Talk:Atlantic High School (Iowa)

Title confusion

This article appears to be a split personality. The lede paragraph descibes the educational institution (which still exists, albeit in a different building), whereas the bulk of the text and all the references are about a structure on the NRHP that was formerly the high school, but is now the middle school.

I would propose a split, with a new article about the educational institution and this one about the building. The only question is what to call them? Notifications will be posted to WPSCH, IOWA, and NRHP for input.

My suggestion would be to move this article to Atlantic Middle School (Iowa), deleting this page and creating the high school's article on a new page with this title. Not sure how COMMONNAME figures in here. Help! John from Idegon (talk) 08:41, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

In light of the brevity of this article, I don't think that a split is necessarily the best approach at this time. My inclination would be to put the material on the old building (basically, the second paragraph of the article's current version) into a "History" section. This approach would keep all the material on the HS and its history, material that would be suitable both for an HS article and for one on the old HS building, in one place.

I wouldn't split off an old-building article unless and until there was enough material on the building to produce a Start+ article, and at least a section's worth of that material was basically irrelevant to the HS article (say, a multi-paragraph architectural description of the old building). — Ammodramus (talk) 13:55, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Ammodramus. If these were two unrelated entities merely sharing a name, of course we'd need to split it up, but we can cover the entire school in one article, as long as it doesn't make the article too long. Locations and personalities notwithstanding, it's the same institution as it was when it occupied the building that's now the middle school; we might as well have a single article covering the institution, its current building, its previous building, and any buildings that it occupied previously. See Third Presbyterian Church (Springfield, Ohio), where this is the case: the focus is the congregation, with lots of information about the building, but simultaneously mentioning the congregation's current building and the current occupants of the congregation's NR-listed former building. Also see Rayen High School, which covers the recently-closed institution, its latest building, its former building (which has NR status), and that building's current occupants. Nyttend (talk) 21:35, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

I'd agree with the above, with the additional point that if there's ever a reason to create an article about the current middle school institution, the material about the historic building should be moved to the middle school article, providing the history of the building currently occupied by the middle school. A mention and cross-reference would of course remain in the high school article. — Ipoellet (talk) 23:38, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Agree with Ipoellet's point. Nyttend (talk) 02:04, 1 January 2016 (UTC)