Summary: This page documents the history of deletion discussions related to high schools. In short, verifiable high schools that aren't just a one-sentence piece of crap are almost ALWAYS kept. Its well over 95%.
The below timeline (substantially created in August 2011) currently includes:
Results from an "everything" search for the first 200+ search results of 16,119 result for "articles for deletion" "high school" "
First 20 results for "articles for deletion" "secondary school" (1,922 results)
All high school VfDs I could find from 2001-May 2004 from the old VfD archives.
First 600 of 4,494 search results for: "articles for deletion" "high school" 2010
Note that when the article is not properly capitalized in the AfD title, e.g., "Town high school" instead of "Town High School", which isn't that uncommon, it probably means the article was newly created and in bad shape when nominated.
First 320 everything search results for --"articles for deletion" high school 2009--(added March 2012 to fill out 2009 listings)
I also made some attempts to include sample AfDs from non-English speaking countries. Sometime these are harder to verify, but once verified are also almost always kept.
[1]Sudbury Valley School (nominated for deletion by Jimbo Wales on July 12, 2003 as a copyright violation. Article was quickly fixed and deletion discussion was removed without further discussion)
Talk:Kew_School (keep, September 2003) (appears to be a closed primary school in New Zealand)
Talk:Hansraj Morarji Public School (merged to town, November 2003) (school location: Mumbai, India) (recreated February 2005 and has remained)
November 2003: [
[6]]. Jimbo Wales comments on discussion of deletionism with example about high school articles, and his comments suggest that articles on typical high schools should be permitted as long as they have some decent content and aren't mass stubs.
"Put another way: if someone wants to write an article about their high school, we should relax and accomodate them, even if we wish they wouldn't do it. And that's true *even if* we should react differently if someone comes in and starts mass-adding articles on every high school in the world.
Let me make this more concrete. Let's say I start writing an article about my high school, Randolph School, of Huntsville, Alabama. I could write a decent 2 page article about it, citing information that can easily be verified by anyone who visits their website.
Then I think people should relax and accomodate me. It isn't hurting anything. It'd be a good article, I'm a good contributor, and so cutting me some slack is a very reasonable thing to do.
That's true *even if* we'd react differently to a ton of one-liners mass-imported saying nothing more than "Randolph School is a private school in Huntsville, Alabama, US" and "Indian Springs is a private school in Birmingham, Alabama, US" and on and on and on, ad nauseum."
Jimbo doesn't say high schools are notable, but the notability concept was fuzzy in 2003.
Wikipedia's size in November 2003 was about 175,000 articles.
Randolph School is school is created February 2004.
Indian Springs School is created July 2005.
November 2003':
Wikipedia:Deletion policy/schools - poll/discussion started on " Should Wikipedia have articles on schools? Rather than discuss this repeatedly on VfD every time a school article appears, it would be more sensible to gain a consensus which could be applied to all of them. That's what this page is for."
[7]Tremper High School (delete, December 2003, likely was an attack article, one comment: "Looking at the history of the article, and the kind of stuff the user who created it was contributing, I just don't know if it's worth keeping. Of the edits to the article, most were insults against the school or people who go there.") (recreated April 2006 and has remained,
George Nelson Tremper High School)
Talk:North Ward School (keep, no consensus, May 2004) (note, this is an elementary school, concept of high schools being different not conceived of in discussion)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Burnie High School (delete, September 2004, appears to have been low quality article with unsourced baloney. Article (same school?) recreated June 2007 and has remained)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Armwood High School (delete, October 2004, nominating comment: "Non-notable high school. Created by troll", BEEFSTEW rating of 0)(was recreated August 2005 and has remained)
English wikipedia starts 2005 with 438,500 articles.
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Millbrook High School (delete, January 2005 - appears to have been a hoax/prank. Troll votes include "All fictional schools are inherently notable. This fictional school has probably influenced the lives of tens of thousands of fictional people.")
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Collier High School (delete, December 2006) (not clear what was deleted, because after deletion the article was redirected to another Collier High School. Discussion refers to this being some special school for "students with difficulty adapting to public schools",so it was probably
Collier High School (New Jersey), which was recreated in October 2007 and has remained. But definitely not a normal high school.) (Note link to December 2006 village pump discussion on notability of subjects, focusing on schools
[16])
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chanhassen High School (speedy delete, December 2006) (vandalism/hoax/very bad content, e.g., "On top of the suspended building, there will be a herd of Big Angry Male Flamingos.") (article recreated in September 2008 and has remained)
2007
English wikipedia starts 2007 with 1,560,000 articles.
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Castlehead High School (delete January 2007) (another poor stub
[17], closing comment included: "The article history is full of vandalism and slander, and nothing in the article is referenced." Article recreated in September 2008 and has remained)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paradigm High School (delete, March 2007) (nominating comment: "A non-notable, small, private school that is written like an advertisement. It has no actual links and google has very little actually about it.") (recreated June 2009)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Masuk High School (speedy keep, Nov 2008) (closing comment: "High schools, per precedent and consensus, are inherently notable. Keeping this AfD open for any longer serves no purpose. Additionally, there is already a clear consensus to keep this individual article. –Juliancolton")
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jhansi High School (keep, December 2008) (closing comment: "The result was keep. The article no longer suffers from the issues it suffered from when it was nominated. (It was also nominated far too early: 2 minutes after creation) Mgm")
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SMK Semera (no consensus, kept, January 2009) (school location: Malaysia) (debate noted issues with verifiability, article improved during AfD)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fremont High School (Indiana) (keep, March 2009) (closing comment: "The result was keep; there is little doubt that this place exists, and the enormous weight of precedent is that all secondary schools are (inherently) notable.")
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gonzaga High School (keep, nom withdrawn, January 2011) (comment from Edison: "The consensus of the Wikipedia community, demonstrated in hundreds of AFDs in recent years, has been that legitimate high schools are notable. The exception might be some tiny home school or private school.")
Summary: This page documents the history of deletion discussions related to high schools. In short, verifiable high schools that aren't just a one-sentence piece of crap are almost ALWAYS kept. Its well over 95%.
The below timeline (substantially created in August 2011) currently includes:
Results from an "everything" search for the first 200+ search results of 16,119 result for "articles for deletion" "high school" "
First 20 results for "articles for deletion" "secondary school" (1,922 results)
All high school VfDs I could find from 2001-May 2004 from the old VfD archives.
First 600 of 4,494 search results for: "articles for deletion" "high school" 2010
Note that when the article is not properly capitalized in the AfD title, e.g., "Town high school" instead of "Town High School", which isn't that uncommon, it probably means the article was newly created and in bad shape when nominated.
First 320 everything search results for --"articles for deletion" high school 2009--(added March 2012 to fill out 2009 listings)
I also made some attempts to include sample AfDs from non-English speaking countries. Sometime these are harder to verify, but once verified are also almost always kept.
[1]Sudbury Valley School (nominated for deletion by Jimbo Wales on July 12, 2003 as a copyright violation. Article was quickly fixed and deletion discussion was removed without further discussion)
Talk:Kew_School (keep, September 2003) (appears to be a closed primary school in New Zealand)
Talk:Hansraj Morarji Public School (merged to town, November 2003) (school location: Mumbai, India) (recreated February 2005 and has remained)
November 2003: [
[6]]. Jimbo Wales comments on discussion of deletionism with example about high school articles, and his comments suggest that articles on typical high schools should be permitted as long as they have some decent content and aren't mass stubs.
"Put another way: if someone wants to write an article about their high school, we should relax and accomodate them, even if we wish they wouldn't do it. And that's true *even if* we should react differently if someone comes in and starts mass-adding articles on every high school in the world.
Let me make this more concrete. Let's say I start writing an article about my high school, Randolph School, of Huntsville, Alabama. I could write a decent 2 page article about it, citing information that can easily be verified by anyone who visits their website.
Then I think people should relax and accomodate me. It isn't hurting anything. It'd be a good article, I'm a good contributor, and so cutting me some slack is a very reasonable thing to do.
That's true *even if* we'd react differently to a ton of one-liners mass-imported saying nothing more than "Randolph School is a private school in Huntsville, Alabama, US" and "Indian Springs is a private school in Birmingham, Alabama, US" and on and on and on, ad nauseum."
Jimbo doesn't say high schools are notable, but the notability concept was fuzzy in 2003.
Wikipedia's size in November 2003 was about 175,000 articles.
Randolph School is school is created February 2004.
Indian Springs School is created July 2005.
November 2003':
Wikipedia:Deletion policy/schools - poll/discussion started on " Should Wikipedia have articles on schools? Rather than discuss this repeatedly on VfD every time a school article appears, it would be more sensible to gain a consensus which could be applied to all of them. That's what this page is for."
[7]Tremper High School (delete, December 2003, likely was an attack article, one comment: "Looking at the history of the article, and the kind of stuff the user who created it was contributing, I just don't know if it's worth keeping. Of the edits to the article, most were insults against the school or people who go there.") (recreated April 2006 and has remained,
George Nelson Tremper High School)
Talk:North Ward School (keep, no consensus, May 2004) (note, this is an elementary school, concept of high schools being different not conceived of in discussion)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Burnie High School (delete, September 2004, appears to have been low quality article with unsourced baloney. Article (same school?) recreated June 2007 and has remained)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Armwood High School (delete, October 2004, nominating comment: "Non-notable high school. Created by troll", BEEFSTEW rating of 0)(was recreated August 2005 and has remained)
English wikipedia starts 2005 with 438,500 articles.
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Millbrook High School (delete, January 2005 - appears to have been a hoax/prank. Troll votes include "All fictional schools are inherently notable. This fictional school has probably influenced the lives of tens of thousands of fictional people.")
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Collier High School (delete, December 2006) (not clear what was deleted, because after deletion the article was redirected to another Collier High School. Discussion refers to this being some special school for "students with difficulty adapting to public schools",so it was probably
Collier High School (New Jersey), which was recreated in October 2007 and has remained. But definitely not a normal high school.) (Note link to December 2006 village pump discussion on notability of subjects, focusing on schools
[16])
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chanhassen High School (speedy delete, December 2006) (vandalism/hoax/very bad content, e.g., "On top of the suspended building, there will be a herd of Big Angry Male Flamingos.") (article recreated in September 2008 and has remained)
2007
English wikipedia starts 2007 with 1,560,000 articles.
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Castlehead High School (delete January 2007) (another poor stub
[17], closing comment included: "The article history is full of vandalism and slander, and nothing in the article is referenced." Article recreated in September 2008 and has remained)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paradigm High School (delete, March 2007) (nominating comment: "A non-notable, small, private school that is written like an advertisement. It has no actual links and google has very little actually about it.") (recreated June 2009)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Masuk High School (speedy keep, Nov 2008) (closing comment: "High schools, per precedent and consensus, are inherently notable. Keeping this AfD open for any longer serves no purpose. Additionally, there is already a clear consensus to keep this individual article. –Juliancolton")
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jhansi High School (keep, December 2008) (closing comment: "The result was keep. The article no longer suffers from the issues it suffered from when it was nominated. (It was also nominated far too early: 2 minutes after creation) Mgm")
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SMK Semera (no consensus, kept, January 2009) (school location: Malaysia) (debate noted issues with verifiability, article improved during AfD)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fremont High School (Indiana) (keep, March 2009) (closing comment: "The result was keep; there is little doubt that this place exists, and the enormous weight of precedent is that all secondary schools are (inherently) notable.")
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gonzaga High School (keep, nom withdrawn, January 2011) (comment from Edison: "The consensus of the Wikipedia community, demonstrated in hundreds of AFDs in recent years, has been that legitimate high schools are notable. The exception might be some tiny home school or private school.")