The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. ( non-admin closure) NorthAmerica ¹⁰⁰⁰ 00:21, 30 April 2014 (UTC) reply

Oakhill Christian School

Oakhill Christian School (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)

(Find sources:  Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Procedural nomination. An IP address prodded the article, and keeps removing text and tagging it, apparently for sourcing issues and lack of notability. I tried gently to explain on the IP user's talk page that almost all high schools are inherently notable, and no, it was not a hoax. I started to add text and citations, but am too busy to complete this task right now. The IP even tagged one citation as not citing the school, although it's plainly there, and a second cite as trivial. I have no axe to grind -- I did not create the article, nor am an evangelical; I don't even recall that I have been to Janesville, Wisconsin, where this school is located. The IP address removed my messages on its talk page, and twice vandalized my talk page, frustrating me to the point that I've had to semi-protect my talk page and come here for community input. Bearian ( talk) 15:07, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply

• Delete The school is not notable. Period. It is not a high school. It's a K-12 school, with an enrollment of 68 in all 13 grades. In 2010 it had 7 graduates. There are no reliable sources that establish any sort of notability, over and above it being an average, run-of-the-mill tiny, unknown school. Bearian added a source that not only fails verification for the sentence it supposedly supports, but says nothing whatsoever about the school. (It consists merely of the school's name in a list.) He also added a trivial, unencyclopedic sentence about the school having received some hand-me-down computers from the federal government, apparently in a weak effort to establish notability.

Bearian has been quick on the draw to label me a vandal. He placed a vandalism warning on my talk page because I prodded the article. And I have never vandalized Bearian's talk page. He has called my honest efforts to stop his removal of legitimate templates from the article without fixing the underlying problems "vandalism". I asked him to stop this scurrilous practice, but he's here doing it again.

And stop calling me "an IP" in an attempt to disparage my edits. IPs are editors. 71.139.142.132 ( talk) 15:43, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply

Keep Oakhill Christian School has a high school. High schools are considered to be notable. Thank you- RFD ( talk) 15:39, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply

• Keep: it's a high school (as well as elementary school), it demonstrably exists, so its Wikipedia article exists. No problem. (I'm a bit worried by Bearian's deleted comments on the IP talk page which suggest that if it wasn't in the USA or wasn't Christian there might be more grounds for deleting it...!) And note that the University pdf link, which the IP says proves nothing, does in fact include the school in a list of high schools invited to take part in a science fair - ie shows that an external body considers it to be a high school. Pam D 16:21, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Keep per Wikipedia:All high schools can be notable and Wikipedia:Notability (high schools). Boleyn ( talk) 16:21, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Comment: Let's not cherry-pick our guidelines. WP:NHS also says: "Merely claiming to enroll teenagers or containing the words 'high school' in its name is not enough for a school to be given a separate, stand-alone article." 71.139.142.132 ( talk) 16:43, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Delete fails WP:GNG which is more important than any secondary notability guidelines. Secret ^account 16:41, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Keep - per longstanding consensus for treatment of schools, in which high schools of confirmed existence are presumed notable. THIS confirms existence as a high school. It does not matter if the high school is large or small, public or private, secular or sectarian. Carrite ( talk) 16:44, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Delete - Despite being a deletionist, I have generally agreed with the "all high schools are notable" arguments of the past. However, I'm not finding this one to be terribly convincing thus far. That a K-12 private school teaches a handful (at best) of 14-18 yr olds does not grant it entry into the "automatic HS notability club IMO. Second, a relevant part of Wikipedia:Notability (high schools) is " To be considered a genuine high school/secondary school, the school must either be a public school (i.e. a municipal or government school) or a private school that is authorised by a recognised accreditation body." From what I see so far, this school should be accredited by the WRISA (Wisconsin Religious and Independent Schools Accreditation), but it does not appear on their list. According to the school's contact info and the church's contact info, the two share the same physical address and even the same phone number. Honestly, what this appears to be is a small bible school largely for the church members, nothing more. If this bears out, I think the keep votes cast thus far should reconsider. Tarc ( talk) 16:56, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply

• Comment - I haven't mentioned the rationale behind the Consensus on Schools lately and will do so now. The Consensus on Schools is a two part proposition that represents a compromise between deletionists seeking a concise encyclopedia and inclusionists seeking in an expansive encyclopedia: (1) Elementary schools are presumed non-notable, barring demonstration of extraordinary additional circumstances; (2) High schools of confirmed existence are presumed notable per se. The reasoning is that a good biography will include mention of a high school but not of elementary schools. These links should be blue, not red. High schools also typically have associated sports teams, dramatic activities, band activities, and so forth that generate news coverage; and their construction, opening, administrative changes, and decommissioning are matters of coverage in the local press. Elementary schools, on the other hand, generally generate far less such coverage. These articles are redirected to the article on the school board responsible for them. Rather than fighting over whether to include or remove thousands of articles on schools at AfD, something which would bog down the works incredibly, the very simple Consensus on Schools has evolved. It is not a formal policy, but it is a de facto guideline, adhered to by 98%+ of closing administrators over the years. It's a rational solution and one that I and others very much support. Carrite ( talk) 17:01, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Keep. It is a small school, with the online sources stating an enrollment of around 70. However, it's big enough to have sports teams receiving substantial coverage in state media (e.g. [1] [2] [3] and many more similar stories), and big enough for the Army to give it a bunch of used computers as part of its Computers for Learning program [4]. Under our usual precedents I think this suffices. I'll also take this opportunity to express my agreement with Carrite's explanation about why the consensus is a good thing, and I'll add that I think high school articles provide an positive starting point for new editors to try their hand at editing on a subject they know about: yes, we get a lot of unconstructive edits in school articles, but we also get a lot of constructive ones.-- Arxiloxos ( talk) 17:24, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply

Add: HighBeam has a 2007 article about the school and one of its graduates, who had been admitted to West Point. The article notes that the school had at that point been around for 35 years, and that the school's basketball team had won the Wisconsin Association of Christian Schools state title three years in a row. -- Arxiloxos ( talk) 19:04, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply

Clarify:The linked High Beam article was about one of its students, not about the school. It also mentioned that the school had a graduating class of two. Besides, a single article is not "significant coverage". 71.139.142.132 ( talk) 20:06, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply

• Comment: I'd feel a lot better about these assertions of consensus if you could point to a policy, guideline, or talk page discussion as evidence. Even then, consensus can change. 71.139.142.132 ( talk) 17:44, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Keep. It is a stub article which has 3 independent sources. That already complies with WP:GNG; at the very least we should give editors a chance to flesh it out and add further sources as needed. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 17:49, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Correction: The article has 2 sources, the reliability of one being in doubt. 71.139.142.132 ( talk) 18:06, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Counter-correction: Wrong. I am including the two external links. That makes four sources/refs of which one is not independent. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 06:37, 23 April 2014 (UTC) reply
    • @ Bermicourt: - which WP:GNG says that 3 independent sources that verify existence and one brief, local piece about a laptop donation constitutes notability? --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  07:40, 23 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Delete Clearly a non notable school. Yes these type of schools can be notable, however this one fails our General Notability Guideline by a country mile. School notability guidelines do not notability guidelines do not overrule GNG, they are simply a presumption that secondary schools should be able to meet GNG. This one cant. Blethering Scot 18:17, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Comment - FWIW, it passes my own standards. Bearian ( talk) 18:54, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Keep Just because it is a small school with few sources for it does not mean that it isn't notable. Kevin Rutherford ( talk) 20:14, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Keep If this is teaching up to (at least) 16, this is a High School; and the accepted view is that they are all notable. Peterkingiron ( talk) 21:24, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. St Anselm ( talk) 21:25, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions. St Anselm ( talk) 21:25, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply

• Delete - From the essay people are relying on to vote keep: "In the isolated instances where such schools have been deleted at WP:AfD, editors were commonly unable to independently verify much more than the school's existence, and sometimes not even that much." Existence alone is not enough. Saying "we've done it in the past" is not an argument if not supported by policy (related to WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS). Also from WP:NHS, as already quoted above, "To be considered a genuine high school/secondary school, the school must either be a public school (i.e. a municipal or government school) or a private school that is authorised by a recognised accreditation body." So even if more than existence could be determined by independent secondary sources, it may not qualify as a "high school." When I was a kid I knew a homeschooling family who half-jokingly referred to their home as the "[street they lived on] school." To hear the way people are talking about the notability of high schools, if a local homeschooling magazine mentioned this "school," and it happened to be home to a 9th grader, it would be on Wikipedia. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  22:58, 22 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Speedy keep WP:IAR, WP:POINT WP:NPASR  WP:SK#1: "the nominator...fails to advance an argument for deletion".  XfD is not an RfC biased with a !vote to delete and without an argument for deletion.  WP:POINT: Nominator stipulates in the nomination that the topic is notable, and then !votes to delete.  Stating that this is somehow procedural has no standing, the nom is still a !vote to delete.  Unscintillating ( talk) 00:49, 23 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Keep I was thinking this might be a borderline case until I saw Arxiloxos' links to high school basketball game scores, such as this. This proves that they have at least 6 boys in high school which refutes some of the earlier arguments about it having very few students at a high school level. Royal broil 03:19, 23 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Keep There seems no compelling reason to delete; the reasons given here seem to be either (a) it's small (not a sufficient reason for deleting IMO) or (b) "it fails to meet the GNG" without stating any reasoning as to why they think it fails the guideline and the sources given in the article are insufficient. Even the nominator doesn't seem to want the article deleted. Waggers TALK 10:32, 23 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Speedy Keep per above - Schools are notable whether we like it or not. - →Davey2010→ →Talk to me!→ 18:40, 23 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Keep It's a high school who's existance is confirmed with sources and that has been mentioned in local newspapers. That's enough for a school for me. Chuy1530 ( talk) 22:54, 23 April 2014 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Wisconsin-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 23:26, 23 April 2014 (UTC) reply

• Delete per Secret and Tarc. GNG supersedes any more specific guidelines or consensus. Yes, public schools are clearly notable, we've established that through consensus and the availability of secondary sources. There is no such consensus or possibility of a similar blanket approach to non-public schools, otherwise we will have articles for every storefront charter school, regardless of the availability of reliable sources. Gamaliel ( talk) 23:42, 23 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Keep as a high school. No reason to think that sources cannot be found to meet WP:ORG. We keep high schools for very good reasons; not only do they influence the lives of thousands of people but they also play a significant part in their communities. Expansion not deletion is the way to go with such stubs. The Whispering Wind ( talk) 02:39, 24 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Delete or preferably merge and redirect to the city's section on education because we don't have significant coverage of the school itself in third-party reliable sources, which is required by the policy at WP:Verifiability so that we could actually write an entire article that contains more than just what the subject says about itself, which in turn is required by the WP:NPOV policy. We haven't found of have anything about the school that isn't in the small local newspaper, which is a violation of WP:ORG (which has explicitly included schools and other educational institutions for years). I know that there are a handful of (almost always younger) editors who want to believe that anybody who claims to issue diplomas that they label "high school" deserves to have an entire article about it in Wikipedia because they're just so terribly important to high school students. I know there are people who are just sick of the disputes and so vote to keep all "high school" articles in the belief that suspending good judgment will make it go away. But just like the essay at NHS says, an unaccredited "high school" that graduates a couple of students a year is little more than a home school, and without independent sources, we can't actually write a balanced article. We should no more keep this article than we should keep one on "WhatamIdoing's Ballet High School". WhatamIdoing ( talk) 16:12, 24 April 2014 (UTC) reply

• Comment - I have yet to see a single call to keep this article address a concern I raised regarding accreditation. For those that may have missed it, I will again point to this clause in Wikipedia:Notability (high schools); "To be considered a genuine high school/secondary school, the school must either be a public school (i.e. a municipal or government school) or a private school that is authorised by a recognised accreditation body." If this cannot be rebutted, then this article fails the HS notability guideline, which is what the claimed "we have always agreed that high schools are notable" agreement rests upon. The only other avenue for retention then rests on the general notability guide, but thus far only brief blurbs about sporting event scores and a laptop giveaway have been unearthed. This is far below the GNG standard of in-depth coverage in multiple reliable sources. Thankfully AfDs are not head counts, and the eventual closing admin will note that the claims that the GNG is met ring hollow, and that the "it is a High School, therefore keep" are false, as it fails the HS guide. Thus far, this is a slam-dunk deletion. Tarc ( talk) 16:48, 24 April 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Agree completely with Tarc. Putting aside the speedy keeps, which seem moot given the extensive debate that has taken place (speedy keep followed by an immediate, differently phrased AfD seems pointless), there is one keep argument that argues a stub article with three sources satisfies the GNG (which I don't agree with), but each and every one of the others relies on the existence of a school being a trump card to all other policies. In the essay for the exception it explains that existence alone isn't actually enough and that in order to count in the first place it must be government-run or otherwise accredited. As Tarc points out, this hasn't even been established -- so the exception (which isn't actually an exception), does not even apply. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  01:34, 25 April 2014 (UTC) reply
    • Not to belabor the issue, but I think that a school with an active interscholastic athletics program covered in newspapers (including state championships), with multiple references that show it is regarded as a bona fide school (that was forty computers they got from the military, not one or two), should and does meet the standard for being treated as a bona fide school. -- Arxiloxos ( talk) 03:14, 25 April 2014 (UTC) reply
      • I don't see it as belaboring, I see it as a point that should be addressed. Coverage of local sports is routine, and a donation of computers is a nice gesture, but neither provides coverage of the subject itself as called for by the WP:GNG. They are simple stories that say "X happened at Y school on Z date". If we were talking about a person here, such coverage would be deemed trivial, or the proverbial "name-dropping". You also speak of a "bona fide" school, but I have pointed out a clause in Wikipedia:Notability (high schools) that this "school" explicitly fails to meet; it is not accredited. Both of those link are guidelines, not policy, and guidelines can be set aside for a greater need. But I have yet to see an argument put forth to do that. It does not meet the qualifications for this "we all kinda agreed that all high schools are notable" side dela that people allude to. Tarc ( talk) 03:34, 25 April 2014 (UTC) reply
      • I would also like to point out that WP:ORG specifically quotes "the season schedule or final score from sporting events" as a form of coverage that is to be considered trivial. The articles written present very little beyond what a stat page would provide. If you're looking for this to pass GNG on its own legs, I think the case is fairly weak. Realistically, you need to take our stance on other HS pages into account. Sasquatch t| c 23:01, 25 April 2014 (UTC) reply
        • "Final score" to me would mean a line-item in a list of scores, not a substantial article actually covering the game. And there's still the matter of those state championships--common sense tells me that a school that contends in a league of high schools is likely to be a real school. -- Arxiloxos ( talk) 23:19, 25 April 2014 (UTC) reply
          • My usual interpretation is if a news article presents no more information than a box score would, I would not consider that deep coverage. None of the articles linked even show that a reporter was at the game. They've simply taken a stat page provided to them and regurgitated it in a sentence. On any other page, I highly doubt you would call this non-trivial coverage. But that's my interpretation. Sasquatch t| c 23:27, 25 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Keep-see no problem with this article-it seems to be notable enough. Wgolf ( talk) 23:00, 25 April 2014 (UTC) reply
• Delete - No evidence of accreditation. Both the Wisconsin Educational Approval Board and Tarc's post raise some interesting issues about whether or not this school actually passes WP:NHS guidelines. Definitely doesn't meet the depth of coverage guidelines in WP:ORG based off merely relisting stats off of a scorepage in a full sentence. The military computer donation is the only piece that I would consider enough to squeak by as a reliable third party source, but even then, it doesn't impart any sense of notability for the school other than they applied for a program and got it... Doesn't really show anything about academics or qualities of school that are worth reporting on. In lieu of evidence of accreditation (heck, even the Wisconsin Association of Christian Schools no longer lists them), I see no meaningful content to keep. If someone can prove otherwise, I will gladly swap my vote. Sasquatch t| c 23:23, 25 April 2014 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.