Charlotte Webb wrote:
On 5/22/07, Angela Anuszewski angela.anuszewski@gmail.com wrote:
My earlier reading made me consider whether or not school districts are notable simply because they exist, or some more significant event or achievement should be required to create or retain an article on the subject.
If a wealth of verifiable information about a school or district...
If information exists, somebody will add it. Try not to be too quick in completely writing off certain topics. Stub templates exist for a reason.
—C.W.
The inclusion of non-notable schools is not, by itself, the problem.
The real problem we have on Wikipedia with school articles, in my opinion, is the amount of vandalism they receive relative to the number of editors repairing them. Since school-aged kids are a main source of vandalism this isn't a surprise. However since this vandalism often takes the form of derogatory remarks about living people it's a serious matter. Reducing the number of school articles which aren't being watched would help.
I tried "prodding" a vandalized article about a junior high school and found that there are editors who watch the PROD category just to remove school articles. While I appreciate that the matter of school notability is hotly debated, I don't think anyone likes having hundreds or thousands of school articles that are unattended targets of libelous vandalism. Other than reducing the number of school articles I don't see a good solution. Perhaps a compromise would be to favor merging school articles into school district articles.
Will Beback
On 22/05/07, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
I tried "prodding" a vandalized article about a junior high school and found that there are editors who watch the PROD category just to remove school articles. While I appreciate that the matter of school notability is hotly debated, I don't think anyone likes having hundreds or thousands of school articles that are unattended targets of libelous vandalism. Other than reducing the number of school articles I don't see a good solution. Perhaps a compromise would be to favor merging school articles into school district articles.
Ask these editors to please keep a closer eye on the articles in question, not just watching for prods. If they do, that'll help the problem greatly.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 22/05/07, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
tried "prodding" a vandalized article about a junior high school and found that there are editors who watch the PROD category just to remove school articles. While I appreciate that the matter of school notability is hotly debated, I don't think anyone likes having hundreds or thousands of school articles that are unattended targets of libelous vandalism. Other than reducing the number of school articles I don't see a good solution. Perhaps a compromise would be to favor merging school articles into school district articles.
Ask these editors to please keep a closer eye on the articles in question, not just watching for prods. If they do, that'll help the problem greatly.
- d.
That was my first response, and in one case an editor did reply positively. However it takes much more time to maintain a couple of hundred school articles than to check PROD and AfD once a day. The basic problem is that we've got more school articles than we can maintain. There are over 1200 public high schools in the state of California alone, and even more middle schools. There could easily be 30,000 public middle and high schools in the U.S. I don't know how many of those now have articles, but according to current WP practices they all could. Maintaining such a large number of vandal magnets is an enormous burden. In exchange for all of that work we are basically just repeating the information on the schools' own websites. Why should we bother? What's the benefit?
By comparison, school district articles seem to be much less prone to vandalism and there are far fewer of them.
Will Beback
On Tue, May 22, 2007 2:19 pm, Will Beback wrote:
That was my first response, and in one case an editor did reply positively. However it takes much more time to maintain a couple of hundred school articles than to check PROD and AfD once a day. The basic problem is that we've got more school articles than we can maintain.
It may be an awareness issue, though. Are the scohol people really aware of the disproportionate vandalism?
In exchange for all of that work we are basically just repeating the information on the schools' own websites. Why should we bother? What's the benefit?
For the ability to have a better article once the proper person comes to make it.
By comparison, school district articles seem to be much less prone to vandalism and there are far fewer of them.
And are far less useful to the reader. There are few things more annoying as a reader than searching for X, which brings you to an article on Y forcing me to sift through irrelevant information.
-Jeff
On 5/22/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
It may be an awareness issue, though. Are the scohol people really aware of the disproportionate vandalism?
If they are not it isn't for lack of telling.
On 5/22/07, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
Maintaining such a large number of vandal magnets is an enormous burden. In exchange for all of that work we are basically just repeating the information on the schools' own websites. Why should we bother? What's the benefit?
NPOV, free content licensing, encyclopedic format, all those things that make Wikipedia great.
That's the theory, anyway. In practice maybe there isn't enough of that to outweigh the detriments, which would be what, the libel? If anyone wants to do a pseudo-scientific study on what portion of articles on schools contains libel, instead of us all just trading anecdotes, it would help.
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
NPOV, free content licensing, encyclopedic format, all those things that make Wikipedia great.
Sure.
That's the theory, anyway. In practice maybe there isn't enough of that to outweigh the detriments, which would be what, the libel? If anyone wants to do a pseudo-scientific study on what portion of articles on schools contains libel, instead of us all just trading anecdotes, it would help.
Perhaps if each person in the thread examined and reported on the situation for his own district. (Or part of a district if it's really big or group of districts if it's really small) Choosing a pre-defined locale could give better perspective on the problem. Number of schools at each level; how many have been vandalized, etc.
Ec
G'day Ray,
Anthony wrote:
<snip/>
That's the theory, anyway. In practice maybe there isn't enough of that to outweigh the detriments, which would be what, the libel? If anyone wants to do a pseudo-scientific study on what portion of articles on schools contains libel, instead of us all just trading anecdotes, it would help.
Perhaps if each person in the thread examined and reported on the situation for his own district. (Or part of a district if it's really big or group of districts if it's really small) Choosing a pre-defined locale could give better perspective on the problem. Number of schools at each level; how many have been vandalized, etc.
I guess those of us who aren't American or Canadian should just bow out now, then ...
(Perhaps instead of the term-with-specific-political-meaning "school district" you really meant "geographical region"?)
Mark Gallagher wrote:
G'day Ray,
Anthony wrote:
<snip/>
That's the theory, anyway. In practice maybe there isn't enough of that to outweigh the detriments, which would be what, the libel? If anyone wants to do a pseudo-scientific study on what portion of articles on schools contains libel, instead of us all just trading anecdotes, it would help.
Perhaps if each person in the thread examined and reported on the situation for his own district. (Or part of a district if it's really big or group of districts if it's really small) Choosing a pre-defined locale could give better perspective on the problem. Number of schools at each level; how many have been vandalized, etc.
I guess those of us who aren't American or Canadian should just bow out now, then ...
(Perhaps instead of the term-with-specific-political-meaning "school district" you really meant "geographical region"?)
Sorry, I didn't mean to be misleading. "Geographical region" would be a fair interpretation of what I said. I know nothing about how the Australian school system is organized. There is some advantage to our system of districts, but it is not the only way of organizing things.
Ec
Will Beback wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
On 22/05/07, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
tried "prodding" a vandalized article about a junior high school and found that there are editors who watch the PROD category just to remove school articles. While I appreciate that the matter of school notability is hotly debated, I don't think anyone likes having hundreds or thousands of school articles that are unattended targets of libelous vandalism. Other than reducing the number of school articles I don't see a good solution. Perhaps a compromise would be to favor merging school articles into school district articles.
Ask these editors to please keep a closer eye on the articles in question, not just watching for prods. If they do, that'll help the problem greatly.
- d.
That was my first response, and in one case an editor did reply positively. However it takes much more time to maintain a couple of hundred school articles than to check PROD and AfD once a day. The basic problem is that we've got more school articles than we can maintain. There are over 1200 public high schools in the state of California alone, and even more middle schools. There could easily be 30,000 public middle and high schools in the U.S. I don't know how many of those now have articles, but according to current WP practices they all could. Maintaining such a large number of vandal magnets is an enormous burden. In exchange for all of that work we are basically just repeating the information on the schools' own websites. Why should we bother? What's the benefit?
Calling the articles "vandal magnets" is prejucicial. Saying that we are just repeating the information on the school website is presumptuous. Even if the initial stub only has that it's something to build on. Presuming that you live in California, you don't need to feel responsible for the whole damn state. That might work out for a low population state, but otherwise keep the selection manageable.If you don't want to bother, give someone else the opportunity to bother.
Ec
David Gerard wrote:
On 22/05/07, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
I tried "prodding" a vandalized article about a junior high school and found that there are editors who watch the PROD category just to remove school articles. While I appreciate that the matter of school notability is hotly debated, I don't think anyone likes having hundreds or thousands of school articles that are unattended targets of libelous vandalism. Other than reducing the number of school articles I don't see a good solution. Perhaps a compromise would be to favor merging school articles into school district articles.
Ask these editors to please keep a closer eye on the articles in question, not just watching for prods. If they do, that'll help the problem greatly.
Ask them to keep an eye on the schools within their own school district. It's much easier to follow schools close to home than some random selection. It was only when I began checking the schools in my district (39 elementary, 11 secondary) that I realized that they were being subjected to deletion vandalism. Perhaps there were AfDs, but one often doesn't find out about those until it's too late.
Ec
On 22/05/07, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
The real problem we have on Wikipedia with school articles, in my opinion, is the amount of vandalism they receive relative to the number of editors repairing them. Since school-aged kids are a main source of vandalism this isn't a surprise. However since this vandalism often takes the form of derogatory remarks about living people it's a serious matter. Reducing the number of school articles which aren't being watched would help.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - we need to think about maintainability in a concrete sense as well as "notability" in an abstract one. If an article is going to need maintenance, but it isn't going to get it, it becomes a net liability to the project...
On 5/22/2007 5:27 PM, Andrew Gray wrote:
I've said it before and I'll say it again - we need to think about maintainability in a concrete sense as well as "notability" in an abstract one. If an article is going to need maintenance, but it isn't going to get it, it becomes a net liability to the project...
If maintenance is the problem, it would seem that tools like semi-protection would be more useful than deletion. If an article (school or not) is clearly poorly monitored, and is prone to receiving damaging vandalism (especially of the BLP/personal attack variety), I wouldn't be at all opposed to semi-protection in that case.
--Chris
On 5/22/07, Christopher G. Parham cparham@fas.harvard.edu wrote:
If maintenance is the problem, it would seem that tools like semi-protection would be more useful than deletion. If an article (school or not) is clearly poorly monitored, and is prone to receiving damaging vandalism (especially of the BLP/personal attack variety), I wouldn't be at all opposed to semi-protection in that case.
We can't semi-protect every single school article.
On 5/23/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
We can't semi-protect every single school article.
{{fact}}
Well, we shouldn't...
{{originalresearch}}
On 22/05/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/22/07, Christopher G. Parham cparham@fas.harvard.edu wrote:
If maintenance is the problem, it would seem that tools like semi-protection would be more useful than deletion. If an article (school or not) is clearly poorly monitored, and is prone to receiving damaging vandalism (especially of the BLP/personal attack variety), I wouldn't be at all opposed to semi-protection in that case.
We can't semi-protect every single school article.
Well, we can't wave a magic wand and say "there, all found and protected". But we can make a decent stab at it if we had the will to do so, catch most of them easily (and then most of the rest gradually)
Christopher G. Parham wrote:
On 5/22/2007 5:27 PM, Andrew Gray wrote:
I've said it before and I'll say it again - we need to think about maintainability in a concrete sense as well as "notability" in an abstract one. If an article is going to need maintenance, but it isn't going to get it, it becomes a net liability to the project...
If maintenance is the problem, it would seem that tools like semi-protection would be more useful than deletion. If an article (school or not) is clearly poorly monitored, and is prone to receiving damaging vandalism (especially of the BLP/personal attack variety), I wouldn't be at all opposed to semi-protection in that case.
--Chris
Permanent semi-protection may be a better solution than merging schools articles into school district articles. It would require a small amendment to the protection policy but would be less disruptive overall.
Will Beback
Christopher G. Parham wrote:
On 5/22/2007 5:27 PM, Andrew Gray wrote:
I've said it before and I'll say it again - we need to think about maintainability in a concrete sense as well as "notability" in an abstract one. If an article is going to need maintenance, but it isn't going to get it, it becomes a net liability to the project...
If maintenance is the problem, it would seem that tools like semi-protection would be more useful than deletion. If an article (school or not) is clearly poorly monitored, and is prone to receiving damaging vandalism (especially of the BLP/personal attack variety), I wouldn't be at all opposed to semi-protection in that case.
That's a policy that I would find more acceptable than deletion or generally merging.. Still those two criteria should both be met first: poor maintence AND recurring vandalism.
Ec
Christopher G. Parham wrote:
On 5/22/2007 5:27 PM, Andrew Gray wrote:
I've said it before and I'll say it again - we need to think about maintainability in a concrete sense as well as "notability" in an abstract one. If an article is going to need maintenance, but it isn't going to get it, it becomes a net liability to the project...
If maintenance is the problem, it would seem that tools like semi-protection would be more useful than deletion. If an article (school or not) is clearly poorly monitored, and is prone to receiving damaging vandalism (especially of the BLP/personal attack variety), I wouldn't be at all opposed to semi-protection in that case.
--Chris
I've been wanting to stop watching school articles and that's increased my concern over the state of school article maintenance. I watch about 250 schools, but most of the vandalism occurs to perhaps 10% of those. So most of my involvement is with the worst problems.
I just looked at a few dozen random school articles, including stubs and uncategorized articles, and I found less vandalism than I expected. The problem may be more limited to individual schools than I'd thought, perhaps based on factors such as having a computer lab. I did see many articles with sourcing, POV, and balance problems, but that's par for the course.
On the whole, it looks as if the school articles are not as bad as they were a year or two ago. While sometimes criticized, the school project folks have apparently made an enormous difference.
Will Beback
Andrew Gray wrote:
On 22/05/07, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
The real problem we have on Wikipedia with school articles, in my opinion, is the amount of vandalism they receive relative to the number of editors repairing them. Since school-aged kids are a main source of vandalism this isn't a surprise. However since this vandalism often takes the form of derogatory remarks about living people it's a serious matter. Reducing the number of school articles which aren't being watched would help.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - we need to think about maintainability in a concrete sense as well as "notability" in an abstract one. If an article is going to need maintenance, but it isn't going to get it, it becomes a net liability to the project...
What is adequate maintenance. When I recently went through my district's schools to see what was happening (39 elementary + 11 secondary) the two instances of what might be considered anything like traditional vandalism were both at high schools. I suspect that elementary schools may be less vandal prone than secondaries, because the kids there are just not on the internet as much.
Ec
Will Beback wrote:
Charlotte Webb wrote:
On 5/22/07, Angela Anuszewski angela.anuszewski@gmail.com wrote:
My earlier reading made me consider whether or not school districts are notable simply because they exist, or some more significant event or achievement should be required to create or retain an article on the subject.
If a wealth of verifiable information about a school or district...
If information exists, somebody will add it. Try not to be too quick in completely writing off certain topics. Stub templates exist for a reason.
The inclusion of non-notable schools is not, by itself, the problem.
I'm glad you see that.
The real problem we have on Wikipedia with school articles, in my opinion, is the amount of vandalism they receive relative to the number of editors repairing them. Since school-aged kids are a main source of vandalism this isn't a surprise. However since this vandalism often takes the form of derogatory remarks about living people it's a serious matter. Reducing the number of school articles which aren't being watched would help.
Vandalism is vandalism, so let's not quibble over which kinds are worse than others. When you let the vandals effectively dictate the policies that will be applied to the large majority of conscientious editors, including those of school age you have effectively lost track of the purpose of the project: to build an encyclopedia. Those with that kind of siege mentality are as much a part of the problem as the vandals they purport to combat. It means that the honest contributors have to watch out not only for the vandals, but to the paranoid clique that is constantly undermining their efforts to start new articles.
Perhaps the school articles aren't being watched enough. If so then time would be better spent finding ways to watch them instead of arguing with people who want such articles.
I tried "prodding" a vandalized article about a junior high school and found that there are editors who watch the PROD category just to remove school articles. While I appreciate that the matter of school notability is hotly debated, I don't think anyone likes having hundreds or thousands of school articles that are unattended targets of libelous vandalism. Other than reducing the number of school articles I don't see a good solution. Perhaps a compromise would be to favor merging school articles into school district articles.
What evidence do you have that there is such a huge proportion of school articles being vandalized? You are using completely unfounded hypotheses, and believing them because they suit your purposes.
Ec
On 5/22/07, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
The inclusion of non-notable schools is not, by itself, the problem.
There you go using the N-word again.
The real problem we have on Wikipedia with school articles, in my opinion, is the amount of vandalism they receive relative to the number of editors repairing them. Since school-aged kids are a main source of vandalism this isn't a surprise. However since this vandalism often takes the form of derogatory remarks about living people it's a serious matter. Reducing the number of school articles which aren't being watched would help.
If a school article continues to be vandalized even after you have blocked that school's IP range, then the school is probably more widely known than you thought. Try semi-protecting it for a while.
I tried "prodding" a vandalized article about a junior high school and found that there are editors who watch the PROD category just to remove school articles. While I appreciate that the matter of school notability is hotly debated, I don't think anyone likes having hundreds or thousands of school articles that are unattended targets of libelous vandalism. Other than reducing the number of school articles I don't see a good solution. Perhaps a compromise would be to favor merging school articles into school district articles.
"Libelous vandalism" can appear anywhere. Nominating an article for deletion because it "has become a target for 'libelous vandalism'" is opportunism at best. However, it could also be considered a violation of WP:POINT.
Deleting the article, or merging it to another article, will only funnel vandalism to other locations, won't do anything to actually reduce it.
Block these spreaders of "libelous vandalism" for trying to fuck up the project. Any action more drastic than that will only mean that they have, to some extent, succeeded.
Revert, block, ignore.
—C.W.
On 5/29/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/22/07, Will Beback will.beback.1@gmail.com wrote:
The inclusion of non-notable schools is not, by itself, the problem.
There you go using the N-word again.
The real problem we have on Wikipedia with school articles, in my opinion, is the amount of vandalism they receive relative to the number of editors repairing them. Since school-aged kids are a main source of vandalism this isn't a surprise. However since this vandalism often takes the form of derogatory remarks about living people it's a serious matter. Reducing the number of school articles which aren't being watched would help.
If a school article continues to be vandalized even after you have blocked that school's IP range, then the school is probably more widely known than you thought. Try semi-protecting it for a while.
Vry good point, and one which I had not thought of. ~~~~
<snip>
—C.W.