. Tell me if there are issues. Adam McCormick (talk) 04:56, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Emblems
Are you allowed to make the emblem of your school using software and upload if you can't find any digital images of the emblem online? Bsrboy (talk) 17:33, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
 * No. As I've said previously, it is against the law for you to violate their copyright. Adam McCormick (talk) 02:58, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Don't be too sure. Fair use has its place.  It is not ok to upload them to the Wikipedia Commons though.  IANAL. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  19:07, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Outside views requested to help resolve a dispute
There has been a long-running content dispute about the appropriateness of certain material added to Talk:The King's School, Chester. I think it could do with some additional views from people who have been uninvolved up to now. Since this project has a banner on the talk page, it seemed sensible to invite people from this project to comment. Could I politely invite anyone with the time or inclination to read through the dispute and comment on the article's talk page? The article is under full protection at the moment, to stop the edit-warring that was going on with respect to the disputed material, and it could do with being resolved, one way or another, to allow development of the article to proceed. Thanks. DDStretch   (talk)  22:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Redirect reorg
I've taken a try at reorganizing the Shortcuts and redirects between this project and the Notability Guideline. Basically, WP:SCHOOLS and its variations are currently directed there and WP:WPSCHOOLS and such are directed here. It's not an ideal solution, but I think it's an alright temporary solution until we have a consensus on the guideline. Adam McCormick (talk) 00:26, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * After a lot of work, I have managed to reorganise the short cuts on sub pages of this project so they follow the main ones (WP:WPSCH, WP:WPSCHOOLS) again. I have removed all the orphaned old short cuts under WP:CSD, these are: WP:SCH/P, WT:SCH/P, WP:SCH/AL, WT:SCH/AL, WT:SCH/A, and WT:SCH/AG. I have kept WP:SCH/A and WP:SCH/AG as redirects that have been used a lot, so removal would not be helpful to those reading old discussions, however as they are now wrong I have removed advertising for them in their associated article in favour of new redirects which follow the main ones. I have also made sure all shortcut redirects to this talk page, the main project page and Notability (schools) are correct. Camaron | Chris (talk) 16:40, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

IB category split by country in progress
Category:International Baccalaureate schools is being split up by country: A few countries such as the United States with dozens of such schools in the category are getting sub-categories. Please join the effort. The goal is to get the count of unsorted schools appearing on the main page down below 200 so you can see them all at once. There are just under 400 schools in the category and its geographical subcategories. It's not relevant to the sorting project yet, but there are about "2,300 IB World Schools in 127 countries," including more than 100 each in Australia (111), Canada (259), the United Kingdom (132), and the United States (875).

I've asked for a bot to help the US sorting effort.

Whether or not being an IB school is automatically notable in the same sense that being a medical school is, it greatly increases the chance that the school will be able to earn its notability the old-fashioned way. With that in mind, if a new school stub is created with "IB" in it, try to find verifiable proof of notability rather than trying to delete it. This applies particularly to schools at grade levels that are not assumed to be automatically notable in their country. Some small private elementary schools may not meet notability criteria, but most or all high schools will be able to if an editor is willing to dig for references. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  15:51, 19 April 2008 (UTC)


 * United States started as an example for the bot to follow. Australia done.  Canada or the UK may be next.  List of schools offering the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme and its sister articles are a good place to start.  Hopefully that will be enough. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  19:06, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Marikina Science High School
Someone in the assessment group may want to wander by this article I tripped over. It is unrated, and should be at least a Start and possibly a B rating. At a quick scan it looks quite well done. Loren.wilton (talk) 20:54, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Automatic Assessments
Im curious as to why we dont use automatic assessments for the quality of our articles. Ive noticed that many of our ~8000 unassessed articles have been assessed by other projects, and I am yet to find one i disagree with. Im just curious why we cant get a bot to go around and fix this, which will just lighten our workload in this area. Since i started focusing solely on quality assessments here, the number of unassessed has risen from ~3500 to ~8000. Thoughts? Five Years 06:53, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
 * There already is a bot which is automatically assessing school articles as stubs or starts. If you look at the log it seems to have assessed hundreds if not thousands of articles. Dahliarose (talk) 10:15, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I constantly find articles that have already been assessed by other projects when doing them. Can it be run more often? Five Years 16:30, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

UK school infoboxes
User:Ratarsed has come up with a potentially useful macro to automatically add and update infoboxes for UK school articles. There seem to be a few teething problems with flags currently getting deleted and shortened URLs being removed which people might like to look out for as these changes are not evident from the edit summaries. The macro currently seems to be set to include Mr./Mrs./Miss as a title in the infobox. I personally think these titles are unnecessary. If anyone has any strong views on the subject could they please comment on Ratarsed's talk page so that the parameters can be set in line with the consensus view before any more edits are done. Dahliarose (talk) 10:15, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

King Kekaulike High School
If anyone is in need of amusement this school article seems to have some lack of veracity (or at least lack of citations) problems. I'm not sure there will be much left after an attempt at cleanup. Loren.wilton (talk) 10:50, 21 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I cleared out the unencyclopedic content and added tags, but it needs some more style work including an infobox and checking the fact-tagged items against the references and making proper in-line citations. Have fun with it. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  17:19, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Cfd on US High school alumni cats
There's an bulk cfd just started here, which might be of interest. -- roundhouse0 (talk) 01:45, 22 April 2008 (UTC)