Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Crocker Highlands Elementary School (2nd nomination)

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 merge to Oakland Unified School District. Col. Warden makes a valiant effort, but which is still insufficient. I must say that the "Speedy keep" vote is appropriate; what should have happened is that this AfD is speedy closed and a merge discussion takes place on the talk page. As for the specific arguments: Having previously survived an AfD is not a reason for keeping. The quality of the merge target is also unimportant. And the sources are local, which would be typical of any elementary school. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 10:53, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Crocker Highlands Elementary School

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Typical elementary school, with no indication of notability, beyond things like new principals over the years. Elementary school articles are usually redirected to a collective article about the school district, in this case Oakland Unified School District, which has a list of elementary schools at List of Oakland California elementary schools, which includes mention of this school. Edison (talk) 21:10, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Keep per WP:SK, "The nominator ... fails to advance an argument for deletion". Also, the article has been previously Kept at AFD. Also, the proposed target, Oakland Unified School District, looks far worse than the current article and so the proposed action would make our content worse, not better. Colonel Warden (talk) 07:30, 27 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment That is a specious argument for speedily keeping this article. The nomination said it had "no indication of notability," beyond run of the mill local and routine coverage. Lack of notability is the basis for most deletions in AFDs. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes# Education says "Most elementary and middle schools that don't source a clear claim to notability are now getting merged or redirected in AfD, with high schools being kept except where they fail verifiability. Schools that don't meet the standard typically get merged or redirected to the school district that operates them (North America) or the lowest level locality (elsewhere) rather than being completely removed from the encyclopedia." That is consistent with the nomination. Also, the target article for redirect,Oakland Unified School District, can be edited if problems are found. It seems far superior to the average article about a school district. Edison (talk) 05:30, 28 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The general policy is that elementary/primary/first schools are not in themselves sufficiently notable to justify their own entry. There can be exceptions, but there is nothing in the article to suggest exceptional notability here. Improving the school district article seems a good idea. AJHingston (talk) 10:29, 27 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:37, 29 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:38, 29 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect, and merge if possible. Our established practice is that primary schools are not generally notable apart from exceptional circumstances, and that we offer the compromise of salvaging what we can and merging and redirecting. A well written article, however much written in GF, does not make its subject notable. To make an exception would risk creating a precedent for WP:OTHERSTUFF arguments. I've started a clean up of the school district page for use s a possible destination for a merge, otherwise the page can be simply redirected to the existing list of schools. Kudpung (talk) 01:31, 29 January 2011 (UTC)BTW: If this article is pruned and copyedited to remove the non essential banter, there won't actually be too much to have to merge.Kudpung (talk) 03:46, 29 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 09:06, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect and Merge Except for WP:NHS, WP:SCHOOL amounts to WP:ORG, from which we have this passage: "[Non-commercial] [o]rganizations whose activities are local in scope (e.g., a school [...]) may be notable if there is substantial [RS] outside the organization's local area. Where coverage is only local in scope, the organization may be included as a section in an article on the organization's local area instead." Even the most prominent event in this school's history -- a shooting incident in early 2008-- was reported only in neighboring counties besides its own (e.g., Contra Costa, San Francisco) in the same metropolitan area. Yakushima (talk) 09:33, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Article cites multiple third-party reliable sources (dating from 1929 to 2008) about various aspects of the school. The school community's involvement in responding to the shooting of a student and its being the center of an effort to encourage more people to send their kids to public schools appear to me to be indicators of significance. Most of the various "keep" reasons provided in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Crocker Highlands Elementary School also are still relevant. --Orlady (talk) 15:53, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete the reasons were essentially sympathy for a well-written article. But there's still only a description of the building, and routine coverage by local papers of new principals, That's not enough fto break the usual rule that elementary schools are not individually notable unless there's something truly exceptional. The other side of the coin for accepting the notability of high schools was the restriction on elementary schools, and I'm equally opposed to destroying either side of one of our few working compromises. DGG ( talk ) 22:54, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As the article is well-written and sourced, it should be kept — this is our policy. The idea that an article of this sort should be sacrificed to appease some party to the bizarre deal which you describe seems preposterous. Shall we start bartering asteroids for comets or sub-species for breeds? It is well established that editors do not own articles and so these articles are not your property to trade or negotiate with. Colonel Warden (talk) 07:51, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with DGG. It's already been stated that being well-written does not make it notable. Sympathy, unfortunately, is not a recognised AfD argument. I'm nevertheless still offering the compromise that we merge what we can to the school district or locality and leave a redirect. Kudpung (talk) 10:08, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Colonel Warden, the policy you link in your argument-from-policy (WP:PRESERVE) is headed "Try to fix problems", not "We should keep every article that's well-written and well-sourced." The policy's first sentence is "Fix problems if you can, flag or remove them if you can't." The problem that apparently can't be fixed in this case has already been flagged: WP:N. But it can't stay flagged that way forever. If AfD discussion concludes that there is no WP:ORG notability, the time for "flag" is over, and the time for "remove" has arrived. In the case of failing WP:N, the only way to remove the problem is to remove the article itself. Nothing else logically follows from this policy you yourself cite in support of your WP:SK vote. This does not necessarily entail wholesale removal of the article text from Wikipedia. In fact, WP:PRESERVE says, "Instead of deleting text, consider [several other measures, including] merging the entire article into another article with the original article turned into a redirect ...", which is precisely what some others (including myself) advocate above. As for the other issue raised -- personally, I don't like the WP:NHS "barter" deal (if such it was), and I would be willing to fight that policy battle wherever is most appropriate. I also don't like talk of "compromise" when application of principle suffices. But here is not the place to hash those things out. That's not what's at stake here. This is an AfD discussion, WP:ORG appears to be the applicable guideline, and we should stay on track with it. It seems this school fails WP:ORG. If so, feel free to make your case from "common sense", for one of those "occasional exceptions", if you can. But please, not by putting words in the mouth of policy that doesn't actually say what you clearly imply it says. Yakushima (talk) 15:25, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your claim that the topic is not notable is counterfactual - the article before us has better sources than the merge target you favour which is a pile of junk. DGG's proposal is even worse because he proposes that this article, sources and all, be deleted completely. This is quite contrary to the policy WP:PRESERVE and seems instead to be in support of some hostage deal which he has made with other parties. That deal does not seem to represent general policy as one is not cited and so is a weak argument. Colonel Warden (talk) 19:35, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Colonel, I think you need to look up "counterfactual". You seem to think it's a synonym for "wrong". If you think it's wrong to say the school is not notable under the relevant guideline (WP:ORG), you still need to say why, in order for your vote to have any real weight in this AfD discussion. (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and a WP:SK in the face of a wall of Delete/Redirect/Merge votes, some of them argued closely from guidelines, is an extraordinary claim). As for your rationale, it's as weak, if not weaker, than your citation of WP:PRESERVE when that policy actually indicates Redirect and Merge in this case, if not outright Delete. It's irrelevant to this article's notability that it might have better sourcing than its candidate merge target. We're under an obligation to improve the merge target, too, so the fact that this article is better sourced only means that such a merge would improve Wikipedia as an information resource (not as a work of fine literature; see below) in two ways: (1) the merge target gets better sourcing and more information, and (2) a non-notable school no longer has its own article, which could only attract more WP:OTHERSTUFF rationalizations in other AfD discussions, further bogging them down. Your argument seems to be based largely on how the resulting merge would "look". There is no policy requirement about article esthetics; in fact, it's emphasized (WP:IMPERFECT) that perfection is not required. Notability for an article's subject, on the other hand, definitely is required. So it's back to the core issue. That is, how does this school pass WP:ORG, given that WP:SCHOOL defaults to WP:ORG when WP:NHS is inapplicable? You still haven't even touched on that yet. And the more you avoid it, the more likely you'll be accused of disruptive editing on this AfD. So consider addressing it directly in your next comment. Yakushima (talk) 04:48, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My meaning is that your statements are contrary to the facts; they are mistaken, false and incorrect. Notability depends upon sources and this topic has better sources than the proposed alternative. Your talk of WP:SCHOOL and WP:NHS is weak because those are essays not policies and we prefer policy-based argument here. Their essence is that of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS which is a notoriously weak argument here. WP:PRESERVE, on the other hand, is a policy and arguments based upon it therefore stronger than such stuff. Regarding disruption, please note that this is "disrupting progress toward improving an article". Note also that WP:DEL states that "It can be disruptive to repeatedly nominate a page in the hopes of getting a different outcome.". This topic has already been through AFD and got a clear result of Keep. Trying to delete it again is a form of double jeopardy which is both disruptive and uncivil. Wikipedia has an explicitly educational mission and so it seems disgraceful that articles about respectable educational institutions should be harassed in this way. Colonel Warden (talk) 07:37, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"My meaning is that your statements are contrary to the facts; they are mistaken, false and incorrect." Or in a word of one syllable: wrong. "Notability depends upon sources and this topic has better sources than the proposed alternative." Notability depends not only on sources, but the quality and relative reach of the sources. WP:ORG calls, in this case, for more than merely regional coverage. This school hasn't gotten that. Also, the "proposed alternative" is the school district article, which, when this article is merged into it, will have at least the same sources, if not better. "Your talk of WP:SCHOOL and WP:NHS is weak because those are essays not policies and we prefer policy-based argument here." WP:SCHOOL and WP:NHS are guidelines, not "essays", and my "talk" of them was entirely to point out that the default, given that neither of them cover the case here, is WP:ORG. Which you still fail to address. "Their essence is that of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS which is a notoriously weak argument here." No, their "essence" for our purposes, if you'll bother to look, amounts to the guideline (not "essay") WP:ORG, which you still fail to address. "WP:PRESERVE, on the other hand, is a policy and arguments based upon it therefore stronger than such stuff." Yet when I reason directly from WP:PRESERVE, to show that it actually prescribes something more like Redirect and Merge, you ... simply ignore my reasoning. "Regarding disruption, please note that this is "disrupting progress toward improving an article"." If, by "this", you mean "this discussion," please note that you may be disrupting progress toward improving the article about the school district, since the useful content in this AfD article might be merged there. "Note also that WP:DEL states that "It can be disruptive to repeatedly nominate a page in the hopes of getting a different outcome."." Yes, but note the immediate context: the case of repeatedly renominating without much delay. The first AfD for this article was a while back: in early March, 2008. Has WP:ORG changed significantly since then, in its applicable parts? It seems so -- see diffs here [1] (Search on "Nationally famous local organizations") I'd address the rest of your comments, but they seem to amount to huffing and puffing over Wikipedia's educational agenda. Look: if there's Redirect and Merge, pretty much the same material will still be available, just in another (hardly unrelated) article. So what's the difference, "educationally"? If the result is Delete, how wouild that deletion block anyone else on the internet from googling on "Crocker Highlands Elementary School" and getting the very first link they get now: the website for that school? How does it prevent anyone from searching Google News on the same terms? Yakushima (talk) 09:58, 4 February 2011 (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.