Wikipedia talk:Notability (schools)

Origins

This page is the result of a Village Pump proposal on 2007-11-21.

Speedy delete?

Given in this page and its talk page as 'failed to meet community consensus' and 'unsuccessful', should it be just speedily deleted? It's hard to make an article about a 'non-notable' school and seeing in a recent AfD, this policy has backfired and used in vain, and many of the 'delete' reasons for it have been strongly slammed by a lot of others. - ÆÅM «(fætsøn!) 05:03, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that this fits into any of the speedy deletion categories, but I do agree that deletion or some form of archiving would be in order given that this page is achieving nothing but confusing people - I've seen it cited on both sides of AfDs, and this is inappropriate given that the guideline was never accepted, and the current text in particular gained little support. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:17, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Even a regular deletion nomination of this page would be summarily closed under the speedy keep rules. Policy pages, even failed ones, are kept as historical references for the project. This page is already tagged with the {{historical}} template, clearly marking that the current form does not have consensus and can not be relied upon when making decisions.
That said, the dicussion above makes clear that prior versions of this page had at least the potential to finally reach consensus. Those earlier drafts could either be reopened or used as the basis for a new proposal someday. Either way, they have value to the project. Deletion of the page and its history is inappropriate. Rossami (talk) 13:49, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Given that every proposal failed to win consensus when it was proposed for adoption, I don't agree that earlier versions of the proposal could have attained consensus - they plainly did not when this was tried. Nick Dowling (talk) 07:21, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

We don't delete failed policy proposals and absolutely no reason to delete this one. TerriersFan (talk) 20:47, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't think deletion in this case would be helpful, this page has a lot of history behind it which I think should be preserved. One idea could be to alter the page to summaries all the options considered for this proposed guideline to make the history more clear. Camaron | Chris (talk) 19:57, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

This is policy on a de facto basis

I will agree that this policy, as written, will still not get a consensus of people to sign on to it, today or in the immediate future. However, if you look at all of the school-related AfDs in the past year or so (if not longer) you will see that the participants in these deletion discussions are essentially following the recommendations of this proposal and that the results of these AfDs -- in which nearly all high schools are kept and most elementary schools are merged -- basically operate as if this proposal was in effect as policy. While this may bode well for establishing consensus in the future, another alternative is to create a results / precedent-based attempt at policy that uses these AfD results to show what the characteristics are of articles that are kept vs. those of ones that are deleted / merged. We can then use these experiential distinctions as the basis of a guideline that can be formalized into policy later down the road. My proposed guideline would enumerate the characteristics of articles that have been retained at AfD and would allow a future AfD participant to argue that the article under consideration should be kept because it matches the characteristics of those kept in the past per precedent, or be merged / deleted because it doesn't. Regardless of the next steps with this proposal here and irrespective of the fact that this is not de jure policy or if this essay is marked as historical, we are essentially observing this as policy on a de facto basis. Alansohn (talk) 12:57, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Have you seen Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes? - I think that it covers the same turf as what you're proposing, and is already a widely accepted point of reference for AfDs. From my observations, the results of AfDs are somewhat skewed by the group of editors who participate in a high proportion of school-related AfDs and argue that high schools are automatically notable. As efforts to have this principle more widely accepted have been unsuccessful (rightly in my view) it's going a bit far to say that its a de-facto policy. Nick Dowling (talk) 22:24, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that school AfD results belong in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes. There is no need to complicate the question of what should be done with school articles and the wikipedia concept of "notability", which is foreign to most contributors of new school articles. There is no need for this guideline, it would even make matters worse in some ways. The same results can be accomplished by other means. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:16, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

New tag

There are two tags for notability essays which did not achieve consensus for acceptance as guideline. They come between the tag for "official" guideline and the tag for rejected, and give a more rounded explanation of the situation. The tags are {{Notability essay}} and {{essay-project-note}}. I have placed the {{Notability essay}} on this essay as being the more appropriate, though {{essay-project-note}} is the more common tag and may be used instead. The reason for {{Notability essay}} is where it is a felt that a WikiProject is not firmly involved. SilkTork *^YES! 00:17, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't agree - this wasn't written as an 'essay' - it was an long-running and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to develop a new notability guideline. As the guideline was rejected each time it was proposed it has little to no chance of being "accepted as a guideline at a future date" as that template suggests. The current text was soundly rejected when it was proposed as a guideline and it's missleading to label it as anything but what it is. Nick-D (talk) 00:23, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

IU think it actually has practical consensus. All AfDs in the last 12 months have been decided on the basis of the criteria presented there. It was kept from adoption here by a very few dedicated people--our procedures for consensus on pages like this is that a few such can prevent any compromise solution, such as they have done at WP:FICT. At AfD, no such supermajority is needed and the general community contributes its commonsense. The correct status for this is in fact guideline, because it has in essence been accepted. It is certainly not "rejected" (I would not say the same about any version of WP:FICT--the conflict continues at the AfD level, with decisions essentially at random depending on participation.).

I don't think that the above and achieved discussions here support your view that only a "few" people blocked this becoming a guideline - there was never anything which even approached a majority and it was constantly being re-written and changed. WP:FICT's recent rejection was very comprehensive (as demonstrated by the large number of votes against it preserved at Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)/Archive 49) not least because it changed radically during the voting period, which was also a problem with this attempt at a guideline. Nick-D (talk) 08:00, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

• Nick-D is right here. This was an unsuccessful attempt to forge a new guideline Many editors still reject its positions. Eusebeus (talk) 00:34, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why that makes a difference, as essays don't need consensus. Mind you, I don't care which tag is used; but following essays is purely voluntary and labelling this an essay doesn't mean people need to agree to it. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 06:50, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

The suggest guidelines here have been challenged repeatedly at AfD over the last month, and the consensus has always been to continue using them in practice, though the explanations people give have differed. I think the guideline that as a default all HS get articles, and others get merged, does in fact have practical consensus in every sense except being certified as having it. The decisions are not at random, but as consistent as AfD ever gets. DGG (talk) 01:04, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Yep. It's unfortunate it can't be made into a real consensus. But, a clarification- non-HS articles are kept if there is something notable- Blue Ribbon Schools Program, or some very wide coverage elsewhere. tedder (talk) 01:08, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

yes, that certain does count as notable. DGG (talk) 00:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

proposal

Change shortcuts to point to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes#Education instead of this page.--RadioFan (talk) 15:08, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

• That would make it much harder for a new reader to sort out and follow all the old historical references which pointed to this page. As has been discussed several times above (and in more than a few deletion debates), even failed policy pages (or perhaps especially failed policy pages) have value to the project. They help new editors to understand the problems and the thinking that led to the current policy. They also help us avoid or at least reduce the regurgitation of the same arguments.
  Common Outcomes is a good place to point people but we should probably do so via new shortcuts, not by attempting to repurpose old ones. Rossami (talk) 15:29, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Rossami - this is a failed proposal, and didn't lead to any changes to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes#Education. It's well worth keeping this for historical reference. Nick-D (talk) 07:31, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Bearian standards

Bearian has written a useful essay giving his 7 out of ten approach for assessing school notability.--ClemRutter (talk) 10:14, 11 January 2020 (UTC)