Apologies for the bias and frustration evident here.
At DRV right now is a debate regarding Finger Lakes Christian School. The sources for this article are: a diary date and a quote form the principal; and the school website. The school is a private church school with 75 students.
The problem with the article itself was established at AfD: absence of non-trivial coverage in reliable secondary sources. We cannot verify anything much other than its existence, so the article contents was a simple directory entry, but of course [[WP:NOT]] a directory does not apply to schools.
The problem with the deletion debate is obvious; it has the S-word in the title so the subject is "inherently notable" (whatever that might mean, no sources were cited to back this claim). Obviously if one were to substitute "company" for "school" in the article title it would have been snowballed into the bitbucket, with its 75 unique Googles outside Wikipedia and mirrors.
The problem with the DRV is that the existence of a number of votes from obdurate "all schools are inherently notable" types means that vote counting gives no consensus, whereas a comparison of arguments from policy - specifically verifiability and hence the ability to cover the subject objectively - shows a clear delete.
The problem with the whole argument is that the quasi-religious belief that every school article must be kept because all schools are inherently notable appears to override all concerns of verifiability and neutrality, to the point where nobody arguing to keep has even tried to fix the major issue raised at AfD, that the contents of the article cannot be formally verified per policy. Folk memory has it that one outright hoax was nearly kept as a result of this line of reasoning.
I'm rather hoping that someone on this list will care enough and have sufficient resources to actually find the reliable sources the article needs, since I have little doubt that the school inclusionists will see to it that it is kept one way or another, and the last thing we need is yet another unverifiable promotional article on a private Christian school. I can't find much other than directory entries, and I find I lose the will to live after reading a certain number of them.
Guy (JzG)
On 23/09/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
The problem with the DRV is that the existence of a number of votes from obdurate "all schools are inherently notable" types means that vote counting gives no consensus, whereas a comparison of arguments from policy - specifically verifiability and hence the ability to cover the subject objectively - shows a clear delete.
This is a hardened attitude formed by people on VFD as it was who wanted to delete all schools from Wikipedia below the notability level of Eton. That is: the process was pathological on both sides.
So let's assume every school will be in Wikipedia on the same basis that every pissweak or even no-longer-existent hamlet in the US will remain. What can be done then?
* Is existence enough? Evidently. * So we need proof of existence and basic verifiable information.
There should be enough for a stub at the very least. If you want to turn it into a list entry instead, the redirect needs to be in the appropriate place.
If you're bringing this to wikien-l to re-fight the school deletion wars, you're probably not spending your time well.
- d.
On 23 Sep 2006, at 17:46, David Gerard wrote:
On 23/09/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
The problem with the DRV is that the existence of a number of votes from obdurate "all schools are inherently notable" types means that vote counting gives no consensus, whereas a comparison of arguments from policy - specifically verifiability and hence the ability to cover the subject objectively - shows a clear delete.
This is a hardened attitude formed by people on VFD as it was who wanted to delete all schools from Wikipedia below the notability level of Eton. That is: the process was pathological on both sides.
So let's assume every school will be in Wikipedia on the same basis that every pissweak or even no-longer-existent hamlet in the US will remain. What can be done then?
- Is existence enough? Evidently.
- So we need proof of existence and basic verifiable information.
There should be enough for a stub at the very least. If you want to turn it into a list entry instead, the redirect needs to be in the appropriate place.
If you're bringing this to wikien-l to re-fight the school deletion wars, you're probably not spending your time well.
We can still give moral support. If content cannot be verified, it should be taken out. The onus is on the people adding the information to provide verification.
On 9/23/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 23/09/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
The problem with the DRV is that the existence of a number of votes from obdurate "all schools are inherently notable" types means that vote counting gives no consensus, whereas a comparison of arguments from policy - specifically verifiability and hence the ability to cover the subject objectively - shows a clear delete.
This is a hardened attitude formed by people on VFD as it was who wanted to delete all schools from Wikipedia below the notability level of Eton. That is: the process was pathological on both sides.
So let's assume every school will be in Wikipedia on the same basis that every pissweak or even no-longer-existent hamlet in the US will remain. What can be done then?
- Is existence enough? Evidently.
- So we need proof of existence and basic verifiable information.
There should be enough for a stub at the very least. If you want to turn it into a list entry instead, the redirect needs to be in the appropriate place.
If you're bringing this to wikien-l to re-fight the school deletion wars, you're probably not spending your time well.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Just for reference, we're looking at a worst case roughly 124,000 school stubs ( http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_085.asp ) for the US.
I understand those that disagree, but I think the categorical include pseudopolicy for schools makes sense. They're of immense interest to most parents, the school system has 72 million odd Americans in it, and categorical inclusionism here is not in any way throwing Wikipedia into disrepute or threatening our server load or diskspace.
On 23 Sep 2006, at 18:36, George Herbert wrote:
On 9/23/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 23/09/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
The problem with the DRV is that the existence of a number of votes from obdurate "all schools are inherently notable" types means that vote counting gives no consensus, whereas a comparison of arguments from policy - specifically verifiability and hence the ability to cover the subject objectively - shows a clear delete.
This is a hardened attitude formed by people on VFD as it was who wanted to delete all schools from Wikipedia below the notability level of Eton. That is: the process was pathological on both sides.
So let's assume every school will be in Wikipedia on the same basis that every pissweak or even no-longer-existent hamlet in the US will remain. What can be done then?
- Is existence enough? Evidently.
- So we need proof of existence and basic verifiable information.
There should be enough for a stub at the very least. If you want to turn it into a list entry instead, the redirect needs to be in the appropriate place.
If you're bringing this to wikien-l to re-fight the school deletion wars, you're probably not spending your time well.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Just for reference, we're looking at a worst case roughly 124,000 school stubs ( http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/ dt04_085.asp ) for the US.
I understand those that disagree, but I think the categorical include pseudopolicy for schools makes sense. They're of immense interest to most parents, the school system has 72 million odd Americans in it, and categorical inclusionism here is not in any way throwing Wikipedia into disrepute or threatening our server load or diskspace.
I don't the issue is technological. It's more to do with the reliability of the information.
The idea is that a smaller encyclopaedia with reliable information is better than one twice as big where (a possibly unknown) half of the information is unreliable.
On 9/23/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
On 23 Sep 2006, at 18:36, George Herbert wrote:
On 9/23/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 23/09/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
The problem with the DRV is that the existence of a number of votes from obdurate "all schools are inherently notable" types means that vote counting gives no consensus, whereas a comparison of arguments from policy - specifically verifiability and hence the ability to cover the subject objectively - shows a clear delete.
This is a hardened attitude formed by people on VFD as it was who wanted to delete all schools from Wikipedia below the notability level of Eton. That is: the process was pathological on both sides.
So let's assume every school will be in Wikipedia on the same basis that every pissweak or even no-longer-existent hamlet in the US will remain. What can be done then?
- Is existence enough? Evidently.
- So we need proof of existence and basic verifiable information.
There should be enough for a stub at the very least. If you want to turn it into a list entry instead, the redirect needs to be in the appropriate place.
If you're bringing this to wikien-l to re-fight the school deletion wars, you're probably not spending your time well.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Just for reference, we're looking at a worst case roughly 124,000 school stubs ( http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/ dt04_085.asp ) for the US.
I understand those that disagree, but I think the categorical include pseudopolicy for schools makes sense. They're of immense interest to most parents, the school system has 72 million odd Americans in it, and categorical inclusionism here is not in any way throwing Wikipedia into disrepute or threatening our server load or diskspace.
I don't the issue is technological. It's more to do with the reliability of the information.
The idea is that a smaller encyclopaedia with reliable information is better than one twice as big where (a possibly unknown) half of the information is unreliable. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The existence of the school in question has been verified, as I understand it.
Nuking the article because one can't verify some other information in the article is nonsense. If it's not completely verifyable and you have some particular question as to its accuracy, then tagging it with unverified, then editing out the info in extremis, are the established thing to do.
This incident worries me. Nothing personal to you, Guy, or Cyde Weys, but there's an established consensus on schools. Just because you've been around for a long time and are admins doesn't mean you can game the procedures to delete something which consensus says should stay. Complaining when people kick back and complain about it is ... nice chutzpah?
This is part of the problem I had with Tony, back six months ago. It's fine to be bold. But the limit of being bold has to be when consensus kicks back and complains about what you just did. If your reaction when consensus kicks back is "process wonkery sucks" then there is a problem.
Trying to undo a consensus via admin guerilla warfare, nicking little slices off it here and there, is not a good way to fix things, and particularly not a good way to establish positive admin/general editor populace relations.
On 23 Sep 2006, at 19:20, George Herbert wrote:
On 9/23/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
On 23 Sep 2006, at 18:36, George Herbert wrote:
On 9/23/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 23/09/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
The problem with the DRV is that the existence of a number of votes from obdurate "all schools are inherently notable" types means that vote counting gives no consensus, whereas a comparison of arguments from policy - specifically verifiability and hence the ability to cover the subject objectively - shows a clear delete.
This is a hardened attitude formed by people on VFD as it was who wanted to delete all schools from Wikipedia below the notability level of Eton. That is: the process was pathological on both sides.
So let's assume every school will be in Wikipedia on the same basis that every pissweak or even no-longer-existent hamlet in the US will remain. What can be done then?
- Is existence enough? Evidently.
- So we need proof of existence and basic verifiable information.
There should be enough for a stub at the very least. If you want to turn it into a list entry instead, the redirect needs to be in the appropriate place.
If you're bringing this to wikien-l to re-fight the school deletion wars, you're probably not spending your time well.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Just for reference, we're looking at a worst case roughly 124,000 school stubs ( http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/ dt04_085.asp ) for the US.
I understand those that disagree, but I think the categorical include pseudopolicy for schools makes sense. They're of immense interest to most parents, the school system has 72 million odd Americans in it, and categorical inclusionism here is not in any way throwing Wikipedia into disrepute or threatening our server load or diskspace.
I don't the issue is technological. It's more to do with the reliability of the information.
The idea is that a smaller encyclopaedia with reliable information is better than one twice as big where (a possibly unknown) half of the information is unreliable. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The existence of the school in question has been verified, as I understand it.
Nuking the article because one can't verify some other information in the article is nonsense. If it's not completely verifyable and you have some particular question as to its accuracy, then tagging it with unverified, then editing out the info in extremis, are the established thing to do.
This incident worries me. Nothing personal to you, Guy, or Cyde Weys, but there's an established consensus on schools. Just because you've been around for a long time and are admins doesn't mean you can game the procedures to delete something which consensus says should stay. Complaining when people kick back and complain about it is ... nice chutzpah?
This is part of the problem I had with Tony, back six months ago. It's fine to be bold. But the limit of being bold has to be when consensus kicks back and complains about what you just did. If your reaction when consensus kicks back is "process wonkery sucks" then there is a problem.
Trying to undo a consensus via admin guerilla warfare, nicking little slices off it here and there, is not a good way to fix things, and particularly not a good way to establish positive admin/general editor populace relations.
Would you be happy with as stub stating the existence of the organisation? Is this verifiable from secondary sources?
On 9/23/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
On 23 Sep 2006, at 19:20, George Herbert wrote:
On 9/23/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
On 23 Sep 2006, at 18:36, George Herbert wrote:
On 9/23/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 23/09/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
The problem with the DRV is that the existence of a number of votes from obdurate "all schools are inherently notable" types means that vote counting gives no consensus, whereas a comparison of arguments from policy - specifically verifiability and hence the ability to cover the subject objectively - shows a clear delete.
This is a hardened attitude formed by people on VFD as it was who wanted to delete all schools from Wikipedia below the notability level of Eton. That is: the process was pathological on both sides.
So let's assume every school will be in Wikipedia on the same basis that every pissweak or even no-longer-existent hamlet in the US will remain. What can be done then?
- Is existence enough? Evidently.
- So we need proof of existence and basic verifiable information.
There should be enough for a stub at the very least. If you want to turn it into a list entry instead, the redirect needs to be in the appropriate place.
If you're bringing this to wikien-l to re-fight the school deletion wars, you're probably not spending your time well.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Just for reference, we're looking at a worst case roughly 124,000 school stubs ( http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/ dt04_085.asp ) for the US.
I understand those that disagree, but I think the categorical include pseudopolicy for schools makes sense. They're of immense interest to most parents, the school system has 72 million odd Americans in it, and categorical inclusionism here is not in any way throwing Wikipedia into disrepute or threatening our server load or diskspace.
I don't the issue is technological. It's more to do with the reliability of the information.
The idea is that a smaller encyclopaedia with reliable information is better than one twice as big where (a possibly unknown) half of the information is unreliable. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
The existence of the school in question has been verified, as I understand it.
Nuking the article because one can't verify some other information in the article is nonsense. If it's not completely verifyable and you have some particular question as to its accuracy, then tagging it with unverified, then editing out the info in extremis, are the established thing to do.
This incident worries me. Nothing personal to you, Guy, or Cyde Weys, but there's an established consensus on schools. Just because you've been around for a long time and are admins doesn't mean you can game the procedures to delete something which consensus says should stay. Complaining when people kick back and complain about it is ... nice chutzpah?
This is part of the problem I had with Tony, back six months ago. It's fine to be bold. But the limit of being bold has to be when consensus kicks back and complains about what you just did. If your reaction when consensus kicks back is "process wonkery sucks" then there is a problem.
Trying to undo a consensus via admin guerilla warfare, nicking little slices off it here and there, is not a good way to fix things, and particularly not a good way to establish positive admin/general editor populace relations.
Would you be happy with as stub stating the existence of the organisation? Is this verifiable from secondary sources?
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Happy? No, it should be a fleshed out, referenced article. That would make me happy.
Acceptable? Leave it as a stub with minimally verifyable information.
Bad? Leave info in it which is unverifyable and appears suspicious or spurious.
Worse? Keep it deleted.
All in my personal opinion, of course.
On 23 Sep 2006, at 20:34, George Herbert wrote:
On 9/23/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
On 23 Sep 2006, at 19:20, George Herbert wrote:
On 9/23/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
On 23 Sep 2006, at 18:36, George Herbert wrote:
The existence of the school in question has been verified, as I understand it.
Nuking the article because one can't verify some other information in the article is nonsense. If it's not completely verifyable and you have some particular question as to its accuracy, then tagging it with unverified, then editing out the info in extremis, are the established thing to do.
This incident worries me. Nothing personal to you, Guy, or Cyde Weys, but there's an established consensus on schools. Just because you've been around for a long time and are admins doesn't mean you can game the procedures to delete something which consensus says should stay. Complaining when people kick back and complain about it is ... nice chutzpah?
This is part of the problem I had with Tony, back six months ago. It's fine to be bold. But the limit of being bold has to be when consensus kicks back and complains about what you just did. If your reaction when consensus kicks back is "process wonkery sucks" then there is a problem.
Trying to undo a consensus via admin guerilla warfare, nicking little slices off it here and there, is not a good way to fix things, and particularly not a good way to establish positive admin/general editor populace relations.
Would you be happy with as stub stating the existence of the organisation? Is this verifiable from secondary sources?
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Happy? No, it should be a fleshed out, referenced article. That would make me happy.
Acceptable? Leave it as a stub with minimally verifyable information.
Bad? Leave info in it which is unverifyable and appears suspicious or spurious.
Worse? Keep it deleted.
All in my personal opinion, of course.
Would you be happy to convert it to a stub with only verifiable information? If so, it may be worth saying so on DRV.
On 9/23/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
On 23 Sep 2006, at 20:34, George Herbert wrote:
On 9/23/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
On 23 Sep 2006, at 19:20, George Herbert wrote:
On 9/23/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
On 23 Sep 2006, at 18:36, George Herbert wrote:
The existence of the school in question has been verified, as I understand it.
Nuking the article because one can't verify some other information in the article is nonsense. If it's not completely verifyable and you have some particular question as to its accuracy, then tagging it with unverified, then editing out the info in extremis, are the established thing to do.
This incident worries me. Nothing personal to you, Guy, or Cyde Weys, but there's an established consensus on schools. Just because you've been around for a long time and are admins doesn't mean you can game the procedures to delete something which consensus says should stay. Complaining when people kick back and complain about it is ... nice chutzpah?
This is part of the problem I had with Tony, back six months ago. It's fine to be bold. But the limit of being bold has to be when consensus kicks back and complains about what you just did. If your reaction when consensus kicks back is "process wonkery sucks" then there is a problem.
Trying to undo a consensus via admin guerilla warfare, nicking little slices off it here and there, is not a good way to fix things, and particularly not a good way to establish positive admin/general editor populace relations.
Would you be happy with as stub stating the existence of the organisation? Is this verifiable from secondary sources?
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Happy? No, it should be a fleshed out, referenced article. That would make me happy.
Acceptable? Leave it as a stub with minimally verifyable information.
Bad? Leave info in it which is unverifyable and appears suspicious or spurious.
Worse? Keep it deleted.
All in my personal opinion, of course.
Would you be happy to convert it to a stub with only verifiable information? If so, it may be worth saying so on DRV. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Happy? No. That should have been the first response of the first AFD nominator. I am getting tired of cleaning up people's AFD messes this way.
Willing to? Yes.
I have so stated on the undelete review discussion.
On Sat, 23 Sep 2006 19:36:33 +0200, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
Just for reference, we're looking at a worst case roughly 124,000 school stubs ( http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_085.asp ) for the US.
I understand those that disagree, but I think the categorical include pseudopolicy for schools makes sense. They're of immense interest to most parents, the school system has 72 million odd Americans in it, and categorical inclusionism here is not in any way throwing Wikipedia into disrepute or threatening our server load or diskspace.
Those are just the government approved ones I think, also remember that there are a few schools outside the US too...
How do we define "school" anyway? Does every money grabbing diploma mill and fly-by-night private teaching institution that ever existed fall into this blanket inclution criterea as well as long as they refered to themselves as "school" in some way, or just those that are government aproved? There are quite a few dodgy business initiatives around the globe that label themselves as "school" or "academy" and such. I don't see why *some* form of notability cutoff for private schools would be such a bad thing.
I've not been into this whole school debate so sorry if this has been covered ad-nauseum before.
On 9/24/06, Sherool jamydlan@online.no wrote:
How do we define "school" anyway? Does every money grabbing diploma mill and fly-by-night private teaching institution that ever existed fall into this blanket inclution criterea as well as long as they refered to themselves as "school" in some way, or just those that are government aproved? There are quite a few dodgy business initiatives around the globe that label themselves as "school" or "academy" and such. I don't see why *some* form of notability cutoff for private schools would be such a bad thing.
Personally I think dodgy places which are not accredited, and have articles pointing this out, are more useful to have in Wikipedia than, say, every public school in California, with unverifiable reports of how it is "one of the best in the county" and "is well-known for its academic opportunities" and so forth. I find entries like [[Patriot Bible University]] more useful in pointing out the lack of authority an institution has than those which use utterly unconvincing peacock terms to discuss legitimate ones.
FF
On 9/23/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Just for reference, we're looking at a worst case roughly 124,000 school stubs ( http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_085.asp ) for the US.
Yes, and the US accounts for ~5% of the world population. Assuming that there are 2x as many schools per capita as in the US, that means over a million stubs.
I understand those that disagree, but I think the categorical include
pseudopolicy for schools makes sense. They're of immense interest to most parents, the school system has 72 million odd Americans in it, and categorical inclusionism here is not in any way throwing Wikipedia into disrepute or threatening our server load or diskspace.
If you think about it, families are of interest to most parents. There are a couple hundred million Americans in families, a few billion people globally. Thus, all families are notable. We need articles on every family in the world.
On 9/24/06, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
If you think about it, families are of interest to most parents. There are a couple hundred million Americans in families, a few billion people globally. Thus, all families are notable. We need articles on every family in the world.
In that case, what we need is to fork every single bio into a "WikiGene" project that seeks to make a free genealogical tree for all humanity, with something on the order of a trillion entries all the way back to what ever common ancestor you choose to reference.
Carl
Carl Peterson wrote:
On 9/24/06, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
If you think about it, families are of interest to most parents. There are a couple hundred million Americans in families, a few billion people globally. Thus, all families are notable. We need articles on every family in the world.
In that case, what we need is to fork every single bio into a "WikiGene" project that seeks to make a free genealogical tree for all humanity, with something on the order of a trillion entries all the way back to what ever common ancestor you choose to reference.
Somewhat less, I guess the creationists only want to go back to 4000 for christ or something like that.... :-)
Kim
Carl Peterson wrote:
On 9/24/06, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
If you think about it, families are of interest to most parents. There are a couple hundred million Americans in families, a few billion people globally. Thus, all families are notable. We need articles on every family in the world.
In that case, what we need is to fork every single bio into a "WikiGene" project that seeks to make a free genealogical tree for all humanity, with something on the order of a trillion entries all the way back to what ever common ancestor you choose to reference.
Check out WikiTree:
http://wikitree.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
On 9/24/06, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/23/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Just for reference, we're looking at a worst case roughly 124,000 school stubs ( http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_085.asp ) for the US.
Yes, and the US accounts for ~5% of the world population. Assuming that there are 2x as many schools per capita as in the US, that means over a million stubs.
We have others floating suggestions of putting a stub in for every city, town, village, and perhaps hamlet everywhere in the world. Those are being taken positively and seriously. I hesitate to guess how many million stubs that will end up being.
I am not going to extend the schools argument to the whole rest of the world. I would assume that other english-speaking nations would want equal inclusion, (UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, etc). That's going to less than double the potential number of school stubs.
G'day George,
On 9/24/06, Guettarda guettarda@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/23/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Just for reference, we're looking at a worst case roughly 124,000 school stubs ( http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_085.asp ) for the US.
Yes, and the US accounts for ~5% of the world population. Assuming that there are 2x as many schools per capita as in the US, that means over a million stubs.
We have others floating suggestions of putting a stub in for every city, town, village, and perhaps hamlet everywhere in the world. Those are being taken positively and seriously. I hesitate to guess how many million stubs that will end up being.
Yes, we do. Suppose stubs on towns are more useful than stubs on schools?
(I don't intend to offer that argument seriously. But you could at least consider it before deciding that towns === schools.)
I am not going to extend the schools argument to the whole rest of the world. I would assume that other english-speaking nations would want equal inclusion, (UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, etc). That's going to less than double the potential number of school stubs.
There are countries out there that don't speak English. They're just as interesting as the rest of us (in the case of NZ[0], far more so). Why aren't you going to consider them? Why are they beyond your scope?
[0] Any Kiwi readers here? Oh, shit.
G'day George,
Just for reference, we're looking at a worst case roughly 124,000 school stubs ( http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_085.asp ) for the US.
The problem is not, and never was, the number of schools in the USA[0]. Quoting numbers specific to the USA gives us a picture that is: a) utterly irrelevant, and b) extremely unflattering to the painter.
How many schools are there, world-wide? How low do we go before we decide that a particular school is not worth an article? How do we keep these articles to a high (okay, not-completely-buggered) standard? The non-American would add the question: why are non-American schools never considered in these discussions?, but not wishing to be seen as mean-spirited by his friends across the Pacific, he won't.
I understand those that disagree, but I think the categorical include pseudopolicy for schools makes sense. They're of immense interest to most parents, the school system has 72 million odd Americans in it, and categorical inclusionism here is not in any way throwing Wikipedia into disrepute or threatening our server load or diskspace.
The schools debate is over, and we lost. I can cope with that. Further arguing is pointless, and leads only to ill-will. If we *must* refight the debate, however, could you at least offer relevant arguments?
(The US school system has approximately 72m Americans? If the school system has three schools in it: A with 36m students, B with 35.9999m students, and C with 100 students ... and what if the Canadian school system had 144m Canadians? And the Mexican 288m?)
[0] I *have* seen people who are otherwise "school inclusionists" argue for deletion of schools in Asia on notability grounds; such people are known as "those without credibility" or, if I'm feeling charitable[1], "Americans".
[1] Or particularly uncharitable!
George Herbert wrote:
I understand those that disagree, but I think the categorical include pseudopolicy for schools makes sense. They're of immense interest to most parents, the school system has 72 million odd Americans in it, and categorical inclusionism here is not in any way throwing Wikipedia into disrepute or threatening our server load or diskspace.
That "immense interest" does not in any way mean that there is actual verifiable information, nor does it keep us from having a steady stream of Oh So Very Funny Young Men editing these little gems of nonsense into still further useless nonsense that good people then have to clean up.
However, I am very sorry to report that I agree with David Gerard, who I think was not being critical of anyone at all, when he said that spending a lot of time in school deletion wars is probably not a good use of any intelligent person's time. I am very sorry to say it, but there it is. :)
--Jimbo
On 28/09/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
However, I am very sorry to report that I agree with David Gerard,
Don't worry, it's not terminal. Usually.
who I think was not being critical of anyone at all, when he said that spending a lot of time in school deletion wars is probably not a good use of any intelligent person's time. I am very sorry to say it, but there it is. :)
Deletion wars in general are a sign people are missing a point. (Well, DUH.)
Lists of the verifiable information and a forest of redirects are often a highly workable compromise, and indeed more usable to the interested reader.
- d.
On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 10:54:01 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Lists of the verifiable information and a forest of redirects are often a highly workable compromise, and indeed more usable to the interested reader.
I absolutely agree. Unfortunately this was rejected out of hand by the obdurate schools inclusionists.
Guy (JzG)
On 28/09/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 10:54:01 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Lists of the verifiable information and a forest of redirects are often a highly workable compromise, and indeed more usable to the interested reader.
I absolutely agree. Unfortunately this was rejected out of hand by the obdurate schools inclusionists.
That's the trouble with entrenched positions in process wars - the people act in a manner indistinguishable from bloody idiots. I suggest persisting on the verifiability and making the list article anyway.
- d.
On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 11:59:51 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
That's the trouble with entrenched positions in process wars - the people act in a manner indistinguishable from bloody idiots. I suggest persisting on the verifiability and making the list article anyway.
In a rare outbreak of Clue (rare for this issue, not the closer of the DRV), the article was (last time I saw it) redirected to the community, which has a short sentence on it. We shall see.
Guy (JzG)
On 28/09/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 11:59:51 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
That's the trouble with entrenched positions in process wars - the people act in a manner indistinguishable from bloody idiots. I suggest persisting on the verifiability and making the list article anyway.
In a rare outbreak of Clue (rare for this issue, not the closer of the DRV), the article was (last time I saw it) redirected to the community, which has a short sentence on it. We shall see.
w00t!
- d.
On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 16:48:34 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
In a rare outbreak of Clue (rare for this issue, not the closer of the DRV), the article was (last time I saw it) redirected to the community, which has a short sentence on it. We shall see.
w00t!
Quite. But what are the chances of this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Alder_Coppice_P... going the same way? Because "strong keep, notable as all schools are" is sure as hell a religious not a policy argument.
Guy (JzG)
On 9/23/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 23/09/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
This is a hardened attitude formed by people on VFD as it was who wanted to delete all schools from Wikipedia below the notability level of Eton. That is: the process was pathological on both sides.
Quite frankly I am anything but a deletionist, but I think that a school with 75 students and no other claim to notability doesn't deserve a Wikipedia article
So let's assume every school will be in Wikipedia on the same basis
that every pissweak or even no-longer-existent hamlet in the US will remain. What can be done then?
- Is existence enough? Evidently.
- So we need proof of existence and basic verifiable information.
There is a long-established tradition of notability for Wikipedia articles. We delete things that are non-notable. People who say "all schools are notable" aren't discussing an issue, they are espousing an ideology. Some people who home-school their children register a school. By that token, anyone home-schooling their children is notable enough for inclusion, so the only barrier then is verifiability
There should be enough for a stub at the very least. If you want to
turn it into a list entry instead, the redirect needs to be in the appropriate place.
If you're bringing this to wikien-l to re-fight the school deletion wars, you're probably not spending your time well.
You really shouldn't be calling the kettle black David ;)
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Note that notability is not the policy. Verifiability is. Even if a school is notable "by default", as some claim, if there is no verifiable information about it, there should be no article.
Guettarda wrote:
On 9/23/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 23/09/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
This is a hardened attitude formed by people on VFD as it was who wanted to delete all schools from Wikipedia below the notability level of Eton. That is: the process was pathological on both sides.
Quite frankly I am anything but a deletionist, but I think that a school with 75 students and no other claim to notability doesn't deserve a Wikipedia article
So let's assume every school will be in Wikipedia on the same basis
that every pissweak or even no-longer-existent hamlet in the US will remain. What can be done then?
- Is existence enough? Evidently.
- So we need proof of existence and basic verifiable information.
There is a long-established tradition of notability for Wikipedia articles. We delete things that are non-notable. People who say "all schools are notable" aren't discussing an issue, they are espousing an ideology. Some people who home-school their children register a school. By that token, anyone home-schooling their children is notable enough for inclusion, so the only barrier then is verifiability
There should be enough for a stub at the very least. If you want to
turn it into a list entry instead, the redirect needs to be in the appropriate place.
If you're bringing this to wikien-l to re-fight the school deletion wars, you're probably not spending your time well.
You really shouldn't be calling the kettle black David ;)
- d.
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On 9/24/06, Constantine Evans constantine@evanslabs.org wrote:
Note that notability is not the policy. Verifiability is. Even if a school is notable "by default", as some claim, if there is no verifiable information about it, there should be no article.
Guettarda wrote:
On 9/23/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 23/09/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
This is a hardened attitude formed by people on VFD as it was who wanted to delete all schools from Wikipedia below the notability level of Eton. That is: the process was pathological on both sides.
Quite frankly I am anything but a deletionist, but I think that a school with 75 students and no other claim to notability doesn't deserve a Wikipedia article
So let's assume every school will be in Wikipedia on the same basis
that every pissweak or even no-longer-existent hamlet in the US will remain. What can be done then?
- Is existence enough? Evidently.
- So we need proof of existence and basic verifiable information.
There is a long-established tradition of notability for Wikipedia articles. We delete things that are non-notable. People who say "all schools are notable" aren't discussing an issue, they are espousing an ideology. Some people who home-school their children register a
school. By
that token, anyone home-schooling their children is notable enough for inclusion, so the only barrier then is verifiability
There should be enough for a stub at the very least. If you want to
turn it into a list entry instead, the redirect needs to be in the appropriate place.
If you're bringing this to wikien-l to re-fight the school deletion wars, you're probably not spending your time well.
You really shouldn't be calling the kettle black David ;)
- d.
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Verifyability is not a problem; there are nationwide school databases out on the Internet with the basic particulars, and in many cases fairly extensive information, on every legitimate school nationwide. Some of these are things like US Department of Education annual reports, which are both available on the web and available in printed form. There are equivalents from state Boards of Education as well.
This information is extremely widely available because parents use it in selecting where they want to move to, based on educational strength, and because public oversight of schools is a generally accepted positive thing.
On 26/09/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Verifyability is not a problem; there are nationwide school databases out on the Internet with the basic particulars, and in many cases fairly extensive information, on every legitimate school nationwide. Some of these are things like US Department of Education annual reports, which are both available on the web and available in printed form. There are equivalents from state Boards of Education as well. This information is extremely widely available because parents use it in selecting where they want to move to, based on educational strength, and because public oversight of schools is a generally accepted positive thing.
So rambot usable lists of the data, and create a forest of redirects.
School articles do need some sort of canonical naming format. [[School name, Town, State, Country]] or something equivalent - something like the naming format for cities and towns with school name on the front.
This will (a) include all verifiable schools (b) having the entry be a redirect to a list until there's something real to write an article about will save on people coughing up their own skulls in disgust.
- d.
On 26/09/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 26/09/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
So rambot usable lists of the data, and create a forest of redirects.
School articles do need some sort of canonical naming format. [[School name, Town, State, Country]] or something equivalent - something like the naming format for cities and towns with school name on the front.
This will (a) include all verifiable schools (b) having the entry be a redirect to a list until there's something real to write an article about will save on people coughing up their own skulls in disgust.
- d.
I realise the opinion of just one person doesn't count for much here, but I'd like to suggest the following for schools and all other "it exists, therefore it should be on Wikipedia" items. I do to some extent subscribe to that view. But I think there are far more logical ways in dealing with the situation than "an article for every school" or "delete anything that isn't nationally/regionally/historically notable".
Surely the thing to do is to concatenate entries of a related nature? Here in Ireland even reasonably small towns have several schools. Surely a single article can cover all the schools, with the individual schools getting their own articles if there is too much content for that parent article? If there are details added to Wikipedia for just one or two schools in an area, surely they can be added to a related more important article such as the town or area?
I'm not suggesting there wouldn't be awkward instances not covered by this, but the concatenation approach should be used more widely on Wikipedia in my opinion. If nothing else, it would ensure that we have decent "parent" articles when very narrow topics later have their own articles. There are far too many situations where we have articles on the minuitia of things, and poorly scratched together ones, or non-existent ones for the broader topic (often such articles don't even do something quick and cheap to improve things, like scraping the introductory paragraph from the sub-articles).
Zoney
On 26/09/06, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
Surely the thing to do is to concatenate entries of a related nature? Here in Ireland even reasonably small towns have several schools. Surely a single article can cover all the schools, with the individual schools getting their own articles if there is too much content for that parent article? If there are details added to Wikipedia for just one or two schools in an area, surely they can be added to a related more important article such as the town or area?
Oh, yeah. If the name isn't a redirect to a list of schools, it could be a redirect to the town. I believe there's quite a bit of this already.
There's a lot of ardent school includeletionists, but they're thrashing out the problem and hopefully wearying of the debate and editing other articles ;-)
- d.
On 9/26/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 26/09/06, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
Surely the thing to do is to concatenate entries of a related nature?
Here
in Ireland even reasonably small towns have several schools. Surely a
single
article can cover all the schools, with the individual schools getting
their
own articles if there is too much content for that parent article? If
there
are details added to Wikipedia for just one or two schools in an area, surely they can be added to a related more important article such as the town or area?
Oh, yeah. If the name isn't a redirect to a list of schools, it could be a redirect to the town. I believe there's quite a bit of this already.
There's a lot of ardent school includeletionists, but they're thrashing out the problem and hopefully wearying of the debate and editing other articles ;-)
- d.
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There would be nothing wrong, in my opinion, with district-by-district, or town-by-town, summary articles covering a set of schools for schools which aren't by themselves entirely completely highly notable. Including schools info in a small town's main article would also be a fine solution for smaller schools. A forest of redirects from a standardized school name format location to be named later to the town articles would work.
Perhaps, starting with a "Schools of (insert location name)" set of articles for each of the US city/town/CDP articles?
Perhaps, a workable policy that if a school article would truly be not much more than a stub, that it should live in a section of such a summary article, and that once it is established that it has sufficient notable characteristics that the section grows to the size that it would make a valid standalone article, it can be separated at that time?
I am not wedded to the idea of needing a separate article for each and every school in the US. I do think that the info should be included here, somewhere. A realistic policy that balances including the info and using fairly normal article size management process would be fine. But it would be terrible to do it in a messy hodgepodge manner; we should identify a pattern and establish a guideline, if that's going to happen.
On 26/09/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I am not wedded to the idea of needing a separate article for each and every school in the US. I do think that the info should be included here, somewhere. A realistic policy that balances including the info and using fairly normal article size management process would be fine. But it would be terrible to do it in a messy hodgepodge manner; we should identify a pattern and establish a guideline, if that's going to happen.
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com _______________________________________________
Well - I would argue that this is not specific to school articles - and that there is a fundemental problem with organisation of information on Wikipedia. Information naturally is hierarchical - if we are really an encyclopaedia, broad topics need articles that refer to sub-topics, that break down to the minuitia.
Sure this sort of happens - but like you say - it's in a messy hodgepodge manner.
Even if there are "guidelines", Wikipedia's organisation mechanism will ensure that there is - generally speaking, no consistent standard of applying those guidelines. Nevermind the fact that the concept of having no hard and fast rules is not really sustainable.
I make little apology for being so critical of Wikipedia's processes - I only do so because I've been here for quite some time, put a lot into the project, and would really like to see it improve a lot. At present it's like driving down the national roads (main arterial routes) in Ireland - where along the same route you will have anything between spanking new motorway and aged narrow two lane (no hard shoulders) winding bumpy country road (on a major intercity route). Oh - except that in Wikipedia's case - bits of the road are missing entirely.
Zoney
On 27/09/06, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
Even if there are "guidelines", Wikipedia's organisation mechanism will ensure that there is - generally speaking, no consistent standard of applying those guidelines. Nevermind the fact that the concept of having no hard and fast rules is not really sustainable.
I'd suggest that too many rules is problematic, like trying to hold too many axioms in your head at once. The more rules, the less articles. We need process, but must take great care in what process we have. See [[User:David Gerard/Process essay]] and hack to bits as needed.
So the guidelines must obviously and elegantly flow directly from the hard policy (NPOV, NOR, V). And if there is no obvious and elegant guideline, come up with something that'll work for now with the people we have, but be very aware that (a) it's a quick hack (b) anything that doesn't follow obviously and elegantly from the hard policy will need to be re-justified repeatedly. Because precedent is not binding on Wikipedia.
I make little apology for being so critical of Wikipedia's processes - I only do so because I've been here for quite some time, put a lot into the project, and would really like to see it improve a lot. At present it's like driving down the national roads (main arterial routes) in Ireland - where along the same route you will have anything between spanking new motorway and aged narrow two lane (no hard shoulders) winding bumpy country road (on a major intercity route). Oh - except that in Wikipedia's case - bits of the road are missing entirely.
The nature of process is that the editors are humans, not robots. And volunteers. So just any process is not necessarily going to work. This has been a source of great frustration for many editors for many years.
- d.
On 9/27/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
There would be nothing wrong, in my opinion, with district-by-district, or town-by-town, summary articles covering a set of schools for schools which aren't by themselves entirely completely highly notable. Including schools info in a small town's main article would also be a fine solution for smaller schools. A forest of redirects from a standardized school name format location to be named later to the town articles would work.
As a mergist, I heartily endorse this event or product.
Perhaps, starting with a "Schools of (insert location name)" set of articles for each of the US city/town/CDP articles?
I wouldn't have it as separate articles, I would add it as a section to the city/town/etc article.
On 27/09/06, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps, starting with a "Schools of (insert location name)" set of articles for each of the US city/town/CDP articles?
I wouldn't have it as separate articles, I would add it as a section to the city/town/etc article.
The other important reason to make a redirect for each school name is to discourage someone writing it as a separate bad article.
- d.
On 27/09/06, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
As a mergist, I heartily endorse this event or product.
As a mergist - how do you get around the difficulties of preserving the history of the content (wrt. attribution under GFDL)? Even if the copyright owner , by licencing their content under GFDL, has no say on the free re-use and modification of the GFDL-licenced content - attribution is required where their content is used - and currently Wikipedia's only pseudo-method of attributing text content is page history (for images of course, the attribution *should be* directly added to the image page - meaning that it is not so critical if history is mucked up - e.g. by a move from en to commons). That does fine until there's a merge (which unless it's merging copy-paste redirects, usually involves copy+paste willy nilly). Regardless of GFDL licencing, copyrights are still held by the thousands who have added to Wikipedia; and as the text has not been released into the public domain, attribution is required (even if only by way of having the article history).
Zoney
On 9/27/06, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
As a mergist - how do you get around the difficulties of preserving the history of the content (wrt. attribution under GFDL)?
Repeated detetions and undeletions. You delete the page you are moving the text to be merged to. Move the text to that page then undelete. Full process is described in how to fix copy and paste moves.
On 9/28/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/06, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
As a mergist - how do you get around the difficulties of preserving the history of the content (wrt. attribution under GFDL)?
Repeated detetions and undeletions. You delete the page you are moving the text to be merged to. Move the text to that page then undelete. Full process is described in how to fix copy and paste moves.
...which is not always practical, but is more likely to be when dealing with short stubs (most of which have brief histories).
Otherwise, a manual merge can be performed leaving the merged page as a redirect. A clear edit summary on both articles, clearly indicating where the content was merged from/to, is sufficient. If necessary a message on the respective talk pages can document the merge.
On 28/09/06, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
Otherwise, a manual merge can be performed leaving the merged page as a redirect. A clear edit summary on both articles, clearly indicating where the content was merged from/to, is sufficient. If necessary a message on the respective talk pages can document the merge.
Sufficient for satisfying people on Wikipedia perhaps! But what about sufficient for the licence we are using? I don't see how it even comes close to providing copyright/attribution information on the content. Having such information available by viewing the page history is one thing - it's another entirely to suggest that it's acceptable to have to go hunting for the old page history on what is now a redirect.
Zoney
On 28/09/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/27/06, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
As a mergist - how do you get around the difficulties of preserving the history of the content (wrt. attribution under GFDL)?
Repeated detetions and undeletions. You delete the page you are moving the text to be merged to. Move the text to that page then undelete. Full process is described in how to fix copy and paste moves.
-- geni
Yes - as you say, specifically for fixing copy and paste moves - I'm familiar with executing this process (oh what fun!). In my experience, merging content usually means combining two disparate articles (e.g. one major article and one stub article). Maybe history merge is still appropriate (it'd sure be confusing to look through though) but it certainly isn't the approach usually taken. Usually the content from the smaller stub article is just copy-pasted into the main one.
Zoney
On 9/26/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 26/09/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Verifyability is not a problem; there are nationwide school databases
out on
the Internet with the basic particulars, and in many cases fairly
extensive
information, on every legitimate school nationwide. Some of these are things like US Department of Education annual reports, which are both available on the web and available in printed form. There are
equivalents
from state Boards of Education as well. This information is extremely widely available because parents use it in selecting where they want to move to, based on educational strength, and because public oversight of schools is a generally accepted positive
thing.
So rambot usable lists of the data, and create a forest of redirects.
School articles do need some sort of canonical naming format. [[School name, Town, State, Country]] or something equivalent - something like the naming format for cities and towns with school name on the front.
Have fun deciding on the name of some of the schools. In Louisville, at least, some of the schools have three or four names by which they're known, and it's often not a matter of abbreviations or the use of a full name versus last name only. Even if you go by the Board of Education's "canonical" name for a school, there are still sometimes two or three variants. For example, we have a school that used to be separate middle and high schools. While it's technically "Moore Traditional School," even in the official higher-up circles, the school is still treated as if it were two separate schools. It just happens to have a single principal.
With the rest of the naming format, the dab portion should only be as detailed as necessary, subdividing to the highest-level geopolitical entity for which the school name is unique.
This will (a) include all verifiable schools (b) having the entry be a
redirect to a list until there's something real to write an article about will save on people coughing up their own skulls in disgust.
Sound's about like what I've been suggesting, list-wise. When we implemented the list for Louisville, it has appeared to slow down the number of school articles that are created for Louisville.
Carl
On 26/09/06, Carl Peterson carlopeterson@gmail.com wrote:
Have fun deciding on the name of some of the schools. In Louisville, at least, some of the schools have three or four names by which they're known, and it's often not a matter of abbreviations or the use of a full name versus last name only. Even if you go by the Board of Education's "canonical" name for a school, there are still sometimes two or three variants. For example, we have a school that used to be separate middle and high schools. While it's technically "Moore Traditional School," even in the official higher-up circles, the school is still treated as if it were two separate schools. It just happens to have a single principal.
No no no - *you* have fun deciding which gets the real name and which gets the canonical name!
This will (a) include all verifiable schools (b) having the entry be a
redirect to a list until there's something real to write an article about will save on people coughing up their own skulls in disgust.
Sound's about like what I've been suggesting, list-wise. When we implemented the list for Louisville, it has appeared to slow down the number of school articles that are created for Louisville.
Yep. And thus school inclusionism resolves to something everyone can at least tolerate without killing themselves *today*.
- d.
On 24/09/06, Constantine Evans constantine@evanslabs.org wrote:
Note that notability is not the policy. Verifiability is. Even if a school is notable "by default", as some claim, if there is no verifiable information about it, there should be no article.
Correct.
"I can prove, by breathtaking querulousness, that the school in my front room fit that rule." "Well done. Cookie for you! Third-party verifiability? No? So sad."
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 24/09/06, Constantine Evans constantine@evanslabs.org wrote:
Note that notability is not the policy. Verifiability is. Even if a school is notable "by default", as some claim, if there is no verifiable information about it, there should be no article.
Correct.
"I can prove, by breathtaking querulousness, that the school in my front room fit that rule." "Well done. Cookie for you! Third-party verifiability? No? So sad."
"I can write articles on schools from the vasty backwaters..."
David Gerard wrote:
On 24/09/06, Constantine Evans constantine@evanslabs.org wrote:
Note that notability is not the policy. Verifiability is. Even if a school is notable "by default", as some claim, if there is no verifiable information about it, there should be no article.
Correct.
"I can prove, by breathtaking querulousness, that the school in my front room fit that rule." "Well done. Cookie for you! Third-party verifiability? No? So sad."
So, the current situation is that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Falls_%28town%29%2C_New_York
contains the following completely out-of-context and unverified and unverifiable paragraph:
"Private education
Finger Lakes Christian School is a private Pre-K-Grade 12 school located in Seneca Falls, New York. It shares the building with the 1st Baptist Church. The current principal is the Rev. Scott Van Kirk. The school was established in 1991. Linked to The First Baptist Church of Seneca Falls, its aims were to offer an alternative for Christian children. The school has about 75 students. Its admission policy is that at least one parent or guardian must be a born-again Christian. As well as the general curriculum, pupils at the school attend Bible classes twice a week, and students have devotional meetings with their teachers or a Pastor at least weekly and have a weekly Chapel service."
I would go in and simply delete it myself and insist that it not be added back until someone finds a source better than the school's own homemade website, but I don't want to be seen as creating *actual policy* in this area by my edits.
I'm just saying.
--Jimbo
On 9/28/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I would go in and simply delete it myself and insist that it not be added back until someone finds a source better than the school's own homemade website, but I don't want to be seen as creating *actual policy* in this area by my edits.
I'm just saying.
--Jimbo
You'd be enforcing verifiability policy, not creating anything new.
Mgm
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
On 9/28/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I would go in and simply delete it myself and insist that it not be added back until someone finds a source better than the school's own homemade website, but I don't want to be seen as creating *actual policy* in this area by my edits.
I'm just saying.
--Jimbo
You'd be enforcing verifiability policy, not creating anything new.
Yeah, but when I do something, unless I am very very very careful, it ends up getting used as a stick to beat innocents to death with. :)
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
On 9/28/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I would go in and simply delete it myself and insist that it not be added back until someone finds a source better than the school's own homemade website, but I don't want to be seen as creating *actual policy* in this area by my edits.
I'm just saying.
--Jimbo
You'd be enforcing verifiability policy, not creating anything new.
Yeah, but when I do something, unless I am very very very careful, it ends up getting used as a stick to beat innocents to death with. :)
Unfortunately they don't even require a "Jimbo action" to create more sticks to beat innocents with. They do it on a whim and call it "process".
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Yeah, but when I do something, unless I am very very very careful, it ends up getting used as a stick to beat innocents to death with. :)
--Jimbo
Couldn't you do what Danny does for WP:OFFICE actions, i.e. have a 'this is me just editing' account and a 'this is me as a policy-creating godking' account? And then anyone who tries to use your ordinary edits to beat innocents with can just be laughed at.
Cynical
On 28/09/06, David Alexander Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Yeah, but when I do something, unless I am very very very careful, it ends up getting used as a stick to beat innocents to death with. :)
Couldn't you do what Danny does for WP:OFFICE actions, i.e. have a 'this is me just editing' account and a 'this is me as a policy-creating godking' account? And then anyone who tries to use your ordinary edits to beat innocents with can just be laughed at.
You haven't experienced the amazing feats of Jimbomancy some wikilawyers and obsessives will stretch to. "This edit is ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE because Jimbo suggested on a mailing list in 1989 that something like it would be a good idea."
- d.
On 9/28/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
You haven't experienced the amazing feats of Jimbomancy some wikilawyers and obsessives will stretch to. "This edit is ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE because Jimbo suggested on a mailing list in 1989 that something like it would be a good idea."
That would be the anti process lot (yes I can provide examples).
On 28/09/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/28/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
You haven't experienced the amazing feats of Jimbomancy some wikilawyers and obsessives will stretch to. "This edit is ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE because Jimbo suggested on a mailing list in 1989 that something like it would be a good idea."
That would be the anti process lot (yes I can provide examples).
That would be both and I can too. Both sides make the error of assuming precedent is binding rather than just a very good idea.
- d.
On 9/28/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 28/09/06, David Alexander Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Yeah, but when I do something, unless I am very very very careful, it ends up getting used as a stick to beat innocents to death with. :)
Couldn't you do what Danny does for WP:OFFICE actions, i.e. have a 'this is me just editing' account and a 'this is me as a policy-creating godking' account? And then anyone who tries to use your ordinary edits to beat innocents with can just be laughed at.
You haven't experienced the amazing feats of Jimbomancy some wikilawyers and obsessives will stretch to. "This edit is ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE because Jimbo suggested on a mailing list in 1989 that something like it would be a good idea."
That's when Jimbomancy is invoked in directly stating that "edits made by this account are to be regarded no differently than those made by any other editor." Also, if the account remained anonymous with regards to its owner...
Carl
On 28/09/06, Carl Peterson carlopeterson@gmail.com wrote:
That's when Jimbomancy is invoked in directly stating that "edits made by this account are to be regarded no differently than those made by any other editor." Also, if the account remained anonymous with regards to its owner...
Those two contradict somewhere ...
There are a few admins who have multiple accounts, purely so they can edit articles without upset people stalking their every step. There are users who have had real-life stalkers and so quietly fade out one account while using a second. This is fine as long as it's for good reason and one is very careful not to cross the streams. Per [[WP:SOCK]], "... some have suggested that Jimbo should get, and edit from, a sock puppet account. Perhaps he does."
- d.
On 9/28/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 28/09/06, Carl Peterson carlopeterson@gmail.com wrote:
That's when Jimbomancy is invoked in directly stating that "edits made
by
this account are to be regarded no differently than those made by any
other
editor." Also, if the account remained anonymous with regards to its owner...
Those two contradict somewhere ...
I didn't mean that the two approaches should be used at the same. That's self-defeating, as an otherwise anonymous user saying they should be treated "no differently than any other editor" would raise a few eyebrows as to the editor's real identity.
There are a few admins who have multiple accounts, purely so they can
edit articles without upset people stalking their every step. There are users who have had real-life stalkers and so quietly fade out one account while using a second. This is fine as long as it's for good reason and one is very careful not to cross the streams. Per [[WP:SOCK]], "... some have suggested that Jimbo should get, and edit from, a sock puppet account. Perhaps he does."
Carl
David Gerard wrote:
On 28/09/06, David Alexander Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Yeah, but when I do something, unless I am very very very careful, it ends up getting used as a stick to beat innocents to death with. :)
Couldn't you do what Danny does for WP:OFFICE actions, i.e. have a 'this is me just editing' account and a 'this is me as a policy-creating godking' account? And then anyone who tries to use your ordinary edits to beat innocents with can just be laughed at.
You haven't experienced the amazing feats of Jimbomancy some wikilawyers and obsessives will stretch to. "This edit is ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE because Jimbo suggested on a mailing list in 1989 that something like it would be a good idea."
Nothing wins arguments like going into a war saying that God and the Bible are on your side.
Ec
On 9/28/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
So, the current situation is that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Falls_%28town%29%2C_New_York
contains the following completely out-of-context and unverified and unverifiable paragraph:
"Private education
Finger Lakes Christian School is a private Pre-K-Grade 12 school located in Seneca Falls, New York. It shares the building with the 1st Baptist Church. The current principal is the Rev. Scott Van Kirk. The school was established in 1991.
This is all verifyable with the New York State board of education. I had all the links up a few days ago and will go back and find them again sometime in the next few days, and reference the article.
Linked to The First Baptist Church of Seneca Falls,
its aims were to offer an alternative for Christian children.
This is only verifyable off the school website and student info packet/application.
The school
has about 75 students.
This is verifyable with the New York State board of education.
Its admission policy is that at least one parent
or guardian must be a born-again Christian. As well as the general curriculum, pupils at the school attend Bible classes twice a week, and students have devotional meetings with their teachers or a Pastor at least weekly and have a weekly Chapel service."
This is only verifyable off the school website and student info packet/application
I would go in and simply delete it myself and insist that it not be
added back until someone finds a source better than the school's own homemade website, but I don't want to be seen as creating *actual policy* in this area by my edits.
I'm just saying.
I think you're applying too high a bar for verifyability. The basic factual existence, location, size and management of the school are independently verifyable. This will be as a rule easily true for any of the 124,000-ish schools in the US.
I think that using a school website for additional descriptive information of the nature of the tidbits above is eminently reasonable. Once we establish that an organization such as a school exists, and verify its general information, then "flavor" details from its website or own published information should count as reasonably verified. The fundamental focus of verifyability needs to be avoiding the publication of untracable false information. In this case, we are tracing the information to the publications of the organization itself, whose existence the NY State Board of Education vouches for.
One could use a stricter verifyability standard and strip out own-website sourced school information, but I ask you (and the assembled throngs), to what end? If the intent is to both provide accurate information and verifiable (referenced) information, then the second is met (school's existence and statistics easily externally confirmed, so it becomes a credible reference regarding itself). Schools as a rule would get in huge amounts of trouble if they started lying in public publications or websites about themselves, so we should make a reasonable assumption of accuracy for those websites.
On 28 Sep 2006, at 19:22, George Herbert wrote:
On 9/28/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
So, the current situation is that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Falls_%28town%29%2C_New_York
contains the following completely out-of-context and unverified and unverifiable paragraph:
I think that using a school website for additional descriptive information of the nature of the tidbits above is eminently reasonable.
I disagree. Wikipedia is not about an organisation's view of itself, but the view of a disinterested observer.
On 29/09/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
On 28 Sep 2006, at 19:22, George Herbert wrote:
On 9/28/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
So, the current situation is that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Falls_%28town%29%2C_New_York contains the following completely out-of-context and unverified and unverifiable paragraph:
I think that using a school website for additional descriptive information of the nature of the tidbits above is eminently reasonable.
I disagree. Wikipedia is not about an organisation's view of itself, but the view of a disinterested observer.
The reader will be interested in a summary of what the school thinks about itself. I don't see how that's not relevant to a useful article.
- d.
On 29 Sep 2006, at 22:15, David Gerard wrote:
On 29/09/06, Stephen Streater sbstreater@mac.com wrote:
On 28 Sep 2006, at 19:22, George Herbert wrote:
On 9/28/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
So, the current situation is that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Falls_%28town%29%2C_New_York contains the following completely out-of-context and unverified and unverifiable paragraph:
I think that using a school website for additional descriptive information of the nature of the tidbits above is eminently reasonable.
I disagree. Wikipedia is not about an organisation's view of itself, but the view of a disinterested observer.
The reader will be interested in a summary of what the school thinks about itself. I don't see how that's not relevant to a useful article.
Yes - let's have that, but clearly marked as their self-image. Facts about a school should come from an independent source.
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Stephen Streater wrote:
I disagree. Wikipedia is not about an organisation's view of itself, but the view of a disinterested observer.
Yeah, but this idea wouldn't involve using the school's own website to verify the organisation's POV assertions of itself (e.g. 'one of the most popular schools in the country') but for more mundane, relatively uncontested facts (e.g. 'at least one of the child's parents must be an adherent of the school's religion'). We do this already for corporations - - for example citing the company's official website as a source to confirm who the CEO is.
Cynical
On 9/28/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote: (re Finger Lakes Christian School)
This is all verifyable with the New York State board of education. I had all the links up a few days ago and will go back and find them again sometime in the next few days, and reference the article.
For what it's worth, see the Schools section of [[Seneca Falls (town), New York]], for the referenced subsections on the public school district and its four schools, the Finger Lakes Christian School, and the larger St John Bosco Catholic School.
There's more material in the Finger Lakes Christian School entry than the others, but they all could use inserting additional flavor details as appropriate. I figure this is a good start.
Guettarda wrote:
Quite frankly I am anything but a deletionist, but I think that a school with 75 students and no other claim to notability doesn't deserve a Wikipedia article
I think the danger here is that "doesn't deserve" (though I agree) is a value judgment about which it is quite hard to get consensus. I would put it this way:
"An article with no independent sources of any kind about a school (or anything else) about which there is only a clearly homemade website presents insurmountable editorial difficulties for us. As a general rule, there is no good way to be sure that we are not being hoaxed, nor that the information on the website is in any way true."
There is a long-established tradition of notability for Wikipedia articles. We delete things that are non-notable. People who say "all schools are notable" aren't discussing an issue, they are espousing an ideology. Some people who home-school their children register a school. By that token, anyone home-schooling their children is notable enough for inclusion, so the only barrier then is verifiability
So, yeah, while I agree, I still think it is almost always better to find some *other* point of argument than "notability" which is the sort of value judgment that is pretty hard to get consensus on.
--Jimbo