[WikiEN-l] School Districts and notability

[Ray Saintonge]

Will Beback wrote:

>David Gerard wrote:
>  
>
>>On 22/05/07, Will Beback <will.beback.1 at 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