Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Archive 5

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Notability

I know there has been a lot of debate on this, with modest results, but articles like Sabah Tshung Tsin Secondary School really are going too far. Secondary schools are not inherently notable. You need to establish some reason as to why this school in particular should deserve its own article. Otherwise, the insane amount of articles on individual secondary (and even elementary? I can't believe we allow articles on random elementary schools?) should be {{merge}}d into regional summary articles (List of schools in Armenia, List of elementary schools in Arizona and the like). Wikipedia is not a phonebook :( dab (𒁳) 10:25, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

It is hard to believe that this article could be challenged on notability. It needs substantial pruning and copyediting, but the claims made regarding its founding, growth, and importance to the Chinese community in Malaysia put it way over the bar for inclusion in WP. Verifiability might be an issue--I didn't follow the reference links--but not notability. It is clear in WP:N that "notability" is not related to any particular editor's personal opinion about how "important" or "interesting" a subject or its article is. What matters is whether others have taken note of it. Whether there should be an article depends on whether enough verifiable information is available, or potentially available, to develop an article that can stand alone. The amount of encyclopedic information in this article, even if cut by 75%, is much to extensive to reasonably merge into an article about the local jurisdiction or schools in the region. A "List of schools in Armenia," or Arizona, would, of necessity, be much more like a phonebook or linkfarm--it could not contain any substantive information about individual schools without grossly exceeding the recommendations on article size. Such a list or category makes sense when there are articles to link to.--Hjal 15:56, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I comletely agree with the statement by Hjal. Not every secondary school needs an article, but the more attributable and globally interesting information in this encyclopedia, the better. Because this encyclopedia is electronic we should not be concerned about an "insane amount" of articles being generated because there aren't an "insane amount" of contributors who write school articles. Regarding Sabah Tshung Tsin Secondary School, a much better case for merge or deletion could be made for the multitude of schools in the stub class, which don't have interesting information, no pictures, and noone contributing. I look at tens of these a week for assessments and while the importance of this article may be low, it is a better start than most. I also think the comment made by dab:

"I don't see how any secondary school is of encyclopedic notability" - on the talk page of Sabah Tshung Tsin Secondary School

is fairly insulting to this whole project. What are we here for if not secondary/high schools? Anything higher is in the University project, so without secondary schools this project looses 90% of its purpose. Adam McCormick 16:48, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Every muncipality likely has a sewers department. Because its a government entity it should stay? I have np problem with some schools staying, provided they have pertinent information. Other schools in the same district have a history, and thus are NOTABLE. Is every sewer department notable? I think not - perhaps one that made a major contribution to the field.SkipperClipper 03:35, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not trying to say that every secondary school needs an article, I'm just trying to refute the notion that none of them do Adam McCormick 05:41, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Notable? Maybe someone can help me with my thinking, I'm seeing a lot of edits saying "This school isn't notable." etc. My qualm is, that WP is designed to break the boundaries of a regular encyclopedias. No, a certain school might not be notable enough to be in a print encyclopedia, but those do not have the resources of WP. I think it's far more important that a entry simply be factual and objective, not that it be famous. If a something (especially public entities) exists, then it is at least due a short blurb of facts and stats. Yes? Kuehnem 18:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

There are specific notability requirements even for wikipedia. The issue is that many school articles are added just because some high school student or administrator somewhere gets bored ad they really don't add anything to the encyclopedia beyond stating their own existence. There are a lot of editors out there who would prefer that ALL school articles, colleges not withstanding, be completely removed and never thought of again. This is an active debate on wikipedia and is certainly not settled, but it is clear that there is a large amount of support for these articles. Adam McCormick 22:59, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Naming of Colleges

Am wondering what system your using to name Colleges and to define them to locations. I have found a school titled Marcellin College, which states ' Marcellin College, Bulleen is a Marist Catholic secondary boys' school situated in Victoria, Australia.' Yet there are other Marcellin Colleges located in other parts of the world such as Marcellin College Randwick. So shouldnt the tag for Colleges include the location unless its a article that includes all colleges with that title ? I ask this as this tag has existed for a long time without change. Boylo 02:04, 3 May 2007 (UTC) Added Note : Noticed that the link List_of_Marist_Brothers_schools has the Marcellin College link going to Bulleen College for the Randwick College listing (yet article does not even include Randwick in topic.

Is Bulleen administratively separate from Randwick? Separate governing boards, headmasters, etc.? If so then the easiest thing to do probably is to just create a new article for Randwick and put a disambiguation link at the top of the Bulleen article. You can name the new article "Marcellin College (Randwick, NSW)" or "Marcellin College, Randwick" for now and move the Bulleen article to a new name of a similar form. See the Edison High School disambiguation page for examples of articles using both conventions. Wl219 02:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I will look into all that and see what can be done. There are many links to that page, so would have to check them also. This is the problem of having the School Name not correctly tagged from the start. Will work on it when i find the time.Thx Boylo 00:35, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Have made the article for Marcellin College Randwick as that is that is how the school is named on their own website, without a coma. As i am new as a Editor i havent done the disambiguation links yet, as wish to make sure i do them correctly.Boylo 05:48, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

new proposal: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (schools)

In response to recent discussion, I've revamped Wikipedia:Naming conventions (schools). I read the talk page for the proposal carefully and read the discussion on this talk page and the archive that happened after the proposal got historicalled, and I think I've changed the proposal to fit the comments that I've read here, and I think that it's really consistent--which means easy to understand and implement.

The one tricky part is the disambiguation. For example, there are lots of schools with Harding in the name. Many named after the President, though maybe not all. The names of the schools are similar, but not the same. They should however all link to the same disambiguation page however and that disambiguation page should be listed at the general Harding disambiguation page. Which means that this will be a real disambiguation project, and for certain schools etc, decisions are going to have to be made about where to locate these disambiguation pages.

However, I haven't dealt with that in the proposal. I see that as a seperate issue and I think that there are great general disambiguation guidelines already, and so the new subproject if there is one, or this project if there isn't could just follow those unless it becomes apparent that disambiguation has to be done differently for some reason for schools. Miss Mondegreen talk  20:25, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

• Strongly Support I think this proposal is strong enough to be Project Policy. If there are no objections we should begin a subproject devoted to disambiguating these pages. Adam McCormick 18:58, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
• Generally Support - I think we need to make a firm establishment on if this applies to universities or not. But apart from that I think this would make a good guideline and I would support a sub-project for it. Camaron1 | Chris 19:06, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support, but - I am convinced we need the advice and guidelines. I'm concerned that a sub project may just raise heat with schools. I would prefer to leave this to schools to sort out for themselves based on our advice and only get involved when a referee is required or two scholls are unaware of their unoriginality. Apologies if all of this is obvious. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Victuallers (talk • contribs) 12:56, 9 May 2007.

As I see it, these are the reasons we need a project:

• The articles may follow the convention, but not do disambiguation. Many people involved in this policy really only work on a few articles and are unaware of much outside of that. Schools would create redirects, and there would be dozens of redirects pointing to articles named very similar things and this has a potential for disaster.
• Articles created now won't have a problem until..., and then it'll be a problem. With a project for disambiguation, there are experienced people moving the pages and the categories and making sure that what links here is still supposed to link here. Creating and fixing disambiguation pages and moving pages and categories is not easy.
• The younger an article is while it's moved, the better. I just foolishly created a subpage and two categories and moved the proper things into the categories for an article that needs to be renamed. Even if it doesn't have subpages and cats, the less links that need to be changed, the better. Articles that are too similarly named used disambigs, not redirects, so all of those links need to be changed by hand. This is a lot of work for the articles, even if it is only done when absolutely necessary, and the sooner it's done in an article's life, the better it is for both the people who do the dismbiguation and the article itself.
• At the very least, a disambiguation project will need to be created to clear up disputes about disambiguation and to do the disambiguation and moving for schools that want it done but don't have someone who can. Miss Mondegreen talk  00:17, May 10 2007

I agree with your proposal and will give a example of why it is needed. Whilst reading a article on Martin Bryant (who murdered 35 people and injured 37 others in the Port Arthur massacre) it stated he attended Marcellin College. At i attended this College myself, i was surprised so clicked the link and found it took me to Marcellin College at Bulleen. Since both use the same title of Marcellin College, i made a new article for Marcellin College Randwick (as one didnt exist) to try and distinguish the two Colleges. This is mentioned above in ' Naming of Colleges ' where a reply was made explaining how to disambiguation. Now being new as a Editor i understood what was needed, but i lack the experience to make those changes, for fear of causing some error or misunderstanding of school titles. From my own knowledge, my college was known as Marcellin College Randwick, (no coma needed) as the suburb is part of the College name, and its reflected on Google coming up as that. But with Marcellin College at Bulleen, when Googled it comes up as Marcellin College, so maybe thats all its title is (no suburb)? So being unsure what to do i have left the articles without any disambiguation links, as i would prefer someone who has more experience to set those up. Its true what you mentioned about most would only do a few schools, as i would only do articles on the schools i have attended myself, so understanding the guidelines of naming schools seems complex for someone such as myself. So i believe having a Editor experienced with sorting out disambiguation problems would be very helpful in these cases.Boylo 02:42, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

University High School -- first, we need to name schools more imaginatively. Secondly, this disambiguation page shows the immense need for both the guideline and the project. Notice, almost every school on the list has it's location added as a qualifier, but there are five different methods used among the various articles:

• (city)
• , city
• of city
• (state)
• of city, state

There are also schools on the list that have a location qualifier as part of their official name, and schools that are not named University High School, but are refered to as some part of or the whole of the name, or were at one time known that way.

It's going to take participation from both the people who are highly involved with the school articles, and people who are looking at the big picture, and have experience movng articles and making sure all of the links go to the right places--both parties working together to come up with something that works and is navigable and encyclopedia.

If you see a place where you don't think the guideline will work or something needs to be changed or where you do think it will work and it's good or needs to be made stronger, whatever, please, come to the project page, and get involved in the talk page discussion etc. We all have varying levels of experience with different types of school articles and the more minds work on this the better. Miss Mondegreen talk  07:31, May 11 2007

Question on standards for including school address information

In almost every article in Wikipedia, street addresses and phone numbers are omitted (see WP:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_a_directory); notable exceptions are when the address itself if famous — for example, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, 10 Downing Street. Recently, I've seen some school articles that have included the street address. Is there a consensus from the WikiProject to include addresses? — ERcheck (talk) 15:00, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Good question, I have heard before that addresses and contact details are classed as un-encyclopedic. However, since nearly every school infobox includes a box for school address, telephone number e.t.c, I have never seen the harm in them and have even included them in the The Petersfield School article which I am working on. Camaron1 | Chris 16:00, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

But the infoxbox includes a lot of other un-encyclopedia information, including information that has to be updated regularly (the current principal, school president). While some information in the infobox would still have to be updated regularly (size of staff, # of students), it would be much less information, it's encyclopedic, and it's easier to find sources for this type of information. Is there any real reason that the infoboxes include this information, or is it just a because we can sorta thing. Because if it's the latter, we should overhaul the infoboxes or make not that certain fields were only to be used if there was a real reason. Having the phone number for a school in an encylcopedia article is a little weird. Miss Mondegreen talk  22:28, May 13 2007

I belive that this sort of information is vital to these articles as, more and more, wikipedia is used by prospective students and their parents to research and evaluate these schools. I don't think there is any harm in posting the information along with a good article and it does add something tangible to the article. Almost ALL notable places give locations and at times even coordinates. I agree that Wiki is not a directory, but just because an article includes some directory information doesn't make it a directory. This guideline is in place so that we don't get list of contact info in liu of content, not to prevent contact info from being included. Adam McCormick 03:25, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Using Wikipedia as a directory exactly what WP:NOT addresses. Per WP:EL, a link to the school site is allowable — and interested readers should be able to find contact information there. If we extend this, then the same argument could be made that all businesses, locations should have addresses and phone numbers. Certainly not encyclopedic. — ERcheck (talk) 00:48, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

WP:NOT Specifically allows "...reference tables and tabular information for quick reference." which includes information on such essentials as where a school is located. These are not current events, they are not vast lists of contact information, they are useful information which, in the context of a well-written article is very valuable. I reiterate, Directory information does not a directory make. I am not suggesting that location and contact info should ever be the main basis of an article, just that having the information absolutely DOES NOT take anything away from this encyclopedia. Adam McCormick 01:16, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

There is also a tangent discussion to this one located here which has a bit more of a global scope than this one. Adam McCormick 00:01, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

• I'm pretty sure that the point of WP:NOT#DIR is that articles can not be solely directory listings, not that directory information is banned. There may be reasons why there shouldn't be address information, but WP:NOT isn't one of them. -Amarkov moo! 02:18, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
• Addresses and phome numbers are encyclopedic to me. Some of the schools I've worked on have changed names two or three times, usually when they changed from K-8 elementary schools to either primary or middle schools, and also when changing to a newly important name, like all of the MLK, Jr., and JFK schools that changed from something else. The address provides a way to confirm that a current aricle about a school with an unfamiliar name is really about the one that a reader went to in the 1950s and is looking for. I hope that we will someday have a fabulous, stable, infobox that will automatically look up the coordinates and enter the geohack template. Even if we don't, I need the street address to look up the coordinates on Google. If a sub-stub has been created with nothing but "Foo Elelmenatry School is an elelmenatry school at 123 Foo bvld in Fooville, Foo County," then I would want to see it merged to a school district article with the schools and addresses in a list or table, showing at least their towns, if not the full addresses. Even though this is much more like a "directory," it would be good for the project, I think. Of course, it seems that there are some who seem to think that usefulness is not only not a notability criterion, but that it is a presumptive reason for deletion.--Hjal 04:39, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• Ok, but what about additional information in infobox's like principal, president, dean etc? How encylopedic is that? Miss Mondegreen talk  08:13, May 15 2007

• I think an address is crucial to the context of a school. Even an individual school's street number can determine which population it serves and which regional districts it falls under. In the case of New Orleans Public Schools, a street number can differentiate schools that may never reopen and schools that are fully operational. A school building's precise geographic location often becomes crucial to its history. It is Stuyvesant's close proximity to Ground Zero that made an impact on its students. In the case of principals, presidents, and deans you could make the argument that they aren't necessary, but many of the federal documents I've seen that mention schools, such as applications for Blue Ribbon Status, put the principal's name at the very top. I don't mind seeing the name of an institution's figurehead in an infobox --Jh12 16:48, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• But student body president? Also, I think the level of notability differs from school to school. If the school doesn't excell at anything, at least the principal's name is on fliers and stuff. And while the student body president may play a large role at some schools and be notable within the school, at other's, the president's name is on homecoming fliers and that's it. Also, some of this stuff is unsourced--especially stuff like president. Miss Mondegreen talk  22:14, May 15 2007

• My opinion would be that thing that change every year or less (Like class/student body officers, one-time campus events, and how the teams finished the season six years ago) are not likely notable but the principal/dean of a school fundamentally affect how that school is viewed by its own community, by its own students, and by the academic community which make them vital to the school. Adam McCormick 03:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that the "president" field in some of the infoboxes is for a school official, not a student. Elected school boards may call their chairperson "President;" some private schools may use the term; it may just be carried over from a college/university template. The school heads, whether they are called "head," "principal," or whatever, are encyclopedic even if they are not personally notable. One value of listing them is that their names are good search terms, especially for schols that have common names or lots of sports coverage. "Lincoln High School" gets a zillion hits, and even "Lincoln High School" "San Francisco" gets too many to look at. But if you add a principal's name to search terms, you can frequently find stuff that would take hours to ferret out. Same for the street address--it might turn up a story from a period where the school had a different name.--Hjal 15:17, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Category for deletion

I thought this WProject may want to know about the CfD nomination for Category:Roman Catholic secondary schools in Omaha. - Freechild 17:49, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Category merger

It has been proposed that the two categories Category:Secondary schools by country and Category:High schools be merged. See the comments at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 May 18. Dahliarose 23:17, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Missing school?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jit_Sin_High_School Erm... Does not consiter entering into WikiProject Schools? (KyoriAsh 17:43, 23 May 2007 (UTC))

We are not omnipotent and thus hadn't found this school yet, it has now been tagged. Thanks for letting us know Adam McCormick 18:19, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

KyoriAsh, to include a school in WikiProject Schools, all you need do is add the {{WPSchools}} template tag at the top of the school's Discussion page. I hope this answers your question. —  Jim Dunning  talk  :  18:23, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for helping, I try to edit the article to a better structure as soon as possible when I have enough data. (KyoriAsh 12:53, 25 May 2007 (UTC))

Rfc

We could use a weigh in at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/University High School (Los Angeles, California).

The article in question is protected after an edit war and we're now attempting to get consensus on whether or not school newspaper articles are RS. Until such a time... Miss Mondegreen talk  00:41, May 24 2007 (UTC)

Fenwick High School (Chicago, Illinois)

Could a few more editors please watchlist Fenwick High School (Chicago, Illinois)? Anonymous editors insist on adding a bunch of unsourced information about how wonderful the institution is without any effort to provide evidence or discuss their edits. I'm sure it's a wonderful institution but this is an encyclopedia, not a marketing brochure. --ElKevbo 05:18, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Sources: School website (free) vs. Newspaper (pay-per-view)

I'm addicted to adding citations to the pages I'm working on, but I end up with a lot of statements sourced to pages on the school district's site. Now, I have access to newspapers and clippings from the schools' history that I can use to re-cite some of the statements...but most of these are not available for free online. I'm looking for advice on how best to handle these situations...is it appropriate to have two citations for a large number of the statements in these articles? Is an online, freely available page from the school district any better or worse than a pay-per-view article from a reputable newspaper? --Hebisddave 22:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Multiple citations is not a problem but I wouldn't do that unless it were necessary for some reason (contentious material, outlandish claim, etc.). If a website is stable and likely to be available for long period of time then I think a source that others can readily access and verify themselves would be superior. However, the odds of any website remaining stable and information available on it over a long period of time (note how I haven't defined "long period of time") are not good. It's your call. --ElKevbo 22:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Citations do not need to be on-line. If they are online then they can be made permanent by using web services that give a permanent link. Citations should preferably not be to a schools website. They should be to a third party. I got all this information by looking at the citations advice. I would start by looking at Wikipedia:Citing sources. Hope this helps Victuallers 22:29, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree: while I have used some information from school websites (such as press releases), I use them sparingly in favor of third-party sources; anything significant is usually available from online versions of regional newspapers. As for offline, I've used yearbooks for some older info (such as census, admin and athletics data), but I'm planning on replacing (or augmenting) them with visits to the local library for hardcopy newspaper sources.
—  Jim Dunning  talk  :  23:34, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

If you look at University High School (Los Angeles, California) you'll see that there's a similar issue there. First off--it's fine to have a link to a source online that requires payment--as long as it's a reliable source. Remember, no link is necessary at all. Books are a reliable source. Newspapers that aren't online are reliable. Being able to click and check is great, but accessibility isn't the definition of reliability. That being said, is one source isn't accessible and you can source the statement elsewhere--providing a second source is nice. Don't go crazy though--make the article clean and readable.

You'll also see something I've done is I've tried to find places where someone is offering the source for free. After the full citation I add a link to the same source elsewhere.

Examples (at the article they have appropriate links):

• The full text is available at The Boston Globe
• A text version of the article is available at the California Film Industy Magazine (I try to see if there's a text version available for pdfs)
• Transcript accessed with LexisNexis 2007-05-26. Listen to the story at www.npr.org

This is at least what I've done--keeping top notch sources, but also keeping accessability in mind. Miss Mondegreen talk  00:32, May 30 2007 (UTC)

Aquinascruft

As a result of a number of issues relating to schools articles which had come to the attention of WikiProject Western Australia and the recent coining of a phrase in an AfD by one project member - a new Essay has been created which may be of interest to your project when dealing with Schools article issues. Titled Aquinascruft, it covers editorial and policy issues usually encountered in the course of maintaining articles relating to private schools, and to a lesser extent public schools. Please feel free to contribute further to this essay by discussing it on it's talk page. Cheers, Thewinchester ^(talk) 15:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Hampton School

This article was assessed as high importance by Victuallers but since that assessment it seems to have been upgraded to top importance. I suspect the person who has upgraded it is one of the article's editors. The school has a long history and some well-known alumni but it is not a particularly well-known public (ie, private) school in the UK. Unless anyone objects I will change it back to high importance. How do we stop school editors upgrading their own articles? Dahliarose 10:36, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I have changed the assessment back to "High" - an important school but not well known enough for "Top". Unfortunately article authors bumping up the assessments of their own articles is quite a big problem. I do frequently check categories like [[Category:High-importance_school_articles]] to see if articles have been placed in them that shouldn't be. Camaron1 | Chris 17:41, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Help Adding to a School Article

Hi, I've been really working hard to add information to the Walt Whitman High School, South Huntington article. I am, however, finding it particularly difficult to find information on the school, but I do know that many clubs in the school, sports teams, and students, have made it far in national, state, and regional competitions. The school offers a wide variety of class, yada yada, I feel like an ad for the school, but I'm just not sure where to look to find other sources. I've searched the internet, but I do not feel everything there is exactly factual. Any suggestions of specific pieces of information I should look for? I could really use some help...Redian (Talk) 20:10, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

You might try searching the archives of local newspapers. If you're in the Huntington Station area you'll know what they are; otherwise here's a list of some local to Huntington Station. Check out their websites and look for sports, academic performance, club, etc. stories. I did a quick Google and found some press release type stuff here and here. Also, check out the NYSED info on sites like this and this.

I hope this helps a bit.
—  Jim Dunning  talk  :  20:51, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so much. I guess I was just worried about not showing the schools notability. Can you also tell me what kind of info on the school can go in the introduction to give an overview, be factual, and catch attention? Redian (Talk) 21:09, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Merging UK Schools Infoboxes

Currently there are five different infobox templates specifically for UK schools. The templates in use are:

• Infobox GB School (used by over 150 schools)
• Infobox UK Schools (used by less than 30 schools)
• Infobox UK School (used by around 40 schools)
• Infobox College GB (used by around 20 colleges)
• Infobox English Public School (used by less than 20 schools)

Infobox GB School is more comprehensive, more flexible, and looks more like other infoboxes than the alternatives. I propose that Infobox UK Schools and Infobox UK School are depreciated in favour of Infobox GB school.

Also, though Infobox College GB is a template specifically for Sixth Form Colleges, all the parameters in Infobox College GB are available in Infobox GB School, so I also suggest this template is depreciated in favour of Infobox GB school.

Similarly, though Infobox English Public School is also a specialist template, all its parameters are present in Infobox GB School, so there is no reason why Infobox English Public School can't also be merged. (Chgallen 13:23, 1 June 2007 (UTC))

I think this is a good idea, a bit of standardisation will make things easier and should not be to difficult to implement looking at the numbers. Camaron1 | Chris 17:46, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Agree with you two. What I find a bit worrying is the low number of GB schools in total. Is there a way of automating how we add these info boxes so we can an LEA at a time? ... or something like that.... I believe there is someone working on adding infoboxes .... Victuallers 19:35, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Many UK Schools use American templates such as Template:Infobox Private School and Template:Infobox Secondary school. That's why the total number of GB schools appears low. While there is nothing wrong with this, these international templates do not have specialist UK school info such as LEA and Ofsted number. (chgallen 20:21, 1 June 2007 (UTC))

There are now more schools using the Infobox GB schools because of a recent merger. While I agree that there should be more uniformity I'm not too keen on this GB schools template because of the coloured banner at the top which looks a bit odd and the use of the term "Official website" rather than the actual URL at the bottom of the box. I much prefer Template:Infobox Secondary school which only really needs a few minor modifications to make it suitable for all UK schools (ie, the facility to use different terms for school heads, eg, headteacher for state schools, and headmaster and headmistress for private schools). There are free labels at the bottom which many UK schools have used to describe their specialist status. Dahliarose 10:25, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

The coloured bar was removed before this merger was suggested, in order to make the template come more in line with other infoboxes. Infobox GB School already has optional fields for Religion, Specialist Status, Local Education Authority, Ofsted number (which produces a link to the school's ofsted report), school houses, and the functionality to change "motto" to "mottoes", "founder" to "founders", "headteacher" to whatever you like, and allow the name of the religious head to be changed to anything (as opposed to just "chaplain", making this template viable for faith schools of a religion other than Christianity as well as Christian Schools who have a cannon or provost) as well as three free labels. Infobox GB school also produces an hCard microformat, something which Infobox Secondary school lacks. The school's website is currently displayed as "official site" in order to save the space a lengthy URL takes up. But if that is the only objection to the depreciation of the other UK templates, then it can be easily changed to optionally display the URL. (chgallen 12:01, 2 June 2007 (UTC))

Infobox GB school is much better now that the yellow bar has gone. Having looked at it again I can see that the template is indeed very flexible and is probably the best available for all UK schools. I would personally prefer to have the option to include the URL for the school's website (most schools do tend to do this anyway) so I would appreciate it if you could alter the template to this effect. Thanks for your hard work. Dahliarose 14:44, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

That's done now. (chgallen 14:27, 4 June 2007 (UTC))

I support the merger proposal. Are there other schools infoboxes, outside the UK, which could also be included? Andy Mabbett 15:41, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I too support the proposal (although it's deprecate, not depreciate - both are fine words but have different meanings). Indeed Chg is to be congratulated on his efforts to supply every need and meet every objection. -- roundhouse 15:53, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Deprecate/depreciate... oops. Thanks for pointing that out. I found Template:Infobox scottish primary, secondary and nursery school which could possibly also be deprecated in time, but it has parameters such as "feeder schools", "feeder school for" and "email address" which GB school currently lacks. (chgallen 16:52, 4 June 2007 (UTC))

I would certainly draw the line at email address. "Feeder schools" might be OK. (Are there many primary or nursery schools with articles?) -- roundhouse 17:36, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Academic grading in North America

This page is in horrible shape right now. I've added the Wikiproject education project banner to the talk page, and posted a notice on that project's talk page but am bringing it up here too because this article is very very bad. It has no references, and I doubt half of the information on the page. It seems to be a hodgepodge of every student's experience with grading, adding some obscure method every which way, and it's impossible to sort out what's credible. It'd be great if someone could find some statistics about how widely these scales are used. --Ybbor^Talk 00:40, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

This is more of an education article, I'll post it over there Adam McCormick 17:58, 4 June 2007 (UTC)