This is a response to User:Silensor/Schools. Comments on the talk page are invited. Grammar corrections are also invited. Since this is (as of yet) my personal viewpoint I would appreciate if other edits did not occur as such. Since it is intended as a response to that inclusionist essay I will pay more attention to issues or problems with the most commonly used keep arguments and not address why articles should or should not be kept aside from that essay.
(Non-indented numbered remarks are Silensor's. Indented remarks under them are my response)
Silensors reasons and my response: 1. m:eventualism
2. Schools are important public institutions and should probably be written about somewhere, even when they cannot sustain an article on their own.
2. a. Presently people do create school articles containing neutral, verifiable information and it is difficult to delete them, even though many think these articles are too trivial for Wikipedia. 2. b. Rather than striving for an elusive consensus to delete a given school article, some feel it is always preferable and usually takes much less energy to merge the text of the article into an article about a suitable habitation or administrative unit: a city, county or state, or a school district of local education authority of other school system, while taking care not to delete the information contained in the article. The article itself should be replaced by a redirect. (note: this particular argument for merges is not supported by all who favor keeping school articles, see #Merge and #Don't Merge).
3. Those who advocate the deletion of schools sometimes use an argument to the effect that a school that doesn't have some special attribute--apart from being an institution of learning--has no identity and shouldn't be in Wikipedia. 3. a. This is a case of special pleading; there is no Wikipedia policy requirement that corresponds to this, it's just an ad hoc condition constructed to justify opposition to school articles.
3. b. Each school is different from every other school--a look at the latest school report card or HMI inspection report of any school should be enough to establish this truism. Someone who looks up the Oratory School would not want to see a link to the report card for Mount Tabor High School, and by providing readers with a way of finding out about individual schools, including what independent or government inspectors have to say about their teaching standards, Wikipedia performs a useful encyclopedic function.
3. c. Schools are not donut shops, traffic lights, or telephone books, they're where we spend a large proportion of our waking lives, where we learn to be adults, gain skills and make friends. They play a large part in determining what kind of society we have. Schools are also community gathering points, where many students and former students can share common experiences and knowledge - a central theme to Wikipedia.
4. It is argued that wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, and that school articles only serve a narrow, local audience. However, Wikipedia is not paper and can afford to serve all audiences of reasonable size. Instead of removing material, technical means can be found to make general topics more prominent to researchers, such as rating more obscure pages "of little general interest" and demoting them in search results.
5. Schools are an excellent entry point for new Wikipedians. In reviewing their contributions, we can educate and inform them about third party verifiability and NPOV as they help build the common knowledge base. A good experience collaboratively editing something "close to home" will encourage long term involvement in a positive way.
6. It has been said that school articles are not maintainable because, for instance, every time a school headmaster or principal changes it should be edited to accommodate the change. There are two counters with that argument:
7. Jimbo Wales said people should relax and accommodate those who write high school articles, as long as they're not mass-inserting a ton of one line stubs. [1]
8. There are multitudes of US city articles which could be said to be "trivial" , and one may say: 'well those cities usually have more people in them than a school'. Yet, Perth, Towner County, North Dakota, for example, only has a population of 13 people. So why include small cities over schools?
This point is a good one but it suffers from multiple flaws:
9. The determination of schools accepted and not should be consistent across the board.
This sentence is still a bit hard for me to read every time I read it. I think what Silensor means is "We should have a consistent method of determining whether or not a school should be included" Subject to that intepretation:
This is a response to User:Silensor/Schools. Comments on the talk page are invited. Grammar corrections are also invited. Since this is (as of yet) my personal viewpoint I would appreciate if other edits did not occur as such. Since it is intended as a response to that inclusionist essay I will pay more attention to issues or problems with the most commonly used keep arguments and not address why articles should or should not be kept aside from that essay.
(Non-indented numbered remarks are Silensor's. Indented remarks under them are my response)
Silensors reasons and my response: 1. m:eventualism
2. Schools are important public institutions and should probably be written about somewhere, even when they cannot sustain an article on their own.
2. a. Presently people do create school articles containing neutral, verifiable information and it is difficult to delete them, even though many think these articles are too trivial for Wikipedia. 2. b. Rather than striving for an elusive consensus to delete a given school article, some feel it is always preferable and usually takes much less energy to merge the text of the article into an article about a suitable habitation or administrative unit: a city, county or state, or a school district of local education authority of other school system, while taking care not to delete the information contained in the article. The article itself should be replaced by a redirect. (note: this particular argument for merges is not supported by all who favor keeping school articles, see #Merge and #Don't Merge).
3. Those who advocate the deletion of schools sometimes use an argument to the effect that a school that doesn't have some special attribute--apart from being an institution of learning--has no identity and shouldn't be in Wikipedia. 3. a. This is a case of special pleading; there is no Wikipedia policy requirement that corresponds to this, it's just an ad hoc condition constructed to justify opposition to school articles.
3. b. Each school is different from every other school--a look at the latest school report card or HMI inspection report of any school should be enough to establish this truism. Someone who looks up the Oratory School would not want to see a link to the report card for Mount Tabor High School, and by providing readers with a way of finding out about individual schools, including what independent or government inspectors have to say about their teaching standards, Wikipedia performs a useful encyclopedic function.
3. c. Schools are not donut shops, traffic lights, or telephone books, they're where we spend a large proportion of our waking lives, where we learn to be adults, gain skills and make friends. They play a large part in determining what kind of society we have. Schools are also community gathering points, where many students and former students can share common experiences and knowledge - a central theme to Wikipedia.
4. It is argued that wikipedia is a general encyclopedia, and that school articles only serve a narrow, local audience. However, Wikipedia is not paper and can afford to serve all audiences of reasonable size. Instead of removing material, technical means can be found to make general topics more prominent to researchers, such as rating more obscure pages "of little general interest" and demoting them in search results.
5. Schools are an excellent entry point for new Wikipedians. In reviewing their contributions, we can educate and inform them about third party verifiability and NPOV as they help build the common knowledge base. A good experience collaboratively editing something "close to home" will encourage long term involvement in a positive way.
6. It has been said that school articles are not maintainable because, for instance, every time a school headmaster or principal changes it should be edited to accommodate the change. There are two counters with that argument:
7. Jimbo Wales said people should relax and accommodate those who write high school articles, as long as they're not mass-inserting a ton of one line stubs. [1]
8. There are multitudes of US city articles which could be said to be "trivial" , and one may say: 'well those cities usually have more people in them than a school'. Yet, Perth, Towner County, North Dakota, for example, only has a population of 13 people. So why include small cities over schools?
This point is a good one but it suffers from multiple flaws:
9. The determination of schools accepted and not should be consistent across the board.
This sentence is still a bit hard for me to read every time I read it. I think what Silensor means is "We should have a consistent method of determining whether or not a school should be included" Subject to that intepretation: