Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dr. Michael M. Krop High School/Problems with high school articles
Problems with High School articles
[edit]- Your answers did not cover my questions. Please also check my comments on another article at Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Alonso_High_School and the response by another user. The difficulty is granularity. To cover a 70-year old high school in the depth you are attempting here would probably amount to writing a short book on the school. And yet you have not yet named in full the current teaching staff by department.Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- I don't think so. A 70-year old high school would probably have NATIONAL awards, that will REPLACE the State awards currently on the article. It would probaly have Nationally or Internationally famous Ex-Alumni, that will REPLACE the local recipients of $500 grants currently on the article. It might have few instances of events that have some national interest.--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- I would quite like to see such material existing on the web, but possibly another project than Wikipedia would be the proper forum, just as the rambot articles, really, are not appropriate to Wikipedia though they are tolerated here. The conflict I am having is that I really think that what you are doing is probably about the best that can be done for a normal, non-notable, high school. And it's not encyclopedic because it covers only the present. (This is a problem with many articles in Wikipedia, contributed by editors fixated only on what is current.)Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- I think Wikipedia is the perfect place. You are right that the school is still non-notable, but I have no doubt that with years it will have some kind of national interest (as most high schools will, I think).--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Regarding covering the present, the problem is that this school started operations in 1998 (I believe). My main source of information is the web, and it's hard to find articles about events that happened before 2003. I guess that with time that will change. Also, I guess that some students of the school will eventually read the article and contribute to it.
- What your article feels like is the beginning of a kind of web log for Dr. Michael M. Krop High School.Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- The difference between a Wikipedia article and a Web Log for a school is that a Web Log would the "journal", and an article evolves (with time) to a more enciclopedic state.--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- It would probably be a good thing if every high school and public school and local charity and university club and so forth had one of these.Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- I would not mind.--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- And I would not want Wikipedia to ever become the "main" source of information in the world. (Imagine the edit conflicts! Argggh! Millions of dollars might depend on getting a single line into a Wikipedia article and making it stay there. Kids and teachers at Dr. Michael M. Krop High School in great editorial fights to insure that the entire world sees the correct viewpoint about some event happening in Dr. Michael M. Krop High School that year because on that single article depends how the world views their school. School boards would get in on the act.Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- This WILL happen (if not happening right now already). The higher traffic Wikipedia gets (and it is climbing), the higher probability of this occurring. I and believe it WILL happen, eventually.--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Should all A students be listed in the article on graduation?Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Maybe the limit will be the size of a Wikipedia article. Maybe these kind of lists will be deleted by average wikipedians. I don't know.--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- There would be thousands of undercover Wikipedians paid to assure that what their employers want to appear is what does appear. There are suspicions that some of this is happening now.Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- I am pretty sure that this is happening already.--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- For something comparable, did you know that reviewers for amazon.com are sometimes sent free copies of books by publishers if they will write reviews?Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- I didn't know, but I am not surprised.--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Fortunately, there will certainly be forks in Wikipedia's future and competing projects or partially competing projects, partly because no volunteer project could sustain the kind of pressure of being anything close to the single source of information on all topics. The pressure alone would be hideously counter-productive. Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- I agree.--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- And mirror sites will want to mirror something different to stand out, not just Wikipedia. What value to be just another of hundreds of mirror sites showing exactly the same Wikipedia content? But part of what Wikipedia must not do now is to try to be everything. There has been for a while a split on VfD between the "every high school is notable and deserves an article" group and "most high schools are not notable". The not-notable votes have tended to be outvoted resulting in keeping of what were often only stubs which never did get fixed up and only get in the way of people searching on the web for information on a school when the same bad stub comes up again and again on Wikipedia mirrors. Currently, the tendency seems to be the other way, for the first time, I think, perhaps because it has become more and more obvious that these articles don't get cleared up and that no-one knows what good articles would be for ordinary schools. The path you are following, that of recording the news of a single school year, seems to me far too granular for the Wikipedia project, to be unsustainable, unless you intend a master article on each school with dependant articles for every school year. If so, you should indicate this.Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- I have no intention of writing an article on EACH school. For now, I am only interested in ONE school. But I am already working on getting other people involved, so the article keeps evolving for years to come.--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- But eventually downloading of every high school yearbook into Wiki-source or a comparable project will probably happen.Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Probably.--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- The problem is that the issue is bigger than your article alone. What kind of encyclopedia article can one write about a normal high school that is not simply what is happening at the moment? Do we want mere lists of minutiae for every year for each high school? Yes, we do, if we want to find that minutiae. It would be helpful if this were on the web. But should it be in Wikipedia?Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- My opinion here is again that although at the beginning you get minutiae, since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, with time contributors will replace MINOR information with more important and relevant information. Some information currently in the article will survive, some will be replaced. And not every high school will include an article. I think that even now, Wikipedia contains articles that all Wikipedians until today have written because they wanted. There are many things or events in the world that probably deserve a space in Wikipedia, but no one has written about it yet. What I am saying is: If there is interest in a High School, let the interested Wikipedian write about it and don't destroy his/her work. Maybe only a few High Schools will get a Wikipedia article. Maybe many. But why should we bother about the ones that nobody has written about yet? Let the interested parties write about them.--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Unfortunately, on the topic you have chosen, the excellence of what you are doing is far from the only issue. Are you producing an excellent article of a kind that should not actually be in Wikipedia but in some other more specialized project?Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Maybe, but I don't see another medium for it yet. I have contributed on different articles in Wikipedia, and just recently decided on creating an article about this school, and make it better than the school's own web site, make it informative, interesting, and of Wikipedia value. But it obviously takes time.--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- I, AAAAA, have copied below what Jallan wrote at the Vfd discussion in another school, for further reference.
- I vote to delete most high school articles not just because the article is a stub but because most schools are not notable and won't ever ever generate an encyclopedia article beyond a bad stub.Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Maybe bad stubs should be deleted. I would not mind. But an article with a lot of effort into it, let it live.--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- I vote to delete most high school articles not just because the article is a stub but because most schools are not notable and won't ever ever generate an encyclopedia article beyond a bad stub.Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Most high schools are normal high schools much like any other normal high school. People mostly neither know nor care about any of them individually. Those who care about a particular school are mostly those employed at that school or by the local Board of Education or who are attending that particular school during a few years of their lives at most. Immediate family also care while a child or sibling is attending such a school. But most don't think that their school is special or notable or stands out. That most high school articles are uniformative stubs reflects the fact that the editor writing such an article either doesn't care much or just can't make a good article from information easily available oor both. What people do care about is their own years in "high school" in general rather than about the history of the particular high school or high schools that they attended.Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- In this case, this high school produces about 1000 graduates every year. This means that about 1000 prospective students (maybe more, because some have interested but never enroll) and their parents have some interest every year. Then, they have interest during the course of the years the student is attending. Then, they have interest after graduating, because the school is always part of their personal histories. So, in this case, 3000 people become interested every year. Over the course of 20 years it is 60,000 people that have or might have interest in the school at one point in their lives. And this doesn't count the people that might have interest in the school of an ex-alumni that suddenly becomes famous and starts appearing in the media.--AAAAA 21:17, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Most high schools are normal high schools much like any other normal high school. People mostly neither know nor care about any of them individually. Those who care about a particular school are mostly those employed at that school or by the local Board of Education or who are attending that particular school during a few years of their lives at most. Immediate family also care while a child or sibling is attending such a school. But most don't think that their school is special or notable or stands out. That most high school articles are uniformative stubs reflects the fact that the editor writing such an article either doesn't care much or just can't make a good article from information easily available oor both. What people do care about is their own years in "high school" in general rather than about the history of the particular high school or high schools that they attended.Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Notable high schools, like notable people, or notable organizations of any kind, would be those mentioned in media as being recognized for some reason other than merely existing and performing their normal, mundane functions. The repetative litany that "high schools are notable" is belayed by the substance of most Wikipedia high school articles which don't provide any reason why a particular high school is notable and often don't say much at all. An encyclopedia article should not provide only the minutiae of present day information such as the name of the current prinipal and whether a football team is doing well, all likely to be out of date even a year from now. Yet a history of a high school would be mostly nothing but such disjointed minutiae: names of principals, lists of teaching staff, awards won each year by teams or bands or clubs, average grades obtained compared to other schools, additions and renovations of the building, and so forth. Such an article would be encyclopedic. But people don't write them. Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- As mentioned before, after 20 years of starting operations, a high school would be of interest or potential interest to at least 50,000 people. And with the growth in Wikipedia an in Wikipedian numbers, I am sure that articles of high schools will eventually evolve to become more "encyclopedic"--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- Notable high schools, like notable people, or notable organizations of any kind, would be those mentioned in media as being recognized for some reason other than merely existing and performing their normal, mundane functions. The repetative litany that "high schools are notable" is belayed by the substance of most Wikipedia high school articles which don't provide any reason why a particular high school is notable and often don't say much at all. An encyclopedia article should not provide only the minutiae of present day information such as the name of the current prinipal and whether a football team is doing well, all likely to be out of date even a year from now. Yet a history of a high school would be mostly nothing but such disjointed minutiae: names of principals, lists of teaching staff, awards won each year by teams or bands or clubs, average grades obtained compared to other schools, additions and renovations of the building, and so forth. Such an article would be encyclopedic. But people don't write them. Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- And there's no point in retaining bad stubs when it would be just as easy for a knowledgeable editor to start an article fresh. Wikipedia is not improved by bad articles that don't improve and are unlikely to improve. Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- I agree. Bad stubs should probably be removed. Articles with quite a lot of work on them should remain.--AAAAA 21:16, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- And there's no point in retaining bad stubs when it would be just as easy for a knowledgeable editor to start an article fresh. Wikipedia is not improved by bad articles that don't improve and are unlikely to improve. Jallan 19:55, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)
A real school is a genuine community of (sometimes) thousands of people that has an impact that lasts the rest of their lives. There is always something unique and notable about such a community, the only thing that can be said in favor of deletion is that the deleter is not interested. It is their right to hold that point of view, but move on, don't prevent others from reading it. Mark Richards 06:42, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)