Wikipedia:Schools/Old proposal

This is a failed proposal.

Consensus for its implementation was not established within a reasonable period of time. If you want to revive discussion, please use the talk page or initiate a thread at the village pump.

Schools are frequently important to their communities, and are often the subject of the sort of non-trivial published works that are needed to complete an article. Wikipedia articles about schools should show that there is sufficient coverage of that school to allow for the creation of a complete article.

Editors may consider a primary or secondary school to be best handled in a separate article if it verifiably meets at least one of the following criteria:

The school has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself, including published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, books, magazine articles, television documentaries, and public reports by schools inspection agencies and consumer watchdog organizations,¹ ² ³ that meet all of the following criteria:
- The coverage is of value in building an encyclopedia (which excludes sources such as newspaper articles that simply mention the school in passing, or directories of schools that offer nothing more than demographic data, or lists of alumni that offer no content other than lists of names or years). ⁴
- The work is independent of the school itself. Works published by the school itself or its staff, students, or faculty, are generally excluded.
- The work is sufficiently reliable to support the facts in the article.
The school has alumni (plural) who are notable according to WP:BIO or WP:MUSIC.
The school is distinctive in any one of the following areas, or in any other areas for which it has received press or other coverage:⁴
- Age
- Curriculum (Academics in U.S.)
- Architecture
- Awards
- Events that have occurred at the school
- Extracurricular activities, including sports

Articles about schools that do not meet the above criteria may be unexpandable save for demographic data. Wikipedia is also neither a directory nor a phonebook. School articles should not merely list upcoming events, phone numbers, schedules etc. Such articles should be merged into an article about their parent community or school district. See Wikipedia:Places of local interest for more suggestions for dealing with such articles.

Notes

^Note 1 : Self-promotion is not the route to having a Wikipedia article. The published works must be someone else writing about the school. (See Wikipedia:Autobiography for the verifiability and neutrality problems that affect material where the subject of the article itself is the source of the material.)
^Note 2 : What constitutes a "published work" is deliberately broad. Some examples: Rift Valley Academy and The King's School, Worcester have been the subjects of books. Maywood Avenue School has been the subject of several full-length newspaper articles. All state schools in England, including all primary and nursery schools, are subjected to regular Ofsted reports. These reports can provide a useful source of information.
^Note 3 : Newspaper coverage includes regular coverage in local media (such as complete stories about a school's athletic program).
^Note 4 : It is assumed these distinctive features indicate there will be sufficient sources to provide the necessary coverage. For instance, if a school is far older than any other school in the locality it will probably have received adequate coverage over the years. Finally, being distinctive locally is sufficient if the local area is sufficiently large (e.g. if there's only one or a few schools, that's not a big enough area of comparison).