Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Article advice/Archive 2

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Avoiding conflict of interest

The following sentence worries me:

Don't use promotional language about your school or words that boost its image. Remember that this is an encyclopedia - it's not a school brochure, website, or Facebook entry.

Coming from a local government background- we used to declare any COI- in the form of I have a substantial financial interest so will neither speak of vote or as it could be seen that I have a insubstantial financial interest so I reserve my right to speak will not vote.. I have an non substantial non financial interest but reserve my right to speak and vote etc-. It seems odd that an editor writing about his school doesn't make a declaration. I speculate that staff paid to work at a particular school have a Substantial Financial COI, and families using that school have a substantial COI- non-financial in state schools, but financial in the private sector.

Staff and students must declare their connections to the school in the edit summary and avoid the use of promotional language to describe the school and avoid peacock terms that might boost its image. Remember that this is an encyclopedia - it's not a school brochure, website, or Facebook entry. Use the edit summary to be precise about the source of your information

ClemRutter (talk) 21:12, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Students must declare? Does that not conflict with Wikipedia:Child protection which states "Never give out information such as your address or phone number to anyone...." Declaring attendance of a school would fall under this I think. EyeTripleE (talk) 23:33, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Additionally, I believe the recommended approach to handling COI is for the editor to suggest changes on the talk page rather than edit the page directly. EyeTripleE (talk) 23:36, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Several things: COI edits by students can be a serious issue, but it's a double edged sword. Editing your school's article is likely the most common entry point to Wikipedia editing by young people. Discouraging that is poor policy. It's ignorance, not willful misrepresentation. And adding to this guideline is not going to change that. Further, singling out students is unfair. I've had issues with staff and alumni too, and frankly they are much more persistent. My suggestion would be that we craft an essay on what an encyclopedia article is and point kids to that when there are issues. Something like "How to edit your high school's Wikipedia article", in which we can, with kind and newbie - friendly language, explain the tertiary nature of an encyclopedia, WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NOT and WP:INDY in terms of a school article. I'd be willing to take that on, starting in my user space and we could carry this discussion there if there is interest. I could start on Monday. This is an important issue, so I'm going to ping my co-coordinator Kudpung here (even tho he's on his annual vacation). Thoughts? John from Idegon (talk) 00:09, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

• Almost every single one of the tens of thousands of articles about schools that are operational (not defunct) has been written either by a student or a member of the staff. Wikipedia is not a schools popularity poll or 'Rate your neighbourhood schools' website, and is unlikely to be used as such. Occasionally one of them give us the run-around, like the User:Worcsinfo did 9 years ago with their multiple socks trying hard to promote a certain ordinary state high school in the UK, but by and large COI in the concept as we understand it is not a problem. A bigger issue today is how the en.Wikipedia is fast becoming the Central Asian Encyclopedia in English, with 20 - 30 unsourced one-liners about schools arriving every 24 hours.

Experience has shown that nobody reads WP:WPSCH/AG before writing a school stub, so however well intended, an essay would be instruction creep and a waste of time. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:39, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Sorry to have disturbed this hornets nest. @Kudpung: But back to the point, if we know it will hardly make a difference, do we change the text? At the moment, are you just deleting the one liners,- or putting them into a quarentine category? Or would it be useful to have a advice template that directs the miscreants (potential new productive editors) to the essay? Is a conflict of interest, when declared no longer a threat but a potential marker to the new editors skills? Should we have a focused welcome message? Have the backroom boys got the technology, to filter the word school on a potential stub creation save- so potential new productive editors would get pushed to the WP:WPSCH/AG before completing the save?

@John from Idegon: When doing a training session it would be nice to persuade our highly qualified (in real life) wikinewbies to look at the site of a school that they are familiar (they often had been governors too) and see if they could improve it? I do like the idea of a tightly written essay written for a 14 year old- then maybe one that is focussed on alumni, staff and governors. With a new batch of MPs desperate to understand the concept of state education we possibly have another target audience. I am warming to the idea from the POV of the kid. If they become familiar (almost accidentally) with such concepts- it will add considerably to their academic career toolbox and their political awareness, which is not on the school curriculum. ClemRutter (talk) 09:39, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Clem, we can't just delete school articles however short or bad they are. They are exempt from A7 but they can be uncontroversially redirected if a suitable target exists. There is no such thing as a 'quarantine' category. A poor school article might be moved to draft and the author informed, but again, most creators of school articles these days just drop their one liner and never return at all - they just don't have any intention of being communicative. Very few new articles are being created nowadays about genuine mainstream schools in the area traditionally served by an English language encyclopedia. I think we're creating a solution that's looking for the wrong problem. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:52, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

To answer your other question, there is no technology that can recognise what a new user is about to do and step in with a warning or some canned advice. The NPP system is now in total disarray with very few new pages being patrolled and an exponentially growing backlog. This affects more than just school articles, in fact around 750 articles a day. If such filters could be made, they would have been made for that already, but the WMF refuses to acknowledge that a priority problem exists, and the volunteer communty is at a loss as to what to do. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:10, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

School pages are becoming advertorial. Fee paying/independent/private school pages seem to be much longer than non-fee paying schools and read like advertisements. Can we set a limit on the size of school pages or more guidelines on what is allowed?

Can we set a limit on the size of school pages or more guidelines on what is allowed? I doubt many editors would favor removing encyclopedic content. The correct response, I think, is to flesh out the public school articles more. EyeTripleE (talk) 23:43, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

WP:WPSCH/AG

I stopped by on WP:WPSCH/AG mentally pretending to be a Wikinewbie- and made one non controversial edit- then retired in despair! It is two, three four articles merged into one. We are sending newbies there to find out how to do their first new edits- and probably newbies who are not native speakers. The article covers everything- so much everything that you can find nothing. What is the way forward?

• Q1- Do we have the will?
• Q2- can we keep the title and just write a fairly prescriptive synopsis- and move the rest to a full page of collective wisdom (name escapes me at the moment)
• Q3 can we police it so the synopsis doesn't develop into WP:Smorgasbord again?
• Q4- Can we ensure that this in non-native speaker friendly? That said I don't mind doing a draft if someone is willing to correct me on practicalities and matters of policy. ClemRutter (talk) 14:27, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

ClemRutter. The AG was written at a time when there were only four or five Wikipedias. The Internet had not yet spread to the desert or the jungle, and most people writing articles were native (or very near native) speakers of English. A glance at today's flood of new articles will show quite clearly that all that has changed. Nowadays, relatively few new articles are being created on schools in the traditional English L1 regions, while as Internet accessibility expands, we are now welcoming many articles about schools in Africa and Asia.

These articles are often sub-standard, so you are of course quite right in that our AG now needs to be written in a graded language that most contributors to the en.Wiki can understand. Unfortunately, not even native speakers even find these advice pages anyway. That is not our fault however. It's the resistance to those who govern the presentation and development of Wikipedia's start and entry pages to making it easier to channel new prospective article creators to places where they can get help before they start.

Changes are now on the horizon. A 6-onth experiment under the auspices of the WMF will now be conducted by the community, after which there will be some serious discussion about redesign of the way in which new users are received, and the design of the entrance 'lobby'. If you have any ideas,please do not hesitate to share them with us here. If you do, please ping me or John from Idegon. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:32, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

@Kudpung: I made an offer above and it still stands. It seems that you have now answered question 1- we almost have the will. For some one in education that is all the go-ahead we need. I will do a little more thinking about structure and if I haven't come back within two weeks ping me. On the specific questions on teachers getting students to cooperatively write a school article- it is a good idea- but on the wrong subject. The teachers are inexperienced, thinking it is something that the kids will relate to, but in truth probably are fishing and couldn't do one personally. If we provided them with topic sheets then they would use them instead. This will need to be chosen in respect to the educational curriculum of the locality. But lets do a little thinking before we commit it to paper. ClemRutter (talk) 13:30, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Elementary/primary and middle schools policy - doesn't work for Australia

"Articles on elementary/primary and middle schools are normally blanked and redirected or merged into the school district article (USA) or the appropriate locality article." Can someone please explain the reason? There are 13000 deleted school pages (school site:http://speedydeletion.wikia.com). Wikipedia wants to encourage newbies especially children to get involved, but currently, their work gets deleted. The policy doesn't seem to work for Australia. In Australia, Private schools show both senior and lower school, but local public schools don't. Localities don't work as they may contain one or more primary schools under very different names. School districts don't work in Australia and are called regions and are unknown to parents and student. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wakelamp (talk • contribs) 09:00, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Why doesn't redirecting to the locality work. If there is an "education" section for the community a blurb can be added for each school? The reason is that middle and primary schools are rarely (but occasionally are) notable while secondary schools frequently are notable. EyeTripleE (talk) 16:39, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

WIth 13000 deleted pages I think the users are saying primary schools are saying they are notable and as I said young Wikipedian should be encouraged! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Guidance_for_younger_editors

But to Localities, in the UK there are 1.7 million postcodes. In the US there are 43 K zip codes, but in Australia, there are only 2500 post codes. So differentiation is an issue.

My other argument is fairness. Private schools get to discuss their primary schools, but government schools do not.Wakelamp (talk) 11:36, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't understand the point about postal codes. If there is an obvious school board (or equivalent) article then that is the redirect target for an article about a non-notable school. If not, the redirect target is the municipal locale. It has nothing to do with postal codes or zip codes.

Private elementary schools don't get a pass on notability any more than public elementary schools do. For that matter, neither do high schools. High schools are exempt from speedy deletion on notability grounds and that is all. The high school must still be notable to warrant an article. The A7 exemption for high schools was passed because high schools have almost invariably been found to be notable when taken to AFD.

If a private school has both elementary and high school components then the elementary grades get mentioned in the article, just as does the elementary component of a public school that hosts both elementary and high school grades. Possibly it is more common for private schools to house both elementary and high school grades, but that is not a failing of the schools guideline.

Wikipedia:Guidance_for_younger_editors is just an essay giving instructions for young editors. It explicitly mentions the issue of article notability. Meters (talk) 07:26, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

I think that is where you dont understand Australia. We dpnt have a concept of municipal locale or region.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Wakelamp (talk • contribs) 04:55, August 13, 2017 (UTC)

It does mention notability, but it also encourages young editors to stop wikipedia being taken over by older editors.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Wakelamp (talk • contribs) 04:55, August 13, 2017 (UTC)

Please sign your posts, and don't insert them in the middle of someone else's post. Australia obviously does have towns and cities. Wikipedia has a number of lists of them, List of towns and cities in Australia by year of settlement for example. And Wikipedia:Guidance_for_younger_editors] certainly does not encourage "young editors to stop wikipedia being taken over by older editors." I'm not spending any more time on this. Meters (talk) 05:11, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

"I'm not spending any more time on this." makes me realise that this area is not welcoming. I make mistakes on Wikipedia because I do not understand your parliamentary and wikipedia rules. . Wakelamp (talk) 00:06, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

• I don't see what post codes have to do with it, nor whether they are private or government schools. We redirect non notable schools (mainly pre-school, primary, and middle schools) to the Wikipedia article about the local education authority or the locality itself. If a school exists, it is in a human settlement. The settlement will almost certainly have a name, and chances are, that place will have an article in Wikipedia. If not, then the next highest local government district will. That's it - simple. We're also not interested here in anything that's on Wikia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:08, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

"We're also not interested here in anything that's on Wikia." I can not see any way to convince you and as the policy is not implemented , except someone is deleting school articles, there seems no need. Wakelamp (talk) 00:06, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

A policy may work for one country, but may not work for others and an American/Uk centric views may enforce this. Can you point me to the Notability debate vote for primary and middle schools? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wakelamp (talk • contribs) 04:55, August 13, 2017 (UTC)

there are close to a 100 K articles in en.wikipedia that are junior, primary, elementary or prep schools. So the notability guideline does not seem to be used. Should we get a bot written to make them all for rapid deletion? Wakelamp (talk) 05:18, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

primary schools also seem to pass the notability based on search engine results Wakelamp (talk) 05:18, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Can you provide an Australian example for which this policy fails? Some of the schools may be notable. For the others, no one has gotten around to redirecting them yet (we're all volunteers remember). Arguing WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not compelling in this instance. We're not going to overwhelm AfD by nominating thousands of articles for deletion at once. EyeTripleE (talk) 23:33, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

• Wakelamp, primary schools and middle schools are not notable, except for special circumstances. There is a misunderstanding by many editors that a large number of sources automatically makes a topic notable. Notability is based on significance and importance, of which the sources serve to confirm the claims. That said We do not delete non notable schools either, we blank them and redirect them per WP:ATD-R (policy) and WP:BLAR (guideline). Redirect is not controversial and can be done by any competent editor without the need for discussion. Misuse of course, as with any disruptive edits, can lead to sanctions.

There are not 100,000 primary school articles; there are however probably thousands of primary schools that have been redirected, and many more that were deleted before t became normal to redirect them.

Finally, Australia related articles are subject to the same guidelines as topics anywhere else. To assume the contrary is incorrect. If there are any justifiable claims of bias against Australian schools, I and John from Idegon want to know about it - with diffs. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:19, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

I used Google to get statistics and I agree that this would not include redirects. I will get or modify a script and advise. Wakelamp (talk) 13:45, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

I am not proceeding with the script. If I provided statistics then it would not change attitudes. So please close this thread. I note that none of the administrators are in Australia AND the policy is not implemented except ad hoc, and the users keep on creating them, so please close. Wakelamp (talk) 00:06, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

ISCED international standards

Revisiting the page I see the confusion on what to call high schools and middle schools still exists- however this has been solved elsewhere. We have a page ISCED that describes it all. Would anyone like to integrate this into the article, or shall I be bold. --ClemRutter (talk) 19:20, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Age inappropriate headings

These are schools (ISCED level 1-3) articles. I read a section that says: The heading may be changed accordingly in regard to the importance of sports, clubs, traditions, students' unions etc. For example, alternative headings could be Students' union, sports and traditions or Students' union activities. I suspect that this C&p from a guideline for a ISCED level 4-8 article and never editted out. Can we please have a concrete example of a school, that has a students' union. If there are a handful then they exceptions not mainstream and this should be covered elsewhere. --ClemRutter (talk) 21:30, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

SCH/AG cleanup

I have attempted to cleanup the first section on Notability, so it is accessible by a new user wondering how to write a stub. At the same time I have been following the advice we are giving in SCH/AG and taking a poor Haringey secondary article- Fortismere School attempting to make look like FA The Judd School. I am intrigued by this line:

• Articles on elementary/primary and middle schools are normally blanked and redirected or merged into the school district article (USA) or the appropriate locality article.

I could understand if it was reworded

• Articles on elementary/primary and middle schools are often blanked and redirected or merged into the school district article (USA) or the appropriate locality article.
• Articles on elementary/primary schools are often blanked and redirected or merged into the school district article (USA) or the appropriate locality article.

Do we lose anything by not describing what happens to the middle schools? It is this one word that has been causing all the recent difficulties. Can I zap it? ClemRutter (talk) 21:08, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

No, do not remove "middle schools". We are using it to mean schools that are above elementary level but below the senior high school level (so, grades 6 or 7 to grades 8 or 9 in North America). Rather than replacing "normally" with "often" I would rather see "unless they are found to be notable" added.Something along the lines of "Articles on elementary/primary and middle schools are normally blanked and redirected or merged into the school district article (USA) or the appropriate locality article, unless they are found to be notable. Meters (talk) 02:17, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

I have done nothing further, and I suspect that this will resolve its self as fewer UK local authorities still use the the three tier system. In the UK we had two official types of middle schools- Middle schools deemed primary and Middle schools deemed secondary, and they were inspected by Ofsted in two different ways. Pressure was put on the authorities to reorganise, as a middle school could span two or even three statistical Keystages (2,3 even 4). We had 7-13 Middle schools (deemed primary) and 8- 14 (deemed secondary)- they were a dream to teach in and excellent social and learning environments for the kids (POV). They also spanned across the ISCED 1-ISCED 2 border.

From a UK perspective,

• Articles on elementary/primary and middle schools deemed primary in the UK are normally blanked and redirected or merged into appropriate locality article.
• Articles on middle schools deemed secondary in the UK are normally blanked and redirected or merged into an appropriate upper school article, unless they demonstrate other notability

With the change to Academy structure Multi-academy trusts the few remaining middle schools, and most primarys are governed by MATs, and could be merged by a stand alone MAT article as the LEAs lose control. It is interesting that students that went through the three-tier system are now parents, and expect that they should be able to choose three tier for their children!

This response is for information and out of courtesy- and not as a call for urgent action. ClemRutter (talk) 23:35, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Thoughts on Naming Facility

Notable teachers/faculty/staff – The names of current and former teachers should only be included if they are notable in their own right (for example, they are published authors or they have won a teaching award), or they have been the subject of multiple non-trivial press coverage.

— WP:WPSCH/AG#OS

I've noticed that many American schools hire retired professional athletes to serve as coaches. In many cases, the athletes are not head coaches, but low ranking assistant coaches. In such cases, this guideline would allow us to include the name of an assistant coach, but not the head coach.

In my view, Wikipedia should not be a directory of people who once satisfied the broad notability criteria for athletes (WP:ATHLETE), but have now faded from public view. However, the current phrasing of the guideline encourages the inclusion of such content. Billhpike (talk) 14:21, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

In an ideal world, Bill, I'd agree with you. But unfortunately, in US society, athletics are a very widely covered topic. It's a certainty local press will make a big deal of the hiring of a professional athlete, and it will also Garner mention in at least USA Today and likely Sports Illustrated too. John from Idegon (talk) 17:55, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

WP:SELFSOURCE and school structure

I have modified this sentence related to referencing:

A school's own website is not an independent source, though can be an acceptable source for informations sections involving no value judgements, such as school structure. I see this as helpful, though it could be seen to be contraversial, so I am flagging it up here.ClemRutter (talk) 22:35, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

I find the school website the best source for the administrator's name, and an acceptable source for the existence of the programs we cover. I think your wording covers that well. Oh, btw, Clem, welcome to the coordinator team. I'm glad there is someone looking after the UK schools. I have a userbox on my userpage you're welcome to copy, and I'll email you the entry code to the private loo. John from Idegon (talk) 18:03, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

I am struggling with these UK conundrums. Does anyone have any opinions so we can set some definitive guidelines.

• A schools web site is not independent. The Ofsted inspection report is independent but a primary source. The letter the school sends to parents announcing the contents of the Ofsted is not independent but secondary- but the text in the letter cut and pasted from Ofsted is independent.
• Schools are now academies. They are either stand-alone academies, or parts of Multi-academy trust. All academies must under company law publish an annual report. Google "name-of-academy-trust" "financial report". The first part of the report gives a description of the assets which is contains a wikipedia like articLe on each school in the academy. The second bit contains the boring financial bit. How do we assess whether this information is secondary or independent? A school may be parts of the assets of the trust, or just be managed by them. When the trust folds, (Wakefield City Academies Trust) the schools continue as they are separate identities. If this is true then that document becomes both independent and secondary. Any opinions?
• Stand-alone academies, or parts of Multi-academy trust. There are certain schools (The Voyager Academy) that were the single school in a trust- does that affect the independence? The Voyager has changed its sponsor to the Thomas Deacon Academy trust- who were a stand alone academy see Trust Financial Statement. Does this move affect the independence status of either or both schools?

I think that we call agree that these Financial reports are WP:RS, and in practical terms we will keep using them as references- I just think that having the analysis done here will help with future FA discussions.ClemRutter (talk) 11:55, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Lists of secondary school names by country

I find this useful but over prominent. I am going to make a change first then invite discussion. There are MOS guidelines to follow that restrict several choices. The body of the text is in Template:List of names for secondary schools by country- that template could be changed into a navbox- or I could format the template as definition list. Please look at the changes, tweak or revert- no offense will be taken.--ClemRutter (talk) 20:42, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

School namesake

The current guidelines do not include any guidance on including information about the school's namesake. I propose that we update the history bullet in WP:WPSCH/AG#OS to the following:

History – Describe the history of the school, including noteworthy milestones in its development. If the school is named after a person, briefly describe who that person was and, if it exists, provide a wikilink to the article on that person.

I'm not sure if the above phrasing is optimal. I don't want school articles to turn into biographies about non-notable namesakes. At the same time, I think it is reasonable for an article to include a sentence like "Smith High School is named after John Smith, who served as mayor of Anytown from 1968–1982." Billhpike (talk) 23:57, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Looks good to me. I once cleaned up a school article where more than half of the text was a bio of its namesake (and a copyvio at that) [1] so the concern is well founded. Meters (talk) 00:15, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I'd like to see some wording in that regarding whether the school was named strictly in honor of the individual, or whether the person was actively involved with the school. If the school was named in honor of a notable individual, one sentence simply acknowledging that with the wikilink to his name should suffice. If the individual isn't notable, add to that a simple description of who he was. Example: "Foo High School was named after Joe Foo, a local farmers who donated the land for the school." John from Idegon (talk) 00:33, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

How about?

History – Describe the history of the school, including noteworthy milestones in its development. If the school is named after a notable person, include a wikilink to the article on that person. If the school is named after a non-notable person, include a 1 to 2 sentence biography. If applicable, describe the namesake's connection with the school.

Since school articles are often where younger editors get started, I would like to avoid WP:instruction creep and keep these instructions as digestible as possible. Billhpike (talk) 15:55, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Can we add "Keep in mind the subject of the article is the school, not its founder."? John from Idegon (talk) 17:57, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Fair point- but the title of the section is history, and for many cases the school was started and named after an obscure founder. If it is more than two sentences, we should be talking of linking to a section at the lower end of the page, so we can control any attempt to merge a bio-stub with our two sentences. Goffs Academy, John Kyrle High School are schools that could benefit from two sentences.

I am queasy about the use of the word namesake to describe its founder. To me patronym- means a name derived from - while namesake- means sharing a name with a difference between The Halley Academy and the astronomer with Winnie-the-Pooh′and his namesake Churchill. I don't think I would even call Winnipeg (bear) Poo's namesake in most consequences. Any thoughts- this must have been discussed before. ClemRutter (talk) 19:39, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Beware idiolect and consult dictionaries (in the aggregate).

Patronymic means "named for the father, an earlier ancestor, or (by extension) a family", not "a name derived from another name". McCandlish and Johnson are patronymics, and so is Martin Luther King Jr. There is no "patronymic" relationship between York and New York. Dictionaries are consistent on what this word means, other than some limit it more tightly to "named for the father", which does not reflect actual usage (even in anthropology, genealogy, and other spheres that are careful about its use).

Namesake has an imprecise meaning; dictionaries conflict on it. It means at least "that for which something else is named". This seems to be the most common meaning in actual usage; e.g., Theodore Roosevelt is often said to be the namesake of the teddy bear, but you'll be hard pressed to find anyone writing that teddy bears are the namseake of Teddy Rooselvelt. However, "something named after something else" is a definition found in several dictionaries, despite the infrequency of that usage, so one might be able to get away with it if the context didn't make it confusing as to the relationship. Several dictionaries also accept a completely broadened definition of "something that has the same name as something else", but it's unclear how widespread this usage is. Many would consider it an error if there were not a relationship, if the name similarity were a coincidence. It's certainly a usage too vague and potentially confusing for encyclopedic writing; to the extent its found in professional writing, it mostly in magazines, and appears to be a form of journalese. Some dictionaries want to limit namesake to biographical use ("a person named after another person"), but this doesn't reflect actual usage at all. Nor does the one dictionary that suggests it means "a thing named after a person", which is what eponym refers to.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:39, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

• Support: One of the only reasons I ever look at school articles is to determine who they're named after. I just did that literally within the hour, and would have waxed sorely pissed if De Anza College did not rapidly confirm in the lead that it is named after Juan Bautista de Anza as I suspected. Whether the namesake is notable or not is utterly irrelvant; WP:Notability only applies to whether or not a particular subject may have its own article here, not whether any article may mention it. The very purpose of that guideline is to merge non-notable topics into notable one and prevent profusion of separate articles on non-notable topics. Re: "I don't want school articles to turn into biographies about non-notable namesakes." – "If the school is named after a person, briefly describe who that person was and, if it exists, provide a wikilink to the article on that person." wouldn't do that, and we have WP:COATRACK to enforce it not happening.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:39, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
• Do we have consensus to add the above text? If not, what changes do we need to obtain consensus? BillHPike (talk, contribs) 02:45, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
  • I'd still like to see a tagline such as I suggested above, but I'm not gonna derail the train over it. John from Idegon (talk) 06:19, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
    • I added the text above. Feel free to WP:BRD if you prefer a slightly different wording. BillHPike (talk, contribs) 04:18, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Pre-nominals and post-nominals

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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On the Projects page, we read that we should avoid including pre and post nominals (CEO, Dr, BA, BSc, MA, PhD, etc.). I suggest that the "etc." needs to be removed and what it includes be clearly specified: does it include only honorifics and temporary status like CEO, or all pre-nominals and post-nominals? I would like to argue here for a distinction between honorifics or titles flowing from degrees earned or CEO status, and titles that indicate the stable identification of the person with a religious organization, such as being a priest ordained to work in a diocese or a religious who has taken permanent vows of obedience to a religious community. Use of "Fr." or "Sr." is widespread in infoboxes. It serves as a very succinct way of indicating that a work remains under the direct control of a diocese or religious congregation, like through the president or principal. Simply mentioning, in the infobox, affiliation to the diocese or religious congregation does not say the same thing as does this brief indication of the fact that the official is assigned to the school by a religious congregation or diocese, giving more direct control to the religious group of which she/he is a member. These pre-nominals and post-nominals should always be used and explained in the article or linked to articles that explain the meaning of "Fr.", "Sr.", Br.", "SJ", "SNDdeN", "OSB",... . Some perspectives on this issue are expressed at Talk:Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School#Pre-nominal and post-nominal. Jzsj (talk) 00:44, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Any change to WP:POSTNOM is better discussed at the village pump: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). BillHPike (talk, contribs) 07:52, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

The article you refer to gives a limited number of specific directives, but only one has applicability here. It allows use of postnominals "when the post-nominals themselves are under discussion in the material". This would be true wherever the office-holder's membership in a religious organization is mentioned in the article. I am not proposing something new but I fear that a broad application of "etc." from the School Project Guidelines would change a usage that is very common across Wikipedia. Further, this pertains to the statement at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy): "This is not the place to resolve disputes over how a policy should be implemented. Please see Wikipedia:Dispute resolution for how to proceed in such cases." If we cannot come to a better understanding here than that is the next step. Jzsj (talk) 18:29, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose any such special pleading carve-out for the Roman Catholic Church and its clergy. Our policies and guidelines must apply equally to all social groups. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 08:31, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I would not limit this to the Catholic church, but would rather make the statement in Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Article guidelines clear so that it cannot be used against all other cases not explicitly mentioned. I'm saying the "etc." gives a vague and unlimited power to editors who oppose certain post-nominals. I'm simply calling for tolerance for post-nominals that are currently very widely used in Wikipedia articles (for instance the "S.J." after the name of the president of the University of San Francisco). Jzsj (talk) 18:44, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose Why would an article editing guideline ever reflect a standard that is different than MOS for something as commonplace as honorific titles and post-nominals? It's not like Catholic Clergy are not discussed in other types of articles such that there would need to be a standard established here. John from Idegon (talk) 09:54, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

MOS never uses the words "pre-nominal" or "post-nominal". And I've explained above that these differ from honorifics. You seem to be assuming that these are honorifics without examining the matter closely. Jzsj (talk) 18:29, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I have placed a notice of this discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Catholicism#Removing Sr., Fr., Br., OP, OSB, SJ, SNDN, etc., from names in infoboxes. Jzsj (talk) 17:56, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

You did not get what you wanted on Talk:Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School, so you popped in here. And now it seems that you are not getting what you want on this page either, you turn to another page for help. How many other pages are you going to ask for help when is forum hopping proves useless? The Banner talk 19:42, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

And it was non-neutral, misleading, spammy WP:CANVASSING. This is not at all about removing Fr., SNDN, etc., from people's infoboxes. {{Infobox person}} and its derivatives support pre-nominal and post-nominal parameters; their infoboxes are one of the only places, aside from their own lead section, where insertion of the "name agglomeration" trivia is actually appropriate and potentially informative (if done properly, e.g. with links to what these terms mean). It does not help something like a school article to tack this stuff onto people's names, however; all it does is clot the material with gibberish that means nothing to, and is of no interest to, the average reader.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:01, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

• Comment I've placed notice at WT:MOS since this would be an update to MOS:POSTNOM. BillHPike (talk, contribs) 20:08, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
• Strong Support: reliable sources use "Sister" so should we [2]. Reliable sources deem it important for their readers to be able to differentiate between a nun/priest and a lay person. This is especially important at a religious school.– Lionel^(talk) 00:46, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

  I think in the case of a nun named "Sister Mary" for instance, we should apply MOS:IDENTITY, since she identifies as "Sister Mary." – Lionel^(talk) 01:06, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

• It may be worth teasing out the identity thing. We really have [at least] four different things going on here:
  1. Post-nominals like "OSB" and "DD", some of which are academic and some of which are not, but which we do not need except in the person's own lead.
  2. Occupational titles like "Mother Superior", "Rector", "Lama", "Imam", "Jisha", "Ajahn", etc. – used with (usually in front of) a name to indicate their role. Should be treated like any other job titles.
  3. Non-neutral honorifics like "Reverend" ("Rev." or "Revd", depending on dialect), "Sri", "His Holiness", "Rōshi", "Sensei", etc. – used by others to refer to the person with deference. Should not be used in Wikipedia's voice.
  4. Matters of self-identification like "Sister", "Father", "Swami", "Bhikku[ni]" and so on – used by the person with their own name as a part of it. It does seem inappropriate to refer to "Sister Mary James" as "Mary" or as "Mary James" (and even more inappropriate to go dig up what that person's legal name was before becoming a nun). There's probably an encyclopedic interest in distinguishing clergy from secular instructors at a particular institution; referring to "Bro. Samuel O'Connell" as such does that efficiently.
      — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:01, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
• Support. I think it important to indicate which schools founded by religious institutes continue to be run by them, particularly when so many no longer are. Mannanan51 (talk) 05:06, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

• Note Jzsj has challenged John's closure. See Special:diff/826422110 at WP:AN BillHPike (talk, contribs) 20:09, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

“School structure” is ambiguous

The WP:WPSCHOOLS/AG#school structure bullet point is ambiguous. Does it refer to the physical structures on the campus? Or does it refer to the structure of the schools administration. There are already separate suggested section for either topics. We should either clarify the title of school structure suggested section or remove it? BillHPike (talk, contribs) 04:15, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

(Late reply) This is the section where we describe the organisation and management of the pupils. It will contain sentences like- The school is organised into vertical tutor groups of 32 pupils who remain with the same tutor for the first five years. Efforts are made to ensure that siblings are in the same group. For sport the students are arbitarily assigned to a house. Academically the pupils are taught in the tutor group clusters for the first two years, but then in Keystage 4 are rigidly streamed by ability for the compulsory subjects, and setted in their options. Agreed the title is ambiguous though to a teacher it is a clear technical term. Has anyone got a better idea. I will pen a short line in the guidelines to make this intention clear subject to WP:BRD — Preceding unsigned comment added by ClemRutter (talk • contribs)

• @Billhpike:@ClemRutter: Per the above, and as a frequent editor of schools' articles who refers and links to this guideline page for rationale for for changes (some structural):

The original wording of this Structure bullet point may have been ambiguous – I interpreted it as the physical structure, therefore rather redundant as this is covered by 'Campus', which was the second section after 'History'. BTW I have a problem with 'Campus' for UK schools; this Americanism is typically used for colleges and American schools, but for UK and other schools sounds pretentious and subtly aggrandizing. I would prefer to see this heading as "Campus, alternatively School site".

There is always a perceived hierarchy of importance in any article type by the way sections are positioned... the most important/pertinent/relevant information followed by the lesser... the current wording changes for 'Structure' may or may not be appropriate, however I wonder why such things as 'home-school contact policy' trumps 'Curriculum'. This 'Structure' point/section (and 'Governance'), with its positioning, came in in 2017 without any discussion I can find... I may be wrong.
The other section I find vague is 'Admissions' (often added to articles), which seems to be a catch-all for a variety of disparate stuff. When I have come across it I have sometimes interpreted this as pupil academic/social relevance for enrolment and/or geographic 'catchment area', which is not a bad thing to have in a school article.

After 'Lead' is 'History', generally fine, typical and consistent for a wide range of WP articles. 'Campus' (the physical/geographic stuff) I think should be next, as previously. Then get on to what goes on education-wise in the school, so 'Governance', if it's necessary and not a one sentence section. Next 'Admissions', if as I describe above; and/or as presently described. Then what is taught - 'Curriculum'. Then 'School structure' (if this is the right wording for this section; I'm not sure), which describes how this Curriculum and teaching is applied. Then 'Extracurricular activities' (typically a great place for added spam). Next 'Awards and recognition', then the rest as exists now.

What is not advised in the guidelines is how to box small amounts of stuff into an article without having one-sentence sections (annoying for readers), something that happens a lot in short, almost stub articles, and not just in school articles. This can perhaps be solved by after 'History', and perhaps 'Campus/School site', having a catch-all section for everything else in a short article, but with text following the hierarchy structure of what is described by the other sections. I have seen struggles on naming such a section, 'The School' being one and certainly not ideal. Perhaps this 'School structure' as a major catch-all could apply here, with the present 'School structure' stuff being given a different name. Acabashi (talk) 13:01, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Who goes in an "Alumni" section?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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There is currently a content dispute at Kamehameha Schools over the addition of Auli'i Cravalho, who did not graduate from Kamehameha Schools. Per WP:ALUMNI, "all alumni meeting these criteria are to be included on an alumni list, regardless of how much time they have spent on a school roll, from one day to several years, and whether or not they graduated." I had thought that Auli'i Cravalho would fit within that definition, as she attended Kamehameha Schools, thought she has not yet graduated; however, another editor disagreed because "alumnus" means "a former student." Would it be more appropriate to create another heading for "Current students" in the article, and list her there? 青い(Aoi) (talk) 22:59, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

My understanding of alumnus / alumna / alumni is that those terms refer to some one is no longer a student at a school. Here are several definitions that I have come across that support this:

• Alumnus states "An alumnus ... is a former student."
• "A former pupil or student, ..."
• "a person who has attended or has graduated from a particular school, college, or university"
• "someone who has left a school, college, or university after finishing their studies there"
• "a graduate or former student of a specific school, college, or university"
• "A male graduate or former student of a school, college, or university."

References

I would be remiss if I did not include Wiktionary, which is an outlier with its alumnus definition:

1. A male pupil or student.
2. A male graduate.
3. A student of either gender.
4. A graduate of either gender.

It is my intent to add the word former before student / pupil to clarify the Wiktionary definition, but I will wait until the outcome of this discussion, as making that change while this is under discussion here would be unseeming.

Peaceray (talk) 23:22, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

As I alluded to in my talk page discussion with Peaceray, I do not disagree with the dictionary definition of "Alumnus". I'm also completely fine incorporating Cravalho somewhere in the Kamehameha Schools article outside of the "Alumni" heading. My primary concern in starting this discussion was that there is an ambiguity as to where notable, current students should be mentioned in articles about schools. I know other editors have shared the interpretation of WP:ALUMNI that I used to include Cravalho in the alumni listing (see, for example, this edit from several months ago, where, ironically, I was promoting the view that Peaceray is now advocating). I'm hoping this discussion can bring a definitive consensus on how to treat these students. Much thanks, 青い(Aoi) (talk) 00:42, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

You've linked to an edit I've made, but you're implyingapplying your own particular interpretation to it. While I understand that WP:ALUMNI does not require graduation as a pre-requesite for inclusion, I think the section is speaking in terms of former, not current, students. I reverted the section heading from "Notable alumni and attendees" because the " and attendees" seems redundant to me in terms of former students. I think in most cases, the notable alumni/individuals mentioned in high school articles are no longer attending the school and thus would be covered by WP:ALUMNI regardless of whether they are graduates per se. How to deal with current students is probably something which has been discussed before, but maybe more on a case-by-case basis. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:59, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[Note:Post edited by Marchjuly to change "implying" to "applying" -- 01:44, 10 April 2018 (UTC)]

I agree with Marchjuly. This is a content dispute. There is no need to change or even clarify a guideline. As a matter of fact, I was in the process of moving this thread to the article's talk when I edit conflicted with MJ. May I offer you two very workable and simple solutions? In small school articles, if there are notable staff and notable alumni, we simply title the section "Notable people". That is one solution. The other might be adding a parenthetical note to her entry saying (As of April 2018 currently enrolled). Personally, I like my first suggestion better. This is a very rare situation. There is no need to change a guideline to address it. That's what WP:IAR is for. On the 5000+ US school articles I watch, this had come up maybe 5 times, and has never been controversial. One real good reason for discussing content issues at the article talk page rather than user talk. The article in question doesn't lack for watchers. John from Idegon (talk) 01:35, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Peaceray, Marchjuly, John from Idegon, thank you all for your comments. I note Peaceray restored a prior version of the article with the "Current students" heading, which I am completely fine with; the "Notable people" heading suggestion also looks good. I do see John's point that the situation of having notable current students probably affects a very tiny percentage of persons listed in these articles across Wikipedia, so clarification to the guideline probably isn't necessary. With that, I'm fine with the status quo and thank you all for your time and thoughtful comments. 青い(Aoi) (talk) 01:50, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

I've got to say I strongly oppose having a header "Current students". It seems like an open invitation to add the prom queen or the star basketball player. John from Idegon (talk) 02:16, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Pictures in alumni sections

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I have not been able to find any previous discussion of whether it is appropriate to include pictures of alumni in the alumni sections of school articles. My opinion is that it is not.

Some of the problems I have already seen, or can envision, with including images:

1. An image takes up far more room than one or two line bulleted entry. This is a formatting nightmare. Either the images take up far more vertical space than the text, or only a few entries can have images. Either way it is very easy for the images to get out of sync with their actual text entries, particularly when considering different viewing platforms. An interesting attempt to overcome this problem is [3]. The use of small pictures in a gallery solved the spacing issue, but at the cost of disconnecting each of the images from its accompanying bullet entry.
2. If only some entries have images then we have the potential for conflict over which alumni get images, whether the images are stand-alone or in a gallery. I recall one article where an editor added multiple images from just a short time span. Most of the additions were dealt with as copyright violations or images of non-notable alumni, but it appeared that the editor was selectively choosing good looking women he had known while he was attending the school.
3. It seems somewhat undue or unbalanced to have multiple images of alumni in an article that is actually about the school. WP:ALUMNI says Entries should be bulleted and have a very brief description of their notability.. It does not mention images, but it seems to me the images should be excluded just as extensive biographical information is. The linked Wikipedia article for each alumnus contains the full details about the alumnus and any photos. There is no need to include it in the school article.

I'll find and link a few examples of school articles with alumni photos later (have to run). Meters (talk) 19:28, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

• As Meters points out: WP:ALUMNI says Entries should be bulleted and have a very brief description of their notability.. That should be enough. Adding images would be excessive and if I were to come across them in an alumni section, I would be sure to remove them with 'See Wiki article' in the edit summary. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:02, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
• While I agree in principle with this proposal, particularly since non-free images often are added (in good faith) to such sections even though it's almost always impossible to justify such non-free use, I am wondering if a simple gallery markup at either the top, bottom or at various points in between entries could be made to work for public domain or freely licensed images. I am also wondering if "school articles" in this particular case will just cover secondary/primary schools and not universities/colleges. I understand that WP:WPSCHOOLS and WP:UNI are separate WikiProjects, but I think WP:ALUMNI is also use as a guide by some for university articles and there seems to be quite a number of articles about universities (see University of Oxford#Notable alumni, Harvard University#Notable people, London School of Economics#Notable people) or even university departments (e.g., University of Chicago Law School#Alumni) which contain images. There there are military schools like New York Military Academy#Notable alumni which also fall under the scope of WP:MILHIST. Trying to remove photos (particularly File:Donald Trump NYMA.jpg) is probably going to be quite contentious. So, trying to institute an across the board ban on all such image use might require an RFC to ensure there's a strong consensus among multiple WikiProjects to do so. Something similar was done for image galleries in infoboxes of articles about ethnic groups per MOS:NOETHNICGALLERIES and it took two RFCs to sort out. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:12, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Here's an example of an article with a long list of alumni with several images: Abraham Lincoln High School (Brooklyn)#Notable alumni. This just happens to be the first school page on my watchlist with alumni pictures. It's a typical example showing how images get out of sync with entries, and I'm not going to bother looking for more examples of this type, but here's a different case: Amador Valley High School#Notable people associated with the school. Just one alumna is pictured, and it's a terrible picture. It's just a promotional publicity shot of an award being presented. It's out of focus and there are multiple people in the shot. For that matter, the alumna in question is of relatively marginal notability (see Aliya Deri with all of one reliable independent source) Meters (talk) 02:59, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Marchjuly, this isn't a formal proposal. I noticed a potential problem and I raised it here and gave my opinion to see what others think. My concern is the indiscriminate addition of images to high school alumni sections. If there's agreement that the pictures are not appropriate in high school (or elementary school) articles I'll just remove them. If someone wants to propose applying this reasoning to other lists of people (alumni or otherwise) I'll be happy to consider the proposal and give my opinion. Meters (talk) 03:15, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

I've been coordinating this project for around 10 years and I can't recall having come across photos of alumni in any of the tens of thousands of school articles I have on my watchlist, but I discovered that these two schools have escaped my attention. Conclusion: we don't have photos in alumni sections and the SCH/AG doesn't need changing to accommodate them. School articles are about the school, not their former students.That said, in the case of Abraham Lincoln High School (Brooklyn), that list should be split off into a standalone list like I did for List of Old Malvernians, then there would be no objection to photos. Amador Valley High School is a different case. It's a FA, but was promoted many years ago and has been subject to hundreds of edits since. It might even be time to ask for an FA reassessment.IMO there's no reason to clutter Wikipedia with the additional bureaucracy of an RfC to confirm these issues of photos. That said, there seems to be a disturbing developing trend on Wikipedia lately to call for RfCs for every minor issue. John, ClemRutter, could you please chime in here. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:32, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

My suggestion of an RfC was mainly made because image removals can be fairly contentious and often quickly lead to edit warring and other problems. Even cases involving non-free images where there is an actual policy on how such images can be used, things often end up at WP:FFD for further discussion. The use of freely licensed or public domain images is pretty much only subject to WP:IUP#Adding images to articles on a community level, with disagreements tending to be sorted out on individual article talk pages like any other content dispute. SCH/AG is an essay, which means it might be hard to use to argue for an across-the-board removal of such images, particularly if we're talking about articles which might not solely fall under the scope of WPSCHOOLS. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:09, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Kudpung, I agree that it is not very common. Amusingly, when I started to search the 2000 or so articles on my watchlist containing "school" in the title for examples, the second school article with an alumni list gave me my first example and I was only at the ninth to find my second example. Meters (talk) 05:28, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Entries should be bulleted and have a very brief description of their notability. I come back to the idea of focus. The article is about the school- it is marginally interesting in some cases to have links to some of the students names but going further is off-focus, and soon becomes WP:UNDUE. ClemRutter (talk) 08:24, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm with ClemRutter here. As an aside, Amador Valley High School definitely needs an FA reassessment, it's become very promotional and fails our school guidelines in various ways, eg competitions below state level, mentioning and quoting non-notable staff, etc. Doug Weller talk 09:44, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

For the vast majority of alumni sections, which are lists, I agree that images don't work; certainly not multiple images. If, however, an alumni section has developed enough to be prose instead of a bullet-point list, I don't see any reason why an appropriate image couldn't be inserted just like any other subheading in the article. Again, though, within reason just like we would for, say, images in the athletics section or the history section. Very few high school articles have alumni sections that are developed that far, though. --JonRidinger (talk) 12:14, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

My images have just been reverted from a Notable-alumni section for no compelling reason

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Meters has just reverted a gallery of images that I'd put into the Notable-alumni section of the S. H. Rider High School page – you can still see it at [4] . In addition, Meters directed me to the discussion immediately above to find out why.

The gallery I produced was the product of careful thought and research. As you can see, it is aesthetically pleasing, modest in size, works well with the text, and represents a range of occupations (five) and generations (three). I should add that it was not a one-shot entry on my part; it was part of a month-long effort, involving dozens of entries, to fully develop the Rider article (e.g., it went from nine to 40 references and 8,00+ to 24,000+ bytes).

I can see many good reasons in your discussion above for eliminating certain images from Notable-alumni sections However, I can see no compelling reason here for eliminating the specific gallery of images that I produced.

Please allow me to respond to your concerns point by point. After reading my response, I hope you will restore or allow me to restore my gallery to the Notable-alumni section of the Rider High page. (I also hope I can persuade you to reject a blanket ban on images in the Notable-alumni sections, and instead introduce clear guidelines that would permit modest-in-size, representative-in-scope, and harmonious-with-the-text images to remain.)

Point One. Meters states that the attempts to insert iumages into the Notable-alumni sections present formatting problems and are out of touch with the text entries. However, it does not follow that these difficulties cannot be overcome! In the last sentence of the first paragraph of his first entry, he notes (without naming me specifically, but by footnoting my work) that my "use of small pictures in a gallery" was an "interesting attempt" to solve these problems, but faults my gallery for being "disconnected" to the bulleted entries.

I strongly disagree. First, each of my pictures has a last name (and nothing else) under it, and the bullet entries are in alphabetical order. Thus, the eye can go from the last name under the picture to the corresponding bullet entry in under one second. Try it and see! Second, the gallery – located as it is at the top of the Notable-alumni section – gives a terrific quick overview of the sorts of people that are in that section (the photos show each of them fully engaged in an aspect of their occupation), and therefore serves the function of any good image: pulling the viewer deeper into the text.

Point Twp. Meters's second concern is that the selection of images for the Notable-alumni section may produce conflict over which images should be chosen. That does not seem to me to be a dispositive concern, for two reasons. First, this conflict is endemic to any encyclopedic enterprise – for example, I especially enjoy reading WP's articles on social, political, and cultural movements, and I find it inevitable and not at all bothersome that some of my favorite participants in these movements will not be pictured. WP should assume that the majority of its editors can and will exhibit that same basic level of maturity. It should not create inflexible rules just because a few of us may be immature. That is not only unfair to the vast majority of us, but it's counter to the democratic spirit of Wikipedia.

Second, there is a way of defusing much of the conflict born of immaturity that Meters is concerned about, and I demonstrated it in my gallery. That way is to make the pictures both (a) diverse and (b) reasonably representative of the notable alumni. As stated above, my five pictures represent five occupations (including two sports occupations – many of Rider's notable alumni are sorts stars) and three generations (the school is now nearly 60 years old). In addition, as their WP bios (and my photos!) suggest, they represent a variety of social and political attitudes. Alas, I could find no female notable alumni – before putting up the gallery, I looked up every WP article that mentioned "Rider High School," as well as the Google and Google Books bios of every woman listed in the WP category of "People from Wichita Falls, Texas."

Point Three. Meters's third point is that there is no need to include photos in the Notable-alumni section, since each of the alumni will have bios (and often photos) on Wikipedia. This point mistakenly assumes that the function of photos in articles is purely functional. It is not; it is also aesthetic and, when done well, galvanizing. One useful purpose is to help bring a subject alive for the viewer, and my gallery certainly does help bring Rider's notables alive (to put it mildly!). Another useful purpose is to help draw the viewer into the text. My gallery does help tempt the viewer to scroll down and learn more.

Point Four. I agree with Kudpung that the use of images in the Notable-alumni sections can be "excessive". However, it is not necessarily so, and my gallery of images demonstrates that. Before creating my gallery, I looked at WP articles about several well-known U.S. high schools, including the Abraham Lincoln High School (Brooklyn) article whose Notable-alumni section was choked with photos (Meters mentions it his second entry in your discussion). I deliberately designed the photos in my gallery to be in some important ways the polar opposite of those photos. For instance, those were big (huge even – look how important we are!), mine were modest in size. Those crowded the text on the right and snaked far down the section, making it difficult to connect them to the bulleted names; mine sat cozily in one strip atiop the names, making it easy to connect them to the names.

My point is that there is nothing inherently excessive about photos in the Notable-alumni section; an editor simply has to exhibit modesty, balance, common sense, and concern for the viewer. These and other such criteria can be included in a set of guidelines. They are already present in my Rider gallery.

Point Five. I appreciate Marchiuly's concern about the use of non-free images in Notable-alumni sections.. However, that concern is universal on Wikipedia, it is hardly uniqaue to Notable-alumni sections. And I wionder how widespread the use of non-free photos in Notable-alumni sections really is. Do we have data? Absent hard evidemce thart high schoolers and alumni are pumping thousands of non-free images into Notable-alumni sections, surely the most rational response to Marchiuly's concern is continued monitoring by WP administratorsand experienced editors, not banning all photos in Notable-alumni sections.

In any event, I drew my my gallery of images entirely from public-domain photos at Wikimedia Commons. Marchiuly writes, "I am wondering if a simple gallery markup at either the top, bottom or at various points in between entries could be made to work for public domain or freely licensed images." That is exactly what I did in my gallery – in fact, I never take images from anywhere but Commons.

Point Six. In his third entry, Meters voices his concern about the "indiscriminate addition" of images to Notable-alumni sections. This is a valid concern, but it is no different from equally valid concerns about the indiscriminate addition of names to such sections or the use of poorly sourced or inappropriate material in other sections of high school articles. Responsible editors can and do revert all these things on WP, and it's easy to do via the "undo" button – and it's just as easy with images as with text. In any event, as I emphasized in Point 2 above, the images I added to the Rider Notable-alumni section were the very opposite of indiscriminate.

Point Seven. Kudpung's second entry and Meters's fourth raise an issue that this dialogue should probably have begun with – just how extensive is the phenomenon of images in Notable-alumni sections, anyway? Nobody appears to have real data. Kudpung (with 10 years of experience) thinks it's virtually nonexistent, Meters thinks it's extensive. I note that in this entire exchange, only three examples were offered – and one of them was my Rider High gallery, which I hope by now I've shown to have been nonobjectionable, even appealing!

Unless it can be shown that clunky and inappropriate images have become so massive a problem in Notable-alumni sections that they can't be dealt with by the ordinary tools of editing (e.g., advice, guidelines, the delete button), surely the least one can say is that a blanket ban is premature.

Point Eight. ClemRutter and DougWeller express a sentiment that I think may underlie this entire dialogue: they think that, in Clem's words, high school articles are about "the school" and that the names of the notable alumni are therefore only "marginally interesting". All I can say is that Clem and Doug must live in a very different environment from mine.

In my world, public schools (aka state schools) vary tremendously in quality; and one way people measure school quality is by asking whether at least some alumni have been able to live unusually creative lives or reach the tops of their professions. As a result, I have known literally dozens of parents, pre-high-school kids, high schoolers themselves, and of course alumni who have pored assiduously through the Notable-alumni sections of high school articles on Wikipedia. They do not see these sections as marginal to schools, they see them as expressing one aspect of their essence.

S. H. Rider High School, the one whose article I've chosen to help develop, is a pretty average high school in a pretty ordinary mid-size American city. Yet if you go onto Google you'll find that it holds 50th anniversary reunions for its alumni! It even has a Facebook page acknowledging alumni and teachers who have passed away. So in the case of many U.S. schools, at any rate, the Notable-alumni section should be seen as part and parcel of the very identity of the schools. That is one reason it is appropriate for some of those alumni to be pictured there.

In conclusion. Thank you for hearing me out. By now I hope I have convinced you that my modest and carefully wrought gallery of images atop the Rider High School Notable-alumni section actually enhances that section and deserves to be restored. If you agree, please either restore it or permit me to restore it in your comments below.

In addition, I hope I have convinced you to re-think your impulse to impose a blanket ban on all such images. A set of explicit guidelines will serve Wikipedia much better here, as we will then be able to preserve the good while rejecting the bad on the basis of explicit guidelines that should minimize controversy. Hopefully my gallery – modest in size, diverse in occupations and generations (and in other ways as well), carefully positioned to allow for rapid visual connection between the names of those pictured and the names of those listed – can offer you some ideas for drawing up guidelines for acceptable imagery in Notable-alumni sections. Best, - Babel41 (talk) 05:07, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I have only skimmed this so far (definitely WP:TLDR territory) but I will point out that I most certainly did not say that I though the problem was extensive, as Babel41 claims. I said the exact opposite: I agree that it is not very common. Meters (talk) 05:43, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

It's irrelevant how often images are added to alumni lists, what matters is if there is consensus that images should not be included in alumni lists. I simply listed the article that raised the issue for me (Babel41's addition), and the first two examples I found by going through my watch list. Meters (talk) 05:53, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

• @Meters, John from Idegon, Babel41, and JonRidinger: I have tagged the article for COI and warned the user. They have used expressions in discussion such as 'our school'. That said, we do not usually include photos of alumni in school articles. The one exception is if there is a manspace alumni article such as for example, at Malvern College. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:06, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

@Meters, John from Idegon, Babel41, and JonRidinger: I will just add to this that school articles are about schools. Alumni sections are only of marginal interest. We realise that many people are proud of their schools and the notable people who have graduated from them, but the extent of including photos also makes the page promotional. Schools, especially government government run scvhools (i.e. in the US, schools maintained by a school district authority) have no need to be promotional. In this respect, as an aside, we come down very hard on fee paying schools that are attempting to advertise through our encyclopedia. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:37, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Rossford High School

Any editors who can chime in at Rossford High School, there has been a disagreement on the inclusion of conference championships in the article's athletics section (see here). --JonRidinger (talk) 17:24, 9 May 2018 (UTC)