Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Newcastle Scholarship

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 keep. A marginal case, but I think the arguments for deletion have been adequately addressed and there is consensus to keep the article. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 12:53, 3 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Newcastle Scholarship[edit]

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WP:N and WP:NOT - it fails WP:GNG. This article is about a comparatively small prize at a private British school, Eton College. The sources provided are obscure, and generally mention it only in passing - usually they only write that some famous person happened to win it in their youth. The only text on it appears to be published by Eton, so is a primary source. These issues haven't been fixed for several years. The tables of winners truly are indiscriminate collections of information, and have not been kept up to date. Eton College has many prizes listed on its page already, and this one doesn't need to be separate. Knowto (talk) 22:29, 20 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - fails WP:GNG. Seems to be a list more than an article too. WP:YELLOWPAGES could apply. Kirbanzo (talk) 23:18, 20 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Education-related deletion discussions. Dom from Paris (talk) 22:34, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. Dom from Paris (talk) 22:34, 21 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 13:27, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. It is the College's most prestigious prize, and for over a century until it changed form in 1976 it was considered the premier school prize examination in England for school students of the Classics (Greek and Latin language and literature) and Divinity. So, it's the most prestigious prize at the most famous and prestigious school in England (and one of the most famous in the world) and for many years was considered one of the top school prizes in the whole country. Sounds pretty notable to me. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:30, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep:

The present monetary value of the prize (something like £250?) is modest but was very considerable when first established in 1829. In any event, the prestige of the prize does not depend on its monetary value.
The alleged obscurity of the cited sources is a matter of opinion; they are, I think, reliable. They tend to be of a biographical nature and naturally do not dwell on the prize at enormous length. Nevertheless, a number of notable winners of the prize have regarded it as a significant life event.
The cited monograph was published by Eton but was written by a reputable independent academic, Dr David Butterfield (and it is in any event not necessary, in order to establish a matter's notability, to show that it is the primary subject of a published text).
I'm not sure what is meant by describing the list of winners as an "indiscriminate" collection of information. It seems to me to be a collection of information that is focused, limited and relevant. Wikipedia contains many lists and the tables in this article do not appear to me to fall into any of the four categories expressly identified at WP:NOT.
The Scholarship is generally acknowledged to be Eton's most prestigious prize (a fact not disproved by the existence of equally remunerative prizes in other fields). I expect that a published source for that proposition could be identified if necessary. (One sees here that the College itself lists the Newcastle first among all prizes awarded.)
Google Books searches produce over 3,000 results for “Newcastle scholarship” Eton and over 1,700 results for “Newcastle scholar” Eton. The article is of potential value to readers of those books. And surely the number of hits is some indication of notability?
The article has contributions from at least a dozen identified editors, who presumably all take an interest in the topic; it's not an obsessive individual's personal hobby-horse.

45ossington (talk) 14:16, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

May I add this by way of rebuttal of the charge that published sources mention the Newcastle only in passing? Miles Jebb's Patrick Shaw Stewart, An Edwardian Meteor (Dovecote Press, 2010) has this description of the contest between Patrick Shaw-Stewart and Ronald Knox:

"The Newcastle has been described by a subsequent victor as the Everest of Eton scholarships. Founded by the Duke of Newcastle in 1829, it consisted of ten papers, taken morning and afternoon over five days in late March. Most of these were in construing unseen Greek and Latin Prose, and composing Greek and Latin Verses. To these were added a general paper on Divinity, and detailed examinations on St Matthew's Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles in the original Greek. With few exceptions it had been won by Collegers, and in the previous year by Daniel MacMillan, with Ronald Knox as proxime accessit. It was generally expected that Knox would now get it, even though he was younger than several of the other contenders, and would be able to try for it again in the following year. The two examiners were Oxford or Cambridge Dons, though famously Mr Gladstone had once taken it upon himself to judge the Newcastle. Those sitting for it were cosseted and given the unique privilege of playing fives between the buttresses of College Chapel between their mental gymnastics. The result was published in The Times and the winner considered by many to be the cleverest boy in the country. The Scholarship was worth £50 for three years. Patrick could look forward to two further Newcastle contests, but decided to go all out for this one for a special reason. It was the convention that the Newcastle winner, if not already in Sixth Form, would be immediately promoted into it. In his case this would place him above Prior and secure for him the Captaincy of the School in 1906/7. It was indeed a mountainous task, and several of the aspirants were two years older than he was. But, encouraged by the Reynolds victory, he set forth to climb it, or rather, to dig into it – ‘to sap like a thousand devils.' He ploughed slowly and deliberately through the scriptural texts, reading every word of a book once begun, and refraining from annotating down the side, determined to rely on his memory. Although the Classical texts could not be prepared, he spent weeks studying the Birds of Aristophanes, without notes or cribs. The week of trial began. He rendered into English verse passages from Homer, Aeschylus and Aristophanes, and from Lucretius, Horace, Lucan and Martial; and into English prose passages from Thucydides, Aeschines and Plato, and from Cicero, Livius and Tacitus. He composed his Greek hexameters and iambics and his Latin hexameters, elegiacs and lyrics, from passages of English poetry. And he answered the technical questions relating to grammar and criticism in Classics and in Divinity. On 7 April the result was announced: Patrick had won. As Evelyn Waugh puts it in his biography of Ronald Knox: 'On hearing the result, Ronald sat down and read the Book of Job straight through; Shaw-Stewart gave up work for the next four years.'"

45ossington (talk) 14:46, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For information: I don't believe this is actually one of the sources listed. Hence my comment. Knowto (talk) 14:49, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A fair point, now addressed. 45ossington (talk) 16:16, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Can be listed on Eton's page (without the lists of winners, most of whom are non-notable people), but not enough coverage, beyond trivial mentions, to have a page of its own. I don't think it's a notable award in itself.--Tacyarg (talk) 15:59, 22 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
~~Delete~~ searches point to general scholarship information pertaining to various Newcastles such as the one in Australia or London. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 16:56, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I hope it is in order to respond briefly to your comment - and apologies if I am infringing Wikipedia etiquette, about which I am not so well informed as I should be. But I don't think your point can apply to the over 3,000 Google Book search results which I refer to above, as they include both the word "Eton" and the precise phrase "Newcastle scholarship". 45ossington (talk) 18:04, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It seemed to be a big deal about the older books, but it is mainly from the same sources, mostly biographies of the people involved, which of course will mention that they got the scholarship, or writeups about Eton in general. The question is how this would differ in impact like the Rhodes Scholarship or Fulbright scholarship whether it's more like a local valedictorian award. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 02:18, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'll strike my vote on this. I've seen more frivolous awards posted with less reliable sources. I do ask that the history of the prize be described away from the lead paragraph, and that the detailed lists either be sourced or scrubbed to list the names without the pre-nominals. The post-noms such as KS seem to be normal for the listing as shown in this 2010 prize summary: [1] The examiners and examiner topics should be removed as excessive detail, but with particular topics of note described in the history section. Supporting minor prizes like The Rosebery Prize (History); The Andrew Duncan Prize (2nd); The Martineau Prize (3rd) should be removed.AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 03:33, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment, saying the Newcastle Scholarship is "a comparatively small prize at a private British school" is like saying the Empire State Building is a small structure (well it doesn't even make the List of tallest structures article) in a US East coast city, these words do nothing to aid editors in discerning whether the scholarship is notable, ditto the words "many winners non-notable" - uh, no, it could be they just don't have wikiarticles yet (doen't matter as WP:NOTINHERITED), anyway at around 10th words Eton College may a bit too long to have more words added to it about this (see WP:LENGTH that suggests around 4th to 7th words for readability - some pruning/splitting of EtonC might be needed?), but with all this said agree that a cleanup could be desirable (eg. only list recipients that have standalones in article ("Recipients include .....", move rest to the talkpage awaiting their own article?). Coolabahapple (talk) 18:10, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
On balance, keep

The prize has enough prestige in the general academic world, beyond Eton, to be notable. The small monetary value is irrelevant.

If for no other reason than that many of the recipients are themselves notable, the list itself is worth keeping. We allow lists of players at minor football clubs and suchlike; surely this is more notable?

Obviously it is not an indiscriminate collection of information.

It is too long to move to the Eton College article, which is already rather long.

However, perhaps all the school postnominals should be deleted as they are not of sufficient general interest outside the Eton community.----Ehrenkater (talk) 15:58, 25 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Kirbanzo (talk) 23:37, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As the lister of this I still think delete. A lot of the support for this article seems to be coming from the fact that it is more somehow "prestigious" than other prizes. As the 2016 editor of The Spectrum (Eton's academic yearbook where one of the Newcastle essays is routinely published among other essays), and as someone who took this prize at Eton among several others, this prestigiousness is definitely subjective. I would in fact claim that other prizes are as prestigious, if not more. The Spectrum Editors frequently don't publish the Newcastle Classical prize if the essay isn't particularly good in comparison to other entries, or too long to reasonably edit/fit in. It doesn't have a particularly special status at Eton, and in recent years, the Huxley has had more entries and been more competitive—with Nobel Prize winners adjudicating more than once. Moreover, the old week-long brutal Newcastle prizes simply don't happen anymore. It's really not the Empire State building of Eton prizes, and it just won't get you into Oxford or Cambridge like it might have done in the 20th century; I know two people who won it and didn't. No-one at any university will have heard of the Newcastle unless they went to Eton or a similar public school. Therefore, if the Newcastle has any reason to be on Wikipedia, I believe it must be historical, not based on the significance or notability of this prize today. Knowto (talk) 15:04, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It would be impertinent of me to suggest that your perspective may have been distorted by excessive modesty on the part of a former winner, but I am struck by the apparent strength of your feeling that what is at worst a fairly harmless article should be deleted. I agree that not many today will have heard of the Newcastle; all the more reason for Wikipedia to furnish means for the enlightenment of those who come across published references to it. I also accept that the particular prestige of the prize (for Etonians) may have been more apparent in the past than it is now, but I am not inclined on this issue to allow the editorial judgments of recent editors of Spectrum (though I'm sure it's a valuable production) to outweigh the accumulated historical significance of some 150 years of published references. Your allusions to the distinction of recent judges of the Huxley Prize, and/or the vagaries of the Oxbridge admissions process, seem to me somewhat off-point. And would Wikipedia be a better place if it generally excluded articles about institutions that had declined in importance? 45ossington (talk) 16:11, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It possibly is a touch impertinent of you, but I'll explain anyway: my desire to delete this page is because I care about Eton and its prizes—which would make sense given I used to compile them all in a yearbook. I think that the somewhat elitist view propagated on this AfD page—which presents the Newcastle Scholarship as some incredibly hard and incredibly prestigious prize—is beyond inaccurate, it's actually slightly harmful to Eton. It wrongly makes Eton look outdated, obsessed with its own prizes and history, and focused mainly on (to quote the Newcastle page itself): "Classics (Greek and Latin language and literature) and Divinity (the Bible scriptures)." This perspective is exacerbated by the full list of winners the page includes, and I feel that it couldn't be further from the truth. It is also unfair to the other prizes, like the Huxley, Rosebery, or the new Hoberman Entrepreneurship prize, among countless others. These prizes are at least as competitive, but obviously don't merit an entire page because they're not a big deal outside of Eton—just like the Newcastle scholarship. This may not be the most Wikipedia-centric argument to delete a page, but the claim I'm making is that this page's existence presents a modern institution inaccurately and unfairly. The allusions to Oxbridge and judges were simply intended to show that this "most prestigious" line that is printed more than once (see the Eton College page and the Newcastle Scholarship page) is subjective, and has changed over time. And I maintain that the published references are mostly tangential, or not included on the Newcastle Scholarship page (though thank you for adding Miles Jebb). I have been able to find several of the others, and it's basically two words in a few of the seven cases. What I don't know is the extent of the Newcastle's historical relevance; if this can be proven to fulfill WP:GNG, it has a place on Wikipedia. However, the full lists of winners feel irrelevant to any historical relevance, and should surely be removed for a more concise list of notable winners? Knowto (talk) 10:07, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

keep, due its long history at a notable institution. ---Asteuartw (talk) 15:27, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Keep there seems to be enough coverage of this and I don't think policies such as WP:YOUNGATH categorically exclude high-school competitions of this sort. The table of winners is excessive. power~enwiki (π, ν) 17:49, 29 August 2018 (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.