[WikiEN-l] Process wonkery

[Guy Chapman aka JzG]

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)
-- 
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG