User talk:Trackinfo/sandbox/NHSL

Draft-stage comment - premise is a bit flawed

Yes, some of those 51 sports leagues clearly meet WP:GNG or WP:ORG, but until there is a pattern of AFD results, it's going to be hard to make that claim in an essay without AFD histories to back it up. You can make the claim in a WP:User essay, but such essays generally carry much less clout than a WP:-space essay.

The whole school-inherent-notability thing has evolved over time. 10 years ago primary schools with at least a few seemingly-notable-source references would "pass" but some high school articles which didn't demonstrate that reliable sources existed failed. Now we are pushing things in the opposite extreme: Almost never will a high school die at AFD, but just this week an editor in an elementary school AFD all but said that primary schools must be redirected or deleted, as if they could never meet WP:GNG or WP:ORG independently of their city or school district or other "parent" entity.

Personally, I think the standard for schools should be something like this:

Editors recognize that almost all "comprehensive" non-special-purpose high schools that offer high school diplomas that have been around more than a year or two have enough sports teams, national merit scholars, and other things that it's almost a given that reliable, independent sources exist that would qualify the school for an article, and it would be WP:POINTYy and wasteful of everyone's time to go around deleting the pages just because those sources may not be easy to find without a lot of work or spending money on a printed or paywalled source. The same presumption can be given to some special-purpose schools but it will be pretty obvious if that is the case.

The exceptions are rare enough that the burden to delete should fall on the person recommending deletion: As part of his deletion recommendation he has a duty to say "I researched this thouroughly and couldn't find anything other than pro-forma mentions such as those in government reports, plus non-independent sources which do not count in assessing notability."

All other primary and secondary schools, including many types of special-purpose schools which happen to grant high school diplomas, should be treated the same as any organization. That is, they should have sufficient references from reliable, independent sources in the article.

In short, the combination of being more than a year or two old, granting a high school diploma, and being a "regular," non-special-purpose high school is a very good proxy for being notable, and the exceptionally "non-notable" regular high school can be handled on a case-by-case basis. In other words, we aren't defining notability as "any non-brand-new non-special-purpose high school that grants high school diplomas is by definition notable" but rather we are saying "any non-brand-new non-special-purpose high school that grants high school diplomas could, in principle (WP:NEXIST), have an article written about it that was so well-referenced that it would be obvious that the school meets Wikipedia's notability guidelines."

As for high school athletic associations:

If you are going to write an essay, the first thing you need to do is find out what really is a good proxy for notability. That is, if people followed your essay there would be very, very few articles which "passed" the criteria in the essay and simultaneously "fail" Wikipedia's actual notability guidelines even if the author had access to every reliable, independent source that mentioned the associated that ever existed.

• Having been the subject of multiple, independent academic studies and/or widely-published books where the neither the authors nor their sponsoring institution had close connections to the association nor were they in the region that the association operated in would probably indicate that the association meets WP:GNG or WP:CORP. On the other hand, it could mean that the authors wanted to study a high school athletic association and just pulled this one's name out of a hat.
• Being featured as an association on nationwide television on a major broadcast or cable network over the course of more than 2 seasons is probably a good proxy. Big-name team appearing on TV two years in a row, no; having the association's state championship on a major national TV network two years in row, yes, that's probably a good proxy.

Some other starting points would be WP:NONPROFIT, WP:ORGDEPTH, and WP:NEXIST. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 03:54, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Consider adding userspace templates, at least for now

Consider adding either {{userspace draft}} and/or {{user essay}} to the top of this page. Also, {{under construction}} if that template applies. {{notability essay}} may also be appropriate. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 03:57, 18 September 2015 (UTC)