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Latest School VfD results

Discussion has been quite lively here of late. As can be seen by the figures below, this discussion has been very successful indeed in improving consensus on schools, in the face of quite a marked increase in school VfD nominations. What it doesn't show is that quite a number of articles are being quietly merged. A lot more "merge" votes are also showing up on the VfD listings; although they are unlikely as yet to overtake "keep" votes this does show that there is growing consensus in favor of retaining whatever significant information on schools may exist in smaller stubs.

These are my personal figures derived from Wikipedia:Watch/schoolwatch/Votes for deletion archive and omit tertiary education institutions that sometimes appear on Wikipedia:Watch/schoolwatch. Only primary and secondary institutions are included here.

  • March
    • Nominated: 29; kept: 17; deleted: 6, copyvio: 2; speedy deleted: 2; merged: 2.
  • April
    • Nominated: 20; kept: 18; deleted 2.
  • May
    • Nominated: 75; kept: 71; redirected (merged): 1; withdrawn: 2; pending: 1.

The one pending discussion for May is expected to be closed with a "keep" result, meaning no school articles listed for deletion in May will have been deleted as a result of a VfD discussion.

A total of 27 school articles were listed for deletion in the first twelve days of June. One article is about a political association started by a student and is heading for deletion. The other 26 all seem to be following the pattern of the May listings. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 23:50, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Since when did "overriding all objections" become "improving consensus"? RickK 07:15, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Could you explain what you're alluding to? --Tony Sidaway|Talk 07:21, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Come on, Tony, you said this discussion has been very successful indeed in improving consensus on schools, when it's pretty clear that this page is being used solely to insure that all non-notable schools are kept. RickK 05:56, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps Rick simply doesn't understand that improving consensus means, among other things, changing hearts and minds, and providing ways for different views to find common ground. What it does not include is sticking to intolerant, intractable positions without any intention to compromise or see the other side. It seems to me that the only remaining "objection" you have, Rick, is your personal belief that schools are not in themselves "notable" -- whatever that is supposed to mean. Do you feel that that "objection" (and its statement ad nauseam) actually helps this particular discourse progress? Or helps make Wikipedia better in any way? Grace Note 06:03, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This from the person who claims that every building ever built should have an article. Yes, I am not going to back down on the requirement that school articles must have as much notability as any person article does. If we followed the WP:SCH logic for people, then every verifiable person would be kept, too. RickK 22:37, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)
  • I did a random sampling of the nominations in May, and must say that several of the schools listed as 'kept' were kept because of a lack of consensus, rather than a consensus to keep. For instance, for Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Albany High School the votes are nearly tied. The closing admin's comment does not necessarily reflect this. Radiant_>|< 09:55, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC) (which has nothing to do with the two comments above, hence the separator)
    • Surely admins should record that a vote was "no consensus"? I know that I always did when I had the time to close VfD discussions. smoddy 10:22, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • Some admins, myself included, record a close "no consensus" as such, and a vote in which the article came nowhere near consensus to delete as a "keep". Having examined all of the nominations for May and all of those for June, I have to say I'm impressed by the growth in the number of merge and keep votes in the past two weeks. For most nominations now the keeps alone outnumber deletes most of the time, and keeps and merges together often dwarf straight delete votes. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:23, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

In reply to Radiant!, I'll make the following remarks: to say that school articles were kept because of "a lack of consensus, rather than a consensus to keep" is both a banal factual statement (all articles kept after VfD are kept because of an absence of consensus to delete) and a misrepresentation of the decision-making process on Wikipedia.

We have a strong and longstanding rule, supported by consensus, that with a very few exceptions (WP:CSD) we don't go around deleting properly formed articles without a discussion and a consensus to delete. To suggest that a consensus to keep is required or implied by a keep vote is both simply wrong and mind-bogglingly misleading. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:19, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • So it is. However, I didn't suggest that anywhere. To suggest that I am suggesting that... ah never mind :) Radiant_>|< 14:52, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
But it's "better" to have consensus. Say an article survives Vfd due to lack of consensus; our Vfd "staff" rotates almost daily so if brought up again there may be a change in opinion, and indeed the nominator or one of the voters often brings it back later on for a revote. Whereas if something is kept due to almost unanimous support, then it's unlikely to be brought up again. Not to say every non-consensus page should be mercilessly re-Vfd'ed after a period, but still it's better to have the Vfd ending in a successful keep as "proof" of an article's "right" to be in WP. IMO of course.
Continuing IMO, I hope a result to this mess is reached VERY soon. And I might as well say this too since I've thought this every time I see a new diff for this page... right now you and Radiant seem to be having a battle of wits, each trying to use reasoning and facts to outdo the other and prove his opinion to be "right". Come on, how old are you two?!? It was looking like we were getting a wonderful compromise with this template and all, but sometimes it seems like one "camp" or the other is surreptitiously hoping one of the boundary stones can be moved in the direction of their favour... Master Thief GarrettTalk 14:34, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
If an article is listed on VfD and kept because of no consensus to delete, then VfD is working as advertised. Only articles over which there can be thought to be some question should ever be brought up on VfD, so I'd say it was a "mess" if we had school articles regularly ending with a massive number of keep votes and only a few delete votes. It's not that bad yet but it's getting there if you count the merges.
Since over 120 school articles have been listed in the past two-and-a-half months, and only two have been deleted with a further one projected to be deleted out of the pending discussions, it would seem that school VfD listings are pretty pointless anyway, but nothing much is lost by running them. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 15:16, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • I am not suggesting anywhere that a consensus to keep is required. Nor do I think so. However, it is obviously confusing that if a VFD ends up with, say, 6 keep votes and 5 delete votes, some admins will close it as "no consensus" and some other admins will close it as "keep". I'm not going to argue on whether one of the two is wrong, however the confusion is obvious. Radiant_>|< 14:52, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

The end result is that the article is kept because of our consensus to keep all VfD'd articles without a rough consensus to delete. The "no consensus" thing is vastly overplayed, emphasizing the particular consensus and ignoring the general consensus to keep. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 15:07, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • I am not seeing a concensus to out right keep. What I am seeing is a lack of concensus on most votes. So by default this result in no action which is defined to be leave the article alone, aka keep. The fact that new people are nominating these articles shows that many editors still have problems with these articles. Also these votes do cause harm. At the very least, they take time away from working to improve articles. Or by implying that articles with no content are OK! The no concensus keeps do cause harm in that it gives the impression that any aricle can now be kept. Reasons like We keep every school so we should also keep... are now showing up on other VfDs. What I don't see is an effort by most to avoid having schools nominated for a VfD. Vegaswikian 19:26, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • That's not what I've been finding. I closed two discussions the other day, and both of them had around 2/3 of the votes being to keep, which is a rough concensus. I think that most of the other discussions offer similar results. Even if people are still nominating articles for deletion, they'll eventually stop if nothing gets deleted. Sure, we'll still have "new" people (i.e. new to this debate) nominate articles for deletion, but that's no different than other topics. If this causes frustration for people nominating VfDs for other topics (because people are voting keep because "we keep all schools so..."), then maybe that's not a bad thing. VfD is overcrowded already, and if people try to find alternate solutions to deleting articles (e.g. merging them) instead of futilely nominating them, I think that's a good thing. JYolkowski // talk 20:47, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I concur with JYolkowski (although I personally don't close school VfDs, for obvious reasons). But the "consensus to keep an article" standard isn't the way to judge consensus on Wikipedia. You have to remember that by consensus we keep all articles that don't meet WP:CSD unless there is a rough consensus to delete. If we consistently get "no consensus" for more about ninety school article VfDs in a row, that tells us something about the strength of consensus on Wikipedia with respect to schools. As JYolkowski says, the vote ratios by which school VfDs are being kept are quite pronounced, in general. This isn't a matter of just a few editors managing to squeak a "no consensu" vote, it's usually a convincing majority to keep.

Looking at school VfDs, the majority over the past couple of months have been campaign listings. In May, around 50 out of the 75 listings were made by one single editor in a three-day spree, and two-thirds of all school VfDs this month have come from another editor also engaged in a campaign of deletion. These two campaigns alone account for the much higher rate of school article VfDs for May and (so far) for June. The rate of school article nomination is three times normal because two editors have accounted for two-thirds of all deletion nominations in May and June.

You write: What I don't see is an effort by most to avoid having schools nominated for a VfD.

The number of nominations isn't something that can be controlled because there are still many editors who think that the solution to a poorly written article is to delete it. I agree with JYolkowski that the continued overwhelming rejection of school VfDs is not a bad thing. Those engaged in these campaigns to delete schools may find something else to do--cleaning up school articles to a level that they find satisfying, perhaps. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 22:22, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Actually, no. Conversely, the ideal is that articles chosen for Vfd are ones that cannot (in the eyes of the nominator anyway) ever be improved; this is a good reason, as "crappy" dead-wood stubs should always be deleted unless they can be merged somewhere. Why would someone nominate something that has a chance of growth? And I'm not talking about the "all articles will grow given time" dream, IMO that's a load of crap. An article will only grow if someone knows about the subject, and with an obscure school the number of knowledgeable people is (unsurprisingly) very small.
Therefore an obscure school article will not grow unless someone intersted in (or obsessed with, depending on your "camp") keeping schools in WP deliberately goes out of their way to learn about and add to it. Logic says that such an article will probably never be noticed by such a "spur of the moment" contributor--until it goes up for Vfd of course, thus inspiring them to get to work because they didn't know it existed before. In many cases the Vfd has become a good way to get hasty and valuable improvements made on something, schools or otherwise. Not to say you should deliberately nominate to force growth, but that's sometimes the side-effect. :)
However in the case of no-consensus Vfds the barely-surviving articles get few if any improvements past their failed nomination. Now why is that? Could it be that they just can't be improved? Well... yes!--that's why we've got projects like Wikipedia:Pokeprosal and of course this one.
Well, I've rambled... really what I'm saying is that articles with absolutely no potential for natural growth--as opposed to "let's hurry and improve this article to save it from the Vfd!" forced growth support which often dies off the moment the Vfd closes--are hopefully the only ones being nominated for Vfd in the first place! And if they haven't grown since their last Vfd, people ideally shouldn't keep re-voting to keep them, regardless of their stance on any given issue. If it didn't grow in x months since the last Vfd, it isn't ever going to, right? Right. Master Thief GarrettTalk 00:54, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I've seen these misstatements repeatedly. To summarise, it is claimed that:
  • School articles are nominated because it is believed that they can never be improved
  • Schools are so obscure that nobody can write much about any given school
Nevertheless, you accept that somehow the articles do get improved when listed for deletion. Well make your mind up! Either they can be improved or they cannot. It's no matter whether this takes a matter of days or years.
It is then argued that:
  • School articles are kept solely because they barely fail to scrape a consensus to delete--they escape by the skin of their teeth
  • Excepting VfDs, school articles show no significant growth over time.
Such statements are patently false. We've already seen that school articles aren't being kept by the skin of their teeth but by a quite handsome margin.
The claim on schools stagnating after VfD is also false as can be seen: a glance shows that of schools that are no longer on VfD work is going on now on Fox Lane High School, Harlaw Academy, Carmel High School (Carmel, California), Jannali East Public School, Essex High School, Princeton High School, Sharonville, Ohio, Baptist Lui Ming Choi Secondary School, Jordan Middle School, and Archbishop Williams High School and that's only in the past three days.
But I've seen these blatant falsehoods and others like them repeated many times; presumably because those repeating these falsehoods cannot be bothered to check whether they are telling the truth or not. Those statements have failed to convince. In other words, it's a waste of time putting these false and long-discredited arguments. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 01:50, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
True. Now let's see what we have for changes. Archbishop Williams athlete urinated on member of hockey team that sounds like encylopedic material. Then there was my edit to insert a History heading in one article. So it is true that articles are being changed. But this does not mean that encylopedic information is being added, which is what we really wanted. Vegaswikian 02:34, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

One item of trivia doesn't refute the fact that these articles are being edited, even where you personally do not like the material being produced.

And let's look at older VfD survivors. This is the table of school articles that survived VfD in February.

February 26
* Robert Frost Middle School keep history
February 25
* Eyuboglu high school keep history
February 24
* Devonport High School for boys KEEP history
February 23
* Canyon Crest Academy Keep history
February 20
* Bishop's College keep history
February 19
* List of schools in the United Kingdom KEEP history
* List of UK Independent Schools KEEP history
* List of high schools in Japan NO CONSENSUS, kept history
* List of schools in New Zealand NO CONSENSUS, kept history
* List of schools by country NO CONSENSUS, kept history
February 17
* List of schools in Singapore KEEP history
February 16
* St. Joseph's College, Hunters Hill keep history
* Urrbrae Agricultural High School keep history
February 9-14
* None
February 8
* Adams' Grammar School Senior Debating Society keep history (deleted by second VfD)
February 5
* Browning School keep history
February 2
* High schools in the United States keep history
* High schools in New Jersey kept history
* High schools in Pennsylvania kept history
February 1
* Collingwood School keep history
* Elder High School KEEP history

You'll find a few articles in there that have not been edited in the three or four months since VfD, but most are being regularly edited. More to the point, there is nothing about the articles that aren't undergoing regular editing that suggests that they cannot be expanded in the same way as the others.

I want to take issue with that snide, dismissive tone that enters into discussion of these articles. An item about a school student urinating on a member of hockey team "doesn't sound encyclopedic." How exactly not? The news made the Patriot Ledger and resulted in a police report. This is neutral and verifiable information. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 03:14, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

By that reasoning, we should have an article on the student who did the urinating. Why don't we? He would certainly be more notable than the school, on the basis of that information. But we don't have an article on him, because if somebody wrote it, it would get listed on VfD, and the person article would be deleted because the person himself is not notable. But the fact that he urinated on an opposing player makes the school notable? My objection, just as it always has been, is that we should apply the same rules to schools (or any other building, despite Grace Note's objections) as we do to people or any other subject -- the article should establish notability. And just existing is not notability. RickK 22:42, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)
So all of those who believed that an $800 million building was not encylopedic because it only appeared in several local papers were wrong? Some believed that appearing in the New York Times would have made it notable. The problem was solved when someone stated they could see the building so the information was verified. There needs to be some kind of reasonable standard. The bar should not be lying on the ground. The issue is how high should it be. And the bar should be at similar heights across the entire wiki. Vegaswikian 03:32, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I'll like to say a few words. First of all, if Mr Tony Sidaway continues the attitude he adopts in Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Gwinett_County_Public_Schools, that he is holier-than-thou-all and that all school VfD are doomed to failure, then I believe a lot of users will be disgusted enough to leave Wikipedia. Now it seems putting a trivial one-line school article is fast becoming a crime. And anyway I'm fast becoming a deletionist. I hate the term, it doesn't apply to me, but if it means undercutting the politicking of these so-called "school inclusionists", why not? School inclusionists are known for some of the most vicious and sarcastic remarks on VfD. Mandel 22:04, July 28, 2005 (UTC)

I think there is a trail of false assumptions at the heart of this. Firstly a school stub is falsely represented as unencyclopedic. Secondly a school article that (like many other perfectly good stubs on Wikipedia) is not edited every few weeks is falsely claimed to be unlikely ever to expand. Thirdly items that are added, even though neutral and verifiable, are falsely represented as unencyclopedic. With bad assumption you will end up with bad conclusions, and then you'll wonder why none of the articles you nominate for deletion are ever deleted any more. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 03:20, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC}

Would you support adding all hotels, parks, casinos and streets? Vegaswikian 03:32, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Update

In May and June 119 school articles were listed for deletion. One was referred as a copyright violation, three were redirected or merged.

Three are still waiting to be closed but look like keepers.

112 out of the 119 have been kept (in addition to the 3 merge/redirects).

In two straight calender months, no school deletion listing was successful in deleting the article except the one case where the article was a copyright violation.

Only two deletion listings in April were successful.

In addition, there has been no discussion on this page for weeks. I've listed this page as "recently closed". I think we've taken it as far as we can; even quite stubby school articles seem to be virtually undeletable. If you encounter one just merge it. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 4 July 2005 23:59 (UTC)

  • Objection Please do not merge school articles. This would be against the majority preference for keeping them which has been expressed time and time again. They are more likely to be expanded if people can find them. All that's required is a link in the article the school article might have been merged into. CalJW 5 July 2005 02:45 (UTC)

Majority may be overstated

I've done some very rough analyis to try and separate out the influence of people (like me!) who are voting on schools a lot from the people with more useful things to do with their time. I'd welcome comments. Specifically:

  • Data quality
    • Any glaring mistakes? Typos, duplications, etc.
    • Framing of results. Should the results be ternary, or something else?
    • I'd love a way to get this data in cleanly and en masse. Any suggestions?
  • How should we define conceptualize consensus?
    • Does a focus group (either for or against) distort the results, or are they the result?
  • Anything else.
    • Has this been done somewhere else I haven't seen?
    • Do we think there is any value in this?

Anyway, I'm pretty sick of the poisonous atmosphere in school VfDs, and also believe there is a chilling effect. I'd like to do some analysis on that as well, but only if anyone is willing to either help out or listen to the results.
brenneman(t)(c) 07:02, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

  • That was interesting data. One problem may be in how did you count the merge and redirect votes? It is no suprise that some editors are always voting keep since they believe that all school articles should be kept. Then you have the no votes that are from those who believe that articles need to show notability and, since most schools don't, they vote delete. Also, your analysis does not judge the condition of the article. Someone may vote delete if they look at the first version but vote keep after 30 revisions. I don't see a discussion at this time producing any solution to the atmosphere problem in the VfD. The only solution would be if the Keep and Delete blocks would enter a discussion to establish a set of objective criteria to judge schools by. The WP:Music project is one that is frequently pointed to as an example of what needs to be done. However I don't see some editors as willing to work to a concensus unless it is totally the way they want it. Finally, it might also be intersting to see how these people voted on other articles. However, this is a lot of data and I don't know if the sample size being used is valid enough to do any real anaylsis. Anything effort that might help to get some criteria to end the discussions should be considered useful. Vegaswikian 07:45, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
    • The problem is that most school VfDs are based on 'non-notability'. People who agree with a 'notability' standard for school pages will vote delete, and people who disagree will vote keep. Not a lot we can do about that really Cynical 13:19, 8 August 2005 (UTC)


The Music project is one example where there can be a legitimate consensus on notability--any two or three people with a Casio keyboard, an electric guitar and a practice amp can call themselves a group and term a demo CD an "album", their friends an "adoring fan base" and a few local gigs a "successful tour". Such claims with respect to schools within the public system are rare. Schools have tax bases, permanent employees, and are monitored by agencies appointed by the government, so it's not surprising that many people think of them as intrinsically notable (but understandable that others may think they're not--as someone who started on that side of the fence I understand both sides of the argument very well).
I think Wikipedia:Schools has been successful in outlining a successful strategy for dealing with school articles, and the success of the schools project over the past three months is testament to that. In May, 75 school articles were listed for deletion, but none were deleted. In June, the figure was down to 44 and only one (a copyright violation) was deleted. In July, the figure was down again, to 28, and again only one article was deleted (somebody's pet project about an "Old Students Association" for a primary school). One July deletion is pending closure and in my judgement will result in either a merge or a keep. In short, no legal articles about real schools have been deleted in over three months now.
To explain away the emerging consensus for schools, there has been an almost equally longstanding tendency to term the votes to keep as part of some conspiracy or cabal, where it's pretty evident to those of us who have been on both sides of the issue that it's simply a matter of views becoming entrenched as a result of continued deletion nominations of apparently reasonable stubs. Rather it appears to me that in recent days the proportion of keep votes in keeps has grown considerably. It is quite common now for keep votes to outnumber delete votes by a wide margin. Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/North Sydney Girls High School shows an extreme example of this: keep votes vastly outnumbered delete votes, and there were numerous changes from delete to keep during the process. This for a two-paragraph article, about 250 words or so. Not bad for an article which was originally speedied on 26 June! --Tony SidawayTalk 13:43, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
It also occurs to me that this article is a splendid vindication of Eventualism. --Tony SidawayTalk 13:54, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
The position that there is an emerging consensus is supported by data that is not being correctly analyzed. You can not make that assumption based on reviews of votes for articles that are significantly modified after being placed on VfD. This is not as simple as couonting votes and drawing conclusions. Vegaswikian 19:43, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
My position that there is an emerging (not quite present) consensus is based on the increasing proportion of keep votes--this could well go up or down so I won't press the matter. Now the articles may be modified, but they're still articles about schools at the end of that process-they don't change into articles about airplanes, tanks, political parties or pop stars, so every keep, merge or redirect vote is a vote to keep the content and history of an article aout a school. If an article is being modified while voting continues (and often a school article is modified by half a dozen editors during a VfD) that in itself is evidence of increasing interest in school articles and willingness to incorporate them into Wikipedia. --Tony SidawayTalk 13:34, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

On the supposedly "poisonous" atmosphere with respect to schools deletion discussions, the atmosphere in my opinion has undoubtedly improved since May, and can only continue to improve as fewer and fewer good school articles are listed for deletion. Insults are hurled on both sides, but still the most common one is the patently false and disingenuous claim that keep votes are unrepresentative. --Tony SidawayTalk 13:54, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Regarding the comparison to WP:MUSIC, I think a similar thing is possible with schools, though far less common. A private school, with few students and no public profile, could be considered non-notable to me. I can't foresee an instance of a state-sponsored school being not notable as the interest of the public is high in such cases. DoubleBlue (Talk) 15:43, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
Yes, that would be non-notable in the sense of being unverifiable. This is my reason for not voting in a recent preschool listing. --Tony SidawayTalk 13:34, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

While I do appreciate the input, it seems to me that we're now re-stating existing arguments. As this has not been resoundingly succesful to date, I was (and still am) proposing another way to approach the problem. Let me posit a possible result and ask how it would be interpreted:

  • That voters in school VfDs (SVs) exhibit different behaviors than in other VfDs (OVs).
    • That is to say, suppose that (assuming we could agree on methods) it was found that an "average" editor who took part in OVs made seven votes a month, but that SV participants were bi-modal (either two votes a month or ten).
    • Suppose, to contrast, it was found that there was no differentiation between SVs and OVs based upon number of votes, but that there is greater polarization. (It's tempting to say, "Of course there is, don't you watch the votes?" but it would be desirable to have facts to support that supposition.)
  • What might these results tell us? More importantly, what would be actionable from this?

Additionally, can we try to avoid extreme POV like "patently false" and disparaging comments like "disingenuous"? They do nothing to progress this discussion. Although it does raise an interesting point:

  • Can we at all concede that it is possible that SVs are not representative?
  • What analysis would be acceptable to prove or disprove this hypothesis?

Personally, I'd like to understand what's currently happening before making plans for how to change it. Again, thanks for the continuing input,
brenneman(t)(c) 06:36, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Some notes on methods

  • For simplicity, any vote other than straight keep or delete I coded to X but not null. This included anyone who changed their vote. I did not include votes such as Cow. The question of "buckets" for counting is linked to data acquisition.
  • It's common to stratify populations to better understand dynamics and to more easily present results. The current strata are by number of votes and voting consistancy. As long as I avoid using anything even remotely pejorative (e.g. "cabal") and stick with descriptives (e.g. "60-90% Delete Voter") are these splits acceptable?
  • I'd like to use some text parsing to get a larger sample. This would mean that some bad data would get through, but that's going to happen anyway. I mention it now to avoid cies of "foul!" at some later stage.

brenneman(t)(c) 06:36, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. You use terms like "unrepresentative". What is your criterion for this? All VfDs are opt-in, and there is absolutely no bar on voting or expressing an opinion in a VfD. You earlier described the situation in terms of a "Cabal"--how would that work, exactly? How could members of a cabal be coerced into making votes that they don't want to make? Now you use the term "majority may be overstated" but you don't elaborate. Can you express your point succinctly? --Tony SidawayTalk 13:25, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I believe what this indicates is that (regardless of any claims to the contrary) there is not any kind of a consensus on the school issue, but it is considered acceptable to simply shout down the minority until they stop bothering to vote. Certainly most people on both sides have been entirely unwilling to make any kind of compromise. Radiant_>|< 14:21, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
    • I admit that I'm a little disturbed by some school inclusionists who have recently refused to accept having school stubs merged as per the compromise that was suggested by the WP:SCH proposal. As well, the VfD nominations continue unabated. It does seem to have been rejected by both sides. DoubleBlue (Talk) 14:42, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
On Blue's claim that "school nominations continue unabated", see below. The figures simply do not bear out your claim; there has been a month-on-month drop in nominations for two months running. This is a fact. On merging, while it is always a possibility the fact is that extremely few VfDs ever end with a consensus to merge or anything near that. The overall preference appears to be to keep school stubs rather than merge them, although there are occasional exceptions. A written document cannot take the place of personal opinions expressed in discussions, and while there is no consensus to merge a school article with another it would be wrong to force the matter simply because one might think it would be a good idea.
I find the language used by Radiant! simply incomprehensible. How does one "shout down" someone on a wiki? --Tony SidawayTalk 14:58, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  • That should be obvious from the angry reaction of several keep-voters to the daily school nomination. Radiant_>|< 15:16, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
Hmm, rethinking, I wonder now if Radiant! all along believed that WP:SCH constituted some kind of treaty between two camps, rather than an examination of the facts pertaining to the continued failure of schools deletion nominations t enjoy any significant success. I'm trying to guess, Radiant!, so excuse me if I get it completely wrong. You've used the term "compromise" quite a lot. Were you of the impression that there was some kind of agreement that people who honestly believe that an article should be kept in its current form should instead pretend that they think it should be merged with something else? I confess that it never occurred to me to expect people to pretend on VfD that their views were other than what they were. I wouldn't ask a delete voter to pretend he wanted a merge or a keep, and I wouldn't expect a merge voter to pretend he wanted a keep or delete. So my question is: why should keep voters, who are quite often by far the largest single party and sometimes well outnumber the merge and delete voters added together, be expected to pretend instead that they favor instead another option? It just doesn't make sense. --Tony SidawayTalk 15:10, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Nobody's asking anybody to pretend they have a different opinion - wherever did you get that idea? This page is presently worded imperatively - 'do this, do not do that'. However, consensus is not behind this imperative - it merely represents the preference of a vocal subgroup of users. Therefore, the imperative is rejected. Radiant_>|< 15:16, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
I still contend that WP:SCH actually describes very well what is happening on Wikipedia. Lots of articles in Wikipedia-space are worded "imperatively", though all they're really doing is giving advice. WP:DICK is the classic example of this.
  • It follows from Wikipedia's extreme reluctance to delete school articles that listing for deletion is a bad idea, don't do it.
  • It follows from the chronic failure of deletion listings over some months and around 150 nominations that quietly merging smaller stubs is preferable to listing for deletion an article that one is personally unwilling to expand.
  • It follows from paucity of material that one shouldn't undo merges unless there is enough for a good stub.
These facts are self-evident, and it shouldn't really be necessary to state them. I regard the fact that they were stated as a key point of clarity in the development of the de facto schools policy. If they can be called a compromise, it's because they're a compromise between the ongoing but moribund schools deletion campaign and hard, cold reality. The act of making such a compromise, and internalizing it over time, could be termed "consensus". I could be wrong, but I think that in all probability within one year there will be nobody on Wikipedia who can remember why school articles were once considered to be so controversial. The trend could yet reverse, but I see no sign of this. --Tony SidawayTalk 15:38, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Your description of what is happening on Wikipedia is accurate. However, none of this was actually found on WP:SCH - I've now fixed that. There is an obvious difference between a descriptive page and a proscriptive page. Radiant_>|< 17:26, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

Explanation of Tony Sidaway's revert of an edit by Radiant!

Radiant! has marked this summary as "rejected". Somehow I don't see it this way. I've removed it but if it's replaced I won't remove it again.

The principal recommendation is for avoidance of VfD listing, and this has been overwhelmingly successful. From a high of 74 school-related nominations in May, the number was down to 44 in June and 28 in July. Nominations are slightly up this month on the same time last month, but still less than half the rate at the same time in June.

Notability continues to be a very controversial matter, and so remains a "bad bet" as a rationale for deletion. In short, this initiative has been overwhelmingly successful in improving the environment in which school articles are developed on Wikipedia. --Tony SidawayTalk 14:49, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Well, I admit that it's true that it's pointless to list a school for VFD. However, that is not because of a consensus that such nominations may not happen (as proven by the fact that they frequently do happen, in good faith, from a variety of users). Rather, it is because a large number of people will put on a de facto keep vote (regardless of the fact that only a few of those voters actually work towards improving school articles). This page was intended as a compromise - however, neither side particularly liked the compromise, and therefore it has no consensus. After that, the initial compromise has been reworded to strongly favor one side's point of view. It may be worded as a guideline, but it isn't supported. Radiant_>|< 14:56, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
Regarding the supposed decrease in nominations, it appears to me from the data at Wikipedia:Watch/schoolwatch/Votes for deletion archive that the average is 1 nomination per day. May's high was the result of a campaign by Neutrality through the alphabet of school stubs while June's slightly higher number was a brief campaign by Dunc. DoubleBlue (Talk) 15:08, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Blue: precisely, Neutrality and Dunc engaged in school deletion campaigns. Those campaigns backfired and they gave up. To a certain extent we're seeing a resurgence of such campaigning, this time from User:TimPope and so far to a much, much smaller extent. However we're still seeing no significant success from these raggle taggle nominations, they make up under one percent of all nominations and they have (correct me if I'm wrong here) the lowest success rate of all regular classes of nomination on VfD.
Radiant!, you write: "it is because a large number of people will put on a de facto keep vote (regardless of the fact that only a few of those voters actually work towards improving school articles)." I don't know which people you're referring to here but let's guess you're referring to people who have voted keep in many school deletion listings. I looked at the keep votes in two or three recent listings and these are the editors I found:
* Tony Sidaway (talk · contribs): I have improved school articles.
* Kappa (talk · contribs): Kappa has improved school articles.
* Radman1 (talk · contribs): Radman has improved school articles.
* Unfocused (talk · contribs): Unfocused has improved school articles.
* CalJW (talk · contribs): CalJW has improved school articles.
* DS1953 (talk · contribs): DS1953 has improved school articles.
* RJHall (talk · contribs) RJHall has improved school articles.
* Christopherparham (talk · contribs) Christopherparham has improved school articles.
Look, this isn't getting anywhere. Where are these massive hordes of people who just vote keep and never make any effort to improve a school article? Be as specific as you can.
You write: "the initial compromise has been reworded to strongly favor one side's point of view." I'd no idea. When was this done? Anyhow I think you have some serious problems with the facts, here, as I've tried to show. Let's get to the bottom of this claim of yours. Which people just vote keep on schools and never improve school articles? Why do you think their votes to keep carry more weight than mine, Kappa's Radman's, CalJW's, DS1953's, RJHall's and Christopherparham's? --Tony SidawayTalk 16:27, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  • So you've listed eight people who improve school articles. Since the amount of people that regularly vote 'keep' on schools is far greater, this has proven my point. I make no claim that anyone's vote carries more weight than anyone else - don't put words in my mouth. Radiant_>|< 17:26, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
    • Firstly, I don't believe it's true that those who vote to keep school articles don't improve them. Secondly, I'm not sure what your point was anyway. VfD is not a votes for collaboration project. People discuss whether an article should be deleted or not. There is no requirement to work on the article in question. One might even suggest, though I would disagree strongly, that interested parties abstain from such votes. It is not suggested that those who vote keep for other kinds of articles have questionable votes because they don't improve them and there's no reason to do so for schools. DoubleBlue (Talk) 17:46, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Radiant!, I quote your words: the reason why it's pointless listing school articles for deletion, you say ,is "because a large number of people will put on a de facto keep vote (regardless of the fact that only a few of those voters actually work towards improving school articles)." Now I don't know which people you mean, but I reasoned that if I took some fairly recent VfDs and identified those people who always seemed to vote keep in those, then I'd find at least some of these people who you say "will put on a de facto keep vote", but dont improve school articles. It stands to reason that they must be doing so in all or most votes, surely. Well those are the people that I found. There may be other people you're thinking of--in which case identify them.

You deny that you've implied that these people's votes carry more weight than anybody else's. But here I've listed the half dozen fairly regular keep voters I could find, these people must have a tremendous effect on the vote because of their number and the fact that they've voted frequently. But they also improve school articles. So we're looking for some people who also always vote keep and outnumber this half-dozen or so (because you say most of these de facto keep voters do not improve school articles. Otherwise I don't know how to interpret what you say. You couldn't perhaps be just saying something which you haven't checked because you already know it's true, surely?

I also endorse what Blue said, although I'd really like to get to the bottom of this claim, because you aren't the first person I've seen make it, but I can never find any evidence to support it. Ideally I'd like to convince myself that it's true, or get enough evidence so that in future if it's raised again (and it will be, I've no doubt) I'll be able to point to abundant evidence to the contrary. Listing all the people I thought you might be talking about was a start. If we can eliminate these people we can move on to any other people who regularly vote to keep schools and see if it is true that their votes make it pointless to list schools for deletion. --Tony SidawayTalk 18:17, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

You may ask "why is Tony paying so much attention to this?" Well I'll explain. For a long time now we've had school article deletion listings abjectly fail to make a deletion consensus. Being a straightforward chap, I naturally assume that this is all there is to it--that deleting schools isn't a popular move and a lot of people will vote against it. But here I'm being told that it's all a matter of Cabals (Aaron, but people have said this before), "overstated majorities" (Aaron again, but apparently only changing the name to avoid the problematic word "Cabal"), and people who are claimed to be voting on principle without showing any real interest in school articles.

Well to me it seems that these are probably just rationalisations, ways to avoid thinking about the unthinkable: that Wikipedia doesn't like deleting schools. But I'm faced with apparently intelligent, thinking people who say these things as if they mean them, as if they had evidence and reasoning that supported those opinions. Well, if that's the case, let's have a look at the evidence, and the reasoning. And then I'll know, and everybody else will know, whether there is anything to it, or if it's just all hot air. That's why I ask you to be as specific as possible, and why I ask Aaron to explain precisely what he means when he says he thinks schools VfD results are unrepresentative. --Tony SidawayTalk 18:28, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

  • "Wikipedia doesn't like deleting schools" sounds reasonable, but the only thing that can be inferred from the facts is that "enough people who care about schools will vote to keep them if nominated on VFD". It would be nice to get rid of the frequent discussions and have a guideline that schools shouldn't be nominated for deletion (in fact, that is what WP:SCH currently portrays to be). However, judging from the fact that there are frequent good-faith deletion nominations on schools from a wide variety of editors, there is no consensus for such a guideline. And in fact this talk page is full of people's unaddressed objections to it. Therefore this page is an imperative that is not supported by the community. And that is misleading. So it should either be moved someplace else (e.g. userspace, or a sub of Wikiproject schools) - or it should clearly indicate that it's not in fact consensual. Radiant_>|< 08:07, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
I think that's a misreading of what a guideline is. A guideline isn't a policy and the standard for calling it a guideline is that a fairly large number of people endorse it as making a lot of sense. It doesn't mean that it's unimpeachable or that everybody follows it. If it made sense when we had around 50 failed school deletion listings in a row, it certainly makes sense now we've got 150. I regard any attempt to change behavior by making policy as undesirable at this point, because clearly there are many diverse views on this subject, and the best we can do is have a guideline that makes sense. Which we do. --Tony SidawayTalk 16:17, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

To a certain extent we're seeing a resurgence of such campaigning, this time from User:TimPope and so far to a much, much smaller extent.

Campaign? Please explain exactly what you mean, do you mean the attempt to merge some schools? Ok I tried that, I would have thought someone listed on the Wikipedian association of mergists might have endorsed it. Please stop exagerating everything. --Tim Pope 20:22, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Please be succinct?

Well, someone has just written 1,653 words in response to a few fairly simple questions, so I'll try to be brief.

Be nice

It does not further discussion to misquote others. Please use as much care as possible.

  • The heading is "Majority may be overstated"
  • The question is "[Is] it possible that SVs are not representative?"

While we aren't a democracy, we should try to work together.

  • Compromise is "a settlement of differences by mutual concessions".
  • Consensus is "general agreement or concord".
  • The key words here are mutual and general.

Evidence

To be frank, I'm pretty happy with the evidence I have presented. It could use some expansion, and it's to early to say anything definite, but the trends are clear. If anyone does not understand what I'm saying or does not agree with this method, please either ask questions or make suggestions. Don't just ignore it and then say, "where's the evidence?" ot that I "don't elaborate".

If it were shown, using methods as described above to examine previous SVs, that:

  • There existed groups (of whatever kind) with clusterable voting patterns. (and)
  • That these groups' impact upon outcomes is demonstrable.
(I.e. that when these groups are removed the results are changed.)

Could everyone concede that this was a bad thing?

Freeping

A non-compulsory vote is a sampling method. Any "cost" may distort the sample, even if it is only the time it takes to vote. Wikipedian interactions are purely social, thus the cost of any action is measured mostly by this. And there is a cost - being drawn and quartered.

To use an (admittedly extreme) example, would we accept it if an active, organized, and fundamentalist religious group began systematically deleting by consistant voting all references to homosexuality from Wikipedia? Because, if we define consensus as "whomever wins the vote", that would be consensus. And please, let's not see a dissertation on how "Aaron equates inclusionism to homophobia". This discussion seems to have a fairly narrow audience right now, and hyperbole has little affect on those who are currently taking part.

Voting and editing patterns

As DoubleBlue has correctly pointed out, the one has no bearing on the other. This is a topic that we should stop right now. Well, right after this at least. However, since Tony has made some claims without providing evidence, I submit:

Radman1

In Radman's last 1000 edits, I found eight edits to schools, and one substantive edit, bolded below.

In that same 1000 edits I see over 60 votes to keep schools.


What not to do now

  • Let's talk clearly and carefully about what's been said, and provide evidence. Ok?

brenneman(t)(c)

  • Good summary. My point is very simple. This page is worded imperatively, like a guideline. However, it does not have consensual support. Therefore, to prevent people from reading it to get the wrong idea, 1) this page should be reworded to be an essay; or 2) it should be moved to userspace or a sub of, say, Wikiproject Schools; or 3) it should clearly indicate that it doesn't have consensual support. Radiant_>|< 08:11, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

On the comment about radman, I don't see what point can be made by singling out the edits by one particular editor, and I don't see what legitimate point can be made about a particular editor by saying that he doesn't often edit school articles. I've voted keep on articles of kinds that I wouldn't dream of editing in a million years--so what? Radiant! made an unsupported, and indeed unsupportable, statement: that schools were undeletable because of a de facto keep vote by people who mostly don't improve schools. That just isn't true.

The past sixteen weeks has seen well over 150 school articles nominated for deletion, and the school-related articles actually deleted during that period comprise the following:

And, uh, that's it. If Team Schools were a baseball team it would be in the Hall of Fame.

And there are signs of possible changing trends. Deletion nominations have begun to focus more on K-8 and even preschools--it seems evident to me that preschool institutions are unlikely to have a place on Wikipedia. The last high school deletion was April 15.

Why are schools almost undeletable? I think it's simple: there are a good number of people who don't want schools deleted from Wikipedia. They've looked at the arguments for deletion and don't agree with them. Some day they may change their minds, but meanwhile it would be better to address the facts than seek to depict this diverse set of people who aren't in communication with one another as a Cabal, or a block vote. They're real people with different opinions and those opinions are united solely, and for the time being, by being opposed to the deletion of school articles. They're not statistics. --Tony SidawayTalk 16:56, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

I do think it's a bit much to make false claims: in particular the false claim that I made claims without evidence. I refuted Radiant!'s own patently false claim, which he made without evidence. My refutation stands. Even the purported counter-example demonstrates that radman has improved school articles--of which I'm absolutely sure Radiant! was aware. I still don't know who these non-editing block voters that Radiant! referred to were, but I suggest that they don't exist; I have looked and found no evidence to support the claim. --Tony SidawayTalk 17:37, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Please correct my misunderstanding. I'm currently interpreting that:

brenneman(t)(c) 02:45, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

  • It's very simple, really. My claim is that "only a few of those (keep-all-schools-on-VFD) voters actually work towards improving school articles". Tony disputes my claim, because all of those voters have edited a school article at least once in their life. I hold that an editor who spends seven times as much effort on VFD voting as on editing school articles, is not really working towards improving them. And by the way Tony has ignored every other issue people have brought up here, which I might note is not particularly constructive. Radiant_>|< 09:38, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
    • As someone who votes for schools to be kept fairly regularly, and improves school articles sometimes, but irregularly, it seems to me that voting in the VFDs does improve Wikipedia's coverage of schools by preventing the article from being deleted. The implication here is that school stubs are not in themselves valuable, and thus helping to keep them in Wikipedia isn't helping. But the view of most of the inclusionists is that the school stubs are valuable, and thus preventing them from being deleted is in itself useful. So separating "improvement of school articles" and "voting in school VFDs" as if they are not overlapping is itself a reflection of a contested viewpoint. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:02, 2005 August 16 (UTC)
      • Maintaining the status quo (as by voting keep) is by definition not improvement. That doesn't mean it's a bad thing, because the situation could also be worse. Radiant_>|< 07:55, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

In answer to the question "Why are schools almost undeletable?", I htink it is more to do with respect for newbie editors who are trying out their skils in writing about something they know. Further, once the stub or article is written ,the information therein is verifiable and usually through the internet.--AYArktos 00:23, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

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