Schools are a constant source of frustration for me. Take, for instance, [[Dean Rusk Middle School]] - personally, I wouldn't call it notable. I've AFD'd ones similar before, and been beat back with a stick (OK, there was no stick, but let's pretend the stick is a metaphor, shall we?) and have been clearly informed that middle schools are notable and that my dog would be kidnapped and my offspring subjected to a game of thwack the mole (again, hyperbolic) should I so much as presume to look at a school listing again, must less post it to afd. I know from my experience last time that there are a few others who, like me, question the notability of such schools, but I get the feeling we're all so shell shocked on this issue that we've just sort of started to ignore the school listings.
Could we, once and for all (or at least until the wind changes) make a determination on whether such school should be included in the 'pedia? Or, if not a determination, at least a very strong suggestion?
Philippe ____________________ Philippe Beaudette Tulsa, OK
philippebeaudette@gmail.com
On 7/2/07, Philippe Beaudette philippebeaudette@gmail.com wrote:
Could we, once and for all (or at least until the wind changes) make a determination on whether such school should be included in the 'pedia? Or, if not a determination, at least a very strong suggestion?
Philippe
Depends you could try setting up a "biography of existing organisations policy" or you could accept that Schoolwatch and the like are powerful enough to prevent the deletion of any school articles.
There's no hope for this. Random checking shows that the vast majority of middle school articles are essentially catalog entries. When the private schools are excluded, there isn't a one I've found that shows the slightest hint of notability.
But we'll never be able to get rid of them. If we try, there will be a tremendous outcry, and the indiscriminate inclusionists will appear to support those whose editing ox is offered up for sacrifice. Perhaps there is some hope for a blanket statement that schools under the high school level are not intrinsically notable. Heck, I'd like to do that for high schools too, but it won't happen. But as it stands, the disambig page for all the "Martin Luther King, Jr." schools is going to be huge, because the direction is at the moment that all of them will eventually get articles.
On 7/2/07, Philippe Beaudette philippebeaudette@gmail.com wrote:
Could we, once and for all (or at least until the wind changes) make a determination on whether such school should be included in the 'pedia?
Doubtful.
Or, if not a determination, at least a very strong suggestion?
"A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." "This page is considered a notability guideline on Wikipedia. It is generally accepted among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. However, it is not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception."
Drop the "significant" part, and that's a pretty objective guideline.
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
On 7/2/07, Philippe Beaudette philippebeaudette@gmail.com wrote:
Could we, once and for all (or at least until the wind changes) make a determination on whether such school should be included in the 'pedia?
Doubtful.
Or, if not a determination, at least a very strong suggestion?
"A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." "This page is considered a notability guideline on Wikipedia. It is generally accepted among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. However, it is not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception."
Drop the "significant" part, and that's a pretty objective guideline.
Yeah! "Significant" is just another weasel word.
Ec
On Mon, Jul 02, 2007 at 02:34:58PM -0400, Anthony wrote:
On 7/2/07, Philippe Beaudette philippebeaudette@gmail.com wrote:
Could we, once and for all (or at least until the wind changes) make a determination on whether such school should be included in the 'pedia?
Doubtful.
Or, if not a determination, at least a very strong suggestion?
"A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." "This page is considered a notability guideline on Wikipedia. It is generally accepted among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. However, it is not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception."
Drop the "significant" part, and that's a pretty objective guideline.
The problem is that it is not objective. The terms "reliable" and "independent" are subjective. This is particualrly important for schools, because they all get a mention in local papers, local govenment reports etc. Also you can not remove "significant" as using the notability guideline, we need need something to reject passing mentions to a School in an article in a local paper about someone winning a minor prize.
My own take on this is that High Schools are notable enough to have an article, but we only write an article if we have what we consider to be good sources. At the first sign of trouble, such as attacks on staff we semiprotect as we would with BLP. We should encourage WPs to put local schools on their watch list.
Brian.
Anthony
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On Jul 2, 2007, at 1:01 PM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:
Could we, once and for all (or at least until the wind changes) make a determination on whether such school should be included in the 'pedia? Or, if not a determination, at least a very strong suggestion?
Nothing in the history of Wikipedia has ever suggested that we could make such a determination.
-Phil
Oh yeah, one more thing.
On 7/2/07, Philippe Beaudette philippebeaudette@gmail.com wrote:
I know from my experience last time that there are a few others who, like me, question the notability of such schools, but I get the feeling we're all so shell shocked on this issue that we've just sort of started to ignore the school listings.
Ignoring such things which some people like and isn't harming anyone else is a good step toward reaching a consensus.
----- Original Message ----- From: Anthony To: English Wikipedia Sent: Monday, July 02, 2007 1:37 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Schools again
Oh yeah, one more thing.
On 7/2/07, Philippe Beaudette philippebeaudette@gmail.com wrote:
I know from my experience last time that there are a few others who, like me, question the notability of such schools, but I get the feeling we're all so shell shocked on this issue that we've just sort of started to ignore the school listings.
Ignoring such things which some people like and isn't harming anyone else is a good step toward reaching a consensus.
That is, assuming that one believes it isn't really harming the project (or anyone else, as you put it). One could also argue (as has been argued almost ad nauseum) that it is not, in fact, helpful to leave them in the project.
Philippe
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It would be nice if we could form a sensible compromise solution like folding most of the non-notable ones into district or county or town articles. I'm not sure this is possible given that most sensible people probably want to stay out of the school debate.
Rob wrote:
It would be nice if we could form a sensible compromise solution like folding most of the non-notable ones into district or county or town articles. I'm not sure this is possible given that most sensible people probably want to stay out of the school debate.
And also because not everyone is going to agree that this is "sensible". I've merged plenty of articles in my time, but the recent trend towards pasting together a whole bunch of small articles on narrowly-focused topics into one gigantic mega-article with a section on each, leaving a redirect behind, seems like a backwards way to go about it. All the same material is still there, it's just harder to find the specific thing you're looking for.
On 7/2/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
I've merged plenty of articles in my time, but the recent trend towards pasting together a whole bunch of small articles on narrowly-focused topics into one gigantic mega-article with a section on each, leaving a redirect behind, seems like a backwards way to go about it. All the same material is still there, it's just harder to find the specific thing you're looking for.
In general I agree, but schools seem the ideal article topic to be merging: a group of small, relatively identical articles about a group of relatively identical institutions.
On 7/2/07, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/2/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
I've merged plenty of articles in my time, but the recent trend towards pasting together a whole bunch of small articles on narrowly-focused topics into one gigantic mega-article with a section on each, leaving a redirect behind, seems like a backwards way to go about it. All the same material is still there, it's just harder to find the specific thing you're looking for.
In general I agree, but schools seem the ideal article topic to be merging: a group of small, relatively identical articles about a group of relatively identical institutions.
A better merge would probably be of multiple schools into an article on the school district (or whatever grouping is used locally). And then only if there isn't much being said about the individual schools. More than one paragraph on one school and it should have its own article, IMO.
Anthony wrote:
On 7/2/07, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/2/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
I've merged plenty of articles in my time, but the recent trend towards pasting together a whole bunch of small articles on narrowly-focused topics into one gigantic mega-article with a section on each, leaving a redirect behind, seems like a backwards way to go about it. All the same material is still there, it's just harder to find the specific thing you're looking for.
In general I agree, but schools seem the ideal article topic to be merging: a group of small, relatively identical articles about a group of relatively identical institutions.
A better merge would probably be of multiple schools into an article on the school district (or whatever grouping is used locally). And then only if there isn't much being said about the individual schools. More than one paragraph on one school and it should have its own article, IMO.
That being the case, an info box should count as a paragraph by itself.
Ec
On 7/2/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Anthony wrote:
A better merge would probably be of multiple schools into an article on the school district (or whatever grouping is used locally). And then only if there isn't much being said about the individual schools. More than one paragraph on one school and it should have its own article, IMO.
That being the case, an info box should count as a paragraph by itself.
Infoboxes wouldn't be a good way to organize an article on multiple schools - a table would be more appropriate. If you're going to combine multiple articles into one, please do more than just concatenate one article after another.
On 02/07/07, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
schools seem the ideal article topic to be merging: a group of small, relatively identical articles about a group of relatively identical institutions.
I look forward to reading [[Schools in the United States named after Martin Luther King]]...
On 7/4/07, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
On 02/07/07, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
schools seem the ideal article topic to be merging: a group of small, relatively identical articles about a group of relatively identical institutions.
I look forward to reading [[Schools in the United States named after Martin Luther King]]...
This article is 150 kilobytes or more in size.
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On 7/2/07, Philippe Beaudette philippebeaudette@gmail.com wrote:
That is, assuming that one believes it isn't really harming the project (or anyone else, as you put it).
Of course.
One could also argue (as has been argued almost ad nauseum) that it is not, in fact, helpful to leave them in the project.
"Harmful" and "not helpful" are two different things, though.
If you have an argument that these articles are harming the project, I for one would like to hear it.
On 02/07/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
If you have an argument that these articles are harming the project, I for one would like to hear it.
They're magnets for crap; they go bad, they don't improve, and they thus lower the average quality of the articles we possess. (This is anecdotal, but I can provide a theory explaining the observed evidence...)
Very little community involvement in them because of their specialised interest; the articles tend to get "owned" by a group of pupils at that school. As a result, we either get a well-meaning (but usually rambling and parochial) brochure/student-newspaper, which isn't wonderful but is tolerable, or we get a scurrilous attack page about this-or-that trivial "scandal" at the school, or just abusive attacks on the staff. And because of the lack of eyeballs on them, they fester.
Part two of this - now speculative - is that the people this impacts most are the schools; they react badly against us, assumping This Sort Of Thing is symptomatic, and thus the very people we ought to be reaching out to are being systematically pissed-off because of our optomistic toleration of this stuff...
Anthony wrote:
On 7/2/07, Philippe Beaudette philippebeaudette@gmail.com wrote:
That is, assuming that one believes it isn't really harming the project (or anyone else, as you put it).
Of course.
One could also argue (as has been argued almost ad nauseum) that it is not, in fact, helpful to leave them in the project.
"Harmful" and "not helpful" are two different things, though.
If you have an argument that these articles are harming the project, I for one would like to hear it.
Agreed, and "not helpful" at worse suggests a neutral effect.
Ec
On 7/2/07, Philippe Beaudette philippebeaudette@gmail.com wrote:
Could we, once and for all (or at least until the wind changes) make a determination on whether such school should be included in the 'pedia? Or, if not a determination, at least a very strong suggestion?
The current status quo evolved from deletionists going on rampages and indiscriminately purging school articles. Nominators couldn't be trusted to have googled the school, or to even have pure motives - Some users openly advocated deleting all school articles, so there was distinct a possibility their claims of 'Fails WP:NOT' or whatnot were just a smokescreen for their real agenda. Enough good, promising, etc articles were whacked for the inclusionists to muster the motivation to organize SchoolWatch. In a practical sense, high school deletion debates now default to keep. This is not necessarily a good thing; Some of the kept articles normally wouldn't pass the notability test and some are simply irredeemable crap. Schoolwatch stands as an example of one result of sufficiently antagonizing inclusionists.
-Chris Croy
On Mon, 2 Jul 2007 18:02:28 -0600, "C.J. Croy" cjcroy@gmail.com wrote:
The current status quo evolved from deletionists going on rampages and indiscriminately purging school articles.
And there was I thinking it resulted from militant inclusionists stating as an article of faith that "all schools are inherently notable" and refusing to accept any compromise whatsoever. Shows what I know.
Guy (JzG)
On 7/8/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jul 2007 18:02:28 -0600, "C.J. Croy" cjcroy@gmail.com wrote:
The current status quo evolved from deletionists going on rampages and indiscriminately purging school articles.
And there was I thinking it resulted from militant inclusionists stating as an article of faith that "all schools are inherently notable" and refusing to accept any compromise whatsoever. Shows what I know.
As ridiculous as that sounds, it's true - there was a time when a lot of people insisted that "all schools are inherently non-notable". The voices of reason were drowned out, and as a result we got a huge backlash in the opposite direction.
Johnleemk
or we can see it as a reasonable compromise, that presently the articles are considered and judged on their individual contents. There are still a few people who continue to support or oppose every such article, but I think most recent decisions on schools at AfD reflect good consensus judgment. DGG
On 7/8/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/8/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jul 2007 18:02:28 -0600, "C.J. Croy" cjcroy@gmail.com wrote:
The current status quo evolved from deletionists going on rampages and indiscriminately purging school articles.
And there was I thinking it resulted from militant inclusionists stating as an article of faith that "all schools are inherently notable" and refusing to accept any compromise whatsoever. Shows what I know.
As ridiculous as that sounds, it's true - there was a time when a lot of people insisted that "all schools are inherently non-notable". The voices of reason were drowned out, and as a result we got a huge backlash in the opposite direction.
Johnleemk _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 7/8/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jul 2007 18:02:28 -0600, "C.J. Croy" cjcroy@gmail.com wrote:
The current status quo evolved from deletionists going on rampages and indiscriminately purging school articles.
And there was I thinking it resulted from militant inclusionists stating as an article of faith that "all schools are inherently notable" and refusing to accept any compromise whatsoever. Shows what I know.
As one of the inclusionists willing to compromise on this issue, I object to that. There were plenty enough people in the middle for a compromise to work. The rhetoric from the extremist-seeming deletionists sunk the various compromise attempts time and time again.
We'd have long-had a standard that if you can't write a good article, you merge it into a city/town/school district article by now if you all hadn't polarized it so much. That compromise came under far more attack from the deletionists than the inclusionists.
On 7/9/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/8/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jul 2007 18:02:28 -0600, "C.J. Croy" cjcroy@gmail.com wrote:
The current status quo evolved from deletionists going on rampages and indiscriminately purging school articles.
And there was I thinking it resulted from militant inclusionists stating as an article of faith that "all schools are inherently notable" and refusing to accept any compromise whatsoever. Shows what I know.
As one of the inclusionists willing to compromise on this issue, I object to that. There were plenty enough people in the middle for a compromise to work. The rhetoric from the extremist-seeming deletionists sunk the various compromise attempts time and time again.
We'd have long-had a standard that if you can't write a good article, you merge it into a city/town/school district article by now if you all hadn't polarized it so much. That compromise came under far more attack from the deletionists than the inclusionists.
And if that was accepted, there would be no need for an Afd for any school, yet every day we see them being nominated, deleted without consensus, and often without redirects being put in place.
Often what is meant by people saying "all schools are notable" is that schools are inherently a topic worth mentioning in an encyclopedia. When that opinion placed on an Afd, closing admins discard it time and time again.
-- John
John Vandenberg wrote:
On 7/9/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/8/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jul 2007 18:02:28 -0600, "C.J. Croy" cjcroy@gmail.com wrote:
The current status quo evolved from deletionists going on rampages and indiscriminately purging school articles.
And there was I thinking it resulted from militant inclusionists stating as an article of faith that "all schools are inherently notable" and refusing to accept any compromise whatsoever. Shows what I know.
As one of the inclusionists willing to compromise on this issue, I object to that. There were plenty enough people in the middle for a compromise to work. The rhetoric from the extremist-seeming deletionists sunk the various compromise attempts time and time again.
We'd have long-had a standard that if you can't write a good article, you merge it into a city/town/school district article by now if you all hadn't polarized it so much. That compromise came under far more attack from the deletionists than the inclusionists.
And if that was accepted, there would be no need for an Afd for any school, yet every day we see them being nominated, deleted without consensus, and often without redirects being put in place.
Often what is meant by people saying "all schools are notable" is that schools are inherently a topic worth mentioning in an encyclopedia. When that opinion placed on an Afd, closing admins discard it time and time again.
-- John
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As one of the deletionists perfectly fine with merging, I agree there were reasonable people (and unreasonable people) on both sides. I would hope an admin closing a deletion discussion would disregard any bald assertion that the person making it didn't bother to support, that's basically a bare vote, and I would also hope they would disregard any "All (insert class of something here) are notable." (I would similarly hope they would disregard any assertion such as "No (insert class of something here) are ever notable." The purpose of an AfD is to discuss whether -this- subject, -this- time, should be retained.
I think the reason you saw so many going to AfD rather than being merged was because of those who would dig in their heels and revert the merge with "Revert, all schools are notable" edit summaries (and those were when they felt like being civil...). Sure, they probably should be mentioned, but nothing wrong with doing that in a combined list by school district rather than 100 permastubs. It came to a point where to get it gone and make it stick, you had to go to AfD.
On 7/9/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
As one of the deletionists perfectly fine with merging, I agree there were reasonable people (and unreasonable people) on both sides. I would hope an admin closing a deletion discussion would disregard any bald assertion that the person making it didn't bother to support, that's basically a bare vote, and I would also hope they would disregard any "All (insert class of something here) are notable." (I would similarly hope they would disregard any assertion such as "No (insert class of something here) are ever notable." The purpose of an AfD is to discuss whether -this- subject, -this- time, should be retained.
I did a search for assertions you've made in deletion discussions, to try to figure out what you think people *should* be saying, and gave up after only finding one you've made recently.
So, how does the following comment explain why an article is notable or non-notable:
*Keep, but change the title to something like "Cherrix medical refusal case", with the name as a redirect. We have plenty of material for an article on the event, but not enough for an article which claims (by being titled with the person's name) to be a full biography on the person.
It seems to me that forcing people to make the exact same arguments over and over and over again is exactly what's wrong with AfD.
On Sun, 8 Jul 2007 20:10:03 -0700, "George Herbert" george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
As one of the inclusionists willing to compromise on this issue, I object to that. There were plenty enough people in the middle for a compromise to work. The rhetoric from the extremist-seeming deletionists sunk the various compromise attempts time and time again.
Sorry, but that's not how I remember it. The lengthy debate over [[WP:SCHOOLS]] was torpedoed mainly by a small number of people who flatly refused to consider anything other than "all schools are inherently notable". No merge was acceptable, no deletion was acceptable, however atrocious the article, they stated as an article of faith that every school merited an article.
I don't recall a *single* deletionist raising any argument that was as dogmatic as those raised by the few militant inclusionists.
Guy (JzG)
& the actual result is a good example of how policy is actually made & should be made--by compromise and shift of consensus at AfD. The one who said hell no still say hell no, but consensus no longer follows that. See a current one (July 9) at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Bushland_High_School
On 7/10/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sun, 8 Jul 2007 20:10:03 -0700, "George Herbert" george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
As one of the inclusionists willing to compromise on this issue, I object to that. There were plenty enough people in the middle for a compromise to work. The rhetoric from the extremist-seeming deletionists sunk the various compromise attempts time and time again.
Sorry, but that's not how I remember it. The lengthy debate over [[WP:SCHOOLS]] was torpedoed mainly by a small number of people who flatly refused to consider anything other than "all schools are inherently notable". No merge was acceptable, no deletion was acceptable, however atrocious the article, they stated as an article of faith that every school merited an article.
I don't recall a *single* deletionist raising any argument that was as dogmatic as those raised by the few militant inclusionists.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
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On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 19:14:30 -0400, "David Goodman" dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
& the actual result is a good example of how policy is actually made & should be made--by compromise and shift of consensus at AfD. The one who said hell no still say hell no, but consensus no longer follows that. See a current one (July 9) at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Bushland_High_School
yes, I know, but it took a long time to get there, and the process was hampered to a ridiculous degree by dogma. Probably on both sides, but I only saw it from the militant inclusionists.
Guy (JzG)
On 10/07/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
Sorry, but that's not how I remember it. The lengthy debate over [[WP:SCHOOLS]] was torpedoed mainly by a small number of people who flatly refused to consider anything other than "all schools are inherently notable". No merge was acceptable, no deletion was acceptable, however atrocious the article, they stated as an article of faith that every school merited an article.
I don't recall a *single* deletionist raising any argument that was as dogmatic as those raised by the few militant inclusionists.
Guy (JzG)
Tough. In such an situation there wasn't any consensus reached. Perhaps that situation illustrates why the idea of "consensus" isn't sensible - but for now it's the decision-making principle that people allege Wikipedia always works under (although as I've said before, I say most of the time people on Wikipedia do what they like, ignoring dissent and even claiming consensus where there is none).
Zoney
On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:03:27 +0100, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
Tough. In such an situation there wasn't any consensus reached.
Wikipedia does "consensus" not consensus. If you want consensus you need to ask the Religious Society of Friends, who will stay at the table until everyone agrees. This was a case where a Wikipedia-style consensus, as in pretty much everyone who had any flexibility at all, was impeded by the obduracy of one or two hold-outs, with the result that a guideline was effectively torpedoed and the matter had to be fought out in the court of AfD, which is never a good place.
Guy (JzG)
On 11/07/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:03:27 +0100, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
Tough. In such an situation there wasn't any consensus reached.
Wikipedia does "consensus" not consensus. If you want consensus you need to ask the Religious Society of Friends, who will stay at the table until everyone agrees. This was a case where a Wikipedia-style consensus, as in pretty much everyone who had any flexibility at all, was impeded by the obduracy of one or two hold-outs, with the result that a guideline was effectively torpedoed and the matter had to be fought out in the court of AfD, which is never a good place.
Guy (JzG)
"Wikipedia-style consensus"
So why call it consensus? Other than to mislead the general public who assume the *English* definition of consensus and think Wikipedia is a wonderful place where everyone eventually agrees and all decisions are made with general agreement.
Besides, the definition for "consensus" in the Wikipedian language as opposed to English is not concrete. Your definition essentially allows people to be ignored/overruled if the decision-makers see fit. Lack of flexibility/compromise from the objectors is not a valid reason. The objectors may be right and so it's quite reasonable that they don't compromise.
Zoney
On 11/07/07, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
Besides, the definition for "consensus" in the Wikipedian language as opposed to English is not concrete. Your definition essentially allows people to be ignored/overruled if the decision-makers see fit.
Which remains a major problem, as long as any single admin can make most decisions.
On 7/11/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:03:27 +0100, Zoney zoney.ie@gmail.com wrote:
Tough. In such an situation there wasn't any consensus reached.
Wikipedia does "consensus" not consensus. If you want consensus you need to ask the Religious Society of Friends, who will stay at the table until everyone agrees.
Quakers have been known to agree to disagree, rather than continue to meet ad infinitum.
On 7/10/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sun, 8 Jul 2007 20:10:03 -0700, "George Herbert" george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
As one of the inclusionists willing to compromise on this issue, I object to that. There were plenty enough people in the middle for a compromise to work. The rhetoric from the extremist-seeming deletionists sunk the various compromise attempts time and time again.
Sorry, but that's not how I remember it. The lengthy debate over [[WP:SCHOOLS]] was torpedoed mainly by a small number of people who flatly refused to consider anything other than "all schools are inherently notable". No merge was acceptable, no deletion was acceptable, however atrocious the article, they stated as an article of faith that every school merited an article.
I don't recall a *single* deletionist raising any argument that was as dogmatic as those raised by the few militant inclusionists.
Well, ok, but I don't remember anyone who was more than briefly active in the debates and who was to my left on the issue, and I proposed the merge-with-communities middle ground repeatedly in several of the many debates we've had on the topic.
I never had any problems on my left. It was entirely with people insisting that they had the right to out and out delete stuff rather than letting us merge appropriately.
"schools are inherently notable" is a belief I hold. It is NOT equivalent to "...and every school should have its own independent article", which I do not hold. There are a few people who believe that; they were a fringe minority in the debates.
Want to make a run at another attempt at putting up a policy, since we all seem to have a happy middle ground here?
On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 15:39:48 -0700, "George Herbert" george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Want to make a run at another attempt at putting up a policy, since we all seem to have a happy middle ground here?
George, what you say makes good sense as always. Our memories of events are coloured by our personal biases, I guess, but the militants are not there right now, so absolutely yes, try for a new and workable guideline.
Guy (JzG)
On 7/12/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 15:39:48 -0700, "George Herbert" george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Want to make a run at another attempt at putting up a policy, since we all seem to have a happy middle ground here?
George, what you say makes good sense as always. Our memories of events are coloured by our personal biases, I guess, but the militants are not there right now, so absolutely yes, try for a new and workable guideline.
Perhaps...
Previous problem - coming at the problem from the "are they notable? yes/no" direction was the fatal flaw and unsolvable disagreement.
Current approach - come at the problem this time from the viewpoint of "school articles should only contain notable and reliably sourced information. school stubs, with only minimal notable and reliably sourced information, should be merged into ..."
We don't even have to come to a solution on the first problem, to solve the second one. 8-)
On 13/07/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Previous problem - coming at the problem from the "are they notable? yes/no" direction was the fatal flaw and unsolvable disagreement.
This is because "notable" was still very close to its origin on AFD as the antonym of "not notable", i.e. "I don't like it."
- d.
On 10/07/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
I don't recall a *single* deletionist raising any argument that was as dogmatic as those raised by the few militant inclusionists.
I do, however, remember them nominating school articles at a rate of 50/day, apparently indiscriminately.
- d.
On 7/2/07, Philippe Beaudette philippebeaudette@gmail.com wrote:
Schools are a constant source of frustration for me. Take, for instance, [[Dean Rusk Middle School]] - personally, I wouldn't call it notable. I've AFD'd ones similar before, and been beat back with a stick (OK, there was no stick, but let's pretend the stick is a metaphor, shall we?) and have been clearly informed that middle schools are notable and that my dog would be kidnapped and my offspring subjected to a game of thwack the mole (again, hyperbolic) should I so much as presume to look at a school listing again, must less post it to afd. I know from my experience last time that there are a few others who, like me, question the notability of such schools, but I get the feeling we're all so shell shocked on this issue that we've just sort of started to ignore the school listings.
Could we, once and for all (or at least until the wind changes) make a determination on whether such school should be included in the 'pedia? Or, if not a determination, at least a very strong suggestion?
How about you ignore the article?
On 7/9/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
How about you ignore the article?
Tried that. They ended up full of vandalism, copyvios (copying from school website and nicking pictures) and falsehoods.
On 7/10/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/9/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
How about you ignore the article?
Tried that. They ended up full of vandalism, copyvios (copying from school website and nicking pictures) and falsehoods.
geni,
This is not unique to school articles. In your experience, is it disproportionate?
I have been watching the schools that have appeared on Afd, and most have been stubs. Sometimes it was obvious that students have made an honest attempt to expand the article with rather uninteresting drivel that is not supported by reliable sources, and frequently editors try to clean this up during the Afd. But in my limited experience, those problems occur in spades in other areas.
-- John
On 7/10/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/10/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/9/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
How about you ignore the article?
Tried that. They ended up full of vandalism, copyvios (copying from school website and nicking pictures) and falsehoods.
geni,
This is not unique to school articles. In your experience, is it disproportionate?
We have no useful data to say.
I have been watching the schools that have appeared on Afd, and most have been stubs. Sometimes it was obvious that students have made an honest attempt to expand the article with rather uninteresting drivel that is not supported by reliable sources, and frequently editors try to clean this up during the Afd. But in my limited experience, those problems occur in spades in other areas.
A difference is that most areas where we pick up large numbers of slightly notable article we have people prepared to look after them (although not in all cases). The problem with schools is that there doesn't appear to be any group really committed to looking after them.
geni wrote:
On 7/10/07, John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
I have been watching the schools that have appeared on Afd, and most have been stubs. Sometimes it was obvious that students have made an honest attempt to expand the article with rather uninteresting drivel that is not supported by reliable sources, and frequently editors try to clean this up during the Afd. But in my limited experience, those problems occur in spades in other areas.
A difference is that most areas where we pick up large numbers of slightly notable article we have people prepared to look after them (although not in all cases). The problem with schools is that there doesn't appear to be any group really committed to looking after them.
Perhaps so, but the looking after would be better handled on a community basis for all things in that community instead of some broad schools project that deals with schools in unfamiliar places.
Ec
On 7/10/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Perhaps so, but the looking after would be better handled on a community basis for all things in that community instead of some broad schools project that deals with schools in unfamiliar places.
Is happening has never happened and given the number of geographical communities is never likely to happen.
On 7/9/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/9/07, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
How about you ignore the article?
Tried that. They ended up full of vandalism, copyvios (copying from school website and nicking pictures) and falsehoods.
I wasn't asking you to ignore the article, I was responding to the complainant. Not ignoring the article was evidently making him unhappy.