[WikiEN-l] Process wonkery

[Carl Peterson]

On 9/26/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 26/09/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at 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