Conclusions

It is preferable that a List of Schools in <area> contains more information than a Category of Schools in <area> - such as statistics or a meaningful ordering other than alphabetic.
The fact that not all lists presently do, does not mean they should be deleted.
It would be useful to get a consensus on schools in general, before discussing lists of them.

There seems to be a flux of nominations of "lists of schools" lately. I believe we need to establish the criteria for such lists. It has already been previously established that lists are encyclopedia. -- AllyUnion (talk) 06:25, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I believe that any list that is merely a collection of internal links should instead be a category. Some people state that the redlinks on the list allow for the creation of new articles - but in practice, these articles are seldom more than stubs of the type "<name> is a <profession>" or in this case "<name> is a school in <place>". If a list is to be encyclopedically useful, it must contain more information than simply the links. For instance, location and size could be mentioned in a neat table. Radiant! 17:20, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Copied from Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy on Lists of schools in X

Personally, I think a category is much more appropriate than an article. Carrp | Talk 05:23, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Copied from Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy on Lists of schools in X

There are several arguments which could be used to support the case that such lists are unencyclopedic and may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. They might include:

An analogy to Wikipedia is not the Yellow Pages. If that rule is appropriate for commercial enterprises, ought we to have a similar standard for public institutions?
Questions about the inherent difficulties in maintaining and protecting such very large lists from vandalism. (a logical extension of Wikipedia:Verifiable) Is it even theoretically possible to know whether a fake school was added to the list? Can we really assume that there will be enough knowledgable reader/editors to keep that specific page on their watchlist that every municipality in the country will be covered? You are talking about many thousands of municipalities after all.
Questions about the influence of the list on the creation of inappropriate spin-off articles. For example, if I see such a list, am I more likely to add a link and then create an entry for my very small elementary school (which our general concensus says is inappropriate) and, when my article is promptly deleted, do more harm than good to our reputation and relationship with a future editor?

I don't know that the arguments would win the day. There are equally good counter-arguments. But the question certainly can be tested through the VfD process. Reasonable people can disagree. As a community, we generally come to some pretty good decisions.

I will add that I consider such calls for "censure" to be inappropriate and unnecessarily hostile. Depending on the exact wording and context in the discussion, they may even be considered border-line trollish and weighted downward by the deciding admin. Rossami (talk) 03:30, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

when lists are encyclopedic

There's a question being asked "are list of schools in X encyclopedic" which I think is misguided. The answer is some is and some aren't. A better question is "when are such lists encyclopedic". Here are a list of criteria I think a list should have to be encyclopedic:

the list should be complete or reasonably expected to become complete
- for example, "list of important public schools in California"
- not "list of schools in America"
the list should add value over a category
- for example, "list of schools in California ordered by size"
- not "list of Schools in California ordered alphabetically"
the list should be verifiable
- specific authoritative sources must be given
the list should give further information
- not just "school name"
- school name, type, size, date of foundation, facilities etc.
lists should be part of larger article and have context
- a table of schools inside an article "education in California"
- not a separate page just listing schools

Mozzerati 21:55, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)

lists which don't fulfill these criteria and don't look likely to in the near future should be deleted. Lists which do fulfill these criteria should not be.

I strongly concur with Mozzerati on this issue. Radiant! 10:50, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)
I agree with this criteria. A simple list of links does nothing that a category could not. DaveTheRed 04:15, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- I disagree. A list can include schools that don't (and shouldn't) have articles. Categories are only good for listing articles. Using only categories will just enocourage more people to create more articles on non-notable, non-encyclopedic schools. And do you really want that? Keep the lists. Miss Pippa 16:05, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  - Well, yes, that's exactly the point. Most lists of schools are mere collections of redlinks, that don't have any information and seem to push users into creating substubs for each school simply to remove the redlinks. That is a Bad Thing. It would be better to have a list of schools that lists useful information, and doesn't provide links for schols that as you say shouldn't have articles. Radiant! 08:14, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)
- I think the suggestion that there can't be good articles about all schools eventually shows a lack of grasp of the potential of Wikipedia. What we have now is a mere acorn of what will exist in the future. Red links are valuable; stubs are valuable; categories do not replace lists; and all schools should have an article. Therefore all these lists should be kept. Wincoote 02:56, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- Exactly. As the policy says (and I know 'cos I wrote this bit), a well-annotated list can contain all of a category and not be redundant with it. Annotations, groupings, red links - all these things add value to a list. As such, it should indeed be taken case by case - David Gerard 13:36, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  - Problem is that lists can contain annotations and groupings, but most of them don't. By the way is there any reason for not putting redlinks for articles-to-be-written on a category main page? It can have descriptory text at the top, therefore it can contain a list. Radiant! 08:34, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
  - I concur completely with Wincoote. Red links and stubs point to information that will eventually be filled in, which is more accurate than the pessimistic "half empty" assessment that they point to information that is not yet there. They should not be removed merely because there isn't anything there YET--that is, in fact, the point of having them red, in hopes that somebody will add to it. English Wikipedia has more than a million articles. What more proof is needed that people follow through with creating content? (I've navigated to more than one site in which I was interested, that was flagged for deletion; this seems inherently silly to me.)Greyscale 06:08, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I mostly agree, but I also see the value of lists of related terms, most of which will never see articles, like slang words in sexual slang or body parts slang. List articles like this are quite informative (albeit admittedly trivial to some in these cases) without the necessity of the list items becoming their own articles. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 16:00, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Categories versus Lists

There seems to be this argument of favoring categories over lists... Shouldn't that also be taken by a case by case basis as well? I agree with Mozzerati's above point, and I believe it should be considered when deciding the inclusion of lists of schools. -- AllyUnion (talk) 05:05, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Comment/Question

Before debating a policy over lists of schools, shouldn't we form a policy on school articles themselves? This is a constant bane of VfD and a worked-out policy would be a great thing to have. It makes sense neither to allow lists (the elements of which will be constantly challenged) nor to disallow lists until the critiera for inclusion of the subject of the lists has been worked out. Or, if this was done somewhere (not here apparently) when I was not looking, please set me straight and point me there. Jgm 15:06, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good point. However, an effort was made earlier to achieve consensus on this point, and it has failed. I would not be opposed to trying again, but it seems likely to become a vote that's too near 50-50 to count as consensual. Radiant _* 15:36, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)
This is actually a good idea. Instead of constantly fighting the desire out there to list schools, why not provide a template specifically for school entries. This would give guidance, require documentation, and increase the yield of useful information. The size of classes and faculty, history, notable graduates, and a number of other factors could be listed in the template. As for lists of schools, I would suggest that there be lists of schools organized under the county in which they reside (at least for the US). This is the level of organization for most basic education in the US and would be a sensible way to organize them and allow people to search for information. Other types of schools like universities and colleges could be listed either in a National University/College or State University/College category (or international equivalent). I think this might strike a reasonable balance between inclusion, order, and utility. -- Glen Finney 20:59, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Well, personally I'm of the opinion that the majority of schools can only produce a very small amount of useful information - insufficient for an article on its own, but sufficient to be included in a good, tabulated article on the region's schools (and if that would only be two or three schools, it should perhaps be in the main town article anyway). A mere list full of red links is not what I'm after of course, but a table giving name, location, size, age range would be suitable. If there is the odd one line of information that can be added to a school, then perhaps that could be noted at the bottom. But only schools capable of generating paragraphs of good information (and not just bumph about their mission statement and 'happy environment') should, in my opinion have a separate article. Average Earthman 10:47, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- Concur. Radiant _* 15:28, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Are red links really the issue?

I strongly concur with the points raised by Mozzerati and Radiant! in the main section of this discussion page. However, I wonder if the problem with lists is really the amount of red links. Is there a policy that I am not familiar with that states all items in a list must necessarily be constructed as links? Couldn't some of those be left as text-only, no link - namely, those that refer to schools that are not notable enough to deserve an individual article?

Maybe a policy that allows compreehensive but less informative listings when links are restricted to notable schools (even if yet unwritten) could be a reasonable compromise. Of course, this would lead us to the real issue pointed out by Jgm above, namely, whether any school is inherently notable. vlad_mv 16:06, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There is no reason why you couldn't have some items in a list linked while others are not. For an example that I've worked on, see the lists on the Putnam competition page. Some of the past winners are definitely encyclopedic, others might be, most certainly are not. I tried to go through and research them, and made links to those that sounded particularly notable. Isomorphic 07:00, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In general it is bad practice to create a list and make every item a redlink. It encourages the creation of substubs. I think an annotated list would be useful, and it could contain bluelinks to a few exceptional schools. Radiant _* 15:28, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Some redlinks do cause the repeated creation of nonsense articles, but they are easily identified during RC patrol--you just look at the deletion history and see a whole list. From this just take a look at "what links here" and amend any likely articles to remove the double-square brackets from the redlink, annotating to explain why you're doing it. It isn't necessary to adopt the attitude that all redlinked lists are wrong. This is a wiki and we should be encouraging, not discouraging, the creation of new articles. --Tony Sidaway ^Talk 13:55, 13 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]