Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Archive 18

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School history in a separate article?

I am an old boy of a Hong Kong high school, La Salle College, and in 2007, I published a 250 page book on the school's history jointly with the school and the old boys association, thus the book is an official history record of the school.

While the 77 year old school currently has a wikipedia entry, the school has a rich history (including having Bruce Lee as an old boy of the school, and several significant pre-war/war-time and post-war stories that linked to regional and world events), and so I am consdidering writing a separate article on the history of the school. I was actually encouraged by reading the article "History of Baltimore City College". Since I researched into the school's history, most of my material would be published adn can be referenced to the book I wrote. Any advise on quoting the book (while writing as a third party)?

Further, I would also plan to spend some time on improving on the original La Salle College article, and brining up its standard. Any advice on that would also be much welcome. Thank you.

The history book I wrote can be previewed here: [1]

--Mghome (talk) 11:46, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

A separate history article is generally only created when the main school article is very long (usually over 100k in size), and any sub-articles must meet WP:N on their own i.e. multiple sources are needed. Feel free to improve the history section, the school clearly has a long history and the current history section for the article does not do it justice. A seperate history article can always be created later as needed. Camaron · Christopher · talk 10:50, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Merging school history

I am informing members of the project that there is a proposal to merge a recently split off school history back to its article. The combined article was about 120k in length, and there was a recommendation to split the history which I agreed with and made. The editor making the proposal did not comment. I have asked him to, and hope that he will soon. LonelyBeacon (talk) 23:37, 21 August 2009 (UTC) Addendum: The article was recently rated as "B" and "High", though this was before the history was complete, and before the history section was split off. LonelyBeacon (talk) 23:41, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

The issue seems to have been resolved now, and I affirm my endorsement of the creation of a separate history article, it meets WP:N easily and the main article was getting way too long. Camaron · Christopher · talk 10:51, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Quick infobox help

Hello- At one point the infobox on St. Anthony Village High School worked properly, and now it does not. It's unclear to me when the edit happened that broke the camel's back, but if someone who has more familiarity with the infobox could quick glance at it and let me know what the problem is, I'd appreciate it. Thanks! matt91486 (talk) 05:05, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. The infobox's template is supposed to be Template:Infobox school (or Template:Infobox School2, which redirects to Template:Infobox school); however this edit on 22:17, 24 June 2009 accidentally messed up the infobox when Rich Farmbrough (talk · contribs) fixed the capitalization of the header. The template in the article then linked to Template:Infobox school2, which has not been created as a redirect to Template:Infobox school. Cheers, Cunard (talk) 05:28, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah, ok - thanks much for the help! matt91486 (talk) 05:32, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Greater Manchester primary schools

WikiProject Greater Manchester are currently debating what to do with their primary school articles. The discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Greater_Manchester#Lane_End_Primary_School may interest this project. Camaron · Christopher · talk 21:02, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

School history detail

There is often no limit to how detailed a school's history can be, particularly with old schools as whole books can be written about them covering all aspects of the school including the buildings, the curriculum, extra curricular activities, how individuals influenced the running of the school etc. But my question is how do we decide what should and shouldn't be included in wikipedia articles of schools. Tbo ¹⁵⁷(talk) 13:24, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

the more information and the longer the history, the longer the article can and should be. "Curriculum" can mean a general description of the curriculum (e.g." Latin was no longer required after 1955") which is good, and a complete listing of the timetable for each year, which is not. Similarly about changes in student life; and about headmasters--some of these will be more important than others. I would normally regard a listing of when each defunct club and publication started at stopped as borderline, but not necessarily if limited to the more important ones. Articles can not be written mechanically. DGG ( talk ) 02:26, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Importance ratings based on unreferenced claims

In a discussion above of Chengdu Shishi High School, which has been given Top importance based on a completely unreferenced claim to date from the 2nd century BC, Camaron pointed out that many high importance ratings are based on unreferenced claims. Sometimes it's just the school website making the claim, sometimes (as with ShiShi) not even that. I think that's a problem. Kanguole 23:26, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I tend to agree. I think for the top importance rating there should be some referencing for the claims which give the article its status. If not, we could end up with a situation where someone makes up a completely bogus article which is then rated as top importance. I would suggest the Chinese school is downgraded to mid importance and told to come back for a review of the importance rating when there are more references. There is however a big problem with schools from non-English-speaking countries, as they are grossly under-represented on Wikipedia. Look for instance at the number of Chinese schools compared to the number of American schools. There are still many countries too for which we haven't identified a single school of top importance. We need to find some way of identifying these schools and bringing them to the attention of the project. I think we can possibly be more lenient with articles on schools from non-English-speaking countries because the sources will undoubtedly exist in the country's own language. We could do with some multi-lingual editors to help out. Dahliarose (talk) 08:54, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

There appears to be more to this Chinese schools history than we know so a downgrade to Mid-importance seems reasonable for the time being. The problem is as Dahliarose says is that importance is not supposed to be based on the current state of the article, but often assessors do not have much more to go on other than the article. There is hence a big problem with systematic bias, which I think the best thing to do is to demand referencing for high/top importance normally, then be a little more lenient on non-English speaking country's schools. This problem also extends to establishing notability of school's, with often not much being available in English. Camaron · Christopher · talk 09:29, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Sure, if already you know about about a school you don't have to rely on the article, and that introduces a bias. But that can't be fixed by being less rigorous about sources. Otherwise the high rankings go to the ones that get here first with the most impressive claims, not the truly most significant schools in a particular country. We should accept sources in other languages, though.

I don't think this is just a problem with non-English-speaking countries. For example, Killara High School got a Mid rating when it had this impressive alumni list, which turned out to be mostly incorrect.

Also, the idea of Top and High assumes a degree of differentiation among schools that might not apply in all countries. For example, my impression is that in China there's little boarding, so there are dozens of elite schools scattered across the country, and it might be invidious to pick out a few of them as Top importance. Kanguole 15:41, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

There isn't a perfect solution, the importance assessments are fine tuned every year or so hopefully they will get more accurate over time. Actually, Killara High School is an example of an assessment that went the right way as far as I can see. It was given Mid-importance based on referenced material throughout the article, if the impressive alumni list had been referenced it may have got High-importance. Camaron · Christopher · talk 17:47, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Speedy article assessment reviews

I am reviewing all articles with higher level ratings of both importance (Top and High) and quality (GA, A, FA). As I did before I will note any speedy re-assessments I have to make due to inappropriate past assessments here. ~~If I do still leave a new higher level rating on an article I will also note that at WP:WPSCH/A for the records.~~ In fact I will re-organise the below listing when I am finished and paste into the assessment summaries at WP:WPSCH/A for the records.

FA: No problems, all approved FAs on the main project page.
FL: No problems, all approved FLs on the main project page.
A: Only Lethbridge Collegiate Institute, fine as project approved but other projects have it as GA-class instead.
GA: Broad Run High School and Scotch College, Perth have been recently demoted, project was not notified so are still listed on the main project page, but both seem to be reasonable demotions. I will update the list to bring the category and the main project page even at 23 GAs.
B: Numbers low enough to have a quick glance through, will have a look later.

I will also do importance ratings later.

B-class (Letters A and B): All Saints RC School demoted to Start, Alvirne High School demoted to C-class, Annenschule demoted to Start, Bellarmine College Preparatory demoted to C-class, Beth Medrash Govoha demoted to Start, Bird College demoted to C-class and removed from the project as just higher/further education (not a school), Bishop Wordsworth's School demoted to C-class, Boston Archdiocesan Choir School demoted to C-class, Boulder High School demoted to C-class, Branston Community College demoted to Start-class, Brisbane Grammar School demoted to C-class, British International School Vietnam demoted to C-class, Amberfield School demoted to C-class.

B-class (Letters C, D, and E): Centerville High School (Centerville, Ohio) demoted to C-class, Central Bucks High School West demoted to Start-class, Charter School of Wilmington demoted to C-class, Christ's Hospital demoted to C-class, Cinco Ranch High School demoted to C-class, Clifton College demoted to C-class, Collingwood College, Surrey demoted to Start-class, Colston's School demoted to Start-class, Cranbrook School, Sydney demoted to C-class, Crooms Academy of Information Technology demoted to Start-class (importance also cut to Mid from High), Daewon Foreign Language High School demoted to Start-class, Deep Run High School demoted to Start-class, Deerfield High School (Illinois) demoted to C-class, Dobie High School demoted to C-class, Dr. Michael M. Krop High School demoted to Start-class, Cass City Public School District demoted to Start-class.

B-class (Letters F, G, H, I, and J): False River Academy demoted to C-class, Frisch School demoted to C-class, Hockaday School demoted to C-class, Hopkins School demoted to C-class, Ilkeston Grammar School demoted to C-class, Illinois High School Association had B-class retained but was given High importance, International Sahaja Public School demoted to C-class, Ipswich Grammar School demoted to C-class but given High importance, Istrouma High School demoted to C-class, James Logan High School demoted to C-class, John Paul College, Rotorua had B-class retained but was given High importance.

B-class (Letters K, L, and M): Kearny High School (San Diego, California) demoted to C-class, Kearsney College demoted to Start-class, King Edward VI Aston demoted to Start-class, King Edward VI Five Ways had B-class retained but was given High importance along with the article for a group of schools at Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI, King Edward's School, Birmingham demoted to C-class, King Edward's School, Witley demoted to C-class but importance increased to High, King George V School demoted to C-class, Latymer Upper School demoted to C-class, Lawrence School, Sanawar demoted to C-class but given High importance, Lawrenceville School demoted to C-class, Le Hong Phong High School demoted to C-class, Liberty High School (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) demoted to Start-class, Lowther Hall Anglican Grammar School demoted to C-class, Lubbock High School demoted to C-class, Lynbrook High School demoted to C-class, Magdalen College School, Oxford demoted to C-class, Mahidol Wittayanusorn School demoted to C-class (my own assessment originally), Maidstone Grammar School demoted to C-class but given High importance, Manhattan High School demoted to C-class, Maplebrook School demoted to C-class, Maryville High School (Missouri) demoted to C-class, Melbourne High School (Victoria) demoted to C-class, Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood demoted to C-class but given High importance, Methodist College Belfast had B-class retained but was given High importance, Millennia Institute demoted to Start-class, Montgomery Bell Academy demoted to Start-class, Morris Hills High School demoted to C-class, Morristown High School demoted to C-class.

B-class (Letters N, O, and P): Nan Hua High School demoted to Start-class, New Rochelle High School had B-class retained but was given High importance, New World School of the Arts demoted to Start-class, Newark Academy demoted to C-class, Nightingale-Bamford School demoted to C-class, Oviedo High School demoted to C-class, Paul VI High School demoted to C-class, Pennsbury High School demoted to C-class, Pickering College demoted to C-class, Piedmont Middle School demoted to C-class, Plano West Senior High School demoted to C-class, Prince Edward School demoted to C-class (also subject to out of control vandalism, I have dealt with this).

B-class (Letters R and S): Rahway High School demoted to C-class, Rajhans Vidyalaya demoted to Start-class, Richmond High School (Richmond, Indiana) demoted to C-class, SMK King George V demoted to C-class, Sabino High School demoted to Start-class, Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory demoted to C-class, Saint Agnes Academy (Texas) demoted to Start-class, Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview had retained B-class but was given High importance, Sankt Blasien Abbey in the Black Forest demoted to C-class and removed from project as not a school, School for Advanced Studies demoted to Start-class, Scotch College, Perth demoted to C-class, Sha Tin College demoted to C-class, Sir Winston Churchill High School demoted to C-class, South Houston High School demoted to Start-class, Southend High School for Girls demoted to Start-class, Southern Cross Campus demoted to Start-class, Southwestern Law School demoted to C-class but given High importance, St Bede's College, Christchurch demoted to Start-class, St Michael's Grammar School demoted to C-class, St Peter's College, Auckland had B-class retained but was promoted to High importance, St. Albans School (Washington, D.C.) had B-class retained but was promoted to High importance, St. Joseph College Cavite City demoted to Start-class, St. Joseph's College, Gregory Terrace demoted to C-class but given High importance, St. Joseph's College, Hong Kong demoted to C-class but given High importance, St. Mark's School (Massachusetts) demoted to C-class but given High importance, St. Mary's High School (Calgary) demoted to C-class, St. Xavier High School (Cincinnati) had B-class retained but was given High importance, State University of New York at Plattsburgh had B-class retained but was removed from the project as not a school, Steller Secondary School demoted to Start-class.

B-class (Letters T, U, and V): Tampines Junior College demoted to C-class, The McCallie School demoted to C-class, Thomas Deacon Academy demoted to C-class, Torquay Boys' Grammar School demoted to C-class, Triam Udom Suksa School demoted to C-class (my own older assessment changed), Troy High School (Michigan) demoted to C-class, University High School (Los Angeles, California) had B-class retained but was granted High-importance.

B-class (Letters W, X, and Y): Wah Yan College, Hong Kong demoted to C-class, Waltrip High School demoted to C-class, Warwick School demoted to C-class, Wayne Hills High School demoted to C-class, Wesley College, Perth demoted to C-class, Westfield High School (New Jersey) demoted to C-class per comments by Jh12 (talk · contribs), Whitney High School (Cerritos, California) demoted to C-class and importance cut from high to low, William Chrisman High School demoted to Start-class, Williamson Central School District demoted to C-class, Winchester College demoted to C-class, Winter Springs High School demoted to C-class, Xavier College demoted to C-class but given High-importance, Xavier School demoted to C-class but given High-importance, Yorktown High School (Virginia) demoted to C-class.

Top-importance (all): All articles checked and seemed fine, mistakes and missing entries at Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools now corrected. All "spin-off" articles of top importance school articles, such alumni lists and history, are now marked as top importance article per general logical practice to give such articles the same importance as the main articles as they are part of one "product". The Doon School was listed as top importance on the project page but never actually given it (was high importance). I have now given it top importance due to its alumni containing some very important people in Indian history, including a prime minister and many cabinet members. It also seems appropriate given that there is currently only one other Top-importance Indian school, despite India been one of the most populated countries in the world. Camaron · Christopher · talk 20:07, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Chengdu Shishi High School is given Top importance presumably due to its claimed history, but the article contains no reliable source for that claim (or for anything else). Kanguole 21:43, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

I have translated the Chinese version of the article, it has a reasonably long article on it particularly given that the Chinese Wikipedia has for a long time being blocked in mainland China. It does not appear to state the first school claim, but it does repeat the school's age claims. In practice articles are often given importance ratings based on unsourced claims, and in this case I am willing to allow it, though the wider project can discuss it if it is necessary. Camaron · Christopher · talk 15:04, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it says that a school was established in 1661 on the site of the earlier school, long since completely destroyed. Kanguole 23:17, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

High-importance (A and B): American British Academy demoted to Low-importance, American School of The Hague (my own assessment) demoted to Mid-importance, Area school demoted to Mid-importance, Bedford school no longer exists as an article but the current one Bedford School has had high-importance transferred to it, Board of education demoted to Mid-importance, Brampton Centennial Secondary School demoted to Mid-importance.

High-importance (C and D): California School for the Deaf, Fremont demoted to Low-importance, Cambridge Rindge and Latin School demoted to Mid-importance, Casablanca American School demoted to Mid-importance, CheongShim International Academy demoted to Low-importance, Chicago Public Schools demoted to Mid-importance, City Montessori School demoted to Mid-importance, Clark County School District demoted to Mid-importance, College Park High School (Pleasant Hill, California) demoted to Low-importance, Columbine High School massacre marked as part of the project and given High-importance, Crow Island School demoted to Low-importance, Croydon College demoted to Mid-importance but given C-class, Dallas Independent School District demoted to Mid-importance, Delhi Tamil Education Association Senior Secondary Schools demoted to Mid-importance, Don Estridge High Tech Middle School demoted to Low-importance, Duncanville High School demoted to Mid-importance. Camaron · Christopher · talk 14:06, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your hard work on these assessments. I think City Montessori School should retain its high importance rating and might even be top importance. It has the world reocrd for the highest school roll - an astonishing 33,000 pupils - is the first school in the world to receive a UNESCO Prize for Peace Education. We don't have many high importance schools from India and with a country with such a large population we should have a lot more. Dahliarose (talk) 09:03, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

The article has had a confusing assessment history and was originally given Mid-importance by Victuallers (talk · contribs), and then promoted to High-importance by an editor involved in the article, Jainrajat11 (talk · contribs), who also removed evidence from the talk page of old assessments which I have now restored. Upon review I am willing to agree that High-importance is appropriate here. Size alone would be enough for Mid, but the Peace Prize and it's international significance is enough for High in my opinion, and it is sourced. I'm undecided on Top-importance, certainly more Top-importance schools from India are needed given that currently we only have two, which is not enough for the size of the country. Camaron · Christopher · talk 12:18, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I have also given the article C-class as it has the length and a about half a dozen references to meet this. Camaron · Christopher · talk 12:35, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

High-importance (E, F, and G): Earls High School demoted to Mid-importance, Eden Grammar School demoted to Mid-importance, Template:Esfschool had importance removed as a template, Greenwood Dale School demoted to Mid-importance.

High-importance (H, I, and J): Harrison College had a broken assessment due to a cut and paste move, I have fixed the assessment as this is now a disambig page and I have transferred the original assessment to Harrison College (Barbados), as well as moved around the page histories to their correct places, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy demoted to Mid-importance, Israel Arts and Science Academy demoted to Mid-importance.

High-importance (K, L, and M): Kendrick School demoted to Mid-importance, Kingsham Primary School demoted to Low-importance, List of Victoria Crosses by school demoted to Low-importance, List of grammar schools in England demoted to Mid-importance, List of school-related attacks demoted to Mid-importance, List of the largest school districts in the United States by enrollment demoted to Mid-importance, Los Angeles Unified School District demoted to Mid-importance. Camaron · Christopher · talk 10:49, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
The previous rating of List of grammar schools in England is here. There seems to be some doubt about the rating of non-school articles. Kanguole 13:06, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Yes there appears to be a lot of inconsistency with importance ratings for lists, this is shown well here with the list originally rated as Low-importance, then rated as High-importance, and I have now gone down the middle. This inconsistency is probably a lot to do with a lack of any precedent on what makes lists important, in addition many lists simply have not been tagged and assessed yet. Strangely the most important schools list I can think, List of schools by country, currently only has Mid-importance. More discussion is perhaps needed on importance ratings for lists so we can get a united precedent going. Camaron · Christopher · talk 17:10, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
It is a bit inconsistent that articles on individual schools are rated in a national context, while lists and articles on school types are sometimes expected to have global significance to be considered important. Kanguole 10:21, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
For Top-importance, and to some extent for High-importance, schools should have something of international interest. Lists and school articles are rather different however and the only real thing to go on with lists is the overall importance of what is listed, so making the two consistent would not be that easy. Standards are rather different between lists and schools. The project has got to decide if it wants higher standards for lists, which would achieve a clear hierarchy from top-importance to low-importance for lists. Alternatively, it could keep standards very close to schools which would, as I see it, result in almost all lists getting at least Mid-importance, and many High-importance, based on the importance of the schools listed, and how international many lists are, which would be considered very significant for a school. Camaron · Christopher · talk 12:28, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

High-importance (N, O, and P): New Kent High School demoted to Low-importance, New York City Department of Education demoted to Mid-importance, Northwood High School (Irvine, California) demoted to Mid-importance, Partially selective school (England) demoted to Mid-importance, Portland College demoted to Low-importance, Pūnana Leo demoted to Mid-importance.

High-importance (Q and R): Generally seem fine. Red Lake massacre added to the project under high-importance (the same importance rating as the related Red Lake Senior High School).

High-importance (S): Saskatoon Public School Division demoted to Mid-importance, Southwestern Law School removed from the project as appears to be a higher education institution, St Peter's School, York is one of the oldest schools in the world which may be grounds for top-importance - but this is not referenced so I have left the existing rating, copy and paste move was fixed at St Thomas' College, Mt. Lavinia and St. Thomas' College, Guruthalawa - the former has high-importance and could be top-importance though some more evidene of claims would be good, St. Brendan's Sixth Form College demoted to Low-importance.

High-importance (T and U): The Downs School (Herefordshire) demoted to Mid-importance. Nothing else to report here.

High-importance (V, W, X, Y, and İ): Valor Christian High School demoted to Low-importance, and Yale Secondary School demoted to Low-importance. Finished at long last, will post these assessments to WP:WPSCH/A. Camaron · Christopher · talk 19:43, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps Reassessment of Auburn_High_School

Auburn_High_School has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. Ruslik_Zero 10:02, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Deletions at Oakhill College

I would like to draw the project's attention to persisten wholsale deletions in the article on Oakhill College by a single-minded editor, Noreference (talk · contribs). The user started by adding highly contentious content which I removed. Since then, she/he removed repeatedly large swathes of text in what I perceive to be a pointy reaction. My previous correspondence with the editor can be found here. Wikipedia articles on schools are not really my field, so I would appreciate if editors from this project could deal with this matter. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:09, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Well it seems to have calmed down now, if it flares up again I would suggest requesting a third opinion on the talk page. Camaron · Christopher · talk 16:51, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

UK school help needed

Sorry, I just don't understand UK schools very well. I'm hoping someone who has at least heard of the OFSTED can look at Kingsbrook College and User talk:Nraynsford. Basically, someone with a COI to the school is trying to update to the latest, most "successful" OFSTED results. It's a pretty simple task, but I'm hoping someone can give it some love. Certainly Nraynsford has been helpful, just doesn't understand how to do it. Cheers, tedder (talk) 04:17, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Amador Valley High School for FA

I have nominated Amador Valley High School for featured article status after several months on working to improve the page. The FAR page is located here if the users of WikiProject Schools are interested. -Deltawk (talk) 04:55, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Well done on getting the article this far, it is not easy getting an article to featured status so don't feel disheartened if you don't succeed the first time. I will list this request on the main project page. Camaron · Christopher · talk 19:36, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Camaron for your help in getting this article more publicity. -Deltawk (talk) 22:28, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Just to confirm the change to the project page, the article has now been promoted to FA at the second attempt with Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Amador Valley High School/archive3. Again, a big congratulations to Deltawk for pulling this off. Camaron · Christopher · talk 19:45, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Article completions update

Just to let the wider project know about how assessments are going the number of unassessed articles has doubled since early August from approximately 150 to over 300 now in October. However, the number of articles missing specifically importance remains at around 11,000 articles. [2] Camaron · Christopher · talk 18:53, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Category:Roman Catholic schools

I have nomed this cat for renaming here. --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 01:30, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Merger discussion Sudbury Valley School

Someone has started a discussion to merge the Sudbury Valley School article (rated high-importance) into the Sudbury school article (which is about the model of education, not a particular school). Discussion is here Nfitz (talk) 03:29, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Karachi Grammar School

This article was recently given top-importance by a new editor, and had previously been mid-importance. I don't really have a strong opinion on it at this time, but some opinions here would be great. The school is not ancient but is still relatively old, and their seem to be some important alumni cited though they are unsourced with the exception of one Benazir Bhutto (sourced checked to verify claim and is reliable). Camaron · Christopher · talk 19:57, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

High would need several such alumni, wouldn't it? In addition to the alumni, there's a claim (also unreferenced) that it's the oldest private school in Pakistan, but it's not clear how long it has been giving secondary education. If the age and alumni claims were backed by references and the history were clearer, High might be possible, but it doesn't seem to justify more than Mid now. Kanguole 15:50, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

We don't currently have any top importance schools from Pakistan. If all the claims can be referenced then I think it probably would be top importance, going by the quality of the alumni and the age of the school. I would suggest high importance for now and a review at a later date when references have been added. Dahliarose (talk) 18:06, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, for the time being I have left it as High-importance as a compromise. Camaron · Christopher · talk 22:14, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Deletions at Noadswood School

Could someone assist regarding deletions in the article on Noadswood School by an editor, Microchip08 (talk · contribs). The individual has removed large chunks from the article based upon the fact my username makes it very clear who I am (I am an Assistant Headteacher at the school). Whilst I understand the point regarding conflict of interest (and indeed understand why some statements that could be deemed "opinion" have been removed), I do not understand why other paragraphs have been taken out (an example being the paragraph related to recent school trips). Although I do understand the danger of conflicts of interest, I also do not see how articles on schools are going to develop without the contributions of members of staff. Your assistance would be greatly appreciated in this matter!-- Timennion (talk) 21:16, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

(The edits in question) Hello there. Sorry for my late reply, but I hadn't realised that you had posted something on this page. I've now re-added a few things that, perhaps, I was overzealous about (prev full). In future, you may find a quicker response by asking me at my talk page (or, if that doesn't work, at a Wikipedia I am more active at). Microchip08 00:38, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Infobox NZ school

There's a discussion whether or not to redirect {{Infobox NZ school}} to {{Infobox school}} at Template talk:Infobox NZ school#Years. XLerate (talk) 00:54, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Question about former schools

I wrote an article on a former 2 room school house in Michigan, that is on the historical sites of the U.S. Government and the State of Michigan. Should I or someone add this to the list of Wiki School projects? Mason District Number 5 Schoolhouse thoughts Jsgoodrich (talk) 09:09, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Help/Suggestion needed for St. Mary's School, Kuala Lumpur

The school has an interesting history - there was a period when it comprised kindergarten, primary and secondary education. I wrote this article in the secondary-school perspective, but I'm really confused as what to do with the primary section (See also: article talk page) since, after all, they did share the same history to some extent.

I was hoping to see this up DYK with some of its interesting facts but I'm completely inexperienced in this, and well, it's been week+ since I last edited it much, so the criteria for DYK seem very unfavourable to the article (plus my edits wasn't really a threefold expansion...).

On another note, I'd love to make this a decent article, but I'm quite at lost on how to get references with limited reliable results on Google. Even some of the refs I cited look quite doubtful.

As for the unexpanded section (School site), I'll be heading to the school within these few days to take some pics. IF (very big if) there's ANY history book of the school, will it be considered as a reliable source? I've done an extensive search through web (even with Malay language) and found nothing else other than those already cited. Also, is the History section too long? I've only rewrote it from a source, don't know if some parts are redundant. To what year that the History can cover anyway? Is it as long as it's a past, e.g. anything before 24 Dec 2009? Lol

I hope to get more opinions and/or help to improve this article. Very much thanks in advance!

BTW, this confused me much: is this page for any school-related article discussion or really only "for discussing improvements to the WikiProject Schools page" per the template? — Yurei-egg tart 05:54, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Can someone keep an eye on a school?

Millard West High School is (apparently) in Nebraska. I don't want to get into an edit war trying to keep a non-notable musician off the list (like this), and I'm tired of dealing with it. That IP has made outright vandalism edits to that school and rival schools in the past, but I'm trying to AGF. tedder (talk) 19:50, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I've removed the name again and soft-protected the page to prevent further anonymous vandalism.--Baron Larf 20:02, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't want to protect or anything as I'm involved. tedder (talk) 20:35, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Editing conflict at St. Rita of Cascia High School

I was wondering if there was an uninvolved editor/administrator or two who could check out the article. A few IPs are deleting some referenced material since they disagree with it. Camaron has been issuing warnings and the two of us have been trying to engage these folks in discussion on the talk page. The IPs return with insults and "we're just trying to improve the article". This article was recently protected after a lot of vandalism, and there is a thought that it might require protection again. Any thoughts/suggestions anyone can input to the discussion over there would be appreciated. LonelyBeacon (talk) 17:24, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Done, protected for a week. I don't have any creative solutions to getting them involved, except to WP:AGF. tedder (talk) 19:42, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Tedder, thanks ... I hope that maybe this will push for more conversation. LonelyBeacon (talk) 22:39, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Just to keep the project updated I have now protected the page till the end of January for persistant disruption. What ever group or person is behind those IPs; I don't think we are going to get anything productive from them given that they took to vandalising my user talk page when I blocked 99.150.201.113 (talk · contribs) for persistent removal of user talk page templates in violation of WP:BLANKING. Camaron · Christopher · talk 15:53, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

School naming conventions

From what I can tell, there hasn't been much interest in establishing school article naming conventions for over a year. Is anyone interested in restarting the discussion? Looking through Category:High schools in Chicago, Illinois, I noticed that the titles are all over the place. Some use the full official names, while some don't, and there are at least three different disambiguation suffixes in use. It would be nice to standardize things.

I realize that there are more serious concerns at the moment, like the BLP problem, but I can't imagine that it would take very long for people to agree on something as simple as school naming conventions. What has been the hold up, besides lack of interest? Zagalejo^^^ 00:20, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I am latching my trailer to Zagalejo's bandwagon. Part me of says that if this is an issue with Chicago schools, it must be an issue elsewhere ... though that is poor logic. In some cases I went looking for a school article, couldn't find it, and later found it under a shorter (or longer) than expected name, with no redirects. Nonetheless, I too would be interested in reopening this old discussion. LonelyBeacon (talk) 01:48, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Can you give an example of the problems and what you are proposing? I've created a couple hundred school articles in one state, they were all straightforward. So I'm having trouble imagining the problem- though I don't dispute there ~~isn't~~ is one. tedder (talk) 05:08, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I think you meant to say you don't dispute there is one. -- Alarics (talk) 06:45, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that. Oops! tedder (talk) 06:56, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, first, there's the problem with the disambiguation suffixes. Some of the Chicago school article titles end with (Chicago, Illinois), while others end with just (Chicago). Which version would you normally use? City/state, or just city? Wikipedia:Naming conventions (U.S. schools) seemed to be an attempt at establishing some conventions, but it was marked as a failed proposal.

The second issue is whether or not to use the full, official name of the school in the article title. Let's say a school you were writing about was named after Abraham Lincoln. Let's also say that, while formal documents relating to the school will call it Abraham Lincoln High School, in everyday usage, people simply call it Lincoln High School. Would you title the article Abraham Lincoln High School, or just Lincoln High School? (The failed proposal also tried to address this issue, but it's kind of vague, so I'd like to know what people actually do in practice.)

Related to the issue above: let's say that after fifty years of being known as Abraham Lincoln High School, the powers that be rename it Abraham Lincoln Community Academy. (This kind of thing happens all the time in Chicago.) Would you use the older name, which is probably the more common version of the name, or would you use the newer official name? Zagalejo^^^ 08:21, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. So the specific name (Abraham Lincoln vs Lincoln, etc) is already covered in WP:NCCN. Presumably, whatever most places refer to the school as is probably the best bet. My HS article-building only left a few examples that weren't 100% clear (in other words, the school matched the district, which matched the state, which matched NCES, which matched local press/state athletics associatons, or at least most of those matched). These were usually an issue if a school had pre-9th grade and some sources called them "Foo Junior/Senior", some just called them "Foo". In cases that weren't 100% clear, or where the school was named something like "Foo Academy", I named them that and then used a redirect from "Foo High School" over. That was partly so my automated scripts would match.

As far as city/state in the disambiguating title, it seems the general consensus is to go (city,state), not just (state). That's especially helpful for something like "Lincoln High School (Illinois)", which is likely to need disambiguation. I'm not aware of a MOS type guideline that backs this up, but I'll ask a friend who would know. tedder (talk) 08:31, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Cool, thanks for the reply. I'd be fine with (city, state). Determining the most common name for Chicago schools seems like it will be a bit tricky, though. I might need to get the Chicago project involved with that. Zagalejo^^^ 08:54, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

The example that you provided leads to a potential problem if you want to standardize--Chicago, Illinois is a redirect to Chicago. WP:CITIES and others had months of discussions on the naming convention for US citis and finally decided that some city articles would use their common name, while others would all be "City, State", or "City, County/Parrish, State" when necessary. They used the AP Stylebook to come up with the list of 30 cities that need not be disambiguated. See [3] IIRC, the dispute here was whether to reguire disambiguation by city for all schools or only those that do not have unique names to start with. I thought that there was a concensus to use the full, "official" name for public schools, at least. Sticking with the regular WP common name guideline would be fine with me as long as there is always a redirect from the official name.--Hjal (talk) 16:53, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, OK. In that case, it might make more sense to drop the state when dealing with the 30 cities mentioned in the AP Stylebook.

I do think it would be a lot easier to use the full, official name of public schools, because it's not always that clear which name is the "most common". What do others think? Zagalejo^^^ 03:58, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

So I had a nice chat with my "resident expert" friend who is good at sorting out policy and consensus and thinking about things logically. She pointed to WP:PRECISION, which is the closest we have for a general policy. To me, that says there's no real reason to revive the proposal specifically related to US schools, especially since different regions tend to have their own weird rules and "authoritative source" on the proper name of a school. She also reaffirmed my opinion of "School (City, State)", except in the case of "City School (State)" when a disambiguation is necessary. That seems to be the way consensus is going in disambiguations, at least. I also agree with Hjal, it's a bit of an issue with "Chicago" versus "Chicago, Illinois". Do something, stick with it, and use redirects liberally. (ec) For full official name? Meh, whatever. You'll probably be the resident expert on Chicago schools, so just be consistent. It just becomes awkward when a formal school name is "Doctor Reverend Martin Luther King Junior Middle/High School (Chicago, Illinois)" and it's known as "MLK School" or "King School". But.. again, no big complaint if you are consistent and willing to explain it occasionally! tedder (talk) 04:05, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Given that I was involved heavily in WP:NC(S) and WP:NC(USS) I think I should weigh in here. Like with notability, there is currently no universal acceptance on naming conventions for schools. The WP:NC policy did have section on schools at one stage, which linked to WP:NC(S), however the naming conventions for article types have since been entirely split off into sub-pages. In fact here is a random old revision with it in. This was probably a necessary loss as this section was hopelessly out of date but was still being cited in moving school articles. There were two main reasons WP:NC(S) failed: (a) lack of input from the wider community despite advertising which prevented a strong enough consensus forming (b) strong nationalistic variations on how schools are disambiguated, in particular disagreement on if commas or parentheses (brackets) should be used, e.g. some parts of Australia prefer commas, while parentheses is standard for U.S. schools. WP:NC(USS) was then started as it was thought there was more agreement on U.S school disambiguation. However, the proposal yet again failed due to lack of interest from the wider community and disagreement over the details. The original WP:NC(S) proposal of adding location details in parenthesis to all schools even if there wasn't a naming conflict (pre-emptive disambiguation) was quickly thrown out due to past opposition. However, there was still disagreement on the proposal of schools being disambiguated to (City/Municipality, State) only if there was more than one school of that name within the city/municipality, resulting in (State) being used if it was only a conflict of schools from different states. Some editors preferred using (City/Municipality, State) whenever disambiguation was needed (so (State) would never be used at all) to make things simpler and look more tidy. I have considered reviving the proposals given that much time has now past, though I have never got round to it. Camaron · Christopher · talk 16:33, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Thoughts on this article

History of Athletics at Stone Bridge High School

From where I am standing, this article needs to be merged ... and by that, I mean maybe 10% of this article should be merged and the rest deleted and salted. I posted the merge notice a while ago, and realized that I was not sure how to proceed. Any thoughts? LonelyBeacon (talk) 06:09, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

If any of it is going to be merged, a re-direct has to stay as we cannot merge and delete due to GFDL/CC-BY-SA licensing restrictions. However, I agree that most of the content is not appropriate for inclusion on Wikipedia at all. I can't see anything else much to do now than to go ahead with the merger and see what happens. There has been a merge notice on top of the article for a while; unregistered users who maintain the article have had plenty of time to respond. After the merger we will just have to see what happens; if there are repeated attempts to re-create without discussion, then protection of the re-direct is a last resort. Camaron · Christopher · talk 16:04, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

image upload for school crest

my account has not been autoconfirmed yet. can an admin please upload an image (non-free, fair use) of the school crest for Urban Prep Academies thanks--NUwildcat09 (talk) 17:42, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I have not been able to find a clean copy of the logo which is suitable for upload so far. However as an admin I have given your account confirmed status so you have all the rights of autoconfirmed users including with uploading images. Camaron · Christopher · talk 18:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:10, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Aquinas College, Perth

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. I have found some concerns with the article which you can see at Talk:Aquinas College, Perth/GA1. I have placed the article on hold whilst these are fixed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 19:28, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion for Middle Schools and Elementary Schools

Normally middle schools and elementary schools are nn, and subject to quick deletion. I ran across an article that had all the middle schools for the area in that one article. Each school did not take up an inordinate amount of space. I think that commendation for one school might keep the others from deletion? Anyway, worth a shot.

Having said that, middle schoolers are notorious for vandalizing. Be best to permanently semi-protect the page, if you can get them to do it! Student7 (talk) 13:54, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

What about these middle school's, it should be semi protected i guess. ASPIRA Youth Leadership Charter School, Linda Lentin K-8 Center. —Preceding unsigned comment added by GeneralCheese (talk • contribs) 03:26, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually middle/elementary schools which are nn are not deleted but merged/redirected. In the USA they are normally redirected to the school district and, elsewhere, to the lowest locality level. This is working well. TerriersFan (talk) 03:57, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

St pauls school hyde

Is the above notable? I'm not 100% on this Activemark thing. I raised a concern on the talk page but I suspect it is probably Afd/CSD material. SGGH ^ping! 17:25, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

It's awarded to a school if "at least 90% of pupils across the school were doing at least 2 hours high quality PE and school sport a week." Over 18000 schools got it last year.[4] So this primary school isn't notable. Prod rather than CSD, I think. Kanguole 18:12, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Prod'd. SGGH ^ping! 18:48, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Mission statements, Goals

Insertion of "mission statements" and "goals" are truly awful. Sounds pov and offputting to a normal reader. Don't quite know how to handle this stuff. Would be deleted in any other type of article! Student7 (talk) 15:36, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I have seen these frequently in articles I assess. I have not gone around removing them, though when I assess articles with them in I usually advice that they be taken out. They raise obvious WP:NPOV concerns, add little to the article in terms of showing how a school is unique given that mission statements can be repetitive, and the copying and pasting of large amounts of text (even if done as a quote) can raise copyright concerns. While WP:MISSION is an essay it highlights well the problems of having mission statements in school articles. Removing such content would not be denying the reader much as mission statements are usually easily found on the school website. I would hence support adding language to WP:WPSCH/AG#WNTI discouraging the addition of mission statements and similar to school articles, with perhaps the rare (if ever) exception that the mission statement has received coverage in multiple secondary sources. Camaron · Christopher · talk 19:09, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I too agree that while mission statements and the like can sometimes tell a reader about what the school holds as important, I know that at many schools, mission statements are lip service. Given that they can especially be long, they really don't belong (at the most, an external link, perhaps even in the article if it fits into the flow, pointing readers directly there). I too would support adding this to WP:WPSCH/AG#WNTI.

This is perhaps not the time to mention this, but I can think of a few other things that could use a more tightened consensus (one way or the other) regarding what should/dhouldn't be in school articles. LonelyBeacon (talk) 19:49, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

"Mission statements" and "Vision statements", for schools as for companies and other organisations, are almost invariably meaningless waffle, and should be removed. -- Alarics (talk) 23:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Per unanimity here, I have added mission statements to WP:WPSCH/AG#WNTI. Camaron · Christopher · talk 16:55, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

User:Gnative

Hello, I hope this is the right place to put this... I've noticed that User:Gnative has been making edits to several schools on Wikipedia, adding ratings from greatschools.org and demographic information. It's cited correctly, but I'm not sure how reputable that site is, or if it belongs on Wikipedia. Can somebody with more experience in this area tell me what to do in this situation? Thank you! --GorillaWarfare ^talk 17:49, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I just reviewed the greatschools.org site and found that the scores seem to be based on voting. This voting can be by parents, students, etc. I think that the inclusion of any external rating should be limited to something relevant such as traditional rankings provided by Money Magazine (college selection) or US News and World Reports Annual reports on education. Aneah (talk) 03:50, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

There appear to be two ratings given a parent rating and test score rating (example school taken from Gnative's edits, though from what I have seen he is adding the latter info to articles). The parental rating should not be included at all because even if the website itself is reliable (and I can't say it is without further investigation), the parental reviews themselves are not, hence the rating should be considered flawed. In addition the rating is likely highly volatile and can change quickly. For similar reasons Wikipedia does not accept scores in games articles if they are based on user reviews. If school articles are going to include reviews they should be reliable and published. Camaron · Christopher · talk 22:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Move of school page

Hi, I was wondering whether the page Savio High School should be moved to Savio Salesian College as according to the local council of Sefton it is the schools name [5]. so does anyone have any thoughts. p.s Its a UK school if that makes any difference. Thanks Tsange ^►talk 14:52, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Ofsted and EduBase agree. It seems the school changed name between 2007 and 2009. I've made the move. Kanguole 00:25, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the help Kanguole. Tsange ^►talk 11:40, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Future of the Assessment Department

The Assessment Department on this project became less active over 2009. Out of the listed assessment team most are either entirly inactive or have moved onto other areas of Wikipedia. Currently only me and LonelyBeacon (talk · contribs) are active in this department; that is enough to manage though some re-structuring may be helpful.

Originally all assessments were expected to be listed in the assessment summaries section for review. This proved unworkable, so the assessment team was divided into two groups; editors listed as "Apprentices" were expected to list all assessments, while trusted "experienced" editors listed only assessments which involved giving articles a rating higher than C-class, or an importance higher than mid. This is in practice followed by few people, and is unenforced, with most just assessing articles and bypassing the assessment department regardless of the level of rating that is given. This is not surprising as no project I know of strictly makes editors list their assessments with reasons on a project page. An automated assessment log is the best way to keep an eye on what assessments people are doing; though it moves quickly. As a result, I would like to make the following suggestions:

The assessment team list is cut to just those that are active in the Assessment Department to make it more useful.
The distinction between "Apprentice" and "Experienced" assessor is ended.
The requirement of expecting editors to list all assessments in the assessment summaries section unless listed as "Experienced" is ended as unenforceable. This could be replaced by a recommendation to list potentially controversial assessments or assessments of which a second opinion is requested in the assessment summaries section.

Any thoughts on this? Camaron · Christopher · talk 17:44, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I understand your reasoning, and agree with it. I think it is important to leave a place for questionable/uncertain assessments. A note could be left encouraging editors to leave their reasonings on the article talk page (unless it is something that is obviously Low/Stub/Start). Just my two bits. LonelyBeacon (talk) 02:18, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

This proposal would certainly make things easier. I haven't done any assessments for a while but I found it quite time-consuming having to list everything on the assessment page, even when I'd qualified as an "experienced" assessor. It's probably easiest to confine discussions about assessments to the individual talk pages, and people can ask here for input if an assessment proves controversial. I'd also like to encourage anyone doing an assessment to put their reasoning on the talk page, especially for mid, high and top importance articles. With everyone doing their own assessments the biggest problem will be ensuring consistency so that schools are not over-rated or under-rated. I think we also need to continue to monitor the top importance articles closely, and continue with the approved list on the main schools page. The biggest problem is the huge backlog of articles which haven't yet received an importance rating. We need to find a way of encouraging more people to do assessments. Dahliarose (talk) 09:54, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

If you just ask people to leave their comments on the article's talk page, and make a note on this talk page if it is controversial, then the assessment summaries section at WP:WPSCH/A will be no longer needed; that would certainly make things easier and would keep discussion more on the article's talk page. I would also agree to a strong note asking people to leave reasons for their assessments on the article's talk page if they are giving or removing ratings above C-class or Mid-importance, with a common sense exception for reverting "rogue" assessments. I agree that we should encourage more people to be doing assessments; this project could do with a bit more outreach. I am frequently finding when looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Schools that most articles are not tagged as part of this project; while this is not a perfect sample by far, it shows that there are likely huge numbers of school articles which are not marked as within this project. Two suggestions I could make are: (1) Create a template to place on active school article editors talk page encouraging them to join the project, and possibly assess school articles. A similar example from another project would be {{WPSIMSwelcome}}. (2) Have a newsletter; this project should be big enough to have one though it will require a lot of work to set-up and long-term effort - depending on how frequent the newsletter is. Larger projects have it monthly or bimestrial, though I would suggest quarterly for now if we did have one, like at Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Newsletter. Camaron · Christopher · talk 18:20, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

It has been a while so per above, I suggest the following be implemented:

The assessment team list is cut to just those that are active in the Assessment Department to make it more useful.
The distinction between "Apprentice" and "Experienced" assessor is ended.
The requirement of expecting editors to list all assessments in the assessment summaries section unless listed as "Experienced" is ended as unenforceable.
The assessment summaries section is replaced (the remaining assessments there can be archived) with a suggestion to leave assessment summaries on the article's talk page and here if it is controversial.
As an extra, I will create a template to be placed on user's talk pages encouraging them to join WikiProject Schools.

Would anyone object if I implemented these ideas? Camaron · Christopher · talk 17:03, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I have implemented all the above changes. This includes the creation of invite template located at {{WPSchools invite}}. I hope the project likes and makes use of this new template, though changes can always be made as necessary. Camaron · Christopher · talk 20:28, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Canada/Winnipeg page moves, infobox removals

Jorge Stolfi (talk · contribs) has recently removed infoboxes from a handful of articles ([6], [7], [8]) and moved a large batch of articles for Winnipeg schools ([9], [10], [11]). The moves appear to be counter to WP:NCCN and are "overly disambiguated". I've invited the user to discuss the changes on their talk page before making any more moves, but I wanted to give a heads-up here, because I may not have the time to move them all back. tedder (talk) 04:54, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Pre-emptive disambiguation of school articles has previously been heavily rejected, so I agree that they should all be moved back. Camaron · Christopher · talk 22:15, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I have noticed in the assessment log that Bender235 (talk · contribs) has also been moving large numbers of school articles without comment. Some of these moves appear rather unnecessary such as Livingston High School (New Jersey) to Talk:Livingston High School (Livingston, New Jersey). "Livingston" does not need to be in the title twice, and this is now out of line with the other Livingston High Schools. This seems to be another case of over disambiguation. What are peoples thoughts on this? Camaron · Christopher · talk 16:47, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Basically all school articles have city and state in their title. My page move just made it consistent. --bender235 (talk) 16:56, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure about that? There is nothing in current guidelines or polices which states schools are always disambiguated to (City, State). The proposal at WP:NC(USS) which never got adopted mostly due to lack of input went against adding the city unless it was actually necessary i.e. when there was more than one school of the same name within a state. Though I still see it as violating existing policy per WP:PRECISION as adding more precision where it isn't needed. Camaron · Christopher · talk 17:18, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Whoever gets there first just like articles. If you are first with "PS 92" you own the name! :) Student7 (talk) 23:24, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Nope, no article or editor owns the name. This is covered by WP:PRIMARYUSAGE. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:16, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

There's a certain amount of rightness in both sides here. I've taken names before with no backlash. Generally, though, the "first" article will have to put up with a bunch of "for other uses" at the top of the article. Not sure this is essential for a name with a dab. (Nothing has happened to the one I'm thinking of, though). But, yeah. The now-collapsed Presidential mansion in Port au Prince was known to inhabitants as "The White House". I haven't checked, but don't think if the editors had appropriated it without the suffix (Haiti) that it would have survived (as an article title) that way. Student7 (talk) 13:01, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

request for some help

I hope I am wrong, but there may be the earliest stages of an edit war brewing at Maine Township High School District 207. There appears to be a someone adding some (potentially_ libelous information that is referenced to a website that sort of looks like it might be the press, but to me looks like a personal website that lacks editorial oversight, and doesn't meet WP:RS. I would appreciate other eyes checking this out and making sure I am handling this right. I have attempted to engage the IP in discussion, and have left explanations on the article talk page and at the IP talk page. LonelyBeacon (talk) 05:25, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I have replied on the article's talk page. Camaron · Christopher · talk 12:24, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Outside opinions on Lincoln High School (Tallahassee, Florida)

There has been a content dispute on the name of two schools of the same name in the same town open in different time periods, though apparently on different campuses. The existence of two separate articles has been agreed upon, however there names have not. The current school is at Lincoln High School (Tallahassee, Florida), while the pre-desegregation all black school is at Lincoln High Tigers of Florida. There is more than one Lincoln High School so parenthesis has already got to be used to disambiguate the location. Due to persistent page moves I have move locked the articles and some discussion has occurred at Talk:Lincoln High School (Tallahassee, Florida)#Content dispute over the new name. Things have quietened down in the past few days and some outside opinions, apart from my own, on what name the articles should have would be great. Camaron · Christopher · talk 12:36, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

One possibility that has not been mentioned would be to use Lincoln Academy (Tallahassee, Florida) in place of Lincoln High Tigers of Florida, as that was the original name of the school, and it seems to have been used for many years (see Riley Museum, Tallahassee). Tim Ross (talk) 14:39, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

That is a good suggestion; I wonder what the others will think of that. Camaron · Christopher · talk 20:34, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

School songs

I was wondering the disposition of the project regarding adding lyrics of school/fight songs to the list of what not to include in school articles?

I poured through the archives, and found this previous discussion from years ago. It seemed pretty inconclusive, becoming mostly a debate over whether school songs were copyright issues or not. Even if songs are not copyvio problems, I think they are not really encyclopedic. If a song is notable, it should likely be in a separate article, or it should be noted without the lyrics. Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by LonelyBeacon (talk • contribs) 00:00, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Even if not copyvio, they fail to have encyclopedic value. If a school's song/fight song gets them in trouble or is otherwise heavily 'controversial', that might be wikiworthy, but there's little to gain by plastering out every song from every school. In other words, I totally agree with /AG. tedder (talk) 00:06, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps the guidelines should say that, but at the moment their only advice regarding school songs concerns copyright status. Kanguole 00:50, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I generally agree with LonelyBeacon that school songs are not encyclopedia, and they certainly should not be posted if copyrighted. Like images the burden is on those adding them to show they are not copyrighted, and if there is reasonable doubt they should be removed. Non-copyrighted school songs are probably best placed on Wikisource, a project for free original source material, and then linked to from the article. La Martiniere Lucknow is a good example of this being done. I would support changing the guidelines to make such suggestions. Camaron · Christopher · talk 21:49, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

As a former high school band student, I would love to provide an option for readers to access lyrics to such songs, especially given that, no doubt, for some schools, these songs are an important part of the school's history/culture. If Wikisource is an option, I would support that. I would even support an external link to the lyrics on the school website, if it were available. LonelyBeacon (talk) 22:20, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

There is a presumed propriety ownership which implies copyright for every item not originated by Wikipedia. We can rationalize their use, but that does not make it legal! Songs, and any other written material belongs to the owner, not to Wikipedia. (Probably what the first discussion said, which I have not read). Student7 (talk) 22:00, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Since there seems to be consensus on school songs not being placed in school articles, I have added them to WP:WPSCH/AG#WNTI. I have included suggestions on moving them to Wikisource. Camaron · Christopher · talk 17:19, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps the guidance at the end of the AG about how to include school songs should be struck. Kanguole 17:46, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I forgot about that section. I have merged any useful content into the WNTI and removed this section as it is outdated. Camaron · Christopher · talk 18:10, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

We don't have the right to release the lyrics under a free use license unless they are ancient, therefore, they do not have a place in Wikipedia. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 00:47, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

The content at WNTI about releasing them under CC-BY-SA is in reference to the copyright holder (i.e. the song author) releasing them under this licence which they can do, although this is unlikely to happen in most cases. I have added a clarification to WNTI to make this clearer. Either public domain or CC-BY-SA (and I assume other compatible licences such as CC-BY) are acceptable for Wikisource. Camaron · Christopher · talk 11:10, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

How can I rate schools on the importance scale?

I wrote four articles about notable German schools, Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums, Laborschule Bielefeld, Helene-Lange-School (Wiesbaden) and Rütli School. I believe that those school s are of high importance because all of them receive much media coverage.

The Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums is one of Germanys oldest prestiguos schools, it has a long list of notable alumni. Also we have several authors writing fictional stories about fictional college preparatory school like (like "St. Martins Gymnasium" a prep school that does not even exist, but was mentioned by several authors in their work). Some persons holf the opinion that St. Martins was really the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums des Johanneums and while I am not sure if that is true (the name St. Martins sounds catholic, but the Gelehrtenschule is protestant as far as I know), I still think it makes the school important.
The Laborschule Bielefeld is one of Germanys few democratic schools. It received a lot of media coverage because of this and was announced "Germany's best school". It is based on the pedagogic ideas of Hartmut von Hentig, a famous German scientist
The Helene-Lange-School (Wiesbaden) is one of Germanys best known "alternative schools", it received a lot of media coverage because of it's new pedagogic ideas and some think it is one of Germanys best schools
The Rütli School is believed one of Germanys worst schools by the media. It received a lot of attention when teachersa wrote a letter complaining about the violent behaviour of their students and spraked a debate about school violence; but there are also good things to be mentioned about the Rütli School. It has a list of notable alumni and gave rise to a circle of resistance figherts during Nazi Germany.

I believe that those school are of high imporatnce. Would you agree with me on that? I will not rate the qulaity of the articles as they have been written mostly by me and I cannot judge it. If you are agree that those schools are of high importance, could you tell me how to change the importance to high?-- Greatgreenwhale (talk) 13:50, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Well the standards required for articles to be given high or top-importance on this project are high. I have reviewed the articles and here is my opinion:

Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums, probably high-importance with age and alumni, could even qualify for top-importance. Clearer sourcing, particularly for the alumni, would help justify a higher rating.
Laborschule Bielefeld, unique status and media coverage justify at least mid-importance. If there was indeed widespread media coverage on it being one of Germany's best schools then that could justify high-importance.
Helene-Lange-School (Wiesbaden), at least mid-importance, could be high if there was wide spread media coverage of it being Germany's best school.
Rütli School, probably mid-importance given media coverage and history, but I'm not convinced there is enough for higher than this.

To change the importance rating of an article you have to abject the importance rating on the template that can be found on the article's talk page. Please see WP:WPSCH/A#I for help. Camaron · Christopher · talk 18:14, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Balboa High School (San Francisco, California)

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. I have found a number of concerns with the article which will need major work so I have delisted it. Please see Talk:Balboa High School (San Francisco, California)/GA1 for further information. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 23:54, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Preuss School

I have done a GA Reassessment of the Preuss School article as part of the GA Sweeps project. I find the article to not meet the current GA Criteria. Here is my review. I will hold the article for a week and I am notifying all interested editors and projects. If you have any questions or concerns please contact me on my talk page. H1nkles (talk) 18:36, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

School notability

I have contemplated writing an article/stub about West Franklin High School, but I've been reluctant because of the lack of consensus on notability of schools. Are we still going by the standard that high schools are automatically notable, or do I need to dig further and find details that will make notability unquestionable? PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 00:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Many editors go by the standard that high schools are automatically notable, although this has far from universal acceptance. High schools being deleted at AfD these days is vertically unknown, though I would recommend giving some independent third-party sources which will satisfy WP:N to avoid problems later. Camaron · Christopher · talk 11:17, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Lethbridge Collegiate Institute

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. You are being notified as this project's banner is on the talk page. I have found some concerns which you can see at Talk:Lethbridge Collegiate Institute/GA1. I have placed the article on hold whilst these are fixed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 04:56, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Montessori Middle School

The page Montessori Middle School describes a middle school in Louisville, TN, that is apparently dedicated to the Montessori method and something called erdkinder, also associated with Maria Montessori.

The page was proposed for deletion in July 2009. In seconding that prod I suggested that, given that there are many schools whose names include "Montessori School," the page name is potentially confusing.

Prod was contested and two users expressed interest in editing the page, but no one has done so. Given that there are about half a dozen citations from a local newspaper, this school might be notable. I still say that the name is inappropriate, though. Do other users have thoughts on how best to improve the page? Cnilep (talk) 19:22, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

On the name, there are no accepted naming conventions on schools, though following WP:NC(USS) on generic names, the best answer is probably to disambiguate to Montessori Middle School (Tennessee). Camaron · Christopher · talk 18:05, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

RFC at Illinois High School Association

There is a request for comment at this article, covered by this project. Interested editors are invited to participate. LonelyBeacon (talk) 00:56, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Category:School articles to be merged

I'm looking at this category which at the time of writing has 584 members, some over two years old, and I propose to merge all those long-standing proposals for UK primary schools, since it seems uncontentious to do so. Anyone objecting will have plenty of time to let me know, because I envisage this taking some months. Rodhull andemu 18:44, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Woodside Primary School, Grays

Woodside Primary School, Grays, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Woodside Primary School, Grays. Rjm at sleepers (talk) 09:11, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Gibson Southern Marching Titans

This article has been nominated for deletion. Interested parties may comment on it at the article's deletion discussion. LonelyBeacon (talk) 05:10, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

New Here

Sorry, I'm new here, is there anywhere I can list an article with request for grading? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iankap99 (talk • contribs) 20:44, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Welcome, see here for requesting an assessment for an article. Keith D (talk) 21:53, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Financial Information

Is there any interest in creating an effort to add more financial information to articles on academic institutions such as colleges and universities based on their IRS Form 990 filings? Fortheloveofbacon (talk) 11:50, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what the 990 says, but it seems to me, like all institutions, a budget should be indicated (I'm guessing that isn't on the 990), average teacher's salary, or listing of average salaries for different teaching positions, what the president was paid, endowment, deficit. Just crucial information. Schools run on money. Without it, no school. Student7 (talk) 19:40, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Not much attention is given to financial information in school articles. Possibly some information should be included though trivia should be avoided. Salaries of individuals should probably not be included per the spirit of WP:WPSCH/AG#WNTI, and should definitely not be included unless a reliable source can be provided, as with the sensitivity of salaries and other personal information inclusion of such content could violate WP:BLP. Camaron · Christopher · talk 20:04, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Camaron. I think compared to the state of most school articles, some more financial information would be welcomed, but should focus on "big ticket" figures: annual budget (where applicable), endowments, etc. Even things like "average teacher salary" can be extremely misleading ... private schools often have artificially lower salaries (at least in the US). Schools that pay on a schedule according to seniority ca have artificially inflated average teacher salaries if they tend to avoid retaining too many younger faculty to save money. Again, speaking for public US schools, most financial information will not really be applicable, but would be applicable to public school districts. Individual salaries really do not give as much information as some might think, as it can be based on a number of factors, not all of which are usually reported publicly. LonelyBeacon (talk) 21:56, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

As an example of the complexity I mention below: at public institutions, president's salaries are usually augmented by funds and perks from the college or university foundation. Since foundations are private, their records are usually not publicly available (this confidentiality is one of the primary reasons these foundations exist as it gives public institutions financial flexibility). So it's difficult to accurately know and compare presidents' compensation packages and information that relied solely on form 990s would be woefully incomplete. Anyone interested in this topic would be better served looking at information in the Chronicle of Higher Education; I believe they periodically publish (some) information about presidential compensation. --ElKevbo (talk) 22:42, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I only speak for the postsecondary context (colleges and universities) but I caution against relying on primary sources such as form 990s. Finances are hugely complicated and Wikipedia editors should not be engaged in original research using primary sources. One way we've tried to address this in many articles is by relying on NACUBO data for endowments since NACUBO are experts and therefore it's better for us to rely on their secondary documents to ensure accuracy and consistency. --ElKevbo (talk) 22:37, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Just to double check, while we are on the topic - I think you are saying that the 990 is submitted by the school itself (and probably can be used for figures that are uncontroversial, whatever those might be :). And is probably unaudited and "raw" as far as we are concerned (possibly quite inaccurate in some cases). Question mark. Student7 (talk) 01:47, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Yup. It's a primary source and should be used with caution, if at all. I'm not at all familiar with the form in question but I am well-informed as to the general nature of college and university finances which are as complicated as the institutions themselves. --ElKevbo (talk) 02:01, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I have posted further details on my talk page on BLP issues related to salaries, for those interested. Camaron · Christopher · talk 10:41, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Sections of the article

Should the section guideline include a section on Awards and Recognition to include any notable awards / recognition that the school may have received? Z22 (talk) 05:19, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

I would not be opposed to this, as it would put all of the awards in one place, however, I would like to see some stipulations put on what should/shouldn't be listed. LonelyBeacon (talk) 17:36, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Good point. Any taker on coming up with such stipulations? Z22 (talk) 22:52, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Stipulation: athletic achievements (state/provincial) championships should be under Sports/Athletics, not here. Some other awards may fall out that way. For example, wouldn't academic awards be listed under, well, "Academic." For that matter, shouldn't we be discussing this under Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Article guidelines? Student7 (talk) 16:37, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Article guidelines redirects to this page. Kanguole 23:18, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the ideas. Here is my take on it with those ideas included. Does this work for us?

Awards and recognition – A list of notable awards and recognition received by the school, staff, or students. Those should be at state/regional, national, or global level. Local awards/recognition should not be included. If the school received the same type of awards in multiple years, do not list them separately. Try to summarize them into one item. Long list should be split into a separate article. For awards/recognition given to school clubs or sport teams, list them under the Extracurricular activities section with the appropriate headings. If there are only a couple of academic awards, consider putting them as prose under the Curriculum section. Z22 (talk) 03:23, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh, actually I wanted to say "... Local and county level awards/recognition should not be included...". Please feel free to add your comments. Thanks. Z22 (talk) 22:31, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Along with "local" awards, district/county (sub-state) awards should not be included. Okay IMO to list sports awards under "Sports" not "extracurricular." Thanks. Student7 (talk) 11:26, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Without looking back at it, I think the section is Student life which can have subsection for Arts, Activities, Athletics, etc. Overall, I think this is a good plan that is forming.

Just one thing to throw out: my school once received an award from a fairly local university naming it a top school in the nation. I think it is important to acknowledge that one could receive an award that is local but national in scope. This would especially be true for schools located near universities, national capitals, and major cities. LonelyBeacon (talk) 17:31, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I think as long as the scope is not local, district or county, and the award is notable, it should be included regardless of the type of entities given out the award. So, maybe rewording could clear things up. Something like "... The awards/recognition that have scope within local or district/county (sub-state) level should not be included. ..." Also, I did double check the guideline again (WP:WPSCHOOLS/AG#S), I found the suggested heading for sports. The details of the suggested headings are listed under the Extracurricular activities section. So, here is the revised guideline on that, "... For awards/recognition given to school clubs or sport teams, list them under appropriate section such as Sports and Traditions. See the guideline under the Extracurricular activities section for details on alternative headings that may be used for information on school clubs and sports. ..." Any other thoughts? Z22 (talk) 06:02, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

You've probably just said this, but if LonelyBeacon's awarder (and review) was clearly national in scope, the fact they happened to be local to the awardee is mere coincidence. Student7 (talk) 12:50, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion the appropriateness on award inclusion should be left more to editor discretion; there are simply too many instructions given in the current wording, and this also seems to been written with the U.S. in mind, making application difficult in other countries. I'm also not sure what the grounding is for the cut-off which has been given, as it does seem rather arbitrary. The scope of an award is relevant, but it is not the only thing that matters, and inclusion of awards/recognition should be better focused on existing policies and guidelines such as WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:RS. Camaron · Christopher · talk 12:57, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Since it already said "notable awards and recognition", so should we remove "Those should be at state/regional, national, or global level. The awards/recognition that have scope within local or district/county (sub-state) level should not be included." from the guideline then? I feel that if we don't have any guideline in this specific area, people tend to put all kinds of awards that they can think of in there which may not make it a good article. I know schools in my town got pages of county-level awards. Those were also listed in newspaper and it seems to pass WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:RS. I don't think it is a good idea to list them all. So, my thought is to keep that guideline. Better wording may be needed, however. Please provide sugession on how we should improve this specific instruction, or just simply remove that part. Thoughts? Z22 (talk) 05:46, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

The award should be WP:N right? That is, it should be of the caliber of a Blue Ribbon School (US). The award should have an actual article, or be awarded by (say) Newsweek, which has an article of it's own. Besides being WP:V. Student7 (talk) 17:02, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what sort of awards people have in mind. Is this something that is only applicable to American schools? I don't see personally see the need for a separate section on awards, and especially not in list form. I would have thought it best if this information could be included either in the intro or in the relevant article section (eg, sports, extracurricular activities). Dahliarose (talk) 18:43, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

WP:WPSCH/AG#WNTI already says to keep lists to a minimum, so I am sympathetic to the question on if such lists are needed at all. Per WP:NNC, the WP:N guideline is not supposed to regulate article content. Stand-alone lists are given as an exception, and although a list of awards within a school article would not be "stand-alone", it could be argued that some selection criteria are still needed to make it a Notable awards section. Even if WP:N is the base of the selection method, there is nothing in this guideline about discriminating against local sources, and proposals to include such language have not achieved consensus at WT:N, as shown by WP:ITSLOCAL. A possible compromise could be something along these lines: A notable awards section should list awards won by the school which are themselves notable e.g. Blue Ribbon Award. Verifiable but non-notable awards can be mentioned at editors discretion in other sections. Camaron · Christopher · talk 19:44, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Why would we need a separate section at all? Couldn't any notable awards be discussed in a history section? --TorriTorri^{(Talk to me!)} 22:49, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

For US articles, they are most reasonably placed with athletics most of the time, the rest of the time in a separate section, or in some subtitle appropriate section. History is a possibility but I don't think we need to define which subsection. This usually falls out.

But US schools definitely need very specific guidelines or they will be inserted runner-up at state athletic meets, regional (county-wide) meets, some local newspaper award which is simply a handout from the school itself, that sort of thing. In the US, every school is wonderful that your child goes to. The schools that are terrible are the ones the other guys kids attend! :) Without guidelines the articles would be nothing but awards, and mostly for doing nothing! Student7 (talk) 20:08, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

If this is only a U.S. issue, then perhaps it should be noted in the guidelines, particularly given that the currently references in the guideline to scope ("sub-state" e.t.c.) would be difficult to apply outside the U.S. I don't see why concerns over an article being taken over by awards justify a ban on mentioning all awards up to a certain geographical scope, which as I have said, has generally not been accepted by the wider community. If there is an issue of a school giving itself awards then this can be cut back under WP:N (if it is applied to mentioning awards) or on editorial discretion with WP:V/WP:IRS/WP:NPOV on grounds that articles are supposed to be based on secondary sources, and if a large amount of non-important awards have been won there should just be a brief summary. This guideline is supposed to give general non-binding advice on creating a school article for any school in the world, and the more arbitrary it looks the less likely editors are going to listen to it. Camaron · Christopher · talk 17:04, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Obviously, my earlier suggestion could not stand a short list of editors so I guess we need to change it. I like your compromise to change the section to Notable awards and have the text you suggested. That should address most of the scope issues and yet it is not too restrictive. Z22 (talk) 02:56, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad you like it. Okay, a possible combination of the existing wording and my proposal could be:

Awards and recognition – A list of notable awards and recognition received by the school, staff, or students. Such a list should only include awards which are themselves notable, and if the school received the same type of awards in multiple years, they should not be listed separately. If the list becomes too long it should be split into a separate sub-article with a summary left in the main article. Awards and recognition may also be mentioned in other sections of the article at editor's discretion, even if the awards themselves are not notable. For awards/recognition given to school clubs or sport teams, list them in the appropriate section e.g. Sports and traditions. See the guideline under the Extracurricular activities section for details on alternative headings that may be used for information on school clubs and sports. If the school has received only a a few academic awards, consider putting them as prose under the Curriculum section.

The main change is that the restrictions on when awards can be given have been relaxed, though the requirement that awards listed in a main awards list are notable is still present. Does anyone prefer alternative wording? Camaron · Christopher · talk 16:44, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

How long should we wait for any additional comments until we apply the updated version to the guideline page? Z22 (talk) 02:22, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Since it has been almost a month, I would say no further wait is needed. I will implement the new version now; it can always be amended later if necessary. Camaron · Christopher · talk 08:44, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

RFC: Bronx High School of Science

There is a request for comment at this article. Interested parties may comment here. LonelyBeacon (talk) 22:28, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

List of Alumni articles (Truro School)

Hi,

Would it possible to get some support over a splitting of alumni from Truro School to List of Old Truronians? User:Bretonbanquet and I would like to see if what we have done is correct here. I've removed all of the (unreferenced) alumni from Truro School, as it was getting a long list, and re-sorted it into categories at the List of Old Truronians and fully referenced the list. I am fairly confident that this is in concurrence with the style set out here, and used in many schools articles.

User:Corbynz seems to have taken offence at this, and insists on reverting us (coming close to 3RR), copying the list of names into the parent article again and removing the link to the new sub-page. We've tried setting out our reasons at Talk:Truro School.

Could you give some comments/advice?

Many thanks,

—User:MDCollins (talk) 22:39, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to associate myself with the above comments. It seemed that User:MDCollins had followed all the necessary guidelines and done a great job - the new list looks like a real improvement to me. It would be great if anyone here could offer us some advice on how to resolve the dispute we find ourselves in. Thanks, Bretonbanquet (talk) 23:03, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Much better sourced than the original article, and appears to meet criteria for splitting. There's every reason to have a separate article. Rodhull andemu 23:20, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

The RFC right above this one is about the same issue at Bronx High School of Science. As long as it meets the criteria for splitting, and it can be sourced, I don't see a problem. LonelyBeacon (talk) 22:43, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I also support the split. It is simply good practice. I cannot, however, get most of the reference links in new the list article to work. Not the issue at hand, I know, but perhaps there is an issue with the links? --Nasty Housecat (talk) 22:57, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately the Truro School Alumni (former pupils) website requires registration, presumably a criterion of which is being an alumnus. That is why the links won't work unless someone has access ("registration required" should be present on the links, unless I've missed any). It's a valuable source as it lists dates-at-school for all alumni who have registered, which is a vast proportion of them; if other sources come up, it can be replaced. Until then, the links are the best we've got. If anyone needs access, I can get it, and I think User:Bretonbanquet can also.—User:MDCollins (talk) 23:49, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Is access available to the general public or restricted? If the latter, it probably runs afoul of WP:SOURCEACCESS. --Nasty Housecat (talk) 00:01, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Hm, tricky one. You can't get it as general access is restricted to "bona fide members of the community". What this means in principal is that the nature of the site is such that all information on it is verified (taking No OR out of the equation), but it does mean that it cannot be checked by everyone.—User:MDCollins (talk) 00:07, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Port Charlotte High School gallery

Recently, I uploaded several images of various parts of the Port Charlotte High School campus to the Wikimedia Commons, and I need a second opinion on which ones should stay in the gallery and which ones should not. I figure a gallery is appropriate, but perhaps, for example, five pictures of the media center is probably a bit much, yet I added them all until a second opinion on which ones are of best quality. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 02:41, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Wow that's a lot of pictures. Galleries for most articles are discouraged. The only time galleries are appropriate within an article are when there are many important examples of a subject, like a particular art or fashion style. Instead, I would recommend creating the category "Port Charlotte High School" on the Commons and placing all pictures there. Then, at the bottom of the Wikipedia article, perhaps in the "See also" or "references" section, place {{Commonscat}} and it will give you a small box directing readers to the gallery images. As it stands now, the gallery dominates the article and most of the pictures aren't really appropriate for an encyclopedic article.

As for the images themselves, I would avoid adding pictures of students unless absolutely necessary, especially ones like "two typical girls" ("typical" is a POV term anyway...it tells us nothing about the school). Focus on the building and even then, just upload pictures of the most notable and unique features of the building to give the reader a general idea of what the school is like. So no, you don't need 5 views of the library and 4 views of the NJROTC classroom or views of each subject classroom or 10 views of the gym or a hallway. Be sure to look at the Image use policy, particularly the section on galleries. --JonRidinger (talk) 03:08, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I hope you bought replacement batteries for your camera! ... I would definitely remove the picture of the current principal and any that have students as the focus. Pictures of the hallways are also not particularly helpful (IMO) of illustrating the school. 1-2 of the main parts of the buildings exterior ... maybe 1-2 of key parts of the school (library, gym, the TV studio??). Just my two bits. LonelyBeacon (talk) 03:21, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I just replied over there. I'd encourage LonelyBeacon and JonRidinger to copy their replies there, and for further conversation to take place at the school's talk page. tedder (talk) 03:28, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Agree with most of the above; just because we have free images doesn't imply that they are of encyclopedic validity, and particularly where identifiable people are involved. WP:IUP describes this, but where living people are involved, we should err on the side of exclusion. Rodhull andemu 03:31, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Don't forget these are not only living people but most are minors. tedder (talk) 03:32, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Well WP:IUP is probably trumped by WP:CHILD and related Arbcom decisions; there's no general policy against depicting children, but it has to be taken on a case-by case basis. Personally, I don't believe there's a problem here; however, there is a argument about the value of the images which is not related to child protection issues. Rodhull andemu 03:41, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Back to the original topic on galleries; I take JonRidinger's point that galleries should not be used for free images that can equally be placed on Commons; however, it is a reality that our readers come first to Wikipedia, and not to Commons, and a casual reader might arguably resent having to click to a related website in order to see related images. It's an issue of the "principle of least surprise" to our users. My opinion is that there is little technical overhead in having galleries in articles, as long as it doesn't get out of hand, and we should not discourage casual readers from being unable to access complete infomration. Rodhull andemu 03:56, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I saw this thread after I removed 2 images, but if you think it's justified to add them back, feel free to do so. I removed the image of the "typical girls" at the HS because it doesn't tell us anything about the school itself. The image of a girl opening her locker was also removed, since ...well... it was a girl opening her locker. I can't see anything special about that, so I removed it. The gallery needs further cleanup to comply with standards. Netalarmpoke 04:49, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

If an article has pictures spaced properly throughout, a gallery isn't needed; not just in this case but in any. I think the gallery guideline is pretty clear about when galleries should be included in articles and when they shouldn't. I have a hard time seeing why any school article would need a gallery. The articles are to give a general view of the school, not a complete visual tour of the facility. This can be covered by pictures in the appropriate sections of the article like history, curriculum, athletics, etc. --JonRidinger (talk) 14:59, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, I figured some of these would be excessive; I uploaded them all however for the community to provide input. Probably some of these could be useful in other parts of Wikipedia, for example, Student, Locker, Head teacher, library, television studio, teenager, Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps, etc., which was something I considered when taking all of these. Thanks for the comments, they've been quite useful. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 15:54, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I went ahead and ripped it down altogether; anyone can restore it or part of it if they think it would better the article. PCHS-NJROTC ^(Messages) 23:48, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I think removal of the gallery was sensible, as the line has to be drawn somewhere on what Wikipedia is for. School songs are not included in Wikipedia as it is not a host of primary source material and such content if non-copyrighted is best on Wikisource. Similarly, Wikipedia is not a respiratory of images so galleries are much better placed on Wikimedia Commons. That gallery would be welcome there as the Commons mainspace is dedicated to galleries on any educational topic, for examples see Commons:Eurovision Song Contest 2008 and Commons:Panthera leo. No reason why schools should not be included as well.

On the issue of the images containing living people, while English Wikipedia guidelines/policy apply when the images are used on Wikipedia, Commons is a separate project and has its own guidelines on this, see Commons:Photographs of identifiable people. Camaron · Christopher · talk 09:44, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Infobox robot

I don't see a robot that's currently keeping the infobox bit of the template on talk pages updated. Would there be interest in me creating one? FinalRapture - † ☪ 15:53, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes! That would be fantastic. tedder (talk) 16:25, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm coding it now. FinalRapture - † ☪ 21:03, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

BRFA FinalRapture - † ☪ 22:08, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Waterloo High School (New York)

I came across the Waterloo High School (New York) article a few days ago and found quite a bit of non-encylcopedic information on it such as a detailed chart of former administrators (including the athletic director), a complete bell schedule chart, as well as detailed lists of former principals and assistant principals and why they left. None of those listed were notable and I removed them (which was over half the article) along with some other fixes to the article including tagging it for references. If any other experienced school editors could take a look and offer advice on that article's talk page or to the user who has replaced it once already, it would be much appreciated. He spends a lot of time doing this on this article and on some others (based on his talk page), but apparently seems fairly oblivious to the basic policies and guidelines. --JonRidinger (talk) 16:11, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

The issue seems to have resolved itself now. CT Cooper · talk 18:34, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Further help at Bronx High School of Science#Notable alumni

There is some continuing problems with this high importance article. Here is the short if it:

There is a lengthy (75-100) person list of notable alumni. I made the recommendation to have it split off into a separate list. That was done, and it is substantially expanded and referenced.
The original list was deleted from the article. Left behind was a summary and a link to the stand alone list.
An editor is not allowing the original list to be deleted, citing among other reasons, WP:SIZERULE does not permit the article to be split, and that (quoting) Forked-off articles generally are much less read than main articles, so I feel strongly that this article needs to have the significant names here.. I do not find any of these arguments compelling. I have advised this editor that if he feels this long list really belongs in the article, then the stand along should be sent to AFD. The editor in question does not want to do this, and feels that it is acceptable to have the stand alone list and the other list within the article. As noted above, there was an RFC which did not break the deadlock on this issue. My original involvement with the article was in a response to rate the article, and at this point I would think there are problems with further evaluation moving forward until this deadlock is resolved, one way or the other. I would appreciate any and all editors taking a moment to peruse what has been going on with the article, and weighing in at the talk page. LonelyBeacon (talk) 18:18, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the current set-up does not make sense. Either the list should remain split with a brief summary provided in the main article, or the entire list should be merged in the main article. Until this is sorted out, the article certainly isn't suitable for GA/FA. CT Cooper · talk 18:28, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Problems with Special education article

If anyone has the time it would be much appreciated if you could have a look at the article on Special education which is on the verge of breaking out into an edit war. General articles need to be written from a global viewpoint. As the article currently stands it is written from a US perspective using US terminology making it very hard for anyone from any other country to understand it or relate it to the situation in their own country. We currently have UK and US editors who have been unable to reach an agreement on the format of the article and acceptable neutral terminology. Further input would be much appreciated. Dahliarose (talk) 11:46, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

U.S. Census bureau school district annotation maps

For those of you trying to source school district boundaries, I just realized that the U.S. Census Bureau releases "school district annotation maps" which show district boundaries.

Here are examples: http://www.healthyschoolsms.org/healthy_school_environment/SDA09C28133_B01.pdf.pdf Sunflower County, MS http://www.healthyschoolsms.org/healthy_school_environment/documents/SDA0728011_002.pdf Bolivar County, MS http://www.healthyschoolsms.org/healthy_school_environment/SDA09C28027_005.pdf.pdf Coahoma County, MS http://www.healthyschoolsms.org/healthy_school_environment/SDA09C28083_A01.pdf.pdf Leflore County, MS http://www2.census.gov/geo/sd2009_rev/st17_illinois/maps/037_DeKalb/SDA09C17037_004.pdf DeKalb County, GA

WhisperToMe (talk) 04:04, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

School zoning of employee housing of U.S. prisons

For people working on U.S. prison articles, please check if the prison has employee housing (some prisons in the USA have employee housing on-site). If the prison has employee housing, check what schools the employee housing is zoned to. Typically the school district that the prison is located in has designated attendance boundaries. Also for high school articles, it should be mentioned that children living in the prison employee housing go to that school. WhisperToMe (talk) 15:43, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

What? Why would we do this? This sounds more like advocacy or some attempt at public service than information than should be in an encyclopedia article. ElKevbo (talk) 15:52, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Why would we do this?

Firstly because reliable sources say these things. Search for the text "Tunica Elementary is only a few miles from the main gate of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and many of its students live on the 18000acre prison" on Google News Archives and you will find the article "Fair enlivens out-of-the-way school" of The Advocate (Unfortunately the news archival service deleted the article, but the record of the article exists on Google News) - And this Mississippi report on Drew School District] (search page 12, page 18/82 in the document) says "The district also serves the employee population of the Mississippi Department of Corrections (Parchman)" - If they say those things, we should too. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:00, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Secondly any prison that has employee residences is to be treated like an article on a U.S. neighborhood or housing development. With the exception of senior residences, every American residential community has the possibility of housing a child who goes to school, and housing developments are tied to particular school districts. In many cases school districts assign those developments to particular schools. For articles to be developed to "Good Article" status, third party sources often talk about how the schools relate to those residences. Without exception, all articles on a U.S. housing development must indicate the school district that the community is zoned to. Prisons with employee residences are to be treated like housing developments.

Thirdly there is no advocacy of any kind that violates the NPOV policy in stating what school the children of prison employees go to.

The reason why I posted that reminder is that people don't think about children living on the premises of adult prisons. In the cases of Angola in Louisiana and Parchman in Mississippi, they do.

WhisperToMe (talk) 18:00, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

UK schools task force

Is there, or has there ever been a task force or a daughter project for articles on British schools?
If not, I will be prepared to start one by sending a newsletter to all members of the schools project. However, the school project aoppears to have had an enormous boost in membership in the last 12 months and is now around 320. I can't believe they are all active (e.g. over 30 edits in the past 12 months) - do we have such a list or can someone make one?--Kudpung (talk) 01:58, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi, you may need to clarify what exact list you are after. If it is just a list of the last activity of the project participants then you could use this tool. Interesting that some of the participants appear to have made no edits whatsoever! Keith D (talk) 17:46, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh! Hi Keith - fancy seeing you here:) Thanks for the tool tip. Perhaps if there is not a special UK schools project I can start one.--Kudpung (talk) 15:39, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Another school article at FAC

The high importance school article School for Creative and Performing Arts is currently a Featured Article Candidate. The review may be of interest to editors on this project. --Nasty Housecat (talk) 00:33, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

The Judd School

Just to let you all know the above article is now a Featured Article candidate. I'm not involved with the project, but would be great if you could review and support/oppose as appropriate. Many thanks, Tom (talk) 16:07, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

This article is now featured. Regards, Tom (talk) 12:53, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Project page updated.--Kudpung (talk) 01:42, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

UK Colleges of Further Education

There nearly 400 schools in this cat. In British English usage a College of Further Education (See College). is most definitely not a university. (although just a few may be affiliated to a local university for the purpose of validating a degree course and issuing the certificate.) There are however quite a few that appear to have been erroneously tagged (perhaps by a bot?) by the WikipediaProject Universities and/or tagged as university stubs. --Kudpung (talk) 18:09, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

There have been no comments on the above, so I will 'rebrand' any articles I come across with the appropriate Wikipedi project affiliation.--Kudpung (talk) 01:27, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

"Reads like a prospectus"

Dear Project, how would you tag something that reads like an extended ad for the great wonderfulness of a school? I do hate drive-by taggists but I've just been looking at an article that certainly needs attention, that I do not feel competent to fix, and that I feel it would be wrong to just leave alone. Certainly I'd never tag it without saying something on the Talk page but really I could do with knowing if you have a standard approach to this. It must be a very common problem - indeed your Article Guidelines would seem in part to reflect this - but I'd love to know what approach is best for fairly marking this problem and perhaps, with luck, attracting the attention of a competent and neutral editor. All advice gratefully read. Thanks and best wishes, DBaK (talk) 15:15, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

I use {{advert}} or {{tone}}. tedder (talk) 15:51, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much. I'll have a look at both. Best wishes DBaK (talk) 15:54, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

How do you add a school?

I would like to request an article for Jackson County High School in McKee, Ky. I cannot find it on wikipedia. It redirects me to a school in Georgia.

204.198.75.137 (talk) 04:10, 17 September 2010 (UTC)A Person204.198.75.137 (talk) 04:10, 17 September 2010 (UTC)September 17, 2010

I do not find where you are directed to a school in Georgia. What article are you talking about that does that?

You may choose to write the new article yourself. Please be aware of guidelines. I will leave them on your page, if they are not there already. Student7 (talk) 14:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

It redirects to Jackson County Comprehensive High School. Either put the redirect up for deletion, or make a dab page, Or preferably use a different name for your article to disambiguate it, using something such as Jackson County High School (name of US state), and then make a dab page. What does Ky mean anyway? --Kudpung (talk) 21:45, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I have replaced the redirect (Jackson County High School) with an article about the school in McKee, Kentucky. Cunard (talk) 22:42, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Excessive Lists

I was asked by an editor to look at the article for the Waterloo Central School District and found quite a bit of excess, unencylcopedic, and non-notable detail. I had previously edited the Waterloo High School (New York) article and have removed multiple times long lists of current and former administrators, none of whom are notable. In editing the school district article, I noticed another school district article (the neighboring Seneca Falls Central School District) also had the same problems as did its high school article. If anyone else edits some of these New York districts, please watch out for these lists and keep them from returning. Another problem I noticed is the inclusion of private schools within the public school articles. Private schools should be listed with whatever entity oversees them (like the local diocese for Catholic schools). If no such article exists, they should be mentioned in whatever locale (city, village, township, or county) they are in. Private schools are not associated, administered, or overseen by the public school district they are in so they shouldn't be in the article about the district. --JonRidinger (talk) 04:51, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

IMO. private schools can also be listed in "Education" subsections and "Education in X" articles. Some schools are stricly private. One owner or owning entiry. Baptist schools, for example, often have no "controlling" entiry. Student7 (talk) 18:47, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Asking for help with Edits to the Template:infobox school district

I looking for help in editing Template:infobox school district. I want to add GeoLocation ({{coord}}) (for example the coord for the main office, in the case of where I added it in Buffalo Public Schools) and to move the {{country}} box on the Same Line direct line for {{location}}because it looks tacty when rendering. I would normally try to edit this myself, but it is beyond my knowledge.
Thank you for your help, and your opinions on the matter. --Wolfnix • Talk • 00:16, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with editing templates so have requested asked those at Help talk:Template to provide assistance. Best, Cunard (talk) 23:54, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Ludwigs2 (talk · contribs) has replied there. Cunard (talk) 08:03, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes. It was taken care of because of a request on WP:VPT, I was sure I removed this request, or noted on it. Sorry for the inconvience. --Wolfnix • Talk • 13:34, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Nominated for deletion: Fáy András Economic High School

There is a discussion on the proposed deletion of the Fáy András Economic High School article at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fáy András Economic High School. This project has expressed an interest on that article's talk page. Interested project members may wish to contribute to the discussion. // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 15:32, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Deletions are best advertised using deletion sorting, specifically the following category: Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Schools. Interested members can watch that category and automagically know if an article has been placed for deletion. tedder (talk) 21:10, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Theodore Roosevelt High School (Kent, Ohio)

I have essentially rewritten this article from the bottom up. I would appreciate any additional editors who could have a look at it and provide some feedback on its neutrality, any potential POV or peacock works/phrases, and if it has excessive detail as I get it ready for GAN and ultimately FAC. I was definitely going for thorough, but would just like some additional opinions to make sure I didn't go off the deep end here. Thanks for anyone who can help. Feel free to change its quality rating if you feel it should be changed from the current "C" rating. --JonRidinger (talk) 02:07, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Most people who read this talk page are members of the schools project, and your request might no reach a broad enough community. You really need to post this on the article talk page too, because that's where any feed back and discussion will take place. I'll certainly check the article over for you and leave any suggestions there.--Kudpung (talk) 05:43, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I do want people from the project to look over it since they will be most familiar with the article guidelines, structure, appropriate content, etc., but I will post something on the article itself. One of the problems I saw at FAC was that editors not familiar with a particular project (in that case cities) would question content that was right along the guidelines of the project or want to see content that didn't really fit the scope of the article. --JonRidinger (talk) 12:09, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

List of schools in...

Are there any guidelines for lists of schools? Look at San Diego CA for example:

Cathedral Catholic High School appears on all 3 lists. Many school districts also have lists of schools, e.g.

Escondido Union School District

All 4 lists list high schools. The lists overlap and are inconsistent with each other. Lionel (talk) 06:23, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Things also get a little complicated when you factor in List of high schools in California. What about this... Keep and maintain the comprehensive list of high and primary schools in the controlling authority, or district. Then, put the high schools in between "includeonly" tags. Thus the list of high schools from a particular district could be transcluded to a county list of high schools, or the state list of high schools. The list would be consistent throughout. (This assumes that we don't plan on having county or state lists of primary schools.) Lionel (talk) 06:46, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Bourne Westfield Primary School - AfD relisted

RESOLVED: Closed as 'merge'. --Kudpung (talk) 06:19, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
This AfD has been relisted because not enough editors have commented. Please comment or !vote if you can after carefully reading both the article and the debate at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bourne Westfield Primary School Thanks.--Kudpung (talk) 02:50, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

School colors

In a current GAN, a question has arisen regarding the inclusion of school colors in the lead. The editor doing the review believes they are an excess detail stating: "School colors do not belong in the lead paragraphs." I wanted to see what some other opinions were from this project. To me, it seems as though the school colors are a pretty noticeable aspect of a school, so mentioning them in the lead would be perfectly natural and expected, just like mentioning the team nickname. Additional insights would be appreciated! Thanks --JonRidinger (talk) 19:48, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

What are school colours? Is this some American thing? Alarics (talk) 20:08, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

They are the colors that a team's players wear, and often the school will be painted/decorated in the same colors. Similar to national colors, I suppose (see the second lead para in Italy national football team). Do UK schools not have this? tedder (talk) 20:13, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

The article School colors seems to suggest it is largely an American thing, along the same lines as team or national colors like Tedder said. The British version seems to be Sporting colours, though sporting colours seem to be closer to an American varsity letter in terms of being awarded rather than shared by the entire student body. If you go to any American high school or college/university, you will likely see that school's colors displayed prominently somehow. And it's not just for athletics either. --JonRidinger (talk) 20:20, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

The lead is supposed to be a summary of the main points in the article. Do the school colors get such emphasis in the article that they warrant also appearing in the summary? Presumably they're in the infobox too? Kanguole 23:13, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes they are in the infobox with color boxes. The way they are currently presented in the lead is the second-to-last sentence in a 3-paragraph lead: "Roosevelt athletic teams compete in the Portage Trail Conference Metro Division as part of the Ohio High School Athletic Association and are known as the Rough Riders with the school colors red, white, and black." The article itself can be found here. They get about the same emphasis within the article as the team name itself gets. --JonRidinger (talk) 01:40, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

IMHO, where and what the teams play, and what they wear, is not material for the lead. It would probably be sufficient to mention something such as: the school enters teams into state sports and athletic leagues and competitions. There are items in the info box for metions of the school colours. 'School colours' is a well know term on both sides of the Atlantic. --Kudpung (talk) 01:50, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Fluff. Please omit. Okay in sports/athletic section. Student7 (talk) 10:42, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd be careful calling it "fluff". If it's just fluff, it shouldn't be in the article at all IMO. The lead should summarize the entire article. While I ended up removing the mention in this case (in the end it didn't make or break the sentence), if the colors get a larger mention within the article (like a unique history, for instance), that could be justified in the lead since the lead should have a mention of every major point that occurs in the article to be a "concise summary" of the article. When an article is evaluated in FAC, at least in my limited experience, that's of of the things editors look for: if the lead adequately summarizes the article, which in this case would be a sentence or two about athletics since the athletics section takes up 7 paragraphs in the body. Basically, every section has some sort of mention in the lead and larger sections obviously have slightly larger mentions in the lead. The overwhelming consensus here seems to be that in general, simply mentioning the colors within the mention of athletics in the lead is probably too detailed. --JonRidinger (talk) 17:11, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

We are not an almanac or a local guide. In fact I would put all of your original text ("pargraph 2". I don't want to know what is in "paragraph 3", please) under "Athletics (Sports)." Germane. Just not in the lead. It may be a difficult principle to grasp, but if the registered editors don't "get" it how are the newbies going to? The primary function of schools is to educate (academics). The sports stuff is just window dressing. We have one school locally that scores about a zero on everyone's academic scale. They stand high in the nation in a sport. Not easy. But easier than teaching the kids math, English, reading comprehension, and grammar, obviously. They have demonstrated the former, but they are unable to demonstrate the latter.

How they stand in choir, brain bowl, water polo, robotics club, etc. may be fun, but has nearly nothing to do with the school performance itself. It seems rather, an attempt to avoid the WP:TOPIC. The topic, academics, is an encyclopedia function. The rest is a frivolous distraction. Student7 (talk) 23:21, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

(indent) While it is true that we are not a local guide, and I would also agree that schools should all be primarily in the business of education ... but whether that education is strictly "academics" is a matter of opinion.

Using a local school, as one example, Mt. Carmel High School (Chicago, Illinois). Mt. Carmel is not a horribly bad academic institution, but its greatest claim to notability is around the success of its athletics teams, and its alumni which go into professional athletics. Something like that needs to be noted in the leadin, where as in most school articles, mentioning athletics would not be proper. Does that make the mention of non-academic information "fluff"? No. To follow: one might note that the business of a business is business, and the rest is not to be mentioned .... though discussion about a business' involvement in charity or its art holdings, etc would be perfectly reasonable to include.

To go a step further: I think it is very narrow to think that the only substantive education that occurs in a school occurs in a classroom between 7:30 and 3:30. Schools have extracurricular activities just for that reason: to give students a chance to learn beyond the classroom (otherwise there isn't much of a purpose for schools to spend money on them). Just as one would be valid in discussing a school's excellence on a standardized test (which is rarely that valuable in measuring success), you would be valid in discussing how their students excelled in building robots or competing in mathletes or competing in quizbowl, etc. As a matter of fact, I would suspect that there is about as much correlation between success in some of these activities (not all) and school academic success as there is in standardized test scores (that's anecdotal, of course).

For the record, I do not believe that school colors, or extracurricular success, should be mentioned in the leadin, unless there is something substantially unique about them which can be properly referenced and cited ("This school's colors were grey and orange, but were changed to red, white and blue because Queen Elizabeth presented the school with a Union Jack during a visit in 1964", or something like that ... The school's cross country running team has won 23 state championships). The school's colors can be listed in the infobox for anyone looking quickly. If there is to be further discussion that can be properly reffed and cited, it can be discussed in a history section or section on school traditions. LonelyBeacon (talk) 01:16, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

On an earlier note, "fluff", as in "should be left out." But we can't keep it out, having failed at our primary task of being an encyclopedia, not an almanac, or WP:PEACOCK for failing schools. All of the above is why US taxpayers hate the current school system. It is entirely too unfocused (to restate the problem). It's like saying that New York City can't balance its' budget, can't pick up the garbage, but it has "a great football team!" Student7 (talk) 12:26, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

This is certainly one opinion (as is mine), but hardly the only one. Schools are not measured on their greatness as having a "great football team" as you put it, but to deny that extracurriculars is a worthwhile part of education is to not fundamentally grasp the idea of educating hte whole person. The push to reduce education to "facts only" and deny the instruction of individual responsibility, cooperation, teamwork, creativity, emotional and artistic expression, etc is a reductionist approach that fails to see schools as greater communities. It would be akin to describing Chicago and failing to mention the lakefront, parks, or museums. No one (I hope) is saying that sports is the most important (or second or third or fourth) aspect of a school.

I seem to recall there being an aphorism to the effect of "The battles of World War II were ultimately won on the fields of Eton" (I'm probably screwing that up) ... implying that the lessons learned on the school's athletic teams were as instrumental in future success as anything learned in a classroom. I admit that it is a great shame that some schools seem to exist with mediochre classroom students/teachers and are known primarily fortheir athletics ... but you also can't deny it, and editing it out of an encyclopedia, IMO, borders on censorship. LonelyBeacon (talk) 13:17, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Waterloo. That sentiment went out of fashion in the First World War. Kanguole 13:28, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes and a good quote."...playing fields of Eton." We have often styled out Western phy ed programs on that aphorism. I think it has (alas) proved to be false when examined scientifically. Athletes turn out no better than anyone else. Often worse! Yes, a few make money, but not many of those, and their lives are no better either. Again a good reason to emphasize academics over athletics. Student7 (talk) 13:04, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

@Kanguole ... thanks for the correction ... I suspected I had the detail wrong. Of course, it is an aphorism, which is to say it should not be quoted as an absolute truth.

@Student7 ... I agree with one thing: "Athletes turn out no better than anyone else." I totally disagree on the "often worse". I can only speak from an Americancentric perspective, but I have seen studies that show that students who participate in athletics and other extracurricular activities have a greater probability of graduating from high school, have a higher probability of being accepted to a college (even excluding those athletes who matriculate exclusively on athletic scholarships), and have a higher probability of graduating with a degree in 5 or fewer years. If one focuses exclusively on the media promoted primadonna athletes who make asses of themselves in the major sports, it certainly looks like athletes are "often worse", but I think that you often exclude kids who go out for swimming and tennis and golf and cross country and sports who don't get a lot of media ... you even forget about the vast majority of kids in baseball and football and basketball that turn out to be decent human beings ... these kids often times never compete beyond high school, but many will talk about how such opportunities taught them about teamwork and dealing with adversity, and learning to succeed and lose gracefully. There are certainly jerk athletes and jerk coaches and jerk fans ... just like there are jerk teachers, jerk accountant, jerk scientists, jerk clergy, jerk politicians, etc, etc, etc.

To steer this conversation back a bit: I only argue that in the case of certain schools ... quite a distinct minority I would guess, one of their primary claims to notability might be some kind of an extracurricular team. It needn't even be a sports team ... Whitney Young Magnet High School is nationally known for Academic Decathlon ... was involved in a nationally covered scandal that led to a film. If that were to be mentioned in the leadin and expounded on later in the article, I would fail to see a reason to object. LonelyBeacon (talk) 18:10, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think Wellington's remark about "the playing fields of Eton" was meant to be a comment just on the importance or otherwise of playing sports at school. I have always understood it to be about the cultivation of "team spirit" and "being a gentleman" in a particular 19th-century "English elite school" kind of way, and if I am right about that, I think it is really a red herring in the present discussion. For what it's worth, my feeling is that "school colours" are probably not significant enough to be worth mentioning in the lead of 98% of school articles. Alarics (talk) 19:55, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

To continue on the general topic (though not colors), I agree that it is okay to feature a non-sports club. The main problem I have found is finding notability. A club might go to a "national" meeting and win, but it turns out there were only a few clubs there. And worse, maybe they all "won." School bands are notorious for local awards that are indistinguishable from other schools. They must be better than other schools; the judging authority must be neutral; and there must be a "significant" number of schools represented, whatever that means! Hard to find unfortunately. Student7 (talk) 20:27, 25 October 2010 (UTC)