Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (schools)/Archive 3

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Status of this guideline

Hi there, I was just wondering whether this guideline was ever raised at the village pump prior to being adopted? As it seems to have gone from a proposal to gaining consensus very quickly, and with the discussion of only a few people - not a very broad group of contributors to discern consensus, and it might have helped to bring in other viewpoints by raising it at VP (if it wasn't, and I can't see anything in the archives). I raise it here, because Alanbly left me this comment after I moved a school article to what I would (otherwise) have considered the correct page title.

I have some concerns here that this guideline conflicts with other principles of naming conventions, principally the primary one that, "Generally, article naming should prefer to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature," by reason of the overdisambiguation of page titles when only one school of that name exists (either in the world, or on Wikipedia). I also note that WP:NC#School names still states, "Schools can share the same name. When disambiguating a school because an article already exists, the most general locale of the school should be used in parentheses to all articles, and a disambiguation page should be created.", which is considerably at odds with this guideline.

I suspect that, if this guideline is followed to its logical conclusion, we'll end up with some ludicrously perverse page titles, for example, Eton College (Eton, Berkshire) (or perhaps even Eton College (Berkshire, England) per the above), or Rugby School (Rugby, Warwickshire), when there is just no dispute over or ambiguity in their present page titles of Eton College or Rugby School. Even the example above of a recent page move, The Petersfield School (Hampshire, England), seems bizarre to me, given that

1. AFAIK, there is no other school called The Petersfield School in the world, and,
2. even if there were, then AFAIK there is only one in Hampshire, so that would be sufficient to disambiguate without the use of "England". (Which probably should be "United Kingdom" in any case.) (Which probably should be "(Petersfield, Hampshire)" in any case.)

I'd be interested to hear the justification for this guideline. Cheers, DWaterson 12:09, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I do have to agree that this has gone from a proposed guideline to an accepted guideline, very quickly. Though I did think consensus was reached for this to become a guideline and most concerns were addressed with WikiProject Schools, however other projects and people could have been informed. As a result, I will neither condone or condemn taking this guideline back to proposed based on this argument.

I do however disagree with the labelling of the move of The Petersfield School article as "bizarre" - as far as I can see it was fair interpretation of this guideline. The world is a big place and I would not put bets on that there is only one school in the world called The Petersfield School. I used (Hampshire, England) as it uses two place names as the guideline states. It does not "skip levels" like (Hampshire, United Kingdom) would by missing out England, and does not unnecessarily partially repeat the school name by repeating "Petersfield" as (Petersfield, Hampshire) would. Camaron1 | Chris 13:23, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, personally I think that The Petersfield School should have been named as The Petersfield School (Petersfield, Hapshire) and my reasoning is this: I didn't know what "Petersfield" is; is it a person's name, a famous battle, a place, or something else? The point being that outside of the UK not many people could Identify Hampshire (Asides from it being in England) on a map much less find Petersfield School without knowing what city it was in. I also don't see anything in the guideline about not repeating a word in the school's name in the location. Adam McCormick 16:43, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

This article does not exactly go into massive detail on what should be used as location disambiguation for schools. The guideline states that you should use [[School Name (Municipality, State/Region)]] as the general form of school article titles. On those grounds you could argue that the article should be titled as The Petersfield School (Petersfield, England) as Hampshire is the county, England is often considered the state, and United Kingdom is the country. So users like me have to interpret this guideline for different situations - as I have done. This is why I left a notice above stating that I had changed the articles names and asked if people felt it was correct - the response I got was that it was; which I do find surprising given the current situation. I would also like to point out that there is nothing in this guideline which says you should repeat part of the schools name to identify its location. With these factors in mind I will move the article to the location The Petersfield School (Petersfield, Hampshire) if there are no objections. Camaron1 | Chris 17:13, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, when you asked above I was under the impression that Hampshire was a city and that there was no corresponding region. Adam McCormick 17:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I personally left comments at wikiprojects: universities, schools, education, and later, education in canada--multiple comments for some wikiprojects. Was that not enough Camaron? Also, sorry about the Petersfield thing. When you asked if it applied I totally didn't click that it was a place--even though I did read the article a couple times. That was my bad. Miss Mondegreen talk  11:20, May 29 2007 (UTC)

There are not set rules on what is needed for a proposal to become a guideline. I am glad to hear that more WikiProjects than I thought were notified of this proposal. As I said, I think consensus was reached, though the village pump could have been informed too and this did run at a fast pace - which some editors have and will use for grounds to question the status of this guideline. Camaron1 | Chris 11:58, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I would also comment that this guideline calls for redirects at the simple name of the school so links like Eton College would still work (Though they might lead to a disambiguation page), and that as I said above, many of us here are not from Europe or the UK and might honestly confuse schools like Eton College (Eton, Berkshire) with Eton College (Vancouver, British Columbia). One last thing and I'll leave this for a reply, "Hampshire" is not unique either ("New Hampshire" for example). Adam McCormick 16:43, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Well that is when The Petersfield School (Petersfield, Hampshire, England) would be used as stated in the guideline - though I am not sure that much detail is needed. Camaron1 | Chris 17:23, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that adding England is necessary I just think it is misleading to list Hampshire as the municipality when the article claims the municipality is Petersfield. Adam McCormick 17:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I have moved The Petersfield School (Hampshire, England) to The Petersfield School (Petersfield, Hampshire), and Sheet Primary School (Hampshire, England) to Sheet Primary School (Sheet, Hampshire) per the above conclusions. I have hopefully fixed linkage and double re-direct issues. Following earlier discussion on re-direct deletion I am now planning to nominate The Petersfield School (Hampshire, England) and Sheet Primary School (Hampshire, England) for deletion at WP:RFD as obsolete re-directs if no immediate objections are raised here. Camaron1 | Chris 18:58, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Just to note, I have raised this at WP:VPP. Cheers, DWaterson 22:09, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

The Petersfield School article seems to becoming the standard example of this guideline in action - which I find interesting. For the moment I am going to leave the article where it is with all current re-directs until we find out where this guideline is going to end up. Camaron1 | Chris 09:44, 29 May 2007 (UTC) See below. Camaron1 | Chris 11:50, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

See #exception for schools that already include their location in official school name. It isn't yet written into the guideline because I was tongue tied, but if the school includes its location in its name, then it's exempt unless it becomes a necessity. Petersfield school is named for Petersfield, so it shouldn't need a location in paranthesis unless there are two such schools. I'll see if I can put it in now. I didn't do it at the time cause I couldn't think straight and then I just plain forgot to. Miss Mondegreen talk  10:20, May 29 2007 (UTC)

I share DWaterson's concerns above. There is clearly value in having standards for how to disambiguate school names; that is the proper role of a page such as this. However, I don't see why this should extend to pre-emptive disambiguation, which WP has generally frowned upon across the board. I don't understand why the basic WP:NC standards shouldn't apply to school articles. If only one "School X" article has been written, or seems likely to be written, there is no particular reason to make the canonical title longer (and harder to remember and type) than necessary. -- Visviva 01:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I would say sheer numbers is as good a reason as any. Given what schools are named for (locations, people, events, and the like) there is much more overlap as to the name of school articles than most other kinds of articles. And where most other disambiguation pages tent to clarify context/subject (which makes preemptive disambiguation much more of a judgement call) in this case, we are only trying to clarify where the schools are and at the same time calling for a structure which will lead to disambiguation pages being created in the right places and redirects being used effectively. Besides more work for those who join the Task Force, what is the harm in making sure school articles are easy to locate? Adam McCormick 03:40, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Comments from Miss Mondegreen

In re the village pump--I believe the first version of this might have been. I'm unsure about that. One of the reasons I believe this was adopted so quickly is that it's not a new idea. If you look through the archives of talk pages of the associated wikiprojects, this issue was raised on a regular basis. The intermitent discussions brought consensus on various issues (paranthesis over commas needed a straw poll) and helped form this version of the guideline (bringing new ideas to the table, ruling out what definitely didn't work).

The problem with wikiproject schools is that most schools will share a name. The variables being how exactly, how many and whether or not wiki articles will ever be written for them. But there were major problem with renaming articles only once it became necessary. For one, the problem that there always is with things named similarly. If there's an exact match, wikipedia just takes you to the page, it doesn't provide results. So if theres an article Joe and an article Joe (singer), and someone searches for Joe, they will find the former always, and the latter never unless there is a disambiguation page or they use an outside search engine, like Google.

• Since schools are often named similarly, we've had multiple articles off by only pronouns or capital letters and because school editors are particularly locally involved disambiguation pages really suffer. Is all school articles follow this guideline, duplicate articles and missing disambiguation pages aren't a problem. This is basically a way of keeping namespaces for all school names free. Creators of school articles, who often do no other editing often strand their article. Moving another school article in order to create a disambig page is complicated, and many don't know how/don't want to step on editors' toes/do it badly and links go to all the wrong places. This also keeps editors aware of when something else on Wikipedia is using the same name. If they watch a redirect page and it turns into a disambig page etc, and they notice that there's a school with a similar name in the area, they'll refer to the school more specifically within articles.
• There's no consistency. Schools use states or cities or countries--they generally aren't named thinking globally--(can the name still be mistaken? can the place be mistaken?). There are even different formats. We have commas and parantheses and written out in several different ways. It's a mess, and so even when you're looking at a school disambig page and all of the articles have location paramters, it can be hard to figure out which one you're looking for.
• Even if none of these problems occured or issues existed, and there were no mistakes, renaming an article and turing the redirect to a disambiguation page causes problems. All of the old versions of wikipedia articles that link to that page now link to a disambiguation page, and it may not always be so easy to figure out what article was being referred to. Moving and changing a redirect breaks old versions of pages. With schools, where a large majority of schools share a name it makes sense to naming schools with location paramaters pre-emptively, which avoids this problem altogether. Moving pages earlier (and fixing the links) lessens the problem (fewer broken pages/none if there's a redirect instead of a disambiguation page).

About the clarity--this page was never meant to address certain specifics. The guideline can't go into the nitty gritty of renaming and disambiguation--so much will come up case by case--we're seeing it already. I thought that the adjustments had been made to the associated project pages (Schools, Universities, Education in Canada, etc). I think that the disambig project should be a sub-project of wikiproject:education, because the naming guidelines apply to multiple education wikiprojects. The project will need to figure out things like where to use cities, where counties, where names are confusing (georgia), where they aren't confusing enough to add a country (hampshire). We should try and recruit people from the disambiguation project, from some sort of location project. We'll try and make general guidelines (like the ones in the guideline here), add more for specific locations, but set up a list of requirements so that people can figure out how to adjust the guidelines to specific pages. The project could also get started on lists of redlink school articles and help with complicated moves. Miss Mondegreen talk  10:13, May 29 2007 (UTC)

Query

What precisely is the problem here, other than a want for bureaucracy? If the guideline is imperfect, edit it and fix it. Note that some exceptions are quite acceptable - guidelines aren't set in stone. >Radiant< 12:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I am aware that the guideline does not need to be perfect, however exceptions for schools which have their location names already in the schools title will make a very big difference on how this guideline is implemented and should be noted. The other concerns been raised by other users are about if this guideline should be passed the proposed stage and that the idea that a location parameter should be used in nearly all school articles should be allowed at all. Camaron1 | Chris 12:11, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The Petersfield School

I can't move it back because the redirect was edited--will someone move the poor school back? The guideline doesn't even apply to it, and it's my fault for not catching it. I forgot to update the project page to include the provision for schools which already have the location in the name, and then Cameron asked me and I didn't catch it and I should have. Miss Mondegreen talk  11:24, May 29 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for cleaning this issue up for us. I have listed the proposed moves at Wikipedia:requested moves so an admin can complete it for us. Camaron1 | Chris 11:42, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Yah, I'm sorry about that. I had just completely forgotten to add it to the policy--when I couldn't find it there it took me a while to figure out what had happened. Anyway, I've added a line to the first section and row to the chart to deal with this issue. If someone wants to clean up the added text that would be great. I've also left a general comment that should answer people's questions about this guideline and I replied to you specifically elsewhere. Thanks for letting me know about this discussion. I haven't been very active lately after my recent bout of WikiOgrishness. Miss Mondegreen talk  11:55, May 29 2007 (UTC)

I think we need to make clear what this part of the policy means. The policy says: When the location of a school is in it's name, no location parameter is needed unless there are two names and a parameter is needed to clarify. I interpret that as meaning that The Petersfield School and Sheet Primary School should remain in those places without a location parameter. I am now been told that a location parameter is still needed to mark missing location information so the schools should be at The Petersfield School (Hampshire) and Sheet Primary School (Hampshire). Which is correct? Camaron1 | Chris 08:58, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I've come to this page rather late but I agree with the comments further up this page. I see no need for every single school article to have brackets indicating the location. I think the school names should be kept as simple as possible and brackets should only be used where there are two or more schools with similar names. As far as I can establish there is only one The Petersfield School. Why complicate the name and clutter up the page by making the title longer? The location information is included in the opening paragraph and in the infobox. Similarly there is only one Sheet Primary School. The existing page barely warrants inclusion in Wikipedia but the location information is given in the opening paragraph. I suggest these school titles should stay as they are. Dahliarose 14:06, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes. While preemptive disambiguation may be tolerated for school names since so many school names are rather generic and there is a high probability of multiple schools with the same name. There is no reason to require school articles to use parenthetical disambiguators where there is no need. older ≠ wiser 14:35, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I think that in this case we've demonstarated a need for preemptive disambiguation. Take Eton College for example, yes there is one well known school in the UK with that name, there's also one in Brittish Columbia. But when it comes down to it, ththe question is whether to do this work up front or to do it on the back end. I think what we're trying to say is that the vast majority of schools are not well-enough known that their names alone tell any reader on the planet where they are. Thus, it is essential for school article titles to be as unambiguous as possible. I think there are definitely exceptions to be made but they need to be better laid out than "The most well-known" and "where there is no need" because that is impossible to judge. Adam McCormick 03:33, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I think also we need to disambiguate at the simplest level. I've therefore added The Petersfield School to the disambiguation page Petersfield. I've also added Sheet Primary School to the Sheet disambiguation page. There do seem to be other places called Petersfield but it's unlikely that there will be other schools with the same name. If there are they should go on the Petersfield disambiguation page. It should not be necessary in such instances to create for example a separate Petersfield School disambiguation page. Dahliarose 15:52, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

On another, less frenzied note

I've added a parameter to my assessment template by which schools that need to be moved can be listed easily and it even includes a link to make the move a sinch. the template is {{WPSchoolsAssessment}} and it's the move prameter. Let me know if this would be helpful anywhere else (within the other applicable banners for instance) Adam McCormick 18:20, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

task force?

I'd like to set up a task force or wikiproject (sub of education) to start work on this. The issues being raised are still broad, but not the level which can really be raised here. The task force/wikiproject could start to deal with issues of when to use which location parameters, lists of locations that need greater specificity (like Georgia), etc. Thoughts? Miss Mondegreen talk  21:44, May 29 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to see this guideling widely implemented as the naming of schools is currently quite pell-mel. As such I think that the first task should be going through assessed schools (Starting with highest importance) and to start proposing moves. I think when it comes down to it we're just going to have to start moving pages and handling arguments as they come up. Adam McCormick 18:23, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I think this new WikiProject is needed to get this guideline on the road for the mass interpretation and implementation that will be needed throughout the Wiki. I will of-coarse help but I am busy at the moment due to exams (see my user page). So, what will this new task force be called: WikiProject Schools Naming Conventions, WikiProject School Naming, School Naming Conventions Unit? Any other ideas? Camaron1 | Chris 17:13, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, I presume it'll be named Task Force. There's a difference between Task Forces and wikiprojects, though I've really yet to see what it is. The big one is that Task Forces use the assessment department of the wikiproject that they belong to, but really that's irrelevant for us. Articles would still be assessed by their own wikiprojects--I don't think wikiproject education has any school articles, so it wouldn't be by our wikiproject or task force doing that, though we'd hopefully get the subprojects to assess for movability. If when articles were assessed they could be assessed in terms of name too, either at the correct namespace or not, and importance/urgency in terms of moving, and difficulty, that would be great. Anyway...I'll set it up as soon as I can. Anyone either know more about Task Forces v. Wikiprojects or have a preference? Miss Mondegreen talk  01:33, June 2 2007 (UTC)

When this idea was originally introduced it was mentioned that another sub-WikiProject of WikiProject Education for introducing this guideline would be set up. That would mean that normal assessments (i.e importance and rating) would be left to the assessment departments of existing WikiProjects but implementation of this guideline would be done under a new WikiProject. However, we could make it a task force instead. Task forces are sub-projects of an existing WikiProject but are not independent and use the parent WikiProjects templates, policies and guidelines. Task forces are supposed to be for tasks of a narrow scope (like article naming) which do not require an entire new WikiProject for it be done, but still require its own subpage, membership lists, and to-do lists. (See WP:TASKFORCE.) I assume that this would be a task force under WikiProject Education as only that WikiProject covers all the scope of implementing this guideline. Note though that task forces still require their own name - like Education Naming Conventions Task Force. Camaron1 | Chris 08:37, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Where are we now?

I can see the need for pre-emptive action with school names which are in multiple use (eg. the various schools named after King Edward VI and VII, the multiple John F. Kennedy High Schools, the numerous St Paul's Schools, etc. However, as I understand the guideline in its present form the recommendation seems to be that every single school article should have brackets after its name to clarify the location. This goes against existing Wikipedia practice, and would make it much more difficult to link to existing articles. The location might well be needed for many schools but it will equally be superfluous for many others. As already discussed above, it would be quite ridiculous to re-title Eton College as Eton College (Eton, Berkshire). The other school of the same name in British Columbia doesn't appear to have a Wikipedia page but if it ever does then it is a simple matter to include a note at the top of the Eton College page with a link to the British Columbia school. The well known school is going to have far more famous alumni and far more inter-Wiki links and the linking process should be kept as simple as possible. Both schools should then appear on the disambiguation page for Eton. Even if someone has never heard of Eton College, all one has to do is look at the info box or the opening paragraph to find out where the school is located. I don't see why it's necessary to include all this information in the title. I am also somewhat confused by the present terminology (ie, municipality, state, region). I do not know how these terms should be applied for schools in the UK as we do not use these words. The terminology must be phrased so that it can be understood globally and perhaps with more examples from other countries. In the UK we have villages, towns, and cities, which are located in counties. UK secondary schools are usually in towns and cities, but primary schools are often in villages. I presume an American municipality is perhaps equivalent to an English town and an American state is equivalent to an English county. But what is a region? Does a country count as a region? Kuwait and Jordan, both of which are countries, are listed in the examples as though they are states/regions. Is Amman the equivalent of an American municipality or an American state? The Wikipedia page for Amman shows that it is in Amman Governate so logically, according to the present guideline, these schools should be listed as Amman School (Amman, Amman Governate) without any need for the country as there is no ambiguity about the whereabouts of Amman. Such a title is however very clumsy and quite unnecessary. William Shakespeare attended the King Edward VI School in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon in the county of Warwickshire. Should this school now be called the King Edward VI school (Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire), the King Edward VI School (Warwickshire) or the King Edward VI School (Stratford-upon-Avon)? The first option is too long and clumsy, the second option is too vague as there might be another King Edward VI school in Warwickshire. I therefore favour using the third option. There is generally (though not always) much less ambiguity with British school names and I would imagine that this proposed guideline is probably more applicable for American schools, simply because of the huge numbers involved. Dahliarose 09:31, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

IMO, so long as the page contains language that implies the inflexible, universal application of preemptive disambiguation to schools, it is unacceptable. It has to allow for common sense exceptions. Universally applied preemptive disambiguation was pretty sounded rejected with television programs. Unless there has been a community-wide poll indicating support for inflexible preemptive disambiguation (beyond the participants on this page or project), the page is in conflict with basic naming conventions. older ≠ wiser 10:28, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree strongly with both of the above posts, and humbly suggest that it might be best to take this guideline back to the drawing board for retooling. I agree with the proponents of this guideline that a naming convention is needed for schools, but it is imperative that we not create a larger mess in the name of fixing the current mess. -- Visviva 11:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I have had mixed feelings over this guideline, when it was first brought up at WikiProject Schools I was willing to let it pass. However, in more recent times I have slowly changed my mind and I now agree with the above. Adding a location parameter on nearly every single school article is going to be very very difficult - especially when it comes to implementing this guideline from country to country. This was proved when we had a "trail run" with two UK school articles (see above) and it ran into a complete mess.

Consensus can change and I think it no longer exists by a long way for this guideline - so we have to re-think it or press the scrap button (like before). While it is a nice idea in theory to have a location parameter on all school articles based on concerns that there could more than one school of the same name that is not initially detected - I think in practise we are going to have settle with standardised location parameters when they are needed only. The issue is not helped by conflicts with other guidelines and consensus established else where conflicting with this guideline. We have to got to get this guideline right before it is introduced - otherwise we will indeed be in more of a mess in school naming than ever before! Camaron1 | Chris 14:55, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Whether or not the preemptive disambiguation bit passes I don't think anyone has raised the argument that this guideline shouldn't be used to disambiguate school articles. I would therefore suggest that we amend the guideline to remove the mandatory-ness but retain the stylistis portion, at least until this debate can be settled. Adam McCormick 17:55, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I have edited out the mandatory language, does that improve matters? Adam McCormick 18:32, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely, though I think we should wait to what the others think before promoting this page back to full guideline status. Camaron1 | Chris 21:44, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm happy with the changes. This is now a much more sensible guideline. I think the next stage is to work on the definitions so that there is no confusion, as demonstrated in the case of The Petersfield School where the editors didn't understand what was meant by the term state/region. I think these words should be avoided as they have so many different meanings. State for instance can mean country. I still don't know what a municipality is. How about place name as a replacement for municipality? I would have thought for most countries School (place name) would be sufficient. There might be a special case for American schools to be disambiguated as School (place name, US state) because of their sheer numbers. I don't think it should ever be necessary to include the country in the title. Georgia might be a US state and a country but I would have thought that the school titles would be quite distinctive and there would be no need to disambiguate at this level. I think we also need disambiguation examples from various countries just to make sure everyone understands what is intended. Dahliarose 22:07, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I think we need to be more specific than place name as that's what is causing the problem right now. I suggest we change it to (Municipality, County/Region) and perhaps specifically state that Region be the highest Government below national. I like municipality because it has a very specific definition meaning the most local government. Maybe it would help if we link to definitions? Adam McCormick 23:11, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm fine with the recent edits to soften the inflexibility of the guideline and AFAIC, the disputed tag I added can be removed. I quite agree that there should be a naming convention for schools, and it should be fairly strongly encouraged as the canonical form -- but there should be some room for exceptions and common sense. older ≠ wiser 00:50, 5 June 2007 (UTC) Since Miss Mondegreen appears to be the proprietor of this page and refuses to allow any changes she doesn't agree with, despite having been discussed here and having at least some support, I insist that the disputed tag remain on the page for as long as the language implies an inflexible standard of preemptive disambiguation. older ≠ wiser 02:12, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

The Wiktionary definition of municipality seems to suggest that there is some element of local government involved. There is not even a Wiki page for municipality though there is a redirect to Township. It would appear that both terms are used more commonly in North America. There is the potential for confusion because other countries don't have the same systems of local government and don't use these terms. Take one English school as an example. The Forest School (Winnersh) is I think correctly labelled at present. It is in the village of Winnersh which could not possibly be described as a municipality or a township. Winnersh comes under the control of Wokingham Borough Council, so presumably here the local council is the equivalent to the US municipality, but it would be completely inappropriate to label the school Forest School (Wokingham Borough). In the UK at least people recognise village, town and city names, not administrative districts. What is wrong with place name or location instead of municipality? These words are recognised throughout the world, are not ambiguous and are not specific to certain countries. I also think we don't need the double location parameters. The form should be School (location/municipality). An additional parameter should only be used in the unlikely event that there are two schools in places of the same name, in which case we would have something like St John's School (Newport, Isle of Wight) and St John's School (Newport, Monmouthshire). It seems a complete waste of time and effort going through every single disambiguated school article and adding in the English county, US or Australian state, Canadian province, etc. At the moment this seems to be what this guideline is suggesting. Dahliarose 08:06, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The problem with place name is that a state name, a village, a house, a hill, a valley, the country, and hundreds of other things are "Place Names" so it just isn't specific enough. At worst (Town/Municipality). Adam McCormick 23:16, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps location is a better word than place name. Town is too specific. A village is not a town and a city is not a town. Municipality seems to be specific to the USA. As Wikipedia is a worldwide encyclopaedia we need to have terms which are understood globally rather than allowing American usage to prevail. Location/place name can be easily explained by providing examples for various countries. Dahliarose 23:55, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

---

I'm about to sign off so I can't really respond, but I'll sign back on in an hour or two with answers to the questions raised. I would like to point out that as Eton College is named after the place it resides in, it wouldn't have its name changed. There are a several specific reasons for pre-emptive naming like this, as well as answers to the questions raised. I'll be back with them shortly. Miss Mondegreen talk  22:37, June 5 2007 (UTC)

Alan's change and the dispute tag

While I recognize that consensus is a mutable thing etc, etc, I'm annoyed that Bkonrad made a major change--though he may have thought it made common sense and when reverted Alan changed the guideline (again, a major change made without discussion or consensus) for one desenter. In case no one has been paying attention, this issue of which school articles need location tags has gone around and around and around and been discussed again and again and again. Going to the guideline page and making major changes without discussion when any issue raised on the talk page has gotten responses rather quickly is not ok--it ignores our policies and guidelines of how to behave on a guideline page. And people seem to be ignoring the past pages and pages of discussion both here and elsewhere. It gets really annoying to have to go over the same things again and again. When I come to pages I haven't been to before or been following closely, I take the time to go over the talk page and find out what's been going on.

municipality? county/region?

Dahliarose--these guidelines are as widespread and vague as possible in terms of what it means. That's because it's a guideline for US schools for British schools for India schools--for all schools and we can't say town, or city or anything specific because it will be different anywhere. That's why this was conceived with a taskforce to go along with it. We can't have guidelines for individual countries or even smaller areas (like the ohio school district guideline), but one guideline can't address all of those issues. We desperately want to get people from various regional projects involved in the taskforce to help set guidelines for various regions.

However, there is a large part of this that applies to US schools. This may just be my perception, but many less US schools are named for a location than schools in other countries. That, and the sheer number of schools means that the problem is worse for US schools.

I spent a great deal of time perusing school categories and lists in various countries and I've found that a lot, that while similarly named (many by the way need incorporation into wikiproject universities or schools), they could certainly benefit from and nicely done diambig page, but they almost all have the name of a city or port in their name. This is true of a great number of UK schools too. The Petersfield School should not have been moved and Eton is likewise exempt.

The reason for this exemption is that schools named after a place are highly likely to be unique, and the name with a location parameter is likely to be really horrible. I'll post the reasons for doing the location paramter on everything else when I sign back on--I've got to go again. Miss Mondegreen talk  01:43, June 6 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm a little annoyed that you would revert common sense changes (which have been discussed above and seem to have support). I'm well aware that the discussion has been going around in circles for a very long time -- but I'm not aware of any general discussion establishing consensus for the language that implies inflexible preemptive disambiguation. older ≠ wiser 02:12, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I realize that you think these changes are common sense. So obvious that you didn't need to discuss the changes before making them, and so obvious that clearly they don't need consensus before going into the guideline. First, the change Alanbly made was made well before most of the discussion here, so don't try to say that proposed changes were discussed and then went into action because that's not what happened. Second, discussion has been going on less than a day and there is no clear consensus. There's a disputed tag--that's clearly good enough. It's not inflexible--there are exceptions in the guidelines, guidelines are as a rule flexible--they are made to be, and this guideline in particular was made to go with a taskforce that would deal with the particulars. These are general rules that need to be applied differently--more or less stringently etc, possibly not at all, but there's no way that this guideline can address that. The overarching generalities are all it can handle--anything specific to a region or article type is too much. Notice, that this guideline at the moment only deals with the issue of adding on the place name and doesn't tackle at all the common names issue that schools typically face. Some of this type of guideline info is available at various wikiprojects but it's not in one place. It needs to be added here, but no, this isn't a roadmap of how to name a school. The common names section would for example let people know to check both their school related wikiproject and their locality related wikiproject for additional guidance--Canada schools for example have notes on the naming of French schools. The current part would direct people to the task force.

Also, you might want to look at archive 2 for that discussion--I'm not sure what you're looking for in particular, but that's the talk page for this project page when this became a guideline. There's also a large section on the wikiproject schools page about it and various stuff on individual people's talk pages etc, but the main discussions happened here and on the talk page for the schools project where there was also a straw poll of sorts I believe. We didn't really hold a formal one but people sorta gave opinions like that anyway.

I wouldn't wholesale object to more exceptions, but there's a real reason we're doing this. There are major problems in the schools area, and the contributing factors aren't going to go away.

• Problems
  • lots of schools with same/similar names. a majority
  • only a fraction of schools that exist are online currently.
  • editors of school articles generally only edit the school, or schools that they know
  • google often doesn't find schools with the same name, even if they do have websites and documents online. You have to know what you're looking for, specifically to find it, especially with common names.
  • similar names--similar articles titles, no diambig page gets created unless one editor stumbles upon both pages.
  • when pages are moved because there's a duplicate of names, no redirect--redirect becomes disambig. this breaks old versions of pages. if a page is at the specific name from the beginning, when a new article is created and the redirect becomes a disambig, nothing breaks.

The truth is that while many school articles are deleted because they lack notability, it's often just that the person writing the article doesn't know where to look. Most schools are notable, either for an alumnus or for a good program or bad program--schools are written in the paper, student wins award or gets a scholarship or there's a scandal of some sort or there's a budget shortage or someone does a human interest piece on a teacher. Within a few years of opening, most schools really do fit our notability requirements. Which is good or bad, depending on your opinion. Unfortunatly, while we have great writers and it's great that people get interested in Wikipedia because they can write about something they know, all of the above is true.

So if you search for A ______ you'll find one school, but The _____ another, or maybe one editor capitalizes the school name and another didn't so two different schools with the same name are out there, but.... The disambiguation of schools is dreadful. When editors do realize that there is school of another name out there, they move the article to some sort of location qualifier. There are several formats, several ways, just within the US alone. Nevermind other countries where you deal with more than cities and states. Dealing with just those two variable, editors have found about 10 different ways to name one article.

The current system doesn't work. The breaking of old versions of articles, of links to wikipedia from other sites etc is also a big problem. We're talking about thousands articles that need to be moved now, and if we keep the problem going, that's thousands more in the future. Count up all of the school articles that we have identified in the wikiprojects, figure that if we're lucky, 1 out of 2 school articles is identified as such--the whole things a mess. It's going to take forever to find some of them, especially the ones that are same name articles but no disambiguation page exists. They can't be found by searching, if they aren't categorized properly they can't be found that way, and if they aren't in the wikiproject they can't be found that way either. We just have to wait for people to stumble onto them, notice the problem and fix it.

Do I think changes could be made? Sure. I'm not sure if there's any type of overarching thing left to be excluded that wouldn't be so severe as to be back where we started, letting the problem continue. I'd really like to start the task force up and get people involved in setting the more specific guidelines there--especially people who have a lot of experience with the schools articles. I'm sure they can see lots of places where this will and won't be problematic. And that's the other reason that people should propose moves and wait for people on the talk pages to respond. If anyone will see a problem with moving an article--it'll be the people who write the article. Who know the article and the school best. They can and should definitely come to the task force and here and say, "this doesn't work". And we'll fix it. It's a guideline.

But I think that the current system is a mess, and that a guideline that just standardizes how to location for doubled articles and emphasizes the need for disambiguation won't fix that. Is the new guideline perfect? No--it needs work. It needs a good task force behind it and it needs to be in action and tried and have people say--this doesn't work, fix this, or we need exceptions for these. And that happened with the university thing and we added an exception for articles which had a location name already in them--which is a pretty wide spread exception and seems to be working rather well.

If people have another suggestion to solve the problems I listed above, something that would work equally well and avoid pre-emptive naming, I'm all for it. If not, we can hopefully compromise and instead of going all for nothing, pre-emptive naming or not, we can try and work on the guideline and create a good task force and see if we can make this work for everyone. Perhaps people could start by explaining what types of articles or what articles they think that this is problematic for? (leaving aside the municipality issue as that would be dealt with by a task force--a guideline can't write in specific details for every area and school type--a task force can) Miss Mondegreen talk  07:43, June 6 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that the problems relate largely to US schools. I wonder therefore if it might be best to change this into a naming guideline specifically for US schools. If it is to be a guideline for naming schools worldwide then the US terminology has to be changed so that there is no ambiguity. It is clear, even from the examples quoted on the guideline page, that editors are confused when they try to apply US terminology to schools in other countries. In some cases for instance state/region has been interpreted as a US state whereas in other examples state/region has been interpreted as the country (eg, Jordan, Kuwait). I thought we had already reached consensus that there is no need for pre-emptive disambiguation for all schools so I am concerned that the guideline has now been reverted. I am strongly opposed to the pre-emptive inclusion of location information in all school titles. There are many schools with distinctive unique names. After a quick trawl through one English school list I've found the following unique names: Sir William Borlase's Grammar School, Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School, The Skinners' School, Kendrick School, Yehudi Menuhin School, Desborough School. The addition of location information in these school titles is not only completely unnecessary but also confusing. If for instance you have a page for Sir William Borlase's Grammar School (Marlow) then the suggestion is that there is another school of the same name elsewhere which is quite clearly not the case. I suggest that for the moment we should just focus on the naming of US schools. Is there agreement that all US schools should have the location information included in their title? If so what form should it take? There are various possibilities:

• 1. John F. Kennedy High School (Fremont)
• 2. John F. Kennedy High School (Fremont, California)
• 3. John F. Kennedy High School (California
• 4. John F. Kennedy High School (California, USA)
• 5. John F. Kennedy High School (Fremont, California, USA)

It would appear from the present guideline that option 2 is the preferred choice. I don’t personally think there should ever be a need to include the country in the title but the country should always be included in the disambiguation page. If agreement can be reached on the naming of US schools then perhaps there should be a school disambiguation page of the month. We could start with John F. Kennedy High School which is a complete mess. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dahliarose (talk • contribs)

Rejection

Well I have been reading through Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines and it says: A rejected page is any proposal for which consensus support is not present, regardless of whether there is active discussion or not. Consensus need not be fully opposed; if consensus is neutral on the issue and unlikely to improve, the proposal is likewise rejected. It is considered bad form to hide this fact, e.g. by removing the tag. Making small changes will not change this fact, nor will repetitive arguments. Generally it is wiser to rewrite a rejected proposal from scratch and start in a different direction. I think that description fits this proposal perfectly - given the pattern of edits and comments been made by people here. Generally on Wikipedia once people are discussing a proposal different to the original one and the page creator does not really agree then it gets rejected, see WP:PROA for example. Policy recommends that in cases like this it is better just to end this proposal and start from scratch a new one else where in which community consensus is more likely to form. In fact I am going to place the rejected tag on now, policy also states it is bad form to hide the facts and not put the tag on (or remove it) when it clearly fits in with the situation, as here. Though, note that I would support rejected tag removal if consensus is somehow reached for a compromise, though I think that is unlikely in the near future. Camaron1 | Chris 10:29, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

One last comment

Ok, There seem to be three voices being heard right now: Miss M, (Arguing for preemptive disambiguation with standard naming); Dahliarose (arguing against preemptive naming but for the guideline as a naming standard); and the various assessment team members trying to sort out the whole gory mess. I don't think anyone has suggested that this guideline doesn't make sense for naming schools, just that the terminology needs work. Regardless, if this isn't solved soon we need to wipe the slate clean and start building from scratch instead of creating a whole policy and berating each other about it. Nobody owns this guideline, and as far as I'm concerned that means that any of us can edit it regardless of the tide of dicussion. IMO, the change I made removed the dispute from the guideling by making it less rigourous. Oh well happy arguing! Adam McCormick 23:20, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the above, this guideline is currently considered rejected so why is it bad just to edit it until consensus exists for it? Anyone is allowed to edit it and it is not exactly like mass edit warring is occurring - so as far as I am concerned it is fine per WP:OWN and very arguably WP:IAR. I personally think the guideline should be reverted to Adam's version and a proposed tag added; and then this proposal should be brought up at places like the Wikipedia:Village Pump once again to see if we can get consensus for it to go ahead - if it doesn't we re-start the cycle. Camaron1 | Chris 14:23, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Consensus doesn't seem likely so we should start over from scratch? After what, 24 hours, or what has it been, a couple days of disagreements? The last couple issues that were raised were solved fairly quickly IIRC. If you'd like to revert back to proposed, that's fine. But problematically, this page has had less traffic even though it has been advertised EVERYWHERE (pump too), and so we get in trickles of people saying "this is an issue" and have to deal with them as they come. We have been dealing with every issue as it's been raised, and that's the best we can do. I'd personally like to see a dispute tag remain, for stability's sake reverting to a proposal every time someone new finds this guideline and notices a problem that we have to deal with and then having to re get consensus is a problem--whereas we could just revert to a disputed form and then be whole again once the dispute has been resolved. Large parts of this guideline not only have consensus but have stable consensus, and it seems a mistake to start over with every issue raised. I'll reply to dahliarose above below. Miss Mondegreen talk  22:08, June 7 2007 (UTC)

Disagreements over this guideline have been going on a lot longer than 24 hours and I don't see how they have been resolved. Some of this guideline is accepted but basic and fundamental parts of it are not. I accept the current tag on this guideline - but it is going to take a lot to convince me to put the accepted tag on. Camaron1 | Chris 16:17, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

in reply to dahliarose/plan for moving forward

Yes, you're right, this is a problem that's more prominent in US schools, but it's still a really big issue outside of the US.

That's not a great way to differentiate--is there anything about those schools that makes them different? When they were established? What type of school they are? Anything? The one thing I noticed about them is that they are all named after people, which obviously doesn't work as a qualifier.

I suppose worst case scenario we could make the guideline for US schools temporarily. That is where the worst problems are and where the biggest expansion is. Our problems in other countries are more basic--often the articles aren't associated with projects even.

If we can't find any other way to rewrite the guideline, we could do that, and this gives us time to set up a taskforce and start setting up the smaller guidelines. The taskforce could also work on looking at other countries and trying to create stricter guidelines, so that when we made this global again, there were not only guidelines in place for location naming in countries where it's more difficult then just (city, state), but there were more specific exception guidelines for those countries as well.

What do people think about that? Does anyone have any other ideas about other qualifiers? And if not, what about my Plan B? Miss Mondegreen talk  22:22, June 7 2007 (UTC)

Which one of those was B? What do you propose, give us one sentence, not three pages. Adam McCormick 00:26, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

This isn't shorter, but it's complete and should be easy to understand.

• Plan A is to ammend the current guideline in some way that doesn't restrict it to the US or remove pre-emptive renaming. If Dahliarose or someone can look at those articles she mentioned and see if adding some restriction would help for schools in other countries (old schools, type of school, something), that would be Plan A. I'm especially unfamiliar with European schools, so there may be something that I've just missed, something that's a simple fix that deals with the problem at hand (like the location exception did earlier), and if so, this would be ideal. If not...
• Plan B is to ammend the guideline (temporarily) to apply only to US schools. US schools are the biggest problem and the biggest area of growth, and we could set up the taskforce and integrate with other projects and smooth out the rough edges, and then the taskforce could work on more detailed guidelines for schools outside the US. Then, depending on what the taskforce comes up with, we change the guideline accordingly. This solves both the location naming problems (municipality?) and the pre-emptive naming problems for countries outside the US. The taskforce may come to the conclusion that pre-emptive naming is not necessary for certain countries, or for anywhere except the US, or it may come to the conclusion that it's necessary but only for a small subsection of article types, but this gives us time to really look at those articles and write good guidelines for what to do with them. Miss Mondegreen talk  06:01, June 8 2007 (UTC)

Everyone else has already agreed that pre-emptive naming is not necessary. We will be going around in circles unless you concede this point. Why create a guideline with endless exceptions? The simple fix is to disambiguate only if the school name is not unique as per Adam's amendment. Some of the schools I quoted are named after people, some are named after organisations. In other cases I do not know where the name originates. The point is that the names are unique, there is no ambiguity and therefore no requirement for disambiguation. If you can agree with this point and let common sense prevail then we're in business. I suggest we proceed with Plan B and make this page specific for US schools. American schools seem to be the main problem and are probably the only schools which need to be disambiguated with a double location paramater (eg, Richmond, Virginia). Schools elsewhere are already covered by Wikipedia:Naming conventions in the section on School names which summarises what is required very succinctly and unambiguously: "Schools can share the same name. When disambiguating a school because an article already exists, the most general locale of the school should be used in parentheses to all articles, and a disambiguation page should be created." Dahliarose 09:48, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I honestly don't understand why "pre-emptive naming" is still proposed on this guideline - as far as I can see it has been rejected and we are going to keep going round in circles unless we move on from this - which does not appear to be happening and hence why I have been making, in my opinion justified, calls to give up or start again. I am choosing plan B as US schools seems to be the main focus of this guideline, though I still prefer Adams amendments to the guideline originally - and if this guideline does get moved to US only I would support a guideline that applied to all schools worldwide with something similar to Adam's amendments later on. Camaron1 | Chris 16:11, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

While I oppose a guideline that implies an iron-clad, no exceptions, pre-emptive disambiguation naming schema, I do agree that ambiguous names for schools are very common and it would be well for the guideline to address this in some way. I'd be OK with something similar to the naming convention for cities/towns in Canada. Something along the lines of "The canonical form of article titles for schools is [[School Name (location, state/province)]]. Schools which either have unique names or are unquestionably the most significant school sharing their name, such as Eton School, can have undisambiguated titles. However, a discussion should take place on the talk page before such a move is implemented — except in the most obvious cases, do not assume that the school name can be considered a primary or sole meaning of the name without soliciting this input first; the fact that another article does not already exist at the plain title is not, in and of itself, sufficient proof that a name is unique." In other words, have a strong recommendation to use a specific form that includes disambiguation, but allow for a relatively low bar to moving to an undisambiguated title when appropriate. older ≠ wiser 18:04, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that makes sense to me. I think having a naming guideline for school naming conventions world-wide is a good idea, to state things like the standard parameter is in brackets; but it should be loose and allow for case by case basis consideration and definitely move away from pre-emptive naming. Camaron1 | Chris 18:19, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Whatever is decided there has to be some variation to take account of common usage. The format [[School Name (location, state/province)]] is all very well for schools in Canada and America but it just won't work for most European countries as the administrative regions are not so well known and are not normally used in everyday language. You would end up with all sorts of peculiar forms, eg, Paris, Ile de France; Berlin, Berlin-Brandenburg Region; Lausanne, Vaud. Then there are all the countries in the Middle East, and as we've already seen we would again get some very odd names, eg, Amman, Amman Governorate. For many such places if you have a double location parameter it makes more sense to have the second part as the country (eg, Paris, France, rather than Paris, Ile de France; Berlin, Germany; Lausanne, Switzerland, etc.). America and Canada have to be dealt with as separate entities so that you have Paris, Texas, rather than Paris, USA, in line with general usage. Very few European schools seem to have articles at present so it's very difficult to decide what the solution should be. Most disambiguated UK articles seem to have adopted the single location parameter (eg, [[Forest School (Winnersh)], rather than Forest School (Winnersh, Berkshire). So long as there is no ambiguity I suggest that the predominant usage should be the preferred format. Dahliarose 23:59, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

A couple questions/suggestions:

• Why does Forest School (disambiguation say that Forest School (Winnersh) is located in Wokingham, Berkshire?
• I don't have an opposition to different standards of namings (in re locality) in different countries. I do think that names should be standardized as makes the most sense, and that our standards should try and follow any existing sort of naming standards in the area. I'm just going to go ahead and set up the taskforce to the best of my abilities. No matter how this guideline goes ahead, or even if we scrap this guideline, we need a task force to help with the naming, renaming and disambiguation of articles, and this guideline is very dependant on having a task force.
• A unique name exemption is fine with me, but I think that we should provide guidance on it. We should keep a modified version of the location exemption, because schools named after a place (like Eton for example) are one prominent example of uniquely named schools. We should mention that just because no other wiki article exists, that doesn't mean the school is unique, and we should have a checklist of things people should do to see if the school is likely to have a unique name. (this might be something for the task force as I imagine it would differ greatly based on location)
• The most well known example? So X (well-know) would have a link to the disambiguation page where all of the other Xs could be found? That seems fine with me, but again something that should be mentioned briefly here and expanded upon on a task force page. Or actually, that's probably mentioned in a disambiguation guideline and we could just link to that. Miss Mondegreen talk  02:23, June 9 2007 (UTC)

task force created...sort of

All right, I created a task force, substed a template and am slowly filling things in Wikipedia:WikiProject Education/School naming task force.

For refence, here's the template page Template:Task force, and the page on task forces Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Task forces, so if any of you would like to help create the talk page, or any of the other numerous things left to do, it would be great. I haven't notified any of the wikiprojects, nothing (I'm not even close to done with the actual page yet). Miss Mondegreen talk  02:42, June 9 2007 (UTC)

Unique

The main problem I see with unique, is that we have to tell people how on earth to tell if the name is likely to be unique. Other than that, this seems like the perfect solution.

In terms of location parameters differing, I agree with most of dahliarose's comments, but I also think that we should look carefully at existing guidelines:

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places)#Parenthetical terms (deprecated) says:

"Experience has shown that place names needing disambiguation will likely have many counterparts elsewhere, both within the same country and between several countries. Later disambiguation at higher levels can require hundreds of edits. It is best to nip the problem in the bud — use the most complete form of disambiguation at the earliest opportunity — thus helping future editors in advance."

Which is both one of the reasons for pre-emptive naming/renaming like this, and is also one reason I'm slightly wary of having only one location term in paranthesis. I think that the taskforce should look at the guidelines for location naming for these countires and make the guideline fit the country. City, state works for the US, but more often then not, we may definitely want to use the country name for the second term. Miss Mondegreen talk  04:47, June 9 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad you're in agreement. I shall restore the page to Adam's previous version. I suggest a gentle approach by starting with the disambiguation pages which are known problems, such as University High School and John F. Kennedy High School. A lot of these pages have existing red links so we will nip the problem in the bud if the schools are correctly named in the first place. This approach will at least establish if there are likely to be any problems with the proposed renaming policy. I know that the same place name can exist in many different countries but the combination of school name and place name is more likely to be unique (eg, Any High School (Paris, Texas) or Lycee (Paris, France). I suggest the focus should be first of all on establishing the procedure for the major English-speaking countries. Potentially controversial renames should be proposed on talk pages first. Dahliarose 16:00, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

The one problem with Alan's previous version (otherwise I would have restored it myself) is that it says that pages should only be named with location parameters if there is another ON WIKIPEDIA. Which is a problem because the creation of articles is spotty at best. We should assume that any school named after a US President is not unique (unless there's something unique attached to the name), but that version of the guideline would have us giving those schools names without location parameters as long as no other school with a similar name had been created.

We need to lay out what we mean by a unique name, and on-wiki existence CAN'T be it, especially because a lot of schools names differ, just slightly. Look at the University High School page. In additional to five different kinds of location disambiguation, the names of the schools vary slightly. Senior high, laboratory high, etc. If one article is created at "University Senior High School", and not given location parameters, because no school by that name exists already, and one article is created at "University High School", because no school by that name exists already, no disambiguation page is created until someone finds both pages, and people who search for "University High School" looking for the Senior High, never find it. This is one of the biggest problems with school articles, and what this guideline would fix and prevent. But it won't do it if we use on-wiki existence as the determining mark for what makes something unique.

I think that we need to say that a school name isn't unique if there's a similarly named school, but past that, I'm not sure what to tell people for how to figure out if their school has a unique name or not. Any thoughts? Miss Mondegreen talk  21:01, June 9 2007 (UTC)

The Bit about "on wikipedia" was not my edit, I just decided not to remove it in the spirit of generallity, I do believe it needs to be changed, but I suggest we change it to something like:

"Uniqueness is achieved only if no other schools with articles on Wikipedia share or approiximate a school's name, and it cannot be reasonable shown that another school with a similar name exists"

This language may be too restricting, but I think this would make the arguments more reasonable. Adam McCormick 02:46, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, I've changed to your definition in the meantime--because the existing one didn't work. It implied what your definition says, but doesn't outright say it, and complicates things.

But I think that your definition is problematic. The problem is is that we still don't leave people any sort of guidance on how to figure this out. School editors by and large work on a limited number of articles, and it's fine to tell them to figure it out, but we need to give them a way too. We should suggest searching Wikipedia not on Wikipedia, but through a search engine. They can't search for an exact name of a school unless they already know that another school with the same or a similar name exists, but searching for generic key words will generally land them an article about a person or a place or a thing (noun!), and not a list of results. Past that, I don't really know how to give a checklist of advice:

• Ways to check and see if there are other schools that share that name
• your school name is probably not unique if
• your school name is unique if

I do it by looking at it, and it's generally obvious to me, but that's not going to help another editor, and I'm having trouble isolating things that belong on those lists. Guidelines are meant to guide and I don't see this doing that yet. Miss Mondegreen talk  06:55, June 10 2007 (UTC)

Clearly there will need to be changes made to the existing page. Some of the examples are obviously now incorrect. I will have a go at making some alterations when I have some more time. I don't think we need to be too concerned with providing guidance about establishing whether or not a school is unique. It's most unlikely that new editors will find this page before they add their article. This guideline will more probably be used for sorting out disputes. I think I now have a solution for the single/dual location parameter problem. There is already a useful existing common sense guideline at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements). I suggest we follow this guideline for the location details in school articles. This would mean schools in the US, Canada and Australia would have the dual parameter but other countries such as England would have the single location parameter. This seems to be the only commonsense solution. Any other solution will contravene existing guidelines. Take the Forest School page as an example. Horsham, Walthamstow and Winnersh are all unique place names. It makes no sense for the schools project to go out on a limb and insist that these schools should be further disambiguated by county. I suggest we change the guideline as follows:

 :::::Dahliarose 13:24, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I like that idea, except that I think it would be a good idea to include a country parameter for countries where we use a single location parameter. Thoughts? Also, could you weigh in at the task force? Miss Mondegreen talk  08:11, June 11 2007 (UTC)

When you start to explore the various naming conventions for places you realise that the whole subject is a complete mess. Place names for each country are disambiguated in different ways so for instance we have:

• [[Town, State]] in Australia
• [[City, Province/Territory]] in Canada
• [[Placename]] for the United Kingdom and Ireland. Where further disambiguation is needed use [[Placename, County]]
• [[City, State]] for the United States
• [[Place name]] for Africa, Mexico, India, etc.

I think we should try and follow the existing guidelines for each country wherever possible when disambiguating school articles. Schools in the UK and Ireland should simply be disambiguated as: [[Any School (Place name)]]. Schools in Australia, Canada and the US should have the dual location qualifier.

The problem is that there are no clear guidelines for many countries. It might well make sense to disambiguate some school articles by the country/island name alone, ie, John F. Kennedy High School (Guam) rather than John F. Kennedy High School (Tumon) or John F. Kennedy High School (Tumon, Guam). The Wellington College page is a good example of the current confusion. For some of the schools on this page it probably is best to disambiguate purely on country/island (eg, Hong Kong and New Zealand). Wellington College, Wellington, New Zealand seems somewhat unnecessary. Wellington College (Berkshire) probably has a strong case for the omission of any location qualifier. If it does have one it should be Wellington College (Crowthorne). We need a wider consultation for some of these other countries. Do we know have consensus that schools in Australia, Canada, the US and the UK should be disambiguated on the above lines? There are more school articles for these countries and they should be the top priority. Whatever is decided we need to allow for a few commonsense exceptions. Dahliarose 11:31, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

My one concern with not doing more complete forms of disambiguation is redoing it is a big pain. The general guideline advises towards completier forms, because things change. Just because a city name is unique now doesn't mean it always will be and redisambiguating is so hard and there's so much room for error--adding on country name or an additional qualifier, in most cases isn't so terrible. Obviously, we use common sense, especially the location doctrine I added earlier, but modified. If the name of the location is in the name of the school, don't repeat that part of the name. So university of california, los angeles--I think we know where you are. Wellington College--there's more than one--are they all in Wellingtons? If so, we should tell people where the Wellingtons are. If not, we should definitely give specifics, because people might assume that Wellington College is in Wellington. But while less fully disambiguated names are prettier, they're could also be a real recipe for disaster. Thoughts? Miss Mondegreen talk  03:37, June 12 2007 (UTC)

new english school

This is exactly what I mean:

New English School
New English School (Jordan)

The one without parameters was created first. The one with was created second and properly has a link at the top For the school with the same name in Kuwait, see New English School.

Unfortunately, if you search for "New English School" on wikipedia you'll find it. And you'll never find New English School (Jordan).

But if you come across the article New English School and say to yourself "that doesn't really sound like a unique article name" and rename it with location parameters, or decide to google and see if you can find another new english school (and low and behold, there's one on Wikipedia), tada!

That's another good hint--if you google a school name to figure out if it's unique and find out that there are multiple school article (different schools) on wiki...it's probably not too unique. ;) Miss Mondegreen talk  08:08, June 11 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't realised that New English School was a real school! There is no dispute that the naming of schools is a real mess. I've added a link to the school on the existing New English School page. There don't seem to be any clear guidelines for the disambiguation of places in the Middle East so I suggest we leave this example out for the moment until we know what we're doing with such countries. I've replaced it with some US schools. Dahliarose 10:35, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, every example was a real school.

I know that there's no real guideline for schools in the Middle East, but once you get out of Europe and North America, the school naming system completely falls apart. Those schools have much less of a tendency to even be in a project--that's the reason I included that example. To make a strong point that there's whole continents of messes of schools out there, and because that's one that I felt was a pretty safe one to choose. "New English School"?? How much more of a generic name can you get? You can't use country names alone, the way it's sorta halfway doing now, it desperately needs disambiguation, and I think we should be using country as a second term there. Can we decide on that so that we can put that example back in? This sounds to euro-centric, a problem that is already prevalent.

Also, another problem with pages being named like this and not being forced to disambiguate, is that pages then get to choose whether or not to disambiguate. New English School used to have a disambiguation link at the top IIRC, but someone deleted it. We need to add in something in the guideline to say that if your an Eton, you have to do top of the page disambiguation...I'm attempting to write that now. Miss Mondegreen talk  03:15, June 12 2007 (UTC)

I'm not too sure about the country issue. We need a few more examples. It might not be such a problem as you think. School names are normally fairly distinctive in individual countries. My instinct is still to keep titles as short as possible with only one location parameter, be it place name or country, with exceptions for countries such as America, Canada and Australia, where it is more common to refer to places with a qualifier by state, province, etc. I think we need to get some input from the wider Wikipedia community too. I've put some notices on the various naming convention pages and on the Wikproject Schools page and I hope we get some more feedback. Dahliarose 10:28, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Observation

I saw an invitation to comment. I have spent 20-30 mins skim reading this page. I concluded

• I couldn't work out where the thread was so I started my own (work around me)
• Pre-emptive naming should not be applied as a rule that must be obeyed.
• Pre-emptive naming is wise if its obvious that there will be others.
• The method of naming location as qualifiers varies from country to country
• Its a massive effort to rename 1,000s of schools

My thoughts

• We are consuming a lot of effort (is the problem this big?)
• Naming of locations is a solved problem. Look at the Wikipedia page for "New York" ... if its says "New York, USA" then thats the location name

I have been spending time "gnoming" around English villages on wikipedia. They have the same problem (obviously). We thankfully, or at least very rarely, have a school with the same name in the same place. So if the location is unique in Wikipedia (and it willn be by definition) then use that. My only new thought is that if possible then can we remove duplication. ie. Leicester School (Leicester, Leicestershire) is a poor name and Leicester School, Leicestershire is a better guess. My only old thought is that we can raise a lot of flack by renaming schools. If we get "Lists" of schools then we can check that any new rule works by changing the list before we change real articles Victuallers 12:30, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Afterthought:I had softened my views on naming after discovering that Eton School was in fact a kindergarten or similar in the USA. In that case I think that Eton School should point to Eton College as that is where I expect to get to when I type in Eton School. The USA school should be strongly encouraged to rename. Victuallers 12:38, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Blimey that was quick guvnr - it does exactly as I wanted - ignore my afterthought Victuallers 12:40, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

This does raise the point that having comprehensive lists of schools for countries and the primary divisions thereof -- verified against reliable sources -- and of course not wikilinked by default -- would help enormously with the maintainability issues here. Is there any work going on in this direction? -- Visviva 12:50, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the lists already exist. In the US they're generally school district lists, in other countries how they're divided depends. Some countries will just have a list of univerisities. The lists are actually what helps us the most because these tend to be properly wikilinked, and so that's how I found The New English School. Most schools are not categorised properly or at all and from what I've seen looking through lists and categories, we only have a fraction of the current articles in the schools that exist in any education related wikiproject.

Example: St. Mark's College (University of Adelaide)‎ is up for an Afd, and it was in the WikiProject Australia and listed with Australia-related deletions, but until I happened upon the Afd, it wasn't a part of WikiProject Universities or listed in the school-related deletions. The article had lots of Wikipedia editors who could have easily added the tag, and so did the Afd. Commenters on the Afd included the writers of Wikipedia:Schoolcruft---so it's not like no one was aware--no one bothered.

Even in a case where lots of people came to the article who were very familiar with these WikiProjects and could have done it in their sleep--the article wasn't a member of the wikiproject. Then we have all of thousands of articles where no one knows, no one comes by, the article isn't categorized--lists are the best resource we have at this point--but even those are VERY incomplete. For some countries where there are university categories and lists and university articles, I've found no school lists and no school categories and nothing through the wikiproject. I don't really believe that there are NO school articles on Wikipedia for that country--I just think that they've fallen through the cracks. Either orphan articles, or worse, almost orphans.

So, in answer to the questions/points raised:

• we have lists--fairly comprehensive and doing not so badly--we sometimes have lists when we have nothing else
• yes--the problem is probably bigger then we think. This isn't something we're going to just fix now, it's something that will happen slowly over years. It's often hard to even figure out if there are two articles of the same or similar name on wiki--and there's no easy or definitive way to figure out if there are two schools that are named similarly off wiki. But we can use common sense to figure out what is and isn't likely to be unique.
• pre-emptive naming isn't going to be applied as a rule that MUST be obeyed. for starters this is a guideline, and the guideline only suggests pre-emptive naming for non-unique names. will some names that we think are unique prove not to be and have to be moved down the line anyway? yes. will some of the pre-emptive naming not be needed? yes. this isn't pefect, but I think, and hopefully there's consensus about this, that this guideline does the best job possible of fixing the system--minimizing the percentage of where we get things wrong, and minimizing the effects.
• "The method of naming location as qualifiers varies from country to country" - yes--the problem is how, and no, that's not the way it's done. New York at the top of the page specifically says that it's an article about the state, and that the city can be found at New York City. With school article [[school (New York)], you can't tell if the school is in the city or the state. There are existing guidelines for how to disambiguate by location for a lot of countries, but a lot don't have any guidance at all. Miss Mondegreen talk  10:28, June 13 2007 (UTC)

mini point of disambiguation - thx. my point about location is "let wikipedia be our (inaccuarate guide).... if it say "New York" is a state ... then its right... or at least its outside our remit to argue about it. Our rule/guideline can be "use the wiki location ... it is (presumed) right - if you say MY School, (New York) then it may be a rural school "

Oh ... and schools from other countries ... surely the Turkish schools are primarily indexed on the Turkish wikipedia. They may be beautifully indexed. I think it is evidence of Anglocentricism (may be a new word) on all our parts Victuallers 15:50, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I'd have absolutely zero idea how to handle that. Actually what would be really cool is if there was an interlanguage wikipedia--that was just for coordinating between different language wikipedias. And there would be lots of Wikiprojects and taskforces. So there could be a task force that included members from wikiproject schools and wikiproject Turkey and it would include members from all of the wikipedias. I have no idea how that would work language wise but wouldn't it be lovely if it could? Miss Mondegreen talk  22:28, June 13 2007 (UTC)

The Turkish Wikipedia might be an exception, but most non-English Wikipedias are in a very rudimentary state of development, and frequently have less extensive coverage even of their "home" countries than does EN. In principle, the standard for coverage of a given country should be the wiki(s) for the official language(s) of that country, but in practice we're not quite there yet. In terms of interlingual cooperation, I think the normal place for that is Meta... don't know if meta:Schools exists. -- Visviva 05:13, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I do agree with Victuallers' broader point about using the existing standards of Wikipedia to the extent possible. I'd like to see this (and a lot of other pages) redefined in a conservative way, so that it primarily just states how the various existing guidelines (for general naming, settlements, disambiguation, etc. etc.) apply in this particular set of cases. It's true that guidelines aren't meant to be prescriptive, but the fact that we had people out moving unoffending pages around "per" this guideine reminds us that these pages do have substantial ramifications. -- Visviva 05:23, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Well they should be proposing it first, and there should be discussion about whether the school name is unique. Also, one of the big todos for the task force is coordinating with the wikiprojects so that article assessment includes name assessment. Does the school need to be renamed? If so, how badly? Hopefully people will focus on the pages that really need to be moved etc, then on that are a low priority. Miss Mondegreen talk  06:15, June 14 2007 (UTC)