User talk:Herostratus/Understanding SCHOOLOUTCOMES

Miscellaneous old business

This is an earlier runthru of the data that is still to lengthy to be useful for the average reader, we think. Retained here for reference.

Raw Data (not recommended) Listing and discussing all uses of the string "SCHOOLOUTCOMES", in context

We'll through the survey section looking for all instances of the string SCHOOLOUTCOMES. That should cover most discussion of that standard, although not necessarily all, but we'll pick up some discussion where that exact string wasn't used, either because it was intertwined with comments that did, or just because it seems germane. Sometimes OUTCOMES was used instead, but the meaning was the same.

We'll try to put down each instance of the use of the string SCHOOLOUTCOMES, with enough context to be useful. Many of the contents were by editors making repeat entries, so a "headcount" approach to the following material is not possible.

Supporter: ("I do think that keeping the presumption of notability for high schools is the best way to go here"): "The consensus of WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES will likely still be the de facto consensus for schools in ... Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States"... "This RfC was largely started because of outcomes of no consensus or delete for schools in South Asia... Making the standard be proof of existence and accreditation makes sense to me in order to prevent systemic bias". But then later "I think there needs to be a distinction between private secondary schools and for-profit secondary schools"
Much back and forth on this issue with that commentor, with one editor asserting "There is a a huge difference between an independent reliable sources that verifies that and the massively low bar of proof of existance which is what this RfC wants to make the standard" and later another saying "If there's a "massively low bar", then that is set by the current WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES essay". So this is a person saying SCHOOLOUTCOMES sets too low a bar.
"Oppose. I don't agree with WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES....". Whether the editor believed that SCHOOLOUTCOMES is not true or not (we now know it is) is not clear. She probably just meant she didn't like it being used to keep articles, though.
"Oppose. SCHOOLOUTCOMES has been a thorn in the English Wikipedia's side for too long. It, or at least the common interpretation of it, is wholly out of line with our notability guidelines"
"Support.. we should codify what has has been de facto pretty much the case until now (editors citing WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES, even though that's only an essay)"
"Support [with reservations]. The trouble with SCHOOLOUTCOMES as stated is that we're talking about different sorts of secondary schools as if they're all on the same level; some classes of schools, such as American public high schools, will pretty much always be notable as important community institutions, while other classes, such as some of the for-profit schools mentioned above, need to be evaluated on their own merits. Unfortunately, public vs. private isn't quite enough to separate these... The reason I can't support just getting rid of SCHOOLOUTCOMES without an alternative, though, is it would make a lot of vulnerable articles subject to deletion due to the current situation at AfD... Given how many high schools are in rural areas, making it more likely that archived print sources won't be easily accessible, or in countries that don't have the same internet presence as English-speaking countries in the West, these are particularly relevant concerns, and I'm uncomfortable throwing existing articles on schools into that mess with no precautions to avoid deletion on account of sloppy research... if AfD gets flooded with school stubs after a change to SCHOOLOUTCOMES there may not be enough editors able to do the research to prove all the notable ones really are notable within a week". Another editor responded "do we actually have any examples of school articles where that has happened" with a reply of "On the Spanish Wikipedia (which lacks Schooloutcomes) I started [an article]... it took a lot of effort to keep the article... several were doubting possible notability until I got someone at University of Southern California to scan parts of a master's degree thesis which talked about the school. One of the other articles was in Japanese but had an English title/abstract. I have been a longtime editor since 2003 and knew the "process" on how to keep articles; a novice I think would have had much more difficulty, even if he/she spoke Spanish. Also, there was one editor who was trying to force a delete even after I presented source after source after source, and I really, really grew to resent that (and I wasn't the only one who felt that way). I think having SCHOOLOUTCOMES prevents these kinds of scenarios from happening."
A neutral commentor: "While I'm normally in favor of WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES, there's something that's bothered me... While it's fairly easy for schools in the United States and other Anglophone countries to receive coverage, the same isn't the case in developing countries. For example, in my country (the Philippines), only schools in the major cities tend to get any form of coverage, reliable or otherwise. In the provinces, maybe outside of Facebook, there may be little-to-no online presence for private or even public schools. I think this tends to be the case for schools in other countries as well. This made me think something like "is WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES too Western-centric as its standards are based on Western educational systems?" An editor responded with "The supporters of SCHOOLOUTCOMES often argue that it helps counter that bias..."
"Oppose And forbid SCHOOLOUTCOMES from being used in AFD discussions while we are about it." (End of comment.)
(Most of the next exchange used "OUTCOMES" rather than "SCHOOLOUTCOMES" but the intent was the same.) "Support... OUTCOMES is neither a policy, nor a guideline, nor technically even an essay or opinion piece - it simply accurately documents a set of clearly evident long-time Wikipedia behaviours, and as such is indeed an acceptable a short cut to the rationale it represents without voters at AfD having to post a list of several hundred or a thousand example..." This was countered with "Times change, and that OUTCOMES has become a self-fulfilling essay is all the more reason why we need to revisit it and address the underlying shortcomings that are now apparent and which make it problematic" and by another editor "There is no reason we could no[t] do the same [change critera] with schools. (And I would expect that if SCHOOLOUTCOMES is nixed, that we would have to re-examine CSD criteria for schools)"
"Oppose. Just like every other institution, a school-article should prove their notability, not their existence... Schooloutcomes is one of the many locally (i.e. WikiProjects) invented excuses to circumvent the common rules for notability."
Oppose. Schools shouldn't get an automatic free pass at AFD, and merely being mentioned in secondary sources isn't good enough to warrant an article. Actual depth to coverage in such sources is also a must.... In all honesty, this is why... WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES is fucking bullshit."
Oppose. SCHOOLOUTCOMES must die! It may have been usefull way back in the infancy of WP, but the way it is commonly applied these days has several negative consequences: It privileges first-world, and more specifically American, high schools... Thus it actually exacerbates the systemic bias of en.WP... It is used as a weapon to summarily shut down anyone daring to question the existence of any high school article, regardless of the quality of the article or the merits of the argument... An SNG [Special Notability Guideline] creates a presumption of notability, not the fact of notability. Any presumption that is not susceptible to testing and consequent possibility of rebuttal is not really a presumption at all. SCHOOLOUTCOMES is often used to basically forbid any testing of the presumption. Countless speedy deletions are rejected and AFDs are summarily closed citing it - a rather bizarre argument from authority. SCHOOLOUTCOMES thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - "high schools are notable because high schools are notable". Educational institutions currently protected by SCHOOLOUTCOMES should actually be subject to the much fairer (and testable) WP:ORG standard. Replied to with "SCHOOLOUTCOMES isn't a policy or guideline. It's a representation of fact. It won't die until the facts change and more editors !vote to delete or merge", rebutted with "You're missing the point that it is used to actually prevent such !votes from happening, it has effectively shut down the debate", replied with "What SCHOOLOUTCOMES does is to suggest beforehand that actually [making he AfD is] a pointless exercise. But if you want to plough that pointless furrow, no one here can stop you. But a lot of us may just step in and !vote to keep, and in doing so will sort of prove the point. So how would SCHOOLOUTCOMES "die" in any case?" reply being "You are proving the point about the problem of SCHOOLOUTCOMES with regards to secondary schools.... It cannot be used in an AFD to say "well, SCHOOLOUTCOMES says we don't delete schools, so this can't be deleted" (which happens all too much). The problem of SCHOOLOUTCOMES is that it is a leftover of pre-notability periods on WP... {I]f it was the case that the near majority of such AFDs [Where GNG or Near-GNG notability was established] that "keep" was the most common result, then SCHOOLOUTCOMES would make sense. But that's not how it is developed or used anymore - its the catch-22 self-fulfilling cycle that is getting worse... It is trivial to find concrete examples of SCHOOLOUTCOMES being used to shut down discussion. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Benicia High School, for example. SCHOOLOUTCOMES is specifically cited as the reason to keep the nominated article, completely shutting down discussion and effectively preventing secondary schools from being nominated for deletion. That is why this RFC is happening. More examples: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Carman-Ainsworth High School, where there are many links to guidelines and policies, and all discussion is preempted by SCHOOLOUTCOMES; another good discussion is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tenby International School, Penang (2nd nomination). I suggest that regardless of the outcome of this discussion, we should create or change a guideline around notability of secondary schools. The current situation is not tenable." Response was "If we repeal SCHOOLOUTCOMES and return to a pure GNG standard, the systemic bias here will become much worse... One of the main benefits of SCHOOLOUTCOMES is that it helps to mitigate our bias against material from less developed and non-English speaking countries", with the reply being "Except part of that systematic bias is that these secondary school articles often weigh heavily on the use of local sources to support notability, which isn't really in the spirit of notability on a global encyclopedia. Local papers covering local schools lack true independence we want for notability sourcing... If AFDs were done in absence of SCHOOLOUTCOMES and considered the type of coverage these Western schools were getting, most of these would still be deleted because of that local coverage, which is a different way to approach fixing that systematic bias while meeting the notability guidelines we expect for any other topic. We need to bite the bullet and accept this is the case though" Another editor, responding to an earlier comment (the thread is a little convoluted here) says "I think that SCHOOLOUTCOMES actually makes it easier to write articles about schools in the developing world. In the U.S. it's easier to find secondary sources... If you're writing about a Japanese high school you may encounter a language barrier. If you're writing about an Ivorian high school, you may find evidence that it exists on a government website... but it may be harder finding secondary source info directly on the web. SCHOOLOUTCOMES treats all senior high schools equally." Some more back-and-forth not explicitly using the string SCHOOLOUTCOMES, then a comment to and editor "You have managed to get this 100% backwards. Schools in the English-speaking industrial world are virtually 100% guaranteed to pass GNG and articles on them will not be challenged..." replied with I'm not at all convinced that most English-speaking industrial world high schools could genuinely pass WP:ORG or WP:GNG... Now take the counter-example of Indian villages... An article about the temple has very little chance of getting created, but if it does get written, it invariably gets deleted fairly quickly as not notable. However the article about the school, which arguably is just as significant to the community as the temple (or clinic), and based on essentially the same sources as the temple article, is permanently exempted from deletion by SCHOOLOUTCOMES. In my country, South Africa... I guesstimate that perhaps only about one hundred schools could genuinely pass WP:CORP or WP:GNG, and IMHO that's perfectly ok, because Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information".
Support. This is a tried-and-true rule of thumb that has worked effectively for the past decade..." [editor did not use the string SCHOOLOUTCOMES explicitly though]. Another editor added in "I think part of the reason why SCHOOLOUTCOMES was decided was that, in [Anglosphere] senior high schools, it was quite common to find non-routine independent secondary sources... It's to the point where I could start articles on Houston schools on the Spanish Wikipedia, which does not have SCHOOLOUTCOMES (and for awhile was quite resistant to school articles).... Now that South Asian schools are coming in, Wikipedia's confronted with a different set of rules. One other reason why I like WP:COMMOUTCOMES for schools is that I know newspapers are generally only digitized until the 80s or 90s, and that means lots of articles that could help notability just aren't online."
In another thread "Some categories of articles do have "presumed notability" - for example... "Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low."... Under current SCHOOLOUTCOMES you can still argue against, say, homeschooling groups (say "typical public high schools are protected by SCHOOLOUTCOMES but...)"
(another case where the editor used OUTCOMES but clear intent to reference SCHOOLOUTCOMES is in evidence.) Support... Overturning it will lead to an absolute onslaught of challenges by bored deletionists that will sink the AfD process... here is the rationale behind our wise WP:OUTCOMES on schools. High schools are centers of their local communities and should be viewed as inherently notable just like occupied places, rivers, highways, and professional athletes. The reason for this is because all of these have published histories of their construction, sports teams that are covered in the press are the site of extracurricular activities covered in the press, etc. The flip side of this is that elementary schools are presumed NON notable unless truly exceptional specimens, since there are many more of them, they are less central to their communities, and do not have the same impact in terms of published coverage of teams and events. The OUTCOMES consensus is a workable compromise between inclusionists and deletionists that has expedited AfD for YEARS." An editor replied with "I want to stress on the 'sink the AFD process' that... we would absolutely need some type of grandfathering process and moratorium on AFDs of schools should SCHOOLOUTCOMES be nixed. In other words, the fears that AFD would be flooded by school AFDs is something that can be readily managed and thus should not be reason to keep SCHOOLOUTCOMES." Some more discussion around this with "It would just be better to have an explicit process statement to know how we'd go forward if SCHOOLOUTCOMES is removed" and later "I am of the view that anything short of a close in the affirmative here will require more work on drafting a process and then probably another discussion on where to go. I think the advantage in separating the discussions and keeping it simple is that it allows people to comment on the question of notability itself, which has never really been answered by a guideline, just SCHOOLOUTCOMES".
An editor asserted "So it is reasonable to assume that all accredited secondary-level schools will pass GNG", the response being "Can you please provide links to AFD discussions that demonstrate your assertion... I have provided links above that show the opposite, that SCHOOLOUTCOMES is used as a self-fulfilling prophecy to shut down discussion"
Support... As someone who participated in school AfD's back in 2004-05, pre WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES, I can say unequivocally the status quo serves the project well... It protects Wikipedia from bias, both actual and apparent. It would be great if all WP:GNG decisions could be so objective. Going back to the old days will result in lots of American schools with lots of local WP:RS coverage staying in, with lots of Indian or other schools getting removed... School deletion discussions never die. Again, this was the prior experience: when a school is deleted, its alums and students re-appear consistently to re-add it. Even if legitimately re-added, another AfD frequently re-starts. Again, we have better places to burn our calories. The hope of deleting Western schools to limit bias is unrealistic. Secondary schools receive different coverage in different cultures... If we subjected counties and towns to WP:GNG, we would see the same bias between, say, U.S. and Indian towns; this is an ideal use of an objective, non-GNG inclusion criterion."
Oppose. I do not find SCHOOLOUTCOMES useful, in that it documents what has happened in the past, but seems to be picked up and used as an argument for the future or used in an AfD as an argument for keeping a school with no notability; because we generally keep schools is not an argument for keeping schools ~ that's circularity of argument, surely.
Support... there is bound to be coverage. Whether or not we can find that coverage is irrelevant. I also believe that WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES saves us all a lot of time and effort at AFD."
Support... SCHOOLOUTCOMES eliminates having 30 high schools in the US with 1 in India. Schools cited by independent sources should be considered notable and my point of view is that even primary schools verified by 5+ sources should be kept and protected by SCHOOLOUTCOMES. SCHOOLOUTCOMES is a longstanding policy and as stated above around a decade old."
Oppose... The current situation when schools are considered by default notable is illogical, and some users are 'abusing' WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES by creating some kind of articles (e.g. about schools with some 100 students) which are inadmissible in an encyclopedia, IMO. Wikipedia is not a directory."
Conditional support. I am generally a supporter of SCHOOLOUTCOMES. The problem with SCHOOLOUTCOMES in my opinion is that editors at an AFD simply quote it with a rational such as Keep per SCHOOLOUTCOMES. or Keep due to longstanding consensus that secondary schools are notable. This is actually incorrect because schooloutcomes says that an article about a school is generally kept if 1. It is an independently accredited degree-awarding institution and 2. at least one independent source has been found to show that the school actually exists. Both these are important and the burden of proof (that the school exists and is accredited) lies on the editors arguing keep. Yet somehow this is often ignored at AFDs... I personally am fine with SCHOOLOUTCOMES... It is also one of the first articles often edited by student... Many secondary schools also have alumni associations and it is helpful to keep a list of notable people who have graduated from the school. As schools can also be considered a building with cultural significance, they may be notable if we apply WP:GEOFEAT. As such, I am in favour of the criteria in SCHOOLOUTCOMES, provided it is strictly followed. (The burden of proof needs to be on the editors arguing keep)."
"I Support that schools which are at least secondary and senior secondary should have at least one mention in some third party reliable website. If such school has no mention anywhere then, it must be recognised by the government of that country and must be 25 years old. Nowadays school articles which have no third party independent sources and established in less than 4 years ago are kept as WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES..." [Unclear what is meant here -- ed.]
"I strongly support prohibiting WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES from being cited in school related AfD's."

That's the end of the survey section. We didn't look at the other section "Process to consider", which was about next steps and so forth. Herostratus (talk) 01:16, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]