Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Katherine L. Albiani Middle School

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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:Delete. Long discussion, lots of strong emotions on both sides, but the consensus appears clear. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 17:19, 24 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Katherine L. Albiani Middle School[edit]

Katherine L. Albiani Middle School (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Non-notable school with no claims of notability. My speedy tag was removed, so here we are. Corvus cornixtalk 04:56, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete per nom, non-notable. Mh29255 (talk) Mh29255 05:09, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep all schools are notable. JERRY talk contribs 05:10, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge/redirect to Elk Grove Unified School District. I have changed my !vote on this, because I was convinced that it is in the long-term best interest of the project to have consistency and precedent for school articles to prevent the drama of an entrenched AFD with no concensus outcome everytime, as this one would likely come to. See my talk page for details. I will not strikethrough all of my other comments on this page, but I hope that my change of position up here will get higher weighting than the arguments I made below. JERRY talk contribs 15:20, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
BOYS! Keep it above he belt and WP:CIVIL LonelyBeacon (talk) 18:44, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Those who claim that all schools are notable have obviously not read WP:OUTCOMES. Most elementary and middle schools that don't claim notability are now getting deleted in AfD. Corvus cornixtalk 17:15, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If it is obvious, then you really don't need to state it. If it really does need to be stated, how about include it in your own comment section up there (^) instead of making an attention-geting and vote-swaying banner down here? JERRY talk contribs 17:32, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for assuming good faith, Jerry. I had thought we had a civil discussion going on, but apparently I was wrong. This is a continuation of a discussion, I have new comments to make based upon other people's comments, and I added my new comments chronologically. This isn't my first AfD, you know. How are these comments any more offensive than your nasty comments to Brewcrewer above? Corvus cornixtalk 18:03, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
WP:AGF? Give me a break! ..."have obviously not read"... Don't make comments about users in AFD... discuss the merits of the article, not the users!! I don't care if it's your first AfD or not... I'll bet plenty of users can contribute quite nicely to their first AfD. This venue is about discussing articles, so keep your comments on target, please. JERRY talk contribs 20:29, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I can see that there will be no reciprocity of civility here, so I see no need to further discuss this with you. Corvus cornixtalk 22:03, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Outcomes is irrelevant. Past wrong decisions don't require future wrong decisions. Mykej (talk) 17:53, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. All of the schools within a particular school district must meet specific educational guidelines peculiar to that school district, as well as any state-mandated requirements and federal guidelines. If a particular middle or elementary school is following the curriculum requirements as mandated by the school district, state & federal government that are common to all middle & elementary schools within the district, what makes this particular middle school so notable that it should have an independent article? Unless there is something so unique & special about a particular middle or elementary school that makes it notable, it isn't notable; and, hence, should not have an article independent from its main school district article. Mh29255 18:04, 17 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mh29255 (talk • contribs)
Comment Can you please explain how this particular school is notable per Wikipedia:Notability (schools)? Mh29255 (talk) 21:35, 17 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Notability (schools) is a proposed guideline that has not received concensus by the community.JERRY talk contribs 00:30, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment There is clearly no consensus from community members regarding what is notable and what is not when it comes to public school articles. What is interesting here is that one member who voted to merge two other middle school listings back into their local school district pages decided to vote to keep this particular listing independent when there is absolutely nothing unique about this listing compared with the other two. To date, absolutely nothing unique or special has been demonstrated about this particular middle school to justify an independent listing. It, along with the other middle schools in its district, are required to follow all of the same curriculum & guidelines as set forth by the district, state & federal government. Hence, the school district's article is a sufficient listing for this non-notable school. If there was something truly special & unique about this school that made it sufficiently notable to justify an independent listing, I would support it having an independent listing; but seeing that doesn't, there is nothing notable per WP:N justifying an independent article for this particular middle school. Mh29255 (talk) 01:04, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Please keep reading the article frequently, it is changing faster than this Afd, (under the concept of m:sofixit). There is information in the article now that makes it standout as the top 20% of Category:Middle schools in California. This category itself also stands as a good argument against what you are saying, methinks. JERRY talk contribs 01:14, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the desperate attempts to keep this non-notable article alive. Mh29255 (talk) 01:16, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Another reminder: (I think there is a template for this somewhere.. I'll go look) please talk about the article, not the editors. Editing an article to improve it while at AfD is encouraged. Read WP:AfD.JERRY talk contribs 01:21, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I just took a look about 12 different CA middle schools listed in the same list as this particular middle school and here's what I found: 10 non-notable articles, some with current vandalism (as I have seen on other middle school articles for schools in other cities & states) and most with no references per WP:V. Shocking? No. The best source of information for the middle schools will come from the school district's website; not a listing here that mentions (at best) school colors & the school mascot. As for what determines whether a middle school is sufficiently notable for a listing here, education professionals cannot even agree on a common criteria for ranking the quality of schools: unified tests are often disputed, and the amount of financing that a school receives is not necessarily a factor. The question then becomes: are several hundred (or several thousand) Wikipedia articles about middle schools that mostly have no notable information in them but are often targeted by teenage vandalism worth being on Wikipedia? In my opinion, no. They're nothing more than uninformative clutter. While it is not uncommon to see where some notable person graduated from high school, it is not common to list what middle school the person attended. I also have yet to see a resume in which someone listed what middle school they attended because is it not relevant. Mh29255 (talk) 01:42, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not referenced, WP:SOFIXIT;, not notable... of course that's arguable; vandalism, WP:SOFIXIT. Education professionals disagree about what criteria to use to rank schools? Well, we can't fix that, but the rankings do exist and are multi-sourced... find a contrary ranking? add it to the article... anyone can edit it you know. The rest of your criteria sounds well-reasoned, but is not community concensus, as evidenced by the very long talk page for WP:SCHOOL (read archives 1-4, too). JERRY talk contribs 01:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Here's what would be an interesting & very notable article about middle schools in a particular district or state: a single article with a table that sorts the middle schools using different criteria (average GPA, dollars spent student, etc.). Not only would be very easy to read, it would convey far more information to a reader than having to search for hundreds of separate middle school articles (that don't necessarily exist) that list such non-notable information as school colors, the principle's name or how many students are in attendance. What else would be an interesting & notable article? A description of the curriculum that all middle school students must meet in a particular school district regardless of what middle school they attend; but an endless heap of individual middle school articles in various stages of repair or disrepair is utterly useless information. It's like doing a search on Google and getting thousands of irrelevant hits when all you need is a single bit of information. Should Wikipedia be a storehouse of useless information or relevant information? That's what is at issue here. Mh29255 (talk) 02:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Again, well-reasoned and intelligent ideas for a guideline for notability. Unfortunately, such a guideline has not received concensus. Many people have objected to various school notability guidelines because if a bar was set, what do you do with a school that is one under the bar? If a school had to have 1000 students, what do you do with the school with 999, or the school with 1001 if two students leave? The notion many have voiced is that schools are a a locally very important part of the communities in which they exist, and hence inherit notability as any inhabited place. And what would you say about a woman who was president of a bank, president of the California College Commission, and had a public school named after her? Would SHE be notable? If so, would the school named after her be? Inherited notability is a tricky thing to put into a policy, obviously. There is no urgent appeal so save server space for the wiki, so why be in a mad rush to delete? JERRY talk contribs 02:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The basis for your argument is that because there may be one or two little bits of information about a particular middle school that that is sufficient for it to regarded as being notable. One of these bits of information is a rating for the quality of the education at the school. However, that single bit of interesting information is buried beneath a bunch of other non-notable information, such as school colors, who the current principle is, etc. Now, let's say that you are a parent and want to send your child to a highly-rated middle school and (for this example) there are 200 middle schools to choose from. What you're saying is that you would prefer to have 200 individual, non-uniform articles, one per middle school, that requires anyone looking for that single bit of information to read through all of the non-notable information in all 200 articles to find it. Would you want to do that? Or, would you prefer, instead, to look at a single page with a table that has the 200 middle schools sorted based upon that single bit of relevant information? As for a school being named after a notable individual, is the school notable because it has a particular name or is only the individual notable? If, for example, there was a museum featuring an exhibit about the notable individual, what would be more interesting to visit: the museum, or the one (or more) middle schools that were named after the notable individual to honor the individual, but have nothing else in common with the notable individual? Again, as far as the AfD for this particular middle school is concerned, there is nothing sufficiently notable to justify a separate page for the school. Is it a school (for example) with a highly specialized program for children with Down Syndrome or for deaf children that no other middle school in that district provides? No. It's simply one of several middle schools in CA in a particular school district that is no different from several hundred other middle schools in CA. A difference that makes no difference is no difference. Mh29255 (talk) 02:57, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
At this point I believe we have established our points of view (and dominated this page with our lengthy posts). I for one would like to see a broader input from others, so perhaps if you and I want to continue to discuss proposed guidelines for notability (which seems to be going off-topic from this AfD), we can take it to our talk pages or Wikipedia talk:Notability (schools). JERRY talk contribs 03:52, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - a review of the references in this articles makes me support deletion more than ever. Most of the sites are "rankings" supported by local real estates businesses, and appear to be either subjective, or listing factual information that support the school being good, but hardly unique or otherwise notable. The only site that appeared to be legit was the brief biography of Katherine L. Albiani. Despite claims that this article is growing, I am not seeing a single piece of information in the article that supports notability. LonelyBeacon (talk) 10:41, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment It's good to know that I'm not the only person who sees that this article is not notable. Mh29255 (talk) 01:09, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Is that a typo, or did you just change your !vote? JERRY talk contribs 03:09, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it was a typo on my part, which I have now corrected. Thank you for catching it. BTW, the article is just as non-notable now as before. Mh29255 (talk) 03:45, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As the editor who added the references, I would appreciate it if you could let me know specifically what references are not valid. I am unaware of any that are biased toward bragging about specific schools. The sites I used have ratings on all schools, and show the same objective criteria of all schools, and do in-fact have negative ratings about some. The rating criteria used for the statements I included in the article were based on the State of California's school rating system. While one could say that the State of California has a reason to believe that their schools are superior, or has a motivation to make it appear so, this would not make sense for a method of comparing the schools within the state. There is a school at the top and one at the bottom of their list, and everywhere in between. I am unaware of any references I added to the article that are sponsored by a real estate concern primarily doing business in the vicinity of this school. Please verify the veracity of your statements about these references and let me know which ones concern you, as I would earnestly like to remove any references that are as you described. JERRY talk contribs 13:45, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry I did not get back soon .... very long day at work (thankfully productive!)
The first reference (EGUSD) is fine ..... basic information from the District webiste
The second reference (city-data.com) ... cites a lot of info, but no source. It includes its own city-data.com rating of 79/100. I don't think that makes a strong case for being a source
The third reference, even thought it is from the district website, is the report card. It is wholly legit, but shows nothing distinguishing about the school.
As I mentioned earlier, the fourth reference (Capitol corp) is for a bio of Katehrine Albiani. It does nothing to establish the notability of the school, but is helpful in explaining the derivation of the name.
school ratings.com is a recapitulation of the report card, with less data, and broken down onto a simpler scale. It ranks the school 8/10. That is a great score, but does not establish the notability of the school.
School Digger is about the same as School ratings.com, but seems to emphasize race and the number of kids on discounted lunch. This site also ranks the school 223rd/1095, which does not help establish special notability.
The Great Schools, aside from more of the basic data from the School Report Card, includes a subjective parent rating. It is a high rating, but again, an 8 out of 10 tells me that this is a good school, but not an encyclopedic noteworthy school.
And for the record, I never did actually say these references were valid. I'm just saying that none of them are helping me to see why this school meets with WP:N. LonelyBeacon (talk) 02:54, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK, but one point: you said "city-data.com cites a lot of info, but no source". Sources do not have to cite their sources, and rarely do. Otherwise, when could you accept a source, and not say according to whom? to them, too? And then to their source, and so on... JERRY talk contribs 03:22, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you ... however, without original source material, I think that leaves open a question the validity of the source. In general, for example, we accept a major newspaper as valid, because we hope the journalists are following hte basic tennants of good journalism, and not making up what they are writing (not always the case). We accept ertain scholarly journals on the same basis: they are peer reviewed, and we hope this process weeds out false information. Just because information appears on a website does not mean that it has to be accepted as a valid source (I'm sure you realize this ... I don't want to come across as preachy or something). The City source site is a commercial site, and might have a vested interest in presenting data the way they do (not necessarily false data .... but perhaps very selective. I think that on a case-by-case basis, editors here have to evaluate the source, the content, and potential issues of validity. The fact is: I don't know how valid that information is on that site. IMO, based on WP:V, there exists enough doubt in my mind as to whether or not it supports a contention of notability. LonelyBeacon (talk) 14:43, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or redirect to district. References are an attempt to keep school instead of to build article by establishing independent notability. There is no such thing as 'inherent notability' as that violates the very idea of an encyclopedia. Epthorn (talk) 16:33, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In case you were referring to my post above, for the record, I did not say "inherent" I said "inherited". JERRY talk contribs 23:09, 18 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge to district Most middle schools will not be notable--thee is simply not enough information available. This is not one of the rare exceptions. I accept all high schools as notable as a matter of convenience, because 90% of them actually are, but that's not true for middle schools. I'm not aware of any significant support for the idea that all schools or notable. DGG (talk) 09:14, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletions. —Camaron1 | Chris (talk) 20:25, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Verifiable, NPOV, and sources have been added to demonstrate it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. DoubleBlue (Talk) 02:17, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as per DoubleBlue's improvements to the article and rationale here. The article obviously meets WP:N standards.Noroton (talk) 03:28, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - With respect, I'm still not buying notability. Two of those references were to a high school that had a tangential, at best, reference to this school (one was a map that says "the school is located across the street ...I'm not even sure I saw this school on that map). The Sac Bee articles all cover a single event; the purchase of land and construction of the school. It got caught up in legal wrangling which is not unusual for any major public land purchase and construction. I will not question WP:V. However, I am still not convinced that WP:N is being met. I am sure that I could go into the Sac Bee and find numerous articles over the years that cover the Sacramento Police, the Sacramento Publi Works, each member of the Sacramento City Council, and the Sacramento Public Transportation System ..... but I'm not sure those would meet notability either. LonelyBeacon (talk) 04:40, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: The map reference was an early addition attempting a quick and easy reference to show they share a campus but, though it does mention the proximity of KAMS, you are correct that it doesn't really show the middle school. I've removed that ref since the SacBee ref better documents the shared campus. On WP:N: It meets the criteria. That criteria is used to counter-act the BIAS inherent in going by editors' impressions of "importance". What's needed is to have NPOV, V, and NOR. DoubleBlue (Talk) 06:14, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: The SacBee article I read through had quite a bit of significant information on the school, including school colors, number of students the school was projected to have (indicating what it was built to hold), school colors, a background paragraph or two on the struggle with the community group over whether to build the schools complex, etc. Even if the articles were solely about the controversy surrounding construction of the school, notability does not expire. And the article goes well beyond just the construction of the school, so WP:N criteria are met. I don't think middle schools are inherently notable, so I wouldn't support keeping this article without WP:N being met. Noroton (talk) 00:57, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom and save some bits. CRGreathouse (t | c) 12:54, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as rewritten, the article sufficiently meets our consensus-based standards for notability. (jarbarf) (talk) 05:53, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: there is no consensus about this article and it remains as non-notable as ever. Mh29255 (talk) 07:35, 24 December 2007 (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.
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