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Can someone cleanup a template and stub articles

Can someone cleanup the elementary school links in {{OCDSB Schools}}? What is happening is that new editors are starting to create articles from the links which will wind up and AfD with a merge to the district article. Thanks. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:58, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

A very good point. People tend to forget that these templates are designed as a navigation aid and not as a prompt to create pages. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:49, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
See what I've done at {{OCDSB Schools}}. If you think the unlinked schools should be removed entirely, you can also do this yourself. Middle schools are generally not notable either, except of course, as for primary school, in exceptional circumstances of notability. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:03, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, and that is a good point about the middle schools. I had forgotten that the same guidance applies to them. Vegaswikian (talk) 04:12, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Could really use schools help at Wikipedia:Requests for feedback

Greetings, as of the last month or so I'm the main guy holding down the fort at Wikipedia:Requests for feedback, and I could really use some additional help. RfF has been an outstanding experience in providing editing help to new editors who really want help and, in the majority of cases, are quick to incorporate feedback and really add to the value of their articles. We probably receive requests for help on schools articles at least once a day, and I'm not really familiar with that world or with that aspect of Wiki.

RfF doesn't require any fixed time commitment, and many feedbacks can be knocked out in literally five minutes or less, so even dropping by once or twice a week for five minutes would aid considerably in answering as many requests as possible, and consequently both encouraging new editors (who may become long-term serious editors) as well as maintaining high Wikipedia standards.

If anyone is willing to step up and drop by even a few times a week for just a few minutes, I would be profoundly grateful, as that would allow me to answer more requests for topics I specialise in (history, art, religion). Thanks! MatthewVanitas (talk) 20:23, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

The best thing to do is probably to direct the enquirer to WP:WPSCH (the main page of this talk page). The project pages contain excellent walk-through on school page creation and have recently been revised and updated. We have this talk page on our watchlists and are quick to reply to any requests for feedback, or questions left unexplained on the project pages. We may also shortly be creating a help page for schools on the lines of the 'Requests for feedback' page. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:38, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Sherborne Girls protection request

I think Sherborne Girls needs semi-protection against an unregistered vandal (an unregistered parent with a complaint of the treatment his daughter received, also adding names to alumnae who appear not to have gone to the school, see History). For all I know it may indeed be a crappy overpriced school, but an encyclopaedia is not the place to say so without meticulous referencing. Unfortunately I couldn't understand how or where to request this or who from. Sorry about that. Bmcln1 (talk) 16:46, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

 Done Normally done at WP:RFPP, but.. I've protected it for 10 days. tedder (talk) 16:51, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. Bmcln1 (talk) 17:46, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

For the first time perhaps ever...

...all of one state's athletic association's full members are on Wikipedia! My major school article creation drive helped to continually whittle down the numbers. At the same time, Arizona's WP:MEA list fell to a whopping five. With Joy Christian School now created, all AIA full members are in Wikipedia! Five associate members, two of which are Great Hearts schools, a third of which is public and another two small prep schools, are left to go (see User:Raymie/AIA Checklist). Arizona has surpassed states with storied completion rates, like Ohio; Oregon; and New Jersey. Raymie (t • c) 02:59, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Dammit, you passed Oregon, congrats! I did a "school drive" in Oregon, the only thing left are historic schools (though I got some of those) and schools inside juvenile detention facilities. tedder (talk) 03:04, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
BTW, some of my lists: List of high schools in Oregon, User:Tedder/2008 Oregon high school graduation rates, User:Tedder/2009 Oregon school district homeless rates. tedder (talk) 03:06, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

coordinates headscratcher

Can someone look at this and tell me why the coordinates fail to appear? tedder (talk) 16:33, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

There was a duplicate blank "coordinates" parameter in the infobox, which I fixed for you. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 06:34, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
thanks! tedder (talk) 11:54, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Evelyn Grace Academy

This is a very poor article on a major school that, whilst newly opened, is already important and innovative. It was subject to a profile in the Telegraph Magazine of 14 May 2011. There is a developmental opportunity here if anyone is interested. TerriersFan (talk) 23:15, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Review request for Template:NCES School ID

Template:NCES School ID (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

I am working on this template to help produce inline references for statistical data about schools in the US. Would someone be kind enough to take a look at the Template and Talk page and give opinions as to ways to improve this? I frankly envision this template eventually being used in hundreds if not thousands of articles and would like to at least get the parameters nailed fairly soon before there are lots of links to it. For a sample of how I see the use, see the article Hommocks Middle School. Many thanks in advance for your time!--Arg342 (talk) 00:29, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

One-month-old FLC

Hello. I have an active FLC nomination up at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Benet Academy alumni/archive1, but I haven't received any comments in over a month. I would thus appreciate any feedback. Thanks! Edge3 (talk) 05:00, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christ Church C.E Primary School

A deletion discussion has been started for this school. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:10, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Blue Ribbon School recognition as sole claim of notability

Any thoughts on whether Blue Ribbon School recognition by the DOE for a US school is sufficient for a elementary or middle school to establish notability? I'm not talking about a case where there is other cited claims of notability, or one where there is significant coverage in 3rd party reliable sources. I'm talking about a case where this it the only claim of notability. I'm thinking not since outcomes on AFDs for elementary and middle schools is generally merge to the district article, it's not enough but wanted to get some opinions here.--RadioFan (talk) 18:59, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

There's been a common consensus among school articles taken to deletion that having been honored as a Blue Ribbon School is sufficient for notability on primary schools. There's no guideline, but it's been consistent among AFDs for at least the past few years. tedder (talk) 23:30, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
If that's the case then it should be in WP:OUTCOMES#Schools--RadioFan (talk) 23:44, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
The Blue Ribbon award is just fine to show notability. Invariably this award brings significant media attention producing sources that can be added to the page. TerriersFan (talk) 18:13, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
I have never agreed with this as a source for notability. As I understand it, every school in the US could get this award at one time or another. It also allows the use of their state assessment systems which are rather different, so a school in one state might not be nominated even if it would be eligible if it was located in another state. Also the criteria artificially limits a nominations. It does this by identifying the disadvantaged schools that meet the requirement and then limiting other schools to only twice that number. Also the criteria for public and private schools is different. If a school receives this once in two hundred years is it notable? If we are going to use this, it should be limited to schools that have received it in some number of consecutive years or after receiving in a certain number of times. Those are probably notable schools. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:53, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Such awards can simply be mentioned next to the school's entry on the list within the school district article. Being given an award does not constitute treatment by a secondary source. Speciate (talk) 03:31, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
Question: Does anyone know how many awards per year are given?
While state standards may differ, these are the top schools in their state. That says something even for a state with a tiny population.
While I question whether we want any middle school article for any reason (because of subsequent vandalism), I admit that I have never had any trouble with my (very few) blue ribbon school articles. Student7 (talk) 20:20, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
To answer your initial question, It varies by year especially since the program has been retooled but in recent years, it's around 300 prior to that it was around 200 per year.--RadioFan (talk) 21:52, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
Numbers - see this for the eligibility quotas for each state (for 2010). I would say, as someone who is largely an outsider to the US education system but has had direct experience of some very good and some bloody awful schools in the San Francisco Bay Area in my professional life, that Blue Ribbon is something that should add weight to a school's claim to notability. Given that only 35 schools in the whole state of California can be awarded each year, it is clearly not something that is given out lightly. I have very direct experience of the UK education system and wish that we had something similar here - in fact we did for a while with Beacon schools. I really like that a percentage of nominations are reserved for schools in disadvantaged areas so it isn't just the WASPs who get the gongs. Perhaps the criteria should be one blue ribbon is a partial claim to notability, two blue ribbons is a definite claim to notability? --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 21:59, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
Vandalism is a deliberate attempt to damage Wikipedia, and allowing users which engage in such activity to shape Wikipedia's content policies and practices is something I am strongly opposed to. I'm am aware that there are vandalism problems on school articles, but there are plenty of tools to deal with that, and I would personally rather see every single school article semi-protected or put on flagged revisions before being deleted because of vandalism. The Wikipedia:Vandalism policy specifically states that articles should not be nominated for deletion in response to vandalism. There are varies reasons for this policy, the main one being it is giving vandals what they want, and that such an action would not necessarily reduce vandalism - vandals would probably just find another article to vandalise. CT Cooper · talk 22:14, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
I have from experience found that blue ribbon schools tend to attract sources which make them more likely to be notable. However, keeping an article solely because it has won one award is less than ideal, and in the worst case scenario it can be discussed in the district article. CT Cooper · talk 22:14, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Boarding Facilities

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_School_of_The_Hague#School_Profile
the reference to boarding facilities in this article may be outdated, If its referring to the boarding house that I am aware of, it will be closed at the end of the current school year 134.146.0.41 (talk) 09:33, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

You might be better posting on the article's talk page then one of the contributors can sort it. Or, you could do it yourself (see WP:BOLD) - anyone can edit wikipedia! --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 09:36, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks I am aware of the fact that anyone can edit but my knowledge on the topic is flimsy and have no means of verifying my statement was hoping that someone else might have, but yes ill add this post to the discussion page of the article.

many thanks 134.146.0.41 (talk) 09:43, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Primary / elementary schools - notability

I thought that there was a general guideline that primary/elementary schools were not considered inherently notable. But I can't find it anywhere. Can anyone clarify pls? Fmph (talk) 07:06, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Belay that. Found it. WP:OUTCOMES#schools 07:09, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Alumni question

More eyes would be welcome on the entry in Deacon's School#Alumni for Ahmed Ali Awan, who has been convicted of a murder. There's a citation for his attendance at the school, but the bluelink for his name is a redirect to the article on the murder. My feeling is that he doesn't meet the notability criterion required for inclusion. Any other views? Kanguole 07:57, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I would agree. Plus if you read the reference it states about Awan "He said he attended Deacons....", without confirming that he actually did. As an aside, I didn't know the school had closed (or even that it had a Wikipedia article). I met the head Michael Griffiths several times and wonder what he is doing now. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 08:06, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Maris Stella High School, Singapore

An IP changed this school on its talk page from start class to A-class and from mid-important to top-importance. Is this correct? It seemed unlikely to me so I reverted it, but my revert has now been reverted by another IP. How do I find out which schools qualify for which category? -- Alarics (talk) 07:31, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

There is no hard and fast rule, but traditionally, articles under the aegis of a Wikipedia project are assessed by members of that project. School articles are graded per WP:SCH#Article grading.--Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:48, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
The two IPs (probably the same editor) have been warned. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:04, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
Good work spotting it. Thankfully with the assessment log it is easier nowadays to pick-up rogue assessments, and I do routinely go through it as IPs/new users giving very high assessments to the odd school article is not uncommon and sometimes goes unnoticed. I also regularly check the school article statistics on the main project page for irregularities with the higher importance and quality ratings. CT Cooper · talk 12:49, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I was looking at several navigational templates for schools within various geographical areas, and I was surprised to see that none of the ones in London I looked at had defunct schools within that area. Defunct schools with a Wikipedia article are obviously notable, and I was expecting the templates to include former schools as Template:Schools in Oxfordshire and Template:Schools in Warwickshire do. Is there any reason why many such navigational templates do not have defunct schools within their area? Coyets (talk) 17:36, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

They should be added assuming that articles exist, which should be easy to check if there is an appropriate category. Like Oxfordshire and Warwickshire, we have them listed in the template for Somerset schools. I would suggest that you add them (WP:BOLD). --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 07:21, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
I don't see any reason why defunct schools can't be included in navboxes. I think the issue is more that defunct schools are under represented on Wikipedia in general, probably due to the heavy reliance on Google with them often having less material available to use on there. CT Cooper · talk 13:43, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (schools)

It would be useful, for consistency, to establish naming guidelines. This proposal seems very sensible but it apparently failed. Are there any major objections to it? TerriersFan (talk) 15:48, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

I would support it if the section on the definite article were dropped. I absolutely favour inclusion of "The" in the name of a school where it forms part of the official name used by the school and government bodies such as the education authority or inspector of schools e.g. The King Alfred School, Highbridge (which of course should be renamed "The King Alfred School (Highbridge)" according to the naming convention) --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 16:03, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
As one of the editors that drafted the original proposal, I can say that the consensus was that the definite article was only to be used if it was part of the official/most common name of the school, and not in other cases. It can be re-worded if necessary. CT Cooper · talk 17:36, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
I've considered reviving it for a while, though never got round to it. I agree that schools could do with a naming guideline as currently there is a great lack of consistency. The two main things that killed the proposal was a lack of activity to give the page the credibility to be a formal guideline, and a lack of consensus on some issues. For example, the guideline tried to establish the standard of using parenthesis (brackets) as the discriminator, but there was resistance to this in some localities that preferred to use commas. Two problem areas I remember were Western Australia (see Category:Schools in Western Australia) and India (see Category:Schools in India - both styles seem to be used there now). In order to work the guideline needed agreement of local WikiProjects and this just didn't happen. In order to make things easier another proposal at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (U.S. schools) was made just to focus on the US, where there is near universal agreement to use parenthesis. Even with that though, the guideline suffered from a lack of activity and there was disagreement on if to use "School (State)" in most cases, with "School (Municipality, State)" only for cases where two schools had the same name in the same state, or just to use "School (Municipality, State)" for all US schools needing disambiguation.
Despite the potential problems I am in favour of giving it another go, though I would still recommend focusing on the US first before dealing with the rest of the world on a country-by-country basis. CT Cooper · talk 17:36, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
Why aim big? To what benefit? We'd be better off starting small - Liechtenstein or Luxembourg possibly and build on small wins until we get to big wins. At that point, the resistance will be futile and something will be agreed. And BTW, most geographical disambiguation is done with commas as opposed to parentheses. So The King Alfred School, Highbridge is perfectly in line with standard wiki dab. I would agree that parentheses would be appropriate for other types of dab i.e. The King Alfred School (girls school) and The King Alfred School (boys school) for instance where those disambiguators are not part of the official school name. Real people already do real disambiguation in real life and they rarely use parentheses. WP:COMMON points towards commas. Fmph (talk) 21:11, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
In which case I'm as happy as a pig in smelly stuff. Tone down the definite article stuff, change parentheses to commas and it's good to go (for me at least...) --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 21:37, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
I don't see any real evidence that use of commas is any more based on "common sense" than parenthesis; "common sense" is a matter of personal opinion and varies widely, and the end of day nobody has forced editors to use parenthesis, given the lack of a guideline, they have decided that for themselves based on what they might consider "common sense". I don't understand the point that parenthesis should only be used for something that is not the school's name - disambiguation is only needed when two school names clash, and so disambiguation must involve adding something to the title which is not in the school's name. I understand the point about starting small, but out of everything in Category:Schools in Luxembourg there are only two articles in there which are in any way disambiguated, these being Lycée Vauban (Luxembourg) and European School, Luxembourg II, so there isn't much of concern there. Due to systematic bias US schools dominate on the English Wikipedia, which overwhelmingly use parenthesis, and despite a few issues as I have mentioned above, I do not think a mass move to commas is justified. Based on past experience with this proposed guideline I think there is very little chance that a consensus will emerge to switch to commas. Particularly given that this proposal previously started with agreement on using parenthesis, and it still failed! Throwing the commas vs. parenthesis issue back into the mix again gives me very little optimism. CT Cooper · talk 22:00, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

I am encouraged by the constructive reaction. What we need to do is achieve a standard that meets the big objections and ask editors to compromise on the smaller issues. No-one is going to get everything that they want but any standard has to be better than the present mishmash. Identifying the two sticking issues:

  • Use of definite article - we simply remove the words "Articles on schools preferably don't start with a definite article (a similar convention applies to universities). See When definite and indefinite articles should be avoided." The introductory sentence to the section covers matters well enough without getting into the detail.
  • Parentheses or comma - we ain't going to get a consensus to use just one so let's be pragmatic. In the US parentheses are so well established that a move to comma isn't practical. However, elsewhere there is a mixture of usage but comma seems to have the strongest supporters. My suggestion is that parentheses are the standard for the US and commas for elsewhere. Not ideal, but better than the present free for all.

When considering these suggestions I would appeal for editors to adopt a spirit of compromise. TerriersFan (talk) 23:07, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

  • Agree with one issue - I'm mostly okay with it, but the US naming convention needs to be handled. If "foo high school" needs disambiguation, "foo high school (state)" is nice. If that needs disambiguation, "foo high school (city, state)" is appropriate. In other words, "foo high school (city)" is discouraged, as is needless disambiguation in the title. tedder (talk) 23:57, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
  • I also don't like "foo high school (city)". I agree that disambiguation should only occur when necessary. However, if disambiguation is needed, is there a case for going straight to "foo high school (city, state)", rather than using "foo high school (state)", to ensure consistent presentation? TerriersFan (talk) 00:26, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
I'm happy with going straight to (city, state). One case where (state) would be preferable is when the high school is named after the city- for instance, look at the dabs of Portland High School. I certainly prefer Portland High School (Maine) over Portland High School (Portland, Maine). I think there are a large number of cases like this, which makes the intermediate level of (state) preferable. tedder (talk) 00:30, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
I think that a good way forward then would be to make disambiguation as "foo high school (city, state)" standard, allowing "foo high school (state)" as an exception when foo=city. TerriersFan (talk) 00:49, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
Works for me! tedder (talk) 00:54, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Agree, mostly – I would prefer "School name (city, state)" to "School name (state)" in most instances, even with only one such school in a state, but I'll go along with either. However, we should probably allow "School name (city)" when the city is one of the ones from the AP Style Book list that stand alone as the title of their own article. See Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(geographic_names)#United_States. One thing that we should try to avoid, I think, is having the two James Monroe High School articles for schools in New York State come out like this: James Monroe High School (New York), a defunct school in the Bronx; and James Monroe High School (Rochester, New York). I would prefer that the first one was "James Monroe High School (New York City)", like most of those on List of high schools in New York City, or "James Monroe High School (The Bronx)".
  • Agree - I really think "School (municipality)" becomes too problematic when it is allowed for some municipalities and not others. While I would prefer to see a more universal standard for all school articles, I understand that this will likely not be possible. I don't object to setting either "School (municipality, state-like-division)" as a standard, though I note that "School (state-like-division)" generally involves less typing (unless there are two such schools). LonelyBeacon (talk) 03:58, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Partially agree - I have historically favoured "School (state)" with "School (city/municipality, state)" only used when there is more than one school in that state with the same name, as was proposed in WP:NC(USS). However, I would be happy with standardising to "School (city/municipality, state)" with "School (state)" only for cases when the municipality is part of the school's name.

On the issue of commas vs. parenthesis again, I think it is best to accept that they are both valid forms of disambiguation for schools. However, I think any worldwide standardisation should use the system which requires least change, and in such an event I think parenthesis wins out, as was set out in WP:NC(S). It is clear though that such a worldwide standardisation is not going to get consensus, and I agree that doing it on a country-by-county is the best way forward, though it is more complicated than US parenthesis and elsewhere commas.

I have looked through some categories to get a feel for how it is done in each country. In Canada, parenthesis appears to be standard in the same way as it is in the US. In Australia, it really depends on what state you look at - in Western Australia commas are standard, while in all other states and the Australian Capital Territory use a mixture. On the whole I think commas are dominant, and a standardisation to using them in Australia is justified once an exact method of disambiguation is agreed.

In the UK it is a real mixture. In Category:Schools in England by county it is close but I think parenthesis is slightly more common, while in Category:Schools in Scotland and Category:Schools in Wales it is again a mixture but I think commas are dominant, and in Category:Schools in Northern Ireland commas are near universal. Any UK standardisation should be done either by constituent country or by the country as a whole. From my observations I would say if done by continuant country, it should be England parenthesis, and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland commas, and if done by the country as a whole, probably commas wins out by a small margin. In Category:Schools in the Republic of Ireland it is real mixture, but commas appear to be dominant. My preference would be go for commas for both Ireland and the United Kingdom as this is is simplest, though again the exact method of disambiguation would have to be agreed since it is all over the place at the moment.

In India, it is a mixture again, though commas is dominant, so again I think standardisation to commas is justified here. Overall, I think the best way to approach a new proposed guideline is to standardise on a country-by-country basis, and the choice between commas vs. parenthesis primarily decided on what is in majority use at the time of standardisation. A skeleton of a proposed guideline might look like this:

  • Australia - commas
  • Canada - parenthesis
  • India - commas
  • Republic of Ireland - commas
  • United Kingdom - commas
  • United States - parenthesis
  • Elsewhere - What is in majority usage

It should be pointed out though that even if the above was adopted in full, with the sheer dominance of the US, parenthesis would probably still be more common. CT Cooper · talk 10:40, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

I can live with
  • US and Canada - parentheses
  • Elsewhere - commas
However, I think it is better to have broad groupings rather than splintering otherwise we end up with having to list every country in the world which would rapidly become unwieldy and, even if it were practical, it is not necessary. TerriersFan (talk) 22:07, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
There are 3 questions that need answering:
  1. Do we need to standardise the naming conventions for school articles?
  2. Do we need to apply the same standard to every school article?
  3. What should that/those standard(s) be?
I'd answer them as follows:
  1. It would be helpful, yes!
  2. Personally, I can see no good reason for this. Its as easy to document two (or 3) standards as it is to document one.
I still maintain that across WP (not just in school articles) comma based dab is more common for geographical dab. If the american editors want to leave american articles as is, then fair enough. Its not productive to fight about it. But we shouldn't change the rest of the world to match a poor 'standard'. Fmph (talk) 22:13, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
Schools are not just place names, they are also names of organisations, so it is perfectly logical that they can adopt a different disambiguation system to pure place names. Outside of place names parenthesis is standard in most cases, and so schools have had the option of going in the direction of either place names or the rest of the project. It is misleading to characterise parenthesis as just done for US schools per what I have said above - it is widely used outside the US, and in some places (based on a quick glance at categories) it is a small majority usage or a very large minority. I would oppose any proposal that approached commas as "superior" or the "standard", with the US and Canada just treated as "exceptions". I also doubt that such a proposal will carry many editors with it, given the large amount of support parenthesis has previously been given with schools. CT Cooper · talk 10:42, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
I disagree. Even if you simplify it just to US and Canada and elsewhere commas, you still need to deal with exactly how you will disambiguate in different countries due to the different systems of regions and municipalities e.t.c. which was an issue under the previous proposal. "One size fits all" doesn't work, and when it was tried resulted in confusion. It is better to list the general agreed practices on a country-by-country basis where they are agreed. There is no need to list every country in the world, since at the moment there are many countries which are of little concern. The only viable alternative I can see is a very vague guideline which would not be of much use. The other problem with such a simplification is that there may be countries I haven't identified that also use parenthesis, and I would be against any proposal that forced a switch to commas where paranthesis was in majority usage. CT Cooper · talk 10:42, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
How the heck did we get to this point? We don't name a place "The United States of America" (which redirects BTW!) which I suppose is the "correct" name. We name the place United States of America and drop the article for sequencing purposes. Most languages do the same. Student7 (talk) 20:40, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
In most cases the definite article is not needed. However, there are a few cases in which "The" is part of the name itself, and it wouldn't make sense without it, The Petersfield School being a good example. CT Cooper · talk 10:37, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I just did a bit of research and in the UK both comma and parentheses are used. As a random example, look at the 196 schools listed in Category:Roman Catholic secondary schools in England. There are 25 that use parentheses and 27 that use commas - so I would say that the UK is a prime target for change but would need consensus on which way to go before articles were renamed. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 10:04, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the UK is target for change and will be more difficult to sort out than other more standardised countries such as the US. Those results make sense from what I have seen, though there was variation between constituent countries. For example, parenthesis is far more popular in England than it is in Northern Ireland. CT Cooper · talk 10:37, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

The country by country examples show how you would disambiguate within certain countries. Is it assumed that to disambiguate between schools in different countries, you would need to add country to the location? If we had a Park School in Birmingham, England, a second in Sheffield, England a third in Birmingham, Alabama and a fourth in Austin, Texas, it might be confusing to have Park School, Birmingham and Park School (Alabama). - Scribble Monkey (talk) 12:16, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

We really need subthreads here. US schools have been aware of avoiding redundant names for high schools within a state. So "Foo High School {State)" is sufficient and would have to be grandfathered in anyway since there are so many instances of that. Grammar schools could be a problem but don't often have separate articles. We have a school in our area called "Central Middle School" which seems a trifle redundant somehow, but "Central" seems like a common enough adjective that many schools would share that part of it, even within the state. But the rest of the name may be unique. So there may be a Central High School someplace, but probably not another Central Middle School, God help us, within the same state.
Having said that, we seem to have worked out a satisfactory compromise for defunct schools. We have defunct "Old school (state)" with "Old school" (still operating) being the main article without a modifier. It does carry hatnote! This seems reasonable. Student7 (talk) 12:28, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Confusing for who?
@Bob - I don't think that an RC category is necessarily representative of the wider UK issue. For a start RC schools tend to be similarly named worldwide, which is not necessarily true of all uk schools. Sacred Heart High School would be a quite common name amongst RC schools anywhere, so that when an inexperienced editor tries to create an article of that name they would find it to be a dab page with lots of Canadian and US schools listed. Pretty much automatically they would create a new article dabbed according to what they have just seen, i.e american style. Maybe that is something we need to consider in any naming scheme. But it doesn't mean we should slavishly follow that style. Fmph (talk) 12:45, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Possibly, though parenthesis can be found frequently in the by county categories in England, which cover all schools. CT Cooper · talk 14:59, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
From what I have seen, most naming conflicts do seem to occur within one country. However, when they do occur cross boundaries I think the only practical solution is to bite the bullet and have a mixture of styles. Even if there was a standardisation of either parenthesis or commas for school articles worldwide, styles would still vary between countries because of inevitable differences in regional and municipality systems between countries. CT Cooper · talk 14:59, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
I think we should follow the normal WP convention for names of disambiguated articles (WP:NCDAB), which would mean adding a disambiguating term in parentheses when necessary. We could leave standards for the content of the parentheses to different countries to decide. As for the current UK situation: there are 3744 schools using {{infobox UK school}}, of which 184 article titles contain parentheses and 250 contain commas. The latter includes a number of schools where the comma is part of the official title of the school. So commas are by no means the rule in the UK, and the figures do not justify discarding the project-wide guidance. Kanguole 12:45, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
That is very useful to know and I like the suggestion that we follow WP:NCDAB because then things are crystal clear with no wriggle room. I have no problems renaming a bunch of UK school articles to use parentheses - I would just like to see some consistency. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 14:42, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
I have to disagree with both of you. I ythink what is clear is that plenty of editors have interpreted WP:NCDAB differently from you by dabbing using commas as opposed to parens, myself included. I can't speak for the others but I have done so by treating schools as places - which they are - and so applying the geo/comma guideline. And it's not just in the UK. There are plenty elsewhere in the world, although mostly outside North America. I'd also disagree with the figures produced. I make it as follows:
Total 3908
Comma 272
Parens 185
And it's not just articles with commas that have them as part of their name. It also happens with parens, for instance St John's CE (A) Primary School. But whats obvious to me with all these is that many do not need dabbing of any sort, and so could/should be moved to simpler titles. Fmph (talk) 14:59, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
I'd also suggest that my earlier contention wrt comparative disambiguation is also true. A quick analysis of the contents of the parens versus the suffix after the commas shows that with the commas, there is only one use of UK and one use of Munich, whereas the parens articles use Barbados(x1), England(x8), Malta(x1), Northern Ireland(x1), UKx4 and United Kingdomx1. And that's despite being less numerous overall. The parens are generally used on UK articles where the need is to dab against non-UK and primarily north american articles.Fmph (talk) 15:24, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
Given that this is the project talk page of WikiProject Schools, I think I should point out that a significant proportion of articles in this project are not just places. In addition to the point I made earlier about schools in general being organisations as well as places, there is the odd article which covers schools in multiple places, such as La Martiniere College, plus a large number of school district articles, which are near purely organisations, not places. While these have not been given much attention in previous school naming convention proposals, and they aren't often disambiguated, they should not be ignored.
At the end of day, whether parenthesis originates from the US or not, it is very unlikely that any consensus will emerge to make a switch from commas to parenthesis or vice versa. On the whole, I maintain the view they are both valid forms of disambiguation, and any guideline should approach it that way. WP:NCDAB really can be read either way - on the one hand you could say that as schools are mostly places they should be disambiguated using commas like pure place articles (villages, towns e.t.c), or you could argue that WP:PLACE is written for pure place articles, not schools, and that parenthesis is acceptable for non-pure place name articles such as schools (this does have some precedent, for example the guideline points out that natural features sometimes use parenthesis, such as Eagle River). CT Cooper · talk 18:36, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Royal Leamington Spa

There is a difference of opinions concerning the education section of this article. It has been suggested that schools in neighbouring towns and cities should be included, if Leaminton children attend them. Independent views would be appreciated at Talk:Royal Leamington Spa. Thanks. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:43, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Done. I have sided with inclusion because although it is based in neighbouring Warwick, the school's priority area includes a large section of Leamington. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 08:06, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
And done by me as well. I have also sided with inclusion. No place is an island, culturally. Significant entities in neighboring places should be mentioned to paint a clearer picture of the place. --Arg342 (talk) 11:22, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
This got me thinking some more, so I asked about this sort of thing at the Helpdesk, and got an interesting reply. See Wikipedia:Help desk#Appropriate content for an article about a place. (If it has been moved to the archives, see June 28, 2011).
After a bit more searching I found Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about settlements which states in its opening paragraph

Similarly, a town or city may spill out of its administrative boundaries, and where this occurs, suburbs and significant places of interest and employment outside the city boundary should be mentioned in the article (though it should be noted that they lie within different administrative areas).

IMHO, this is good guidance regardless of the country we are writing about. --Arg342 (talk) 09:12, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Question on structure of Extracurriculars in High School articles

Hi there, I'm new to the Wikipedia community. I came across this article about the high school I attended Seminole High School (Seminole County, Florida). I noticed much of the article is missing references and lacks proper citation, especially in the sections about the extracurricular activities. At the moment, it's somewhat odd how the extracurricular activities are broken out, I was wondering do you think they should be organized by their level of achievements or alphabetically? Is there any precedent on structure of extracurricular sections of High School articles? --Habitage (talk) 15:09, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, welcome to Wikipedia! Its good to see a new author concerned with referencing. With regards to your initial question, the first place to look is the WikiProject Schools article guidelines which has a section on Extra-curricular activities. Also for some practical suggestions, have a look at the Featured articles and Good articles on the schools project page. Hope that helps, GlanisTalk 17:22, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
Hi, and welcome to the schools project. Seminole High School (Seminole County, Florida) does indeed have problems with its extracurricular activities, especially those concerning music and dance. Added around January 2010, they have escaped attention, but they do need significantly reducing to the barest essentials to remove the promotional tone. The article should of course essentially about the school and not about its bands. Anything you can do to help would be much appreciated. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:00, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

List of Old Guildfordians (Royal Grammar School, Guildford) FL

I've currently got this article (well list) nominated as a Features List candidate the comments page is here.

I would welcome any comments/suggestons/opposition/support on that page so it has the best chance in the process.

Thanks, GlanisTalk 15:57, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Scholastic athletic conferences

General question to the project: After trying to assess some articles on the long list of unassessed articles this morning ... I came across a few articles for scholastic athletic conferences. Are these articles that should be covered by the project, or not? I have no strong opinion either way, but thought I would get a general feel. LonelyBeacon (talk) 21:28, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I would support inluding them in the project. Sports is one of the more problematic sections of high school articles, attracting spurious listings of "notable" students and alumni for insignificant accomplishments, even in the context of local news coverage, and for events that never happened. For some schools, sports coverage makes them "notable" at a national level, for others, even though the coverage is entirely local, it is the overwhelming share of news coverage. I think that improved articles about interscholastic leagues and their state organizations, with good references and links to their league, section, and state records, will help editors find encyclopedic information about the schools they are working on and to more easily determine if a new entry is encyclopedic, trivial, or vandalism.--Hjal (talk) 04:04, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Probably a good idea. There is no harm in having an extra project keeping an eagle eye on pages that attract puffery and WP:LISTPEOPLE. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:09, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
Agree with editors above.
Note that regional high school athletic conferences are there for driving convenience (budget) and have almost no meaning for an encyclopedia. Big School beats Little School. So what? But conferences by size at the state level, even small states (provinces), have notability IMO. I think a lot of regional athletic conferences for colleges are similar but am not quite so certain.
I know nothing about athletic conferences at any level (if any!) outside of English speaking countries. Student7 (talk) 20:55, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Beijing No.4 High School

While I was paring down the unassessed articles list, I came across this school. I think it may be a "high" priority article, and there is a possibility it may warrant "Top" status as there is a strong feel that this may be one of the best schools in China. It has an impressive list of alumni, and it appears to have played some role (however minor) in the revolution, and even in helping China secure the Olympics. I have engaged with an editor who seems to have extensive experience in editing the Chinese wikipedia, but is newer to the English Wikipedia, and has informed me that, especially in terms of the older historic aspects of the school, third party sources likely don't exist, but that an alumni site might provide some backing. If some more experienced editors could give some advice, I think this is an article about an interesting school that has been witness to some really important history, in a part of the world that still remains less known to much of the English speaking world. I will open a section over on the talk page. LonelyBeacon (talk) 00:44, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Infoboxes for School Districts...

I have been working on school articles for a couples of months here in Wikipedia, and until the other day was only aware of a few Infobox templates for school related subjects. The ones I knew were the handful of ones mentioned in the instructions on the WikiProject page. The main one I am aware of is {{Infobox school}}. What I discovered the other day was that there are a few for Districts ({{Infobox School district}} and {{Infobox School District}}), however they are specifically not mentioned in the WikiProject instructions.

I made this edit the other day switching a {{School district}} to {{Infobox school}} and adding some data. A fellow editor reverted it, acknowledging a good faith edit, but saying that articles about Districts should use a District Infobox.

So the question is what is the preference, if any, of the community here?

My opinion is that Infobox school is a monster. It was built to handle everything and in doing so is almost unwieldy. It does however have some fields not in the current versions of the other District Infoboxes. I have no objection to refining another District Infobox and making it the standard for District Articles.

While this may not be the most pressing issue for the WikiProject, I feel that if there is going to be a standard, it should be declared, and the WikiProject moved towards that standard. Also, if there are elements that should be discouraged, the documentation for those elements should make that clear. --Arg342 (talk) 10:49, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for pointing this out. I agree that Infobox school is a monster, but would you mind explaining that directly on the box's talk page at Template talk:Infobox school? Your feedback is important and it will probably get more resonance there. Thanks. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:31, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
I've semi-protected {{Infobox school district}} since it is used on over 500 pages. On the issue of merging, I don't really mind either way. School districts are rather different from articles on single schools and having a separate template for them is not unreasonable, as long as there are no duplicates. CT Cooper · talk 11:53, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
I'll stand up and raise my hand: I was the editor who reverted Arg342's edit.
As has been mentioned here: this is murky area. There are certainly a lot of school districts which are one school districts. However, there are also a great many districts which encompass many schools, and in these cases especially, the difference between "the district" and an individual school in the district is big ... part of the reason why we have separate articles. The parameters in the school infobox, IMO, don't always translate well to the district, and vice-versa.
Kudos to Arg342 for bringing this up though. I had no idea there were two infoboxes for districts. I just went in and added the more detailed one to the article that Arg342 was referencing earlier. It looks nice, and certainly gives room for some more data.
I'm hardly married to either, and am very open to what the consensus on the issue comes to be. LonelyBeacon (talk) 15:07, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
The school and district articles need rather different material although there are a number of ares where they overlap. I see districts needing more emphasis on governance and program management. Arg342 has pointed out the lack of consistency in district direction.
Article guidelines only states that an infobox should be provided. The following section which addresses districts omits any guidance about differentiation. The example district article includes a district infobox in conflict with point 5 of the infobox guidance at WikiProject_Schools.
I propose that appropriate concurrence should be sought to approve the separation of district and school article guidelines to include separate infoboxes. Note that British Columbian and Canadian districts already have their own infoboxes. Both could be merged into the existing district infobox. Template:ISCL support should be considered for the district infoboxes.
SBaker43 (talk) 03:50, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
Part of the problem is that many school article creators don't fully understand that while we do have different infoboxes for the major word regions, having too many different infoboxes and creating ad hoc ones just serves to confuse new users. These infoboxes also have invisible embedded functions. Over the years there has been a lot of creation of superfluous school infoboxes and over the past months we've been trying to sort this out. I have put one duplicate School District infobox up for deletion - it was a basic school infobox with just its template name changed. Please don't hesitate to update the WP:WPSCH/AG yourselves to reflect these changes, and to update the instruction pages on the templates. Any queries about the actual hidden programmation of the infoboxes is probably best addressed to User talk:Kanguole who is one of the experts in this area for school related infoboxes. Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:13, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

As I see it, here are the selling points between having separate infoboxes for schools ({{Infobox school}}) and school districts ({{Infobox school district}}) versus a single infobox ({{Infobox school}}):

  • Appearance:
  • Maintenance:
    • Single template solution has a slight advantage here.
      • Only one to maintain. {{Infobox school}} is already a monster (I count 260 possible parameters, many of which are currently undocumented and included for backward compatability); it would only need three simple fields added to it to make a redirect from {{Infobox school district}} work 100%.
        • asst_superintendent
        • schools
        • teachers
      • Two templates would mean one monster and one tame domestic pet to maintain. Since there is still a monster, I don’t see the advantage here, UNLESS there is going to be a future effort to untangle {{Infobox school}}, and I don’t know that there is enough energy and commitment in the community to warrant that.
  • Usage instructions:
    • This can be a draw with clear instructions to future editors. As it stands now, it is unclear.
  • Ease of use:
    • This again can be a draw, especially if {{ISCL}} is improved or variants are created.
    • My idea here is to either add parameters to {{ISCL}} or create variants so that editors wishing to create a new school related infobox would get a blank template with fewer fields, but aimed more specifically to what they want. For example, if ISCL could take a country code, then 1) they can get the country specific infobox, if there is one (such as Canada or UK) and 2) if getting the generic {{Infobox school}}, fields that specifically do not apply can be suppressed. A great deal more could be done here, including making a wizard of some sort to interview the editor and deliver a concise infobox template.

Possible solutions:

  1. Clean up documentation and improve/supplement {{ISCL}}:
    1. ALL of the possible solutions would require this!
  2. Direct editors to use {{Infobox school district}} or {{Infobox school}} as appropriate, but allow existing articles to stay as they are:
    1. Add a few fields to {{Infobox school district}}, improve documentation, and we can move forward.
  3. Direct editors to use {{Infobox school district}} or {{Infobox school}} as appropriate, and aggressively move the districts currently using {{Infobox school}} to {{Infobox school district}}:
    1. While this could be done, I count about 900 articles using {{Infobox school}} that include "district" or "schools" (plural) in the title. This would be a big job and I am not sure it would be worth the effort.
  4. Switch to a one template solution ({{Infobox school}}) by doing a redirect from {{Infobox school district}} to {{Infobox school}}:
    1. This would not require a great effort as far as I can tell. It would require the addition of the three fields to {{Infobox school}} and making the redirect and it would be done.
  5. Switch to a one template solution ({{Infobox school}}) by editing the articles currently pointing to {{Infobox school district}} and changing them to {{Infobox school}}:
    1. Same as #4, but requires editing about 685 articles

I guess I have a slight preference to #4, with #2 my second choice. --Arg342 (talk) 11:29, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

What this detailed analyis seems to have missed out on is the fact that {{Infobox school}} is currently the 'global' standard, but that there are many localised variants such as {{Infobox UK school}}. Personally I see school districts as a very American construct and the proposed changes would solidify that. Certainly itwould have no real application within the United Kingdom for instance. The equivalent structure in the UK would be the Local Education Authority which, by current convention, are absorbed into the standard UK county articles. So ditching the school district infobox would mean that there may be a need for more localised infoboxes in the future. This is not really the worldview that we should be striving for. Fmph (talk) 11:56, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
I don't think the School District infobox should be scrapped. School districts are an intrinsic part of the US education system. What we don't want is people going off and creating district infoboxes for their own districts. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:11, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
As I read the comments, #2 above is the way to go. In that spirit, I have made some minor improvements to {{Infobox school district}}, and some major additions to the documentation. Please feel free to take a look and make further improvements as you see fit! Thanks for all your efforts here! --Arg342 (talk) 03:38, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Creation of new article on a Greek school

Hello everyone:) This is the first time I have ever written on English Wikipedia, but I have been quite active on Greek Wikipedia since 2007. My question regards the school I teach at, which is the Evening High School of Argostoli, located on the island of Kefalonia in Greece. What makes our otherwise ordinary school special is that we have been active in (Greek) Wikipedia editing since 2007, and our work has played an important role in the Wikipedia publicity campaign that has been launched in Greece since the beginning of the year. Namely, the "Concise Guide for Wikipedia Editors" that I wrote in Greek originally for our school has become a success all over the country, as it has been printed in 11,000 copies and is being distributed at Wikipedia workshops and events throughout Greece. The guide features material that has been contributed by students of our school. In addition, the poster I presented at the Scientix Conference in Brussels, Belgium won first prize in the poster competition (scientix.eu is a European-Union supported portal for science education throughout Europe and beyond). Again, the poster showcased the work we have done on Wikipedia. In view of all the above, I think an article on our school and its achievements in the Wikipedia movement would be of interest to the general public, perhaps even serving as an example for other schools to follow (demonstrating that even "second-opportunity", working adult students are "welcome" as Wikipedia editors). Should I proceed with creating the article? If "yes", could you offer some guidelines as to what templates/categories/etc. are applicable? Thanks very much, greetings from Greece:)--Saintfevrier (talk) 18:15, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

We take the general notion, which someone will disagree with below, that all high schools are notable. This is not a rule, but merely understood. Editors will quote otherwise if you read down.  :)
You seem unique because it is aimed (solely?) at adults, unusual for Europe. In the U.S. there is a second chance for everything everywhere!  :) Adults would attend classes at a regular school, work online, or attend same school at night.
Since you are involved, I would suggest putting your book in "External reading" and mention it on the talk page. School articles are not about people. They are about the school itself. Okay to mention the "principal" or major school leader that is on the spot responsible for the school, whatever the title. The templates have options for adding titles (and omitting others which will be absent).
A line might read "The school has received attention for being the only high school...." Then cite news sources that are clearly neutral. Educators that are not connected to the school system okay, but regular news preferred. Please understand that Wikipedia itself is not looking to pat itself or other contributing editors on the back! We have people with doctorates and near-illiterates editing. So editing itself, is no big deal.
A Canadian school which is "tolerable" Adult High School (Ottawa). A place to start. The templates for regular high schools seem out of place, but you can try looking some up. They have Athletics, notables. History would be germane to your article.
All need citations. Greek if you don't have English.
You might mention it here when you get it online and you're ready to have other eyes looking at it. Or not. Your choice. Student7 (talk) 20:27, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for your reply, and advice: all perfectly understood, all makes sense. The Canadian school is quite similar in purpose to ours, but ours is around 1/10 its scale... Adult education in Greece is provided by the Ministry of Education for working students aged 14+; usually (as in our case) the schools operate in the daytime as well, but as separate institutions (i.e. "regular" high schools). Adult students are entitled to attend regular schools, but most often this is not possible, as these students work during the day... hence the need for evening education. The curriculum is the same, save for phys-ed and arts classes (to save time and focus on the more important classes). Junior high is equivalent in duration to regular, high school is a year longer, diplomas are equivalent. (Idea: do you think that maybe it would be useful to include these general details on adult education in Greece in the article? Unless they have already been registered elsewhere...)
Citations are available, only in Greek (apart from the poster competition, there I would link with the EU portal). I think the "The school has received attention..." approach is best. I wouldn't need (or want!) to mention my name, the principal's name OK, I'll check if there are any applicable templates. As for notability of high schools, don't worry, I'm used to it: same debate in Greek Wikipedia;-)
So I'll give it a go and come back to this page to mention it for others to see once it's done. Thanks again!--Saintfevrier (talk) 21:25, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
The material about adult education in Greece should probably go somewhere in Education in Greece or an offshoot of it; in fact that article itself could do with some updating, referencing, and perhaps re-organisation.
It was a surprise to me that Greek 14-year-olds can be in full-time work (as I understood your comments). --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:36, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
Hi again:) Yep you're right, had a look at Education in Greece, the article definitely needs work... and there's absolutely no mention of evening education. Your question on 14-year-olds working full time led me to do a little research. No-one is allowed to work full-time in Greece unless he/she has completed compulsory education. Compulsory education in Greece is 9 years, which means that 14-year-old individuals are in the 9th grade and about to graduate from (junior?) High School (we call it "Gymnasium")... so that legalizes them to work (it would make more sense if the age limit was 15 though, wouldn't it?) Most of our students are much older anyway... not many 14-year-olds actually do work in Greece (my daughter, for one:))) Turns out I may have to delay creating the article - I've been requested to make a presentation of how we use Wikipedia in the classroom at a workshop in Prague, so I have to get my act together... I'll be back:)--Saintfevrier (talk) 23:28, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Make sure to cite sources. While if you can find English ones that might be a plus, Greek ones work perfectly fine. You amy also consider ones in say French if you feel confortable with such, since being in a language that uses the Roman alphabet they will be more accessible to the English reader than categories in Greek. Also, make sure to use your own words when writting the article, but if you have worked on the Greek wikipedia you probably know about copyright vio issues. Bear in mind even if you are using a public domain source in English they will often delete it if it is a direct copy. It is better to be short and in your words, than longer and in someone elses words and threatened with deletion.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:36, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Grade-based notability

My AfD of The Fenn School, which serves grades 4-9 in the US, has sparked a debate on grade-based notability at Wikipedia talk:Schools. Raymie (t • c) 19:32, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Ludgrove School

I wonder if any other editors would care to offer comments on the Ludgrove School article. It has previously been assessed as of high importance to the school project. It is a famous prep school which has educated many famous people including several members of the Royal Family. However another editor has proposed that the school be merged. Further comments would be welcome. Dahliarose (talk) 16:23, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer, Dahliarose. I have left a comment there. Moonraker (talk) 06:15, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Articles in need of review

I have spent part of the last few months reviewing the chart on the project page (WikiProject Schools articles by quality and importance); specifically looking at articles that were not assessed for quality or importance. I started with the "A" articles and have worked down through the "O" articles. As of now, there are about 100 articles that remain in that alphabet range which I did not assess in order to keep them on that double "??". Some of them are middle/elementary schools which may not have met the notability threshold. Some of them I couldn't identify as a school of any kind. Some were schools that I'm not sure are a part of the project. Some are schools that are long ago closed, have no referencing, and I am concerned may never be referenced (in some cases, schools that were opened for 10 years back in the 1920s or so). If you are looking for something to do, you might peruse those articles and help decide if the articles belong, don't belong, should be merged, or whatever. LonelyBeacon (talk) 20:04, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Notability as conferred by award or inspection

In order to simplify AfD's, can we reach consensus on awards that automatically confer notability to a school, and then record these in our project's outcomes for future AfD debates?

  • In the USA, the Blue Ribbon Schools Program is given to the highest performing or most improved schools in a state. The award is restricted by quota (determined by state population) and schools cannot be nominated more than once in five years. I would argue that a blue ribbon school is notable and therefore (as we assume with High Schools) it confers automatic "keep" status to any grammar, elementary, middle, junior high school blue ribbon winner that is AfD nominated.
  • In the UK, for state schools, Ofsted is the state inspector of schools. It awards a rating on a four-point scale of outstanding, good, satisfactory, or inadequate. In 2009, around 9% of schools were rated outstanding (source), but since then the tougher inspection regime means the number has fallen. As with Blue Ribbon, I would argue that and outstanding Ofsted report confers notability on a school. Therefore I propose that any outstanding-rated primary, infant, junior, first or middle school (past or present) should be automatically kept if AfD nominated.

I don't know about the education system in other countries but I suspect something similar exists. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 14:27, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think an outstanding OFSTED report on its own should make a school immune from deletion. There should be multiple sources to prove the school's notability. Sufficient sources can usually be found to satisfy the notability criteria for any UK secondary school. It's a different matter for primary schools. There has to be something else to make the school notable such as a very long history or a location in an historic building. I don't know too much about the Blue Ribbon program but I would have thought again that a single achievement is not sufficient to confer notability.Dahliarose (talk) 00:19, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
A high proportion of the notable schools in the United Kingdom are outside the state sector, and most such schools which might be notable come under the Independent Schools Inspectorate, not under Ofsted. To give some special status to Ofsted reports would be a form of discrimination (you could even say affirmative action), and we can't have that in defining notability. However, I agree with Dahliarose. A really good inspection result only signals excellence for the moment, and no sensible parent would rely on it two or three years later. If an inspection were to confer any notability, then that should be on a strictly temporary basis. Doesn't WikiProject Schools have its own notability criteria? If it does, then I suggest this discussion should be moved to the talk page for them, with the aim of agreeing an amendment. Moonraker (talk) 01:09, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
And why would independent schools be more likely to be notable? Seems a rather strange idea to me. Fmph (talk) 08:04, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

For a while now, there have been many discussions about the correct naming for categories that contain students of individual schools. We currently are using at least 4 different forms to address various regional differences. These are Category:People educated at schoolname, Category:Former pupils of schoolname, Category:schoolname alumni and Category:Old schoolnicknameians. At this point, there are still some naming issues between the first two and converting the last to anything else. I believe that the parent category for all of these is Category:Alumni by educational institution.

One large group of nominations that drove the creation of this RFC is here. There are about 15 associated individual CfDs there. These discussions link to some of the previous discussions which have reached multiple conclusions. This last set of discussions is also tainted by violations of WP:CANVASS. Historically bulk nominations don't work since the results for different institutions can be different. Conversely, individual nominations don't work since some editors claim that this is trying to bypass what is the common consensus that a bulk nomination would support and oppose for that reason.

CfDs generally don't have the participation that other classes of discussions have with discussions often closing very limited input (similar to what we get for some nominations at WP:RM). So in the interest of getting the input from a wider segment of the community it is believed that an RFC would help.

One example of what a category can look like when there is mixed results is Category:Former pupils by school in England. This category also shows a different issue in that while it is a 'by school' one, using the 'old fooian' naming does not identify for most casual readers the name of the school. This leads to a main discussion point here. Should we retain categories in the form Category:Old schoolnicknameians in violation of WP:OFFICIAL but, while being obscure, likely conforming to WP:COMMONNAME? I'll note that many of the naming policies and guidelines don't really cover category names. So a reading of Wikipedia:Categorization and Wikipedia:Category names may be helpful for some.

I'm not going to list a suggested solution for a survey at this time, but let one evolve from the discussion. The 'old fooian' issue is probably the difficult one. I think the other issues can can resolved by simply agreeing on the name for country parent category and then using that for the subcategories. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:55, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Support the status quo: Over the years, this "Old Fooians" question has proved to be quite a visceral issue, with some surprisingly aggressive debates about it. In my view, we do not need a "one size fits all" approach to naming these school categories for former students or pupils, and the constant pursuit of one is a recipe for a lot more conflict over the months and years ahead. Vegaswikian, you say "using the 'old fooian' naming does not identify for most casual readers the name of the school", but the simple answer to that is to include a link to the school in the category summary, which should be good practice in any event. We certainly need to take casual readers into account, but in an encyclopedia names should not be chosen because people lack the specific knowledge which they come here to find. Moonraker (talk) 01:51, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
And it should be noted that you may be responsible for violating WP:CANVASS. I'll leave it to the closing admin to make the decision on how to deal with responses by those you notified. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:23, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
It is somewhat ironic that the first respondent in an rfc resulting from a cfd 'tainted by violations of WP:CANVASS' should immediately canvass all those who supported 'Old Boodlefoodleians' in the said cfd, eg this diff and 6 other diffs within minutes of each other. Old Boodlefoodleians do tend to stick together. Occuli (talk) 19:54, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
Yep, and the closing admin will need to dig these out and decide how much weight these should have in the outcome of the discussion. This RFC was opened specifically to avoid the intentional contamination of the CFD discussions. BTW, I think there were 17 affected in a short period of time. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:55, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
When this question is constantly reopened, I do not see that it can help the quality of the debate for those interested in it to be unaware that another discussion is going on. WP:CANVASS says "In general, it is perfectly acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions, provided that it is done with the intent to improve the quality of the discussion by broadening participation..." It also says "keep the message text neutral", and I do not think what I said could have been more neutral. Moonraker (talk) 00:45, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
It also clear states "The audience must not be selected on the basis of their opinions". The users you notified all stated opposition in previous discussions. Timrollpickering (talk) 13:00, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Rename all this was meant to only by a policy for UK, other places have other issues and have generally reached consensus on the form they use) to People educated at Foo. This is the most functional and useful form. We have debated other forms and come up with this as a compromise that raises the least red flags. People have over and over again explained why many of the terms in the status quo do not work.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:03, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Rename all to a more understandable format, such as "People educated at FOO". WP:COMMONNAME applies to article names, and categories can be treated slightly differently for purposes of clarity. The vast majority of the "Old FOOian"-style names are essentially forms of jargon only understood by comparatively few. "People educated at FOO" is simple, clear, neutral, and relatively unable to be misunderstood. Category redirects, of course, should be placed on any alternate names that are commonly used by the "in crowd". Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:08, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment I have explained this elsewhere and so have others so I did not see why I should here. I will try though since there are no links. People educated at Foo has multiple advantages. "old fooian" is obscure, probably violates WP:Jargon, has no clear connection between the institution and the name in many cases, which makes it hard to detect when we have a disambiguation problem (it was mentioned that Category:Old Cliftonians is a cat that covers 2 distinct and non-related schools, but we are applying it to one although we have an article on the other). There is no rule in how to convert. The majority derive from the name by adding -ian, -ite or such at the end, sometines complicated by dropping an ending vowel. A few add just put old on the fron, so we add -s to pluralize (except Category:Old Lancing, where there is no -s, so it may or may not break rules for pluralizing). However many use names deirved at by other manners. Several use the name of the founder, which is often obscure. Others use a part of the official name which is rarely referenced. Others use an old name of the school and it sometimes is unclear if that can apply to those educated at the school under the current name. Some use a latanized form of the name, in one case creating overlap with a universities Latin form. Others use the name of the town where the school is, in some cases when there are multiple schools in the town. Still others use the name of the town where the school used to be. Others use phrases like "academicals" that could in theory apply to any place with academy in its name. There are a few old fooian forms that I have not even explained their origin.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:29, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment Well now that I have given a taste of why the old fooian form does not work, I will explain why we should use people educated at foo. "Former pupils of foo" fails because there are certain people who insist that pupil is no longer the accepted term for those being educated at secondary schools in the UK. Former studients of foo fails because another group as vocally insists that no one not yet at university level is a student in the Uk. Both of these terms also have the drawback of saying "former". This would exclude people currently being educated at these schools who are notable such as 1-members of royal families, 2-child actors/singers, 3-possibly some figure skaters and maybe people in a few other sports. Secondly "former" might give people the idea it would be good to create cats like "former politicians", "former doctors" and who knows what else, and it is not, so if we can avoid that word we should. "alumni" is used in almost every other education case, but people vehemently insist that in the UK "alumni" is only used for those who went to a university, and some people seem to want to argue that it is fairly rare even there. "people educated at foo" thus 1-avoids the student/pupil war which has no chance of being settled, 2-avoids former, with its excluding a some potential cat members, possibly spawning persen parralel cats and encoraging former elsewhere where we do not want it, 3- is clearly a way people would describe these things in the UK, and is in many cases the language used in the text, 4-clearly links the category to its parent institution, making it clear when we need further disambiguation based on the disambiguation used in the article name of the school, 5- allows for the term to be altered to the current term when the school changes its name, as we do with university cats like Alumni of Oxford Brookes University, 6- since we pretty much only have this in the UK and we have it agreed to the People educated at form, we avoud the Alumni of foo/foo alumni debate, which we currently have some schools with each of these forms in the UK cat.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:29, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Rename all to "People educated at (X)." I think it's time to give up on "Alumni." Over the years I've seen many people complain that "alumni" doesn't cover current students, doesn't cover all grades of students, and doesn't cover all genders of students. While I don't have any of these problems with it, I'm certainly not in favor of a lack of clarity. "Pupils" is equally problematic, as it really doesn't seem appropriate for college students in the US. "Old Whatevers" may be the most egregious bit of jargon I've ever seen in the category system, and I would like to see it completely expunged. That leaves me with "People educated at," which is clean, useful, and true in all cases.--Mike Selinker (talk) 03:20, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Support renaming - I have no problem with either People educated at School or "school alumni", or even "Alumni of School". I do have a problem when article/category titles are written in such a way that they are almost meta- in their presentation ... I'm not such a big person on the need for consistency, but I do have a problem when something can be titled more obviously and isn't. LonelyBeacon (talk) 06:03, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Support - tentatively - I support the standardisation of the categories, and my preferred is "Former students (or pupils) of Foo", I do not support renaming to alumi, as to me in the UK this implies those with an association to a University rather than a school, unlike in the states where it is the standard - to sum up I support, but not with the word alumni. GlanisTalk 07:23, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment I have interpreted this to apply only to the UK school issues. That is the only place where there is not a consensus. Alumni technically can be applied to current stedents, and its use is universal or almost universal in the case of university and college categories. Maybe I have made to many assumptions, but the UK schools is really the only place where we even discuss the various cats. A few other non-university cats use other words, but university and college is universally using alumni, and with Britain where the topic most at hand having clear distinction between school and university there is no reason to think this is meant to apply to anything except primary and secondary schools. Maybe we do need a clearer indication of what exactly we are discussing. However the old fooians do not enter into British universities and colleges, so there was no reason to suspect such were under discussion until Mike Selinker snuck mention of universities into his discussion. I can give long and involved discussions of why alumni should be used at all levels in the US. I guess I should have read the start more closely, but the four forms are all present in the UK, it was from a UK related cat discussion that I came, the other cat discussions have almost all been in the UK, and technically the UK has at least five cat forms, both alumni of school and school alumni. There might be reason to rename everything, everywhere at all levels to "people educated at X", but with everything in the header about "schools" and no mention of universities, there is no reason to think most commentors expected this to apply more broadly, and with Vegaswikian using the uniquely troubled UK cats as an example it is understanable why people might interpret this discussion more narrowly than everything, everywhere.John Pack Lambert (talk) 07:29, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
    • Sorry, I thought you were proposing a discussion on everything, not just on UK pre-university schools. For those, I support getting all of them to one standard, and if we can't get all of them to that standard, then at least all the non-"Old Whatevers" to that standard. It seems the only one not punched full of holes is "People educated at," which has my support if "alumni" is unavailable. But having different standards for the non-"Old Whatevers" is ridiculous, and should be changed immediately to something consistent. The minimum this RfC should accomplish is that.--Mike Selinker (talk) 23:42, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Proposal for entire cat tree I have looked at the whole cat tree and have the following proposal. 1- in Category:Alumni by university or college use alumni. This is used for all cats there. The alumni of univeristy/university alumni should be determined on a country by country basis. 2-In case of Category:Graduates of Air Force Academies, I think we should thus move this categories contents into the Univeristy and colleges tree, unless I severly misunderstand what RAF College Cranwell is, in either case drop the "graduates" and change to alumni or if Cranwell is sub-tertiary, change to "people educated at". 3- rearrange Category:Alumni by drama school so that it does not combine secondary and tertiary, then realign the contents into the relevant secondary or tertiary cats and follow their rules. 4-Category:Alumni by secondary school. I do not think there is a world-wide solution for this cat, we should go for nation by nation solutions. A-US, Canada, Ghana, Fiji and other cats that all use alumni- leave alumni unless there is a country specific argument for change. B-Australia, leave as is with all specific cats at People educated at X. C-Ireland, end the old fooian forms. Open to a discussion where we can determine if alumni is apprpirate form since it is used by 8 of the 12 schools, or if we should use people educated at. This introduces another form that has not been mentioned yet Category:Past pupils of The High School, Dublin. D- New Zealnd, leave former students since this is evidently the agreed on form in New Zealand. E- Pakistan. This has 1 old fooian, 1 alumni of school and 4 fooians (no old even, althoug Category:Patricians (St. Patrick's High School, Karachi is not as opague as the others. These need to be renamed, probably all to people educated at X. F- Sierra Leone, there is one cat here, but it is Category:Old Edwardians (St. Edwards). I would say go to People educated at School here, but it probably can go through an individual CfD. G- South Africa, this uses not only old fooians , 1 alumni (out of 15 cats) but also such categories as Category:Paarl Old Boys which may or may not be distinct from Category:Paarl Gimnasium Old Boys. I was told an old boys form would never fly by some of the most ardent defenders of the old fooian form. I would say move this entire country cat to people educated at foo. H- Sri Lanka has three old fooians intermixed with 12 alumni of. I would say shift all to alumni, but it might be worth opening to a Sri Lanka specific discussion. I- United Kingdom- move all to People educated at foo.John Pack Lambert (talk) 07:56, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Support status quo. The "Old Fooian" forms are recognisable names for former pupils of schools in the UK and are commonly used - claims that they are jargon are ludicrous, since Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and is meant to educate. "Alumni of Foo" would simply be wrong per WP:ENGVAR, as the term is not used in the UK except for former students of tertiary institutions. It is never used for primary or secondary pupils. This has been pointed out again and again. "Former pupils of Foo" would be mildly acceptable and is the form that should be used for schools without an "Old Fooian" form. Arguments that the British government now refers to students and not pupils don't really hold water, as 1) it doesn't apply to independent schools, which still use "pupils", and 2) government usage in 2011 does not and should not affect the vast majority of categorised articles about people who went to school when "pupil" was still the normal form; Wikipedia is not a revisionist document (unless the language used is actually unacceptable today, which is clearly not the case here). But frankly, there is no need to use a constructed name ("Former pupils of Foo") when an actual name ("Old Fooians") already exists. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:39, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Support status quo - Necrothesp makes the very good point that we should not be inventing new terms when we already have actual terms. Alumni would be paticularly unacceptable - an imposition of foreign language usage on a British subject, which is contrary to ENGVAR. Former pupils and former students are not suited for universal use on British schools for the reasons Necrothesp gives - for example, I was a pupil at Penrice School and a student at St Austell VIth Form college, but I have friends of the same age who were pupils at VIth form, and know children now who are variously students or pupils depending on the individual school usage. This is a perennial proposal. Has anyone tagged the cats so that watchers will know about this discussion? DuncanHill (talk) 09:05, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Support the status quo as Moonraker and others above. Use WP:COMMONNAME in local countries rather than trying to be procrustean. Why do we need a "one size fits all"? As stated by Moonraker, a brief introduction with a link to the school can clarify as needed. — Jonathan Bowen (talk) 09:14, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Rename all the UK ones to "People educated at FOO". (I am not aware of any cfds which have objected to 'alumni' in the States; there have been cfds which advocated deletion of all US (high) school alumni cats but the name has not been seriously challenged.) Apart from 'Old Etonian' and a very few others, the term 'Old BoodleFoodleian' is not used used in UK English except within 'Old BoodleFoodleian' circles. I have never heard Tony Blair described as an 'Old Fettesian' (google immediately comes up with a source for this claim in the Times, no less: "No one refers to the Old Westminster Nick Clegg, or Old Fettesian Tony Blair, but at times it seems as if the Tory leader’s real name is The Old Etonian David Cameron") or John Betjeman as an Old Cholmeleian, Old Dragon or Old Marlburian. "People educated at FOO" is a neutral descriptive phrase, not a 'constructed name', cf 'Category:People from Liverpool vs Category:Liverpudlians or Category:Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge vs Category:Caians. In my opinion the placing of an article in a category should always follow transparently from the contents of the article without any further research: X went to Foo School, ergo 'Cat:People educated at FOO School', not 'Cat:Old BoodleFoodleians'. (By all means let us put at the top of the category "People educated at FOO are known as Old BoodleFoodleians" and by all means keep 'Cat:Old BoodleFoodleians' as a redirect.) Occuli (talk) 09:40, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Question - Do we have to have one or the other? Could we use both "Old Fooians" and "People Educated at Foo" and let time take its course? I suspect that within a year or two we'd find one of these atrophying. Then have the discussion again. If we can't have both then:
  • Support the status quo since at the end of the day I find little evidence to suggest that what we do now doesn't actually work. It just seems to be something that editors like to look at from time to time. --Teach46 (talk) 09:48, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Support the status quo since regional variations should be allowed and it is in accordance with WP:COMMONNAME. Since the categories for USA and Canada uses their own terminology, so should the UK and other countries be allowed to do so. The Old Fooian, with a few variations, is used for a large number of schools in the UK and in a number of countries, so is widely understood. A myth seems to have developed that pupils is not used for secondary schools on the basis of the comments of one contributor. No evidence has been provided to support this, although there is evidence to contradict this, eg the glossary on the UK government website states "Secondary schools generally cater for pupils aged 11-16 or 11-18".[1] Thus I did not think there is any problem with using Former Pupils in categories and I think it is the best option for those UK schools which do not use Old Fooian or Alumni. Cjc13 (talk) 11:16, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
    • I'm a secondary school teacher in the UK - most schools I've been involved with refer to the pupils as "kids" when talking informally (between staff, with parents and the pupils themselves) and "students" on a formal basis. Pupils would, of course, be understood but is seldom used. --Teach46 (talk) 09:12, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment. Many categories for UK schools have recently been created by one or two editors using "People educated at". Many of these have only 1 or 2 entries. This seems to be a deliberate attempt to sway the ongoing discussions and does not seem to be in keeping with the spirit of Wikipedia. Cjc13 (talk) 11:23, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Rename, in general, to People educated at schoolname. "Former pupils of schoolname", in particular, fails the "timelessness" test. The encylopedia should aim to be timeless. When the individual becomes historic, "former" is no longer needed. "schoolname alumni" and "Old schoolnicknameians" may be appropriate where these terms are independantly notable (i.e. where the category can follow the name of a parent article. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:40, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Isn't educated past tense, so fails "timelessness" test? In practice, I think there are very few schoolchildren with articles in Wikipedia, and they could be included whatever the name of the category. Cjc13 (talk) 21:53, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • No it's a passive form that works in the present. And there are nearly a thousand articles in the year of birth categories from 1995-2006 - a mix of child actors, young sports stars, young musicians, young prodigies, families heavily in the public light and so forth. They're disproportionately likely to end up in the school's categories because information about their education is usually easy to find in profiles. Timrollpickering (talk) 22:24, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • To me it comes across as past tense. People at the school would be described as "People being educated at". Of course many of the ones you suggest would be at American schools where they would all be listed under Alumni, although that is normally considered to be for those who are a "graduate of a school, college, or university." Cjc13 (talk) 23:19, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • I also read it simply as past tense. It is timeless in that the phrasing won't ever need to be updated. For example: A living person was educated at their school; The 15th century inventor was educated at their school. Both facts are presented with the same structure. However, while a living person is a former student, the long dead person was a student. Dead people are not normally assocaited as former anything. Facts that relate to a time-specific time are best presented in past tense. There was a mini ice age in the middle ages. Only facts that are continuing, or permanent, are best presented in present tense. The sun provides heat to the earth. Two squared is four. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:51, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Thank you for clarifying your point of view. Personally I think you can say that the 15th century inventor was a pupil at the school and hence is a former pupil of the school. Also the school articles are more likely to include a heading "Former pupils" rather than "People educated at this school". Cjc13 (talk) 13:28, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Support a consistent form within each country Where a country has a consistent terminology use that, where it does not then use a clear neutral term that makes the categories understandable and accessible to those not versed in specialist jargon. The "Old Fooians" forms may be used by schools in a lot of countries but that is not the same thing as the individual terms being widely understood in those countries - by and large these terms are known to the schools themselves and those who went to them but to the wider world are opaque (and "Old Etonians" is very much exceptional in recognition).
    It's clear from searching around that some schools in the UK now use "alumni" but many others don't (and a lot don't seem to have formal relations with their ex pupils/students). It's also clear from looking around that there is a mix of use on "pupils" and "students" by schools these days and it's best to avoid that mess. "People educated at" is a term that avoids such a minefield completely and seems the best available compromise.
    The parent categories for each country should best reflect the term used for individual schools in that country and working upwards has been the best direction so far. Timrollpickering (talk) 13:14, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment. In the UK the use of different terminology partly reflects the different nature of the schools, eg indepentdent and state, grammar and comprehensive, etc, so I think it is reasonable to allow different names for the categories. As regatds "pupils" and "students", even if a school chooses to describe the children as "students" it does not make "pupils" incorrect. I think many schools would use both terms, but for the categories pupils is better to avoid confusion with university students. Cjc13 (talk) 13:36, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Don't use alumni for people with master's degrees or doctorates. That's for sure. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 14:39, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
This suggestion wouldn't be applied to colleges/universities, would it (we are talking strictly about secondary schools and below)? LonelyBeacon (talk) 15:42, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
I did mention that the top category is Category:Alumni by educational institution, but the problem that we have had is likely limited to the Category:Alumni by secondary school branch. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:31, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
I see the point. Thanks to you and Cjc13 for clarifying the position. LonelyBeacon (talk) 19:57, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
GeorgeLouis - why not? Please expand. My Masters is from Durham University and they call me an alumnus.--Teach46 (talk) 09:14, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Support the status quo. The names for former pupils of many of these schools have been used for hundreds of years. If someone is, for instance, looking for a list Old Etonians they would expect to find it in a category of Old Etonians not in an artificially created category such as alumni of Eton College or former pupils/students of Eton College. The categories should be dictated by current usage not by a desire for uniformity. If someone is interested in finding such a category they would naturally go to the school page first so the lack of consistency is not an issue. Dahliarose (talk) 13:06, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
  • 'Recognize national difference, and do it two ways. {{cat|Lawrenceville School alumni]] is perfectly natural American; Category:Eton alumni is less natural in England. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:23, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment - Not that this is ever a strong reason to change, but I think everyone realizes that in the absence of some uniformity, within six months of ending this conversation, some new editor is going to come along and move "Old Fooians" to "Former pupils who are currently alumni of Foo". Some English editor is going to change it back and call said editor some ignorant American. That American editor is going to be some American kid going to school at an American air base, and is going to steal a bomber from the air base, and will fly it over and blow "Foo" off the map.
There will be an attempt to smooth things over diplomatically, but when the UK diplomat is introduced as an "alum of Foo", and walks out over the insult ...
The UK will declare war on the United States, a nuclear exchange will ensue, bringing in the Russia, China, France, Kazakhstan, and perhaps Kyrgyzstan. This could have been prevented by simply adopting a more uniform standard of listing humans who used to attend a particular school, but who are we to prevent the world from going to Hell.
Even if my apocalyptic prediction somehow doesn't come true, I think we all realize that in the absence of some level of uniformity, there will be routine and regular attempts by people new to the projects to move things in good faith, and I suspect that its just going to lead to problems between editors. I have to plead ignorance in not knowing the particulars of the use of "pupil" and "alum" around the world. I'm glad to be educated on this now ... but I have a suspicion that this is a conversation that will have to come up many more times in the future, if things aren't changed.LonelyBeacon (talk) 17:44, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Support the status quo use of "Old Fooian" and "Former pupils of.." for UK schools. This has the benefits of being accurate and concise. I see no need for globalisation (or is that globalization?) of such terms and fear that one size does not fit all. I oppose the use of "Alumni" or "students" for UK secondary-level education and feel that there are too many issues with the semantics of the unwieldy "people educated at..." Countries have very different educational systems and to impose alien standards on each country is to misunderstand their condition. The rejection of terminology developed over their centuries of tradition is not a neutral stance. In addition, WP naming standards says that category names are "normally corresponding to the name of a Wikipedia article". Thus the article on Old_Etonians would logically have a similarly-named category. We do not have a page or redirect for 'People educated at Eton College'? (Many of these schools pages will already have at least a sub-heading named for their Old Fooians.) Ephebi (talk) 14:03, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Comment: This discussion should have been kept out of the CfD pages and brought here a year ago. If there is agreement here to maintain the Old Boy format as an appropriate terminology to use on UK-related pages, then that will give editors of those other countries' pages the confidence to re-instate a more nationally-appropriate set of terminology. I'm sure that other countries with historical British influence will watch this UK discussion with interest. The crux of the matter matter boils down, in my opinion, to whether a country's editors (who are likely to be best informed about their local terminology) can select their own terminology, or whether they have to submit to the proponents of globalization, simplicity and consistency. Ephebi (talk) 14:03, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Recognizability:One might argue that "Old fooians" is not recognizable to people outside of countries that use this style, but that is a weak argument, IMO.
Naturalness: It could be arguable that "Old Fooians" is the natural thing to look for, if you are from countries that use that. It could also be argued that this is not a natural thing to be looking for, if you are not from one of those countries.
Precision: I hear the issue with using terms like "alumni" or "students" or "pupils" or "graduates" because those terms may have different meaning in different places.
Conciseness: "List of Old Fooians" is slightly shorter than "List of people who attended Foo". But I don't find the length difference a compelling argument either way.
Consistency: "List of Old Fooians" cannot be applied to all schools ... as a matter of fact without knowing the exact numbers I would bet it cannot be applied to most of the school articles on this site. "List of people who attended Foo" can be applied to all schools. I would argue that "List of people who attended Foo" is the only suggestion thus far which satisfies all of the criteria given to fulfill the article titles policy. LonelyBeacon (talk) 01:50, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
    • On recognisability and naturalness, part of the problem with most of the "Old Fooians" names is that within their own countries they're generally only known to and used by the schools, their ex pupils and some of the intra-school networks. As noted above, "Old Etonians" is very much the exception in being widely known and used and it's telling how often it's the example given. Timrollpickering (talk) 13:53, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
As an American, I have to tell you that I would never think to look for "Old Etonians". I also have to recognize that in the UK, and some other parts of the world, that certainly might be the first thing someone might be looking for. I guess at this point, the issue isn't necessarily total number of reliable sources, as much as it is pertinent to find reliable sources that can confirm how common "Old Fooians" is? I have a growing suspicion, though absolutely no concrete confirmation, that this is not the more common form around the world. I would think if this could be more concretely confirmed, then a change, for the sake of the world might need to be changed; and that includes changing and redirecting quite a few American school lists as well. LonelyBeacon (talk) 01:40, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
  • comment - Nobody has yet shown the rationale (as far as I can see/read) for rationalising these categories into a single naming scheme. I'm not yet convinced that doing so is either necessary, or a good idea. Certainly a single scheme for use in EVERY country would be an unecessary cultural imposition. I also don't accept that terms like Old Fooians are necessarily restricted to individual school communities. Perhaps the test should be reliable sources. If there is evidence of reguyalr usage outside of the school community amongst the general public (as is the case with Old Etonians), then perhaps it should be used/allowed. In any event, if there is an imposed structure on the categories, then maybe the rule would be to use the familiar usage in lists i.e. List of Old Fooians and use the People educated at Foo College for the category. Fmph (talk) 17:50, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
But where is the guidance that says a consistant naming scheme in categories is a desired outcome? Is that just your opinion? Or is it supported by guidance or policy? Fmph (talk) 07:44, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
It's supported by policy at Wikipedia:Category_names#Categories_by_country, which begins "All categories whose subcategories are categories by country (roughly all categories that are members of Category:Categories by country) shall have a per-category naming convention which will apply to all of their subcategories."--Mike Selinker (talk) 08:03, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
It is also supported by WP:PRINCIPALNAMINGCRITERIA, which includes a criterion that names should be consistent. This is part of policy, not a guideline. LonelyBeacon (talk) 14:39, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Unfortunately, WP:PRINCIPALNAMINGCRITERIA says as its opening sentence This page describes Wikipedia's policy on choosing article titles. We are not discussing article titles here.14:54, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Actually i take that back. The 2nd sentence of WP:category names says Standard article naming conventions also apply; . So, WP:COMMON does apply to category names. Fmph (talk) 14:58, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
You left out a very important part of the quotation These naming conventions, their guidelines and their exceptions are listed here. and there is nothing in there related to schools. In fact it doesn't list any person-related categories at all that I can see. They seem to come into Wikipedia:Category_names#Categorization_of_people. Which doesn't specify consistency of naming schemes as being an over-arching guideline. Fmph (talk) 08:41, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
The word "convention" appears more than 20 times on that page. The first section says, "If you wish to propose a new naming convention for categories or modify an existing convention, do so on the talk page. If relevant, consider placing a notification at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions or other appropriate discussion pages. Creating a category, one should be particularly careful and choose its name accurately. Moving non-conventionally categorized pages to another category name (see{{Category redirect}}) imposes an additional overhead – an edit for each article and subcategory." The whole page is about naming categories conventionally. You need a separate section devoted to schools to tell you that the overall guideline of consistency applies to schools?--Mike Selinker (talk) 14:20, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't read it that way. there is no imperative in there that says that all categories of the type we are discussing must/should be identical. In fact, some of the other parts of that guideline seem to suggest using a degree of common sense rather than trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Fmph (talk) 14:54, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Nor are there written declarations on every red light that say "The rules of red lights apply to this particular red light," and yet somehow we all believe they mean "stop." You can choose to jaywalk if you want to, but you can't expect people to take your side when you say "I can't believe that car hit me when I crossed against the light."--Mike Selinker (talk) 16:03, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
Glad to see you agree with me that it isn't actually written down anywhere.Fmph (talk) 21:20, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
I think we can both agree that I don't agree with you on that point.--Mike Selinker (talk) 02:31, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment - As an American, I am perfectly happy with the "School name alumni" format. It should be retained for the U.S., at least. As for other countries, I would prefer consistent use of "alumni," but I would not object to "former pupils" or "former students" if those terms are more meaningful in the cultural context. However, as a Wikipedia contributor, I believe that the "Old Fooians" should be avoided in category names. That chummy form is inherently obfuscatory and it inhibits useful contributions by contributors who have not been initiated in the "Fooian" tradition. I also object to the "People educated at schoolname" form because it carries the sometimes-false implication that the people included in the category were in fact "educated" at the school in question. I have documented the school affiliations of a number of sports stars, rock musicians, porn stars, race-car drivers, murderers, etc., some of whom attended their associated schools only briefly. All of those people are legitimately described as "alumni" of the associated schools, but that does not necessarily mean that they were educated at these places (if, in fact, they were successfully educated anywhere) -- in some cases, their enrollment in a particular school was so brief that it is highly unlikely that they obtained any education there at all. --Orlady (talk) 19:25, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
I hear you, but the problem I see: if we are asking folks to change "Old Fooians" to standardize the articles, and as noted further up the discussion "alumni", "pupils", and "students" are all problematic, it becomes an issue when we change "Old Fooians" to conform to a standardization, but don't change other articles as well. LonelyBeacon (talk) 01:40, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
But old fooians has multiple problems in the by school categories. They don't naturally sort in an order associated with the schools. Even if you force them to sort by school, you have articles at apparently random locations in categories since it is not obvious from most of the names, what the name of the school is. With their other problems, all of the other options don't add this level of confusion. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:09, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Rundown by country

I've just gone through the national categories in the Category:People by educational institution tree and found a number of schools categories that were not in sub-categories of Category:Alumni by secondary school. Where necessary I've created a national sub-category. As initial names I've used "Former pupils by school" for UK dependencies and "Alumni by secondary school" for other countries but this is entirely because of the need to use something and we can amend them if and as needs be. There are now thirty-two countries with schools categories and they break down as follows:

  • Australia - Subdivided by state, all categories use "People educated at School Name" following a CFD in February. A number of schools have an "Old Fooians" form, some but not all of the categories used it before the CFD.
  • Bangladesh - Just one category in the form "School Name alumni".
  • Canada - All categories in the form "School Name alumni" following a CFD in January, before this some used "Alumni of School Name". There are surprisingly few categories for Canadian schools compared to similar countries.
  • Egypt - Just one category in the form "School Name alumni".
  • Estonia - Just one category in the form "School Name alumni".
  • Fiji - Two categories, one in the form "School Name alumni" the other "Alumni of School Name". A CFD in February deadlocked on which particular consistent form to use.
  • France - Just one category in the form "School Name alumni".
  • Ghana - Two categories, one in the form "School Name alumni" the other "Alumni of School Name".
  • Guyana - Just one category in the form "Alumni of School Name".
  • Hong Kong - Just one category in the form "Alumni of School Name".
  • Hungary - Just one category in the form "Old Fooians".
  • India - Five categories in the form "Old Fooians", three in the form "Fooians", three in the form "School Name alumni".
  • Iran - Just one category in the form "School Name alumni".
  • Ireland - (Currently only contains schools in the Republic.) Eight categories in the form "Alumni of School Name", two in the form "Old Fooians", one in the form "Former pupils of School Name", one in the form "Past pupils of School Name".
  • Isle of Man - Just one category in the form "Alumni of School Name".
  • Jersey - Two categories. One in the form "Old Fooians", the other in the form "Foo Old Boys" (Foo is not the School Name).
  • Lebanon - Just one category in the form "School Name alumni".
  • Luxembourg - Just one category in the form "Alumni of School Name".
  • New Zealand - All categories in the form "Former students of School Name" following a CFD in December 2009. Prior to this the-then few categories included "School Name alumni", "Alumni of School Name", "Former pupils of School Name" and "Old Fooians".
  • Nigeria - Just one category in the form "School Name alumni".
  • Pakistan - Four categories in the form "Fooians", one in the form "Old Fooians", one in the form "School Name alumni" the other "Alumni of School Name".
  • Romania - All categories in the form "School Name alumni".
  • Sierra Leone - Just one category in the form "Old Fooians".
  • Singapore - Just one category in the form "Old Fooians". Update - Five in the form "School Name alumni", one in the form "Old Fooians".
  • South Africa - Nine in the form "Old Fooians", three in the form "School Name Old Boys", two in the form "Foo Old Boys" (both use the main distinctive words from the School Name), one in the form "Alumni of School Name".
  • South Korea - Three categories, all in the form "School Name alumni".
  • Sri Lanka (cat just moved) - Twelve categories in the form "Alumni of School Name", three in the form "Old Fooians".
  • Switzerland - Just one category in the form "Fooians".
  • Taiwan - Two categories in the form "School Name alumni".
  • Turkey - All categories in the form "School Name alumni".
  • United Kingdom - Subdivided by constituent country. A variety of forms with "Alumni of School Name", "Former pupils of School Name", "Old Fooians" and "People educated at Foo" the main ones but a few other forms can be found on a handful of categories.
  • United States - Some subdivision by state. Overall all but two categories are in the form "School Name alumni". One is in the form "School Name people" (and the description says it includes staff and honorary diploma recipients), the other in the form "School Name alumnae".

(Note that although "Old Fooians" or "Fooians" forms are used by schools in a number of countries that does not mean the terms are widely known & understood in those countries outside of the schools, as stated by several users in various CFDs.)

Update There's also now one for:

  • Barbados - Just one category in the form "People educated at School Name"

In summary:

  • Just one category - Bangladesh, Barbados, Egypt, Estonia, France, Guyana, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iran, Isle of Man, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Switzerland (151615)
  • Two - five, single form - South Korea, Taiwan (2)
  • Two - five, multiple forms - Fiji, Ghana, Jersey (3)
  • Six - twenty, single form - Canada, Romania, Turkey (3)
  • Six - twenty, multiple forms - India, Ireland, Pakistan, South Africa, Singapore, Sri Lanka (56)
  • Over twenty, single form - Australia, New Zealand (2)
  • Over twenty, nearly all same form - United States (1)
  • Over twenty, multiple forms - United Kingdom (1)

Timrollpickering (talk) 13:16, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Comment. Producing a globalization list here is premature before the UK-specific topic is decided above. I also note that many of the categories have been 'rationalised' already, without broadening the discussion outside the CfD process. The list above would have looked quite different a year ago. Ephebi (talk) 14:03, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Comment Timrollpickering has produced for our consideration a careful analysis of a global picture which he has been very active in creating, and as Ephebi says the list would have been quite different a year ago. It should not surprise anyone that British schools have been among the most resistant to the "globalization" which is being promoted. What I observe here is a frankly obsessive approach to imposing a global consistency which will only suit a minority of those who are interested in the question. Moonraker (talk) 00:59, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
A year ago the main differences were that a lot of the smaller national categories weren't there and the individual school categories were spread all over, plus the Australian categories were a wide ranging mess and the Canadian categories were mixed on the placement of alumni. Otherwise it was much the same mix of clarity within some countries and mixes within others. Timrollpickering (talk) 13:14, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
A number of changes appear to have been recently made by Timrollpickering (talk) without open discussion, such as the creation of new categories and speedy renames. These changes seem to reflect his views rather than a consensus. Cjc13 (talk) 11:25, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Rename. People educated at Foo" is very objective, non-controversial and a real pain since most nations will have to change all of their related categories! All for the best. Student7 (talk) 14:42, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
It just occurred to me that "educated" may be a bit pov presumptive. "Alumni" just mean "attended" which is our intent. "Educated" means he got an education. For some notorious people, this may seem a bit much. Or politicians with whom one disagrees!  :) Student7 (talk) 15:31, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Alumni actually mean graduated in some areas and not just attended. That's why it was not forced on all subcategories. Probably the only generic option is Category:Graduates of xxx school but that would eliminate large numbers of people in these categories who just attended a school. Personally I don't find that as a problem. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:59, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
That one's unworkable because there are countries where nobody "graduates" from school, there are no formal ceremonies at all to mark the end of one's schooling and those who've gone the whole distance just complete it. Even in cases where there are graduation ceremonies it's extremely difficult to check a lot of people's precise outcome. Timrollpickering (talk) 19:39, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
Excellent point! This was true in some parts of the US in the early to mid-19th century. "Academies" (we would say "high school" nowdays) were used as focii for tutors and students with aspirations to enter college. Once they passed the college entrance exams, they were no longer seen around the "Academy!" And some of these Academies still exist though in quite a different form. So they were "attendees" at best and never "graduates." Student7 (talk) 19:06, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
I do not have a problem with the word alumnus being used in connection with any schools, colleges, or universities which themselves are comfortable with using it, but it would seem to me a recipe for confusion if the English Wikipedia were to allow the word to have substantially different meanings in different areas of the encyclopedia. So far as I recall, alumnus originally meant "foster-child", later "pupil", and yet later "former pupil or student". I think it would be a mistake to stray from the last meaning. Moonraker (talk) 01:13, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
The following is the definition of alumnus from the online Oxford English Dictionary: "The nurseling or pupil of any school, university, or other seat of learning. Also, a graduate or former student (chiefly U.S., esp. in pl.)" The term does seem to be used in the UK but it does not seem appropriate to enforce American English usage on the rest of the world merely for the sake of consistency. Dahliarose (talk) 16:58, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment. I've nominated a few of the far-outliers here. Those are the "past pupils" category in Dublin, two "alumnae" categories in the US and UK, and the "people" category in Cincinnati. Also, in the above list, the Singapore description is wrong; it has five "School Name alumni" categories and one "Old Befuddlians" category.--Mike Selinker (talk) 04:49, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
  • proposal - I suggest that the national wikiprojects should be asked to come up with some "Former students at ..." Category Naming Guidance for their area of coverage. Failure to do so may lead to the imposition of a 'global' category naming scheme. Fmph (talk) 07:49, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment. I think we should go ahead with "People educated at X" (which is perfectly accurate and neutral) in countries where we can. Let countries where editors are balking alone. Perhaps we can bring them around someday. This is a "Project" not "Policy." We can make more sense where we can. Where editors are too emotionally involved with retro naming, maybe we'll have some other editors later who will be willing to step up their articles to objective naming. Student7 (talk) 11:57, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
    • I think it's workable for each individual country to have its own consistent form - we've had this on the university alumni categories for several years now and it's worked quite well. What isn't very workable is when there's a mix within a national category, often resulting in confusion, accidental duplication and messes when only a few of the categories come up on CFD without a clear standard to aim for. Timrollpickering (talk) 14:13, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Support rename all to "People educated at schoolname" - This is a sensible, useful phrase that is plain English. Uniform naming is good for an encyclopedia. Terms such as "alumni "or "Old ABCs" might be used in the vernacular, but that doesn't mean the encyclopedia articles must follow suit. Redirects can be employed so readers searching for alumni or Old will find what they are looking for. --Noleander (talk) 16:57, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment "People educated at ..." does not seem to comply with WP:Commonname. Pupils seems to be a straightforward term used by nearly all, if not all, schools in some context, so "former pupils" seems more appropriate if a consistent term is needed. Cjc13 (talk) 17:50, 3 August 2011 (UTC)
  • I was referring to their use in the name of categories. While a baseball players who retires from the professional sport can still be a baseball player, in relation to schools there is a definite point at which they leave, so I do not think it is a valid comparison. Even if you want to make the comparison, for instance the article for Larry Bird has "former American NBA basketball player" in its opening sentence. Cjc13 (talk) 09:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
  • As I said I do not think your comparison is a good one. I don't think anyone. apart from perhaps Good Olfactory, is suggesting deleting all these categories and there are plenty of categories that use former in their title. Cjc13 (talk) 18:56, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
  • May I ask, What is this discussion about? The section heading does not specify clearly that it is to do with former pupil categories for schools in England (in practice mostly, but not all, secondary schools) but that seems to be the only real focus of it. The discussion follows a whole series of Cfds, such as these. I suggest that those piling in from other parts of the world should be slow to wish to impose a global approach on England. In any event, if there are several who wish to do so, there seems to be no consensus about what particular global approach to impose. Moonraker (talk) 10:17, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Everyone has an input into category names: this is to avoid the infiltration of names incomprehensible to the world at large. In any case, many of the people opining here and at cfd (and disagreeing with you) are from the UK. (I have no wish whatever to impose or support a global consensus. Alumni is fine for the US.) Occuli (talk) 10:53, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
  • I think that the UK folks should be omitted from any imposition of standards until they can come up with one of their own. I think (therefore) that they should exempt themselves from further discussion here until this happens. I suspect that a majority favor what the rest of us are saying. But this is not a consensus. It is the extremists, as usual, driving their discussions. "Old Befuddlians" is hardly going to cut any ice with various nationalities I could name in the UK, but won't. There is absolutely no reason why "People educated at Oxford" cannot take its place alongside "People educated at Places That Accept Scum Like You and Me!" I think the rest of us should go ahead. The UK can catch up later, if exempted from what we decide here.
Incidentally, there are people who are not UK-ers who have legitimate input into that decision-making process. While I would hate to have a non-UK majority foist a poor decision on schools from there, there is no reason that legitimate editors not from the UK but editing school articles cannot have their say. Student7 (talk) 00:37, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment - It there is no consensus, and I am fine if that is the case, so be it. My concern is that in a year or so some new editor is going to go in and start editing because they are a bit ignorant of this situation, and someone is going to jump down their throat for imposing UScentric views or not respecting British tradition or somesuch ... and I am worried based on what I am hearing that this has happened before, and that it is going to keep happening until things are more standardized. If the decision is, things don't have to be standardized, that's fine, but I do hope all editors will play nice when it looks like some interloper comes in and starts making bold changes that vioalte the local turf. LonelyBeacon (talk) 07:36, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
As I said above, why don't we ask the country projects to take on this task? Any that don't can have a global solution imposed. Simples. Fmph (talk) 10:21, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
As the British education system was exported around the English-speaking world, would the global solution be the convention we select for UK schools? (Obviously places like the USA would already appear to have its national dialect preferences set by its own contributors.) Ephebi (talk) 13:42, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Cfd relating to renaming of categories for Alumni of Schools in England

There is currently a discussion, started on August 8, in Cfd relating to the renaming of categories for Alumni of schools in England. Any contributions to the discussion would be appreciated. Cjc13 (talk) 21:51, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

where we seem to be now

We seem to be all talked out on this subject. While I can't close the discussion, I think the following conclusions are supported by a read of the comments:

  1. The Old Boys network is not going away. There are many editors making well reasoned arguments to keep "Old (X)s" as categories, and just as many making well reasoned arguments for wiping those jargon-rich names off the face of the earth. In the state of such a deadlock, I don't see those changing except by administrative fiat. (That definitely could happen, but it would be a guideline-based decision, not a consensus-based decision.)
  2. Irrespective of those "Old" categories, and despite a few "Support the status quo" arguments (which seem primarily to support the existence of the "Old" categories), there is almost no one pushing for anarchy in naming. Nearly everyone who cares wants (and in some cases, demands) some consistency of naming--again, not necessarily including the "Old" categories.
  3. However, there is just as widely accepted a view that difference across countries is okay. While we could get to a single standard such as "People educated at" or "People who attended," there's no pitchfork mob demanding such a thing. To this group, consistency within each category is more important than consistency across all categories.
  4. Allowing for this, pretty much everywhere other than the Commonwealth uses, and will continue to use, "Alumni" in one of its two supported forms, except where "Old (X)" is used.
  5. Inside the Commonwealth, the train is moving toward the "People educated at" format. "Alumni" is thoroughly debunked for UK categories, and is very likely to be eradicated from the Commonwealth categories. There are a couple of very vocal "Former pupils" supporters, but more people that say "Former pupils" suffers from time and consistency issues. "People educated at" also has its critics, but it has way more supporters than any other option. (A latecomer, which has not been evaluated, is "People who attended" or "Attendees of." While intriguing, this format has no current categories.)
  6. Since nearly all of the "Alumni of" categories are in the Commonwealth, the form "Alumni of (X)" will probably vanish, leaving "(X) alumni" as the main form of "alumni" categories.
  7. So with all that said, I believe a conclusion of Leave alone all "Old (X)" categories for now; rename all non-Commonwealth, non-"Old" categories to "(X) alumni"; rename all Commonwealth, non-"Old" categories to "People educated at (X)" except where "alumni" is dominant would be completely warranted by the above discussion. I'm not closing it as that, because I can't. But I wouldn't be surprised if that was the conclusion a neutral closer came to.

I expect some disagreement on this, naturally. I personally am one of the most vocal detractors of the "Old (X)" categories, even going so far as to dub them "Old Befuddlians." But I can't see how the army of supporters of those gets overruled in a community that values consensus. I can see a world where one general category type (likely "People educated at") sits next to those strange looking outliers. For now, anyway.--Mike Selinker (talk) 15:26, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

  • Good summary. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 16:34, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree with Bob that this is an accurate summary of the conversation. I'm certainly willingot live with it ... one one hand it solves a problem. On the other hand, I suspect that a year or two in the future, we will be back to square one unless something more formal comes into being. Perhaps it is good enough to take a "wait-and-see" approach, or perhaps while this is still fresh, we could try something more formal. LonelyBeacon (talk) 17:30, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Comments on summary:
1. Many of the editors in favour of using "People educated at" are from North America but they seem to have no intention of using it for their own categories. Some discussions have been decided without any input from local editors.
2. ""Former pupils" suffers from time and consistency issues". Where is the evidence to back this up for UK schools? It may be true in North American and 1 or 2 editors claim personal knowledge of the use of student for secondary schools in England, but evidence has been presented for UK schools, particularly in Scotland, that contradicts this view for the UK. Cjc13 (talk) 09:00, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Personally, I'm in favor of abandoning "Alumni" across the board in favor of "People educated at" or "Attendees of." But that has not gained traction here. It is irrelevant where people are from, as long as they're listening to people from other countries. And what we're hearing from UK editors is that at least some of them believe "students" and "pupils" and "alumni" have very different meanings in the UK. If we North Americans were ramming something down the UK editors' throats, it would be "Alumni" solely for consistency's sake. But we're not. We're listening to what UK editors say and adjusting accordingly.
As for "former pupils," what I said was "There are a couple of very vocal 'Former pupils' supporters, but more people that say 'Former pupils' suffers from time and consistency issues," not that it was a fact that it suffers from those issues. I know you disagree with the concept that it is a bad category name, but you can't disagree with the fact that lots of people have said it is.--Mike Selinker (talk) 16:21, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
What I am asking is what evidence do they have against using "Former pupils". At the moment it appears to be anecdotal or somebody's personal opinion, whereas there are UK secondary school websites and government websites which use "pupils" and "Former pupils" contradicting what they have been saying. Cjc13 (talk) 20:56, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

One issue which hasn't received much attention is how to name the by country categories. "Alumni by" or "Former students by" or "Former pupils by" works for countries using those forms for the individual categories, but we need a standard form for countries using the "People educated at" form and those that are just "Old Fooians". A lesser issue is whether or not to include the adjective "secondary" - there's a number of countries where the word has been objected to because either it doesn't fit how schooling operates in the country (e.g. Sri Lanka where if I understand correctly most schools teach all years but movement between schools at certain points is quite common) or because the term is not used for all sectors (here in the UK it tends to only be used for schools in the state sector). Whilst this on can be changed in individual circumstances it would be handy to have a clear default starting point when adding further countries. A few countries (Estonia, Turkey and the US) are using "high school" instead. Timrollpickering (talk) 23:44, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

That's the ticket. Cant go wrong there. I think that the Old Fooians issue is a slight red herring as its unlikely that a whole country would have all the cats in that form. Cats in that form are more likely to be interspersed with others in one of the more 'normal' forms. Fmph (talk) 06:14, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
If the category is well developed I agree; however there are some very small categories for countries like Hungary, Sierra Leone and Switzerland where the sole categories so far are in that form. Timrollpickering (talk) 10:32, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't think there's a form that works there. "Old Boys in Sierra Leone by school" is too gender-specific, and "Old People..." certainly doesn't work. Let's handle these on a case by case basis, with "Alumni" being the default if no one can find any evidence that "Alumni" isn't country-appropriate.--Mike Selinker (talk) 16:11, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment In the UK, "Alumni" for schools is often defined as "Former pupils". So using "Former pupils" would be closer to the naming format for those schools using Alumni. If you wanted to copy the American format, you could use "Foo School former pupils" for the categories. Cjc13 (talk) 21:20, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Good summary – I would personally be happy with "Alumni in the United Kingdom by school" (using the fact that the super-parent is Category:Alumni). (I am from the UK.) Cjc13 ought really to have noticed by now that the "Former pupils" format, once a dead horse, has now been converted into pet food and cannot even be satisfactorily flogged. Occuli (talk) 23:38, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Where is your evidence for your claims that "pupils" is no longer used for secondary schools? So far no evidence has been provided that supports this claim. Cjc13 (talk) 09:55, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
  • I would actually be okay with "Foo School former students" if that was the general preference. It would at least be more consistent with the American categories that used Alumni. Cjc13 (talk) 10:05, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
I agree that the use of pupil and student is inconsistent. Local schools that I deal with seem to use either, with perhaps the majority using "student", yet Ofsted continues to use "pupil" to refer to all who study at a school, including its sixth formers. The DfE's EduBase website avoids either using "children" instead, yet uses "pupils" and "children" interchangeably on its main website. That total lack of consistent use is why I for one am completely in favour a solution that uses neither student, nor pupil in a category name. --Simple Bob a.k.a. The Spaminator (Talk) 14:13, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Thank you to Occuli for at last providing some evidence to back up your claims. I do not think that the preferred use of student by some schools makes using pupil incorrect or inaccurate, eg on the Pastoral Care section of Eckington School, it says "Every pupil at Eckington School has a Form Tutor"[3]. I actually think that either pupil or student would do, although pupil seems the more neutral term as it is not used for those at University. Clearly we differ on this matter but I think it is worth discussing. Cjc13 (talk) 14:36, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
  • I completely empathize, but it really feels like further discussion will only be reiteration of points made multiple times. Since User:Vegaswikian made the original request for comment, I will ask him whether he believes a conclusion is warranted, and if so to close the discussion with any closing comments he would like to add.--Mike Selinker (talk) 15:40, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Since I participated in the discussion, I am involved and should not close the it. I think the summary is reasonable. It points out that the oldfooian issue is still not resolved and it will likely take an additional discussion, possibly here. I think in addition to the simple question of using oldfooian there is a more difficult one about how these work in a category tree by school. This discussion will automatically be delisted after 30 days, but the RFC notice can be removed before then. I guess that a request for a closer can be posted at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:08, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment I have two remaining points here which I don't believe have been raised.
1 Pupil vs Student: Occuli raises an good point that there has been a trend to use "student" in some types of British schools instead of, or alongside "pupil". However this was certainly not the case a few decades ago. But these categories are to be applied extensively to historic characters, where calling each a "former student of" would be an inappropriate neologism. However applying the term "former pupil" is as valid today as it was then, albeit not so fashionable in some sectors. The vast majority of biographies in WP would apply to people who left school before the 1980s, e.g. in the days when "student" only applied to university. To be encyclopaedic WP should reflect reality, rather than fashion.
2 Non English speaking world. There are a number of Non-American, non-Commonwealth countries which have such categories. There needs to be a choice as to impose a US format (alumni?), a UK/Commonwealth format (pupil?), or if another more local term can be found. (e.g. should a European school such as Category:Lycée Louis-le-Grand alumni have a US format applied to it?]] Ephebi (talk) 08:29, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I'd have to say that the more modern eduspeak in the UK commonly uses student for secondary and pupil for primary. Fmph (talk) 09:50, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
Some schools may use "student" but they also use other terms including "pupil". Of the 8 secondary school websites listed above by Occuli, 7 also used "pupil" on their website. The use of "student" by some secondary schools does not make "pupil" incorrect for those at secondary school. Cjc13 (talk) 10:09, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I expected the usual quibbling. Even Eton uses 'student' on more pages than it uses 'pupil': pupil, 38 results versus student, 53 results. Occuli (talk) 17:18, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
You missed out Etonian, 484 results. Cjc13 (talk) 19:08, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
As this particular sub-thread is 'Pupil vs Student', your search is wholly irrelevant. Are logic and comprehension not taught these days in the independent sector? Occuli (talk) 08:54, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
As Eton mostly uses Etonian instead of pupil/student it shows how irrelevant your searches relating to Eton were. Cjc13 (talk) 19:29, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
Fmph, if we were writing a DfE paper about teenagers at a modern state school today then I would have some sympathy for using the term "student". But my point remains that we are applying these categories largely to people of various eras to whom such modern jargon would have been inappropriate. WP has plenty of precedents where we do not impose a neologism on a historic subject. Ephebi (talk) 13:40, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment. Wikipedia does not prescribe use of language - that's why we have WP:ENGVAR for cases of discord. Categories are one thing, and are not article content. Visitors to Wikpedia who are looking for lists of notable people who attended certain schools, will probably access those lists from links on the school article. In articles themselves, perhaps use the 'student' vs. 'pupil' that the school uses about itself on its own website. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:03, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Support mixture of Old Fooians and People educated at.... Use of Old Fooians is supported by WP:COMMONNAME, is self-explanatory in a hypertext 'pedia by a click or two, and is more consistent over history where a school has changed its name. Where there is no such established name, "people educated at" has most support in the UK, as the categories span time periods when people attending schools were known as "pupils" and as "students". It is clearly understood that "educated at" refers to people who attended a school, regardless of pedagogic efficacy. "Alumni" should be avoided as it is rarely used re schools in the UK. - Fayenatic (talk) 17:34, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment. Is there any interest in using "People who attended ..."? It seems more accurate than "educated at". Cjc13 (talk) 23:26, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
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