Wikipedia talk:Dashboard/schoolwatch/Schools for deletion archive

I've tablified the results, in an attempt to make them more legible. Please tell me if you like it or not. It may be worth considering to add a table border. Radiant_* 07:50, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

Vote for Deletion

This article survived a Vote for Deletion. The discussion can be found here. -Splash 02:36, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Can some explain the point of this "All the World's Schools Project"?

Hi, Tony, I am genuinely puzzled. I see that in one past debate you wrote

Schools are generally regarded as eminently noteworthy. I don't know about your country, but my country has lists of the institutions and sends inspectors round. We spend billions of pounds maintaining them, our kids spend most of their waking lives in them, and to put it briefly schools are a huge part of the society in my country--far more so than, say, the armed forces, and second only to the public health service. As to encyclopedic, that usually comes down to neutrality and verifiability. Because of the aforementioned inspections and the public appetite for information on schools, there is plenty of verifiable information about them. I shouldn't worry that anyone would mistake a school article for "meaningless garbage" and delete it. --Tony SidawayTalk 21:51, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

But it seems to me this misses the point. Noone would deny that schools and public education are terribly important. But why oh why does it follow that the world needs an individual Wikipedia article on every single school in the entire world? I really don't get it. Is it some kind of morale boosting effort? A plea for donations to the Alumni fund? An attempt to garner voter support for referendums to increase school spending? Please, in one paragraph, what is your goal here? If you can explain it, maybe I'll go back and change all my nay votes on the currently outstanding referendums you listed.---CH (talk) 00:23, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I archived my suggestions on avoiding this kind of VfD at All the world's whatever.---CH (talk) 01:40, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

GRider Link

It had previously been decided to remove all reference to partisan pages from this page and keep Schoolwatch neutral when it comes to schools per discussions between myself Tony Sidaway and others. GRider's page is fine on it's own but we don't need a link to a blatant and inflamatory page like his any more then we do to an article on deleting all schools. In addition GRider's page is redundant to this one when it comes down to it.Gateman1997 00:52, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Please provide a link which corroborates this. As far as I am concerned, both watchlists are useful, the GRider version even more so now that Nicodemus75 has apparently left Wikipedia (out of frustration). There is nothing "blatant and inflamatory" about it, and if you wish to create your own list of schools for deletion I don't see why we can't link to that too. Silensor 19:32, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Adding to what I just said, I've found that the pages are not wholly redundant; they seem to have different criteria as to what they will list, and are maintained on different schedules. One is not a mirror image of the other. Silensor 19:35, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

(Edit Conflict) At one point I did have my own anti-school page, which is what led to Tony Sidaway and myself discussing and concluding that Schoolwatch should be a neutral site. GRider's page is blatantly pro-school, which is fine, but it has no place being linked to on the neutral site, just as my own page had no business being linked to. I don't have the discussion handy as it happened months ago, but I'll search for it.

Thank you. Perhaps you should reinstate your anti-school page if you feel the GRider one is too pro-inclusionist somehow, for balance.  ;-) Silensor 19:46, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Somehow I think that would be counter productive, however if users on both sides don't start taking the WP:SCH proposal seriously I'll seriously consider organizing an anti-school cabal.Gateman1997 22:47, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I removed the link again. It's quite redundant, but that's not a huge problem. The real problem is it seems to be seen as divisive. Those wanting/supporting it, already know about it (don't need a link). Anyway, I would ask somebody wishing its return to please explain exactly what unique value GRider's page has, that's not here. --Rob 03:50, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

If there is a general consensus that the link to User:GRider/Schoolwatch is too controversial for the Wikipedia:Watch/schoolwatch/Schools for deletion archive, I have no objection to it being removed. My attachment to the GRider Schoolwatch Programme is partially a sentimental one, but I also find it to be much easier to update. They both serve their own purpose, and as Rob said those who wish to track it already know of it. Bahn Mi 01:01, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Whiting Lane Elementary School

This article was speedied less than an hour into the "debate." Per precedent for elementary schools, they probably shouldn't be speedied, as there's no mention of it being nonsense or a hoax. Does this deserve a deletion review? — Rebelguys2 ^talk 23:00, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I've asked the admin for his reasoning. If it was truly {{db-empty}}, then deletion was ok. For instance, if it didn't say where the school was, and there could be more than one, than deletion may be justified, for lack of context. If there was adequate context, then hopefully the admin will undelete/relist it. Otherwise, a review would be warranted. --Rob 23:28, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Okay. The speed at which that deletion was carried out made me think that there was a justifiable reason. But, on the off chance that the "elementary school vanity" and "cleanup tag" argument could possibly imply that it was not completely "empty," I thought it best to raise a flag over here. — Rebelguys2 ^talk 23:36, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

It was not an empty article, so the speedy deletion may have been somewhat dubious. The contents before being deleted were as follows:

Whiting Lane Elementary School is the greatest elementary school of all time. Located in West Hartford, CT, it is truly a great place to send your child daily.

End of article. Not much content was here, I'm afraid, but on that same token, it was not necessary to preemptively delete it either. Silensor 23:45, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

• Yeah that speedy deletion was out-of-process, since the article adequately identifies the topic, and we have huge numbers of geo-stubs that do no more. No point taking it to deletion review though, simpler just to recreate it. Kappa 00:16, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Lafayette High School (St. Joseph)

Fix it up or it's going to AfD. Denni ☯ 02:34, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Fix up your attitude or you're going to RFC. This is not the place to make demands, if you want an article to be cleaned up, use {{cleanup-school}} and try asking politely. Silensor 02:47, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Totals

I've removed the totals as needless scorecounting. Precendents aren't binding in AFD, and boiling everything down to numbers is often misleading.

I'm curious what purpose the numbers actually serve. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 21:27, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

The page doesn't say anything about "precendents". The totals give an exact sense of how many nominations were made in a given month. Without the totals, users would have to add up the nominations themselves. I see no reason to remove that information from the page so I will again revert. Please seek consensus prior to removing valid content from the page. --JJay 21:31, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't see it as valid content. Please seek consensus before reverting good-faith edits. ¬_¬

Why would someone need to know how many nominations were made in a month? What purpose does that information serve? - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 21:34, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

This page exists to monitor deletions (afd, prod, speedy, etc) of school-related articles. The totals give a month-to-month overview of the trend in nominations, deletions, etc. It is, in my opinion, highly relevant to have that sort of information on this page. Your edit may have been in good faith....however, not understanding the "purpose" of valid content is not a license to remove it without discussion. --JJay 21:46, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

No one here is "scorecounting", as you put it. Please seek consensus before reverting JJay's change. Silensor 21:42, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

This page is being cited as source for a precedent. (Example) Precedent isn't binding on AFD and nobody is explaining any other reason that the result totals are there as anything but scorecounting. (It's nice that your opinion is that it's valid, but I'd rather like to know what reasoning you have; why is the "trend" useful or important, and more useful or important than disruption of AFD by implying that precedent is binding?) What other purpose do the totals serve? - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 21:52, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Precedent isn't binding but obviously it's significant. Take for instance WP:MUSIC, the template at the top notes that the page is useful because it explains precedent (that is, what people have done before in similar situations). Christopher Parham (talk) 04:43, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

If someone is citing the page as a precedent, then I would assume the proper response would be to respond by saying that "Precedent isn't binding on AFD". If someone is "disrupting" an AfD, there are certainly ways of dealing with the individual "disruption". As I indicated, the totals give a rapid overview of the month-to-month trend in deletion of school articles. This information is highly useful for the many people working here on improving school articles. The information demonstrates whether attempts to improve school articles are meeting community acceptance and validation. As you know, school articles are frequently improved during the AfD/Prod process. The totals highlight the outcome of these efforts. They also allow me to quickly review the articles that were deleted in order to try to ascertain the reasons for the deletion. You may not consider that to be "valid" - perhaps because you do not edit school articles - but it is a real tool in the overall school project. --JJay 22:09, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Malls for deletion

Editors interested in locally important topics may wish to keep an eye on Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Malls. Kappa 02:59, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Recent schools AfDs have resulted in deletion

Since this isn't a common event, I thought that users not paying as much close attention to the page might miss the events on their watchlists, I'm using this as an opportunity to point out that 3 recent school AfDs have been closed as deletions. JoshuaZ 06:12, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• Only remarkable because of the overwhelming precedent of AfDs for schools failing, and the articles being kept. In general, the school articles being deleted as listed in this archive are done so because they utterly lack content and have no prospect of ever having content, are hoaxes or are non-secondary schools. Articles for schools outside the U.S. also seem to be at greater risk, perhaps because of the greater difficulty in finding sources. New articles also seem to have a greater mortality risk, perhaps being nipped in the bud before they had a chance to develop. Admins who have decided to take it upon themselves to "act boldly" -- often disregarding "keep" votes they feel are inadequately justified, while counting similarly unjustified "deletes" -- are another factor in the limited number of successful AfDs, though some of these articles that failed AfD have been challenged successfully and undeleted.. Other than that, the year-to-date has shown that American secondary schools with any non-trivial content have a near-perfect track record of retention, a demonstration of the overall consensus for retention of such articles. Alansohn 06:26, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• • Agree in parts, disagree in parts. Disagreements: First, The comment about admins acting "boldly" ( since I don't consider most of the deletes to be as "unjustified"(I'd rather not have this devolve into another school notability discussion. I'm more interested in discussing here what the numbers mean. Thus, I'm only noting this paranthetically)). More seriously, looking through the last few discussions I don't see any evidence for schools outside the US being more likely to be deleted. part of the issue is that the deleted sample is small at this point, so it would be difficult to have a statistically signifcant trend but even an eyeball count doesn't show any obvious trend. (If someone has time I'd be interested in seeing actual counts of the form deleted/nominated for both US and non-US. I suspect that if one broke it down into English speaking world and non-English speaking world the trend would be more pronounced). I also agree that American secondary schools with any non-trivial content have a "near-perfect track record of retention" although what each of us calls "non-trivial" may be different in this case. I strongly disagree that this is in anyway an indication of a consensus to keep such articles especially given the large fraction of such discussions that close as no consensus. JoshuaZ 07:06, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• • • I think the numbers are relatively unambiguous -- at least two or three dozen school articles are created per day, excluding those which may be speedily deleted. So even on the banner days for school deletion, we gain twenty or more school articles. This is what I mean when I say we have a de facto policy of keeping schools -- if you exclude hoaxs and copyvios (i.e. the noncontroversial deletions), the rate of addition outstrips the rate of deletion by perhaps 100:1. I'm not sure that these numbers really mean much for our current discussions, except that they explain why inclusionists may believe that asking for school content not to be deleted is a reasonable request. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:37, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• • • • Chris, that's an interesting way of looking at it by looking at the creation/deletion ratio. However, given that schools at this point are not nearly as speediable or proddable it begins to look a bit different. Also, I'm not sure that ratio is what matters- if we had a massive backlog of a certain type of article to get deleted and they were being created at a fast rate that doesn't mean that they should be kept. The relevant matter is really when the articles come to wide community attention (that is, get AfDed) what happens? However, that does give nice insight into what some of the inclusionists may be thinking. Thanks. JoshuaZ 07:45, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Further observations on recent trends

Deletions do seem to be getting more and more common. However, a new trend may be emerging- redirecting articles to their school districts without touching the history. In any event, JoshuaZ 16:40, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

And once that trend increases in frequency, why bother going through AfD in the first place? Just boldly do it, it saves all the fuss and bother that AfD debates usually become. JYolkowski // talk 22:56, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I think Joshua posted this here because of some comments on AFDs. I disagree with what his evaluation seems to conclude, but do NOT think that schools should be automatically speedy deleted, like JYolkowski does. --ForbiddenWord 20:49, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Please retract your incorrect assumption about my beliefs. Had you read this thread you would have realized I was referring to redirecting the articles, not deleting them. If you pay attention to the school debates you might notice that I'm one of the more inclusionist people there. JYolkowski // talk 23:59, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I concur with the above, and you don't get more deletionist wrt schools than me. But there are deep divisions and the proper place for an airing of views is AfD. Despite any shift, school debates remain mired in contentiousness, often resulting in no consensus, and that needs to be respected. Eusebeus 22:43, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I actually put the above there because I thought it would interest users who keep track of this page. I doubted people would be notice much in the way of trends just from a few edit summaries so it seemed helpful to summarize what was going on over all. JoshuaZ 23:00, 29 November 2006 (UTC)