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.
Long and poorly-referenced list of non-notable entities. Per
WP:NOT a directory (especially a "simple listing") there is little or no sourced information attached to the list entries, no clear way to tell if the items actually belong on the list or if they have been added later by vandals.
At
WT:CATHOLIC#Lists of parishes, schools, religious on diocesan article pages we discussed the removal of such lists from diocesan articles per the above guidelines.
Elizium23 (
talk) 04:09, 8 May 2020 (UTC)reply
2.
Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Common_outcomes#Schools states: "Most elementary (primary) and middle schools that don't source a clear claim to notability usually get merged or redirected to the school district authority that operates them (generally North America) or the lowest level locality (elsewhere or where there is no governing body)." - In the United States most Catholic schools are directly operated by the archdiocese, so the archdiocese is the " school district authority" for these schools.
Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools/Article advice is the essay/article guidelines advice for the Schools WikiProject and it states: "Non-notable school articles are generally blanked and redirected to the school district's article (USA)"
3. Practice is just as important of a consideration as what the policies and guidelines strictly say. Wikipedians have been listing "elementary (primary) and middle schools that don't source a clear claim to notability" in these lists for over a decade, and WP:COMMONOUTCOMES means that the solution was to merge them into lists.
Also bear in mind this will need the input from the
Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools and
Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists projects. Because various topics intersect here, it is important to get feedback from a broad variety of Wikipedians.
Delete per nom. Wikipedia is not a directory of every single thing that exists, and we certainly do not need to cross-categorise Catholic schools to a specific region.
Ajf773 (
talk) 01:50, 9 May 2020 (UTC)reply
Please see the comment below regarding LISTN
WhisperToMe (
talk) 05:44, 9 May 2020 (UTC)reply
Comment: The archdiocese managed most (not all) Catholic schools, and makes the decision whether those that it does manage are closed (as is seen in the articles I cited). This is why the lists are by archdiocese. Now, for independent Catholic schools (those not operated by an archdiocese but merely associated with it) it may be a different manner.
WhisperToMe (
talk) 05:30, 9 May 2020 (UTC)reply
All the more reason to delete it. Linking a list of schools to a archdiocese (rather than a geographic location) fits well into the criteria of
WP:NOTDIR and
WP:INDISCRIMINATE.
Ajf773 (
talk) 20:37, 10 May 2020 (UTC)reply
Dioceses are geographically based: each American county is assigned to a diocese: Chicago's archdiocese covers Cook and Lake counties, so all Catholic schools in these two counties would be covered. This geographic organization is no different from the countywide public school districts (for example in Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia) which have lists of their respective schools. Public school lists are already shown to be discriminate and to fulfill the gazeteer functions of this encyclopedia, and therefore fulfill the encyclopedic criteria. BTW
school districts also don't necessarily operate every single public school in their boundaries due to the existence of
charter schools.
WhisperToMe (
talk) 21:22, 23 May 2020 (UTC)reply
Awesome! I make lists of schools because Wikipedia does fulfill the purpose of being a
gazetteer (this is stated in
Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features)). LISTN states: "Lists that fulfill recognized informational, navigation, or development purposes often are kept regardless of any demonstrated notability." I feel that listing Catholic schools fulfills the gazetteer function of Wikipedia. This is in addition to the reliable secondary source coverage on Catholic schools closing throughout the United States. The
National Center for Education Statistics documents the K-12 schools in the U.S., and this is similar to the organizations listed at
Gazetteer#United_States such as the
United States Geological Survey for locations.
WhisperToMe (
talk) 05:44, 9 May 2020 (UTC)reply
@
Ajf773: Which says "These "other stuff exists" arguments can be valid or invalid." (in other words it is okay to use OTHERSTUFFEXISTS when the comparison is correct and the essay page explains this). List of Pokemon is a featured article, so my point is that we do in fact list things not individually notable. The question is whether it is okay to list this particular group of individually non-notable things or not. I pinged since OTHERSTUFFEXISTS states "it is important to realize that countering the keep or delete arguments of other people, or dismissing them outright, by simply referring them to this essay by name, and nothing else, is not encouraged."
What about article x? also explains "The nature of Wikipedia means that you cannot make a convincing argument based solely on whether other articles do or do not exist, because there is nothing stopping anyone from creating any article." - But in this case List of Pokemon is now a featured article, not merely a random article created by somebody. The point I made is that lists of "non-notable" items are acceptable, and I explained above why there is an informational/educational purpose in this list.
EDIT: I also realize there are fictional character lists like
List of Animal Crossing characters and these lists have existed on WP for over a decade. When notability of a list is considered, one should make a case whether there is a proper informational purpose as per LISTN.
WhisperToMe (
talk) 12:35, 12 May 2020 (UTC)reply
Delete - the best of this should be covered in an unwritten article on the history of education in the archdiocese. I'd assume there already is a list of high schools in the archdiocese. If not, pruning the article in question to that might make sense per
WP:ATD, but if the lidt exists, I do not see it as a good redirect target.
John from Idegon (
talk) 21:43, 10 May 2020 (UTC)reply
@
John from Idegon: What would be a better redirect target for Catholic schools directly operated by an archdiocese? I feel that the archdiocese from a U.S. parochial Catholic school standpoint has the same role as a school district from a public school standpoint.
An example of a public school list I created was
List of Houston Independent School District elementary schools, simply because I needed a common redirect target for HISD elementary schools, and because HISD operates so many of them. These "in archdiocese" ones are just Catholic versions of this one.
The reasons why I created these lists: 1. The archdiocese's primary job is not to operate schools but to operate churches, so the details on school closings can't take too much
WP:WEIGHT in a history section; these lists allow me to expand upon the schools more. 2. There are cases where either the elementary/K-8 school itself is notable, or the affiliated parish/church is notable (so the school redirects to the church). The notable schools should be listed too, but then the ordinary reader will expect to see the rest. 3. Schools can have additional details covered by newspapers that give a full history of what happened at the school: there have been cases of schools about to close, be given reprieves, and then get closed years later. It gives the reader a full picture of Catholic education and Catholicism in the archdiocese and the communities within it. Also 4. It allows me to put the lists in the jurisdiction of the schools and lists WikiProjects.
Keep. Add sources if needed.
Jdcompguy (
talk) 20:44, 13 May 2020 (UTC)reply
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 14:41, 16 May 2020 (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.