Talk:Coal Hill School

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Comprehensive or secondary modern?[edit]

Is Coal Hill School described liks this in the series, as they are different types of schools? Tim! (talk) 20:20, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'll have to check, but I believe Coal Hill was a comprehensive rather than a secondary modern, as it taught history and science rather than exclusively technical skills. --khaosworks 21:15, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Nine years later, I've found that secondary sources differ on this question, so the article shouldn't say definitively that it's either. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:17, 4 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The production subtitles on the DVD comment that it's a comprehensive and explain to a modern audience how this was a very new thing in 1963. Timrollpickering (Talk) 19:08, 16 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Recommendation for Deletion[edit]

Subject of this article is a major part of the DW origin story. If notability is a concern with regards to a non-fictional school, I'd suggest renaming the article with a (Doctor Who) suffix. Merging into An Unearthly Child might be appropriate, but that article is quite long already. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Daburow (talk • contribs) 03:09, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete[edit]

Merge into a Who page, not notable by itself. No independent sources regarding it except fan pages/episode guides. 86.139.247.169 (talk) 11:14, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You say that you're for deletion, but the first word of your rationale is "Merge". There is no such thing as "merge and delete", because attribution for the merged material needs to be preserved. Ansh666 19:33, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A mistake. Please do not remove deletion tags merely because IPs gave them, I found Josiah Rowe's to be a more helpful edit, giving some semblance of notability. 86.175.80.78 (talk) 07:13, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I did not remove it merely because IPs gave them, I did it because there was no valid rationale for deletion stated anywhere for me to complete the AfD. (And there still isn't.) Ansh666 08:11, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You're relatively experienced, and "No independent sources regarding it except fan pages/episode guides" is more than enough of a rationale. Simply removing it without fixing the problem clearly stated here is not good enough. 86.190.100.37 (talk) 10:30, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Except for that the first part was "Merge into a Who page" - an AfD with that would get speedy kept in a heartbeat. I did add a notability tag, too. Ansh666 19:53, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If an autconfirmed user added a tag, you would not remove it, you would see it out regardless of the hopelessness, hence my complaint regarding the treatment of IPs. If you must remove an AfD tag (an offence which can be met with a warning), please remedy the issue. 109.157.241.142 (talk) 17:27, 3 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The warning can only be issued if there is an active AfD going, which there was not. If an autoconfirmed user added a tag without creating the discussion, I would remove it just the same. If they created the discussion with the rationale, I would instantly close it as speedy keep. There is no difference. Ansh666 19:13, 3 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You would not close it as speedy keep as only admins can close AfDs unless there are no delete votes and the nominator has withdrawn. An autoconfirmed user has no excuse for not creating the discussion, but IPs are unable to do so. 86.182.38.86 (talk) 15:53, 4 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I can, and do, close AfDs per WP:NACD, which technically only restricts closes that I cannot technically carry out (delete). Anyways, there's no point in this conversation so I won't be back. Ansh666 19:03, 4 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You could not have closed it within a few hours of it being posted. This is meant to be about consensus, not someome with only 5,000 edits removing IPs AfDs without fixing the problem. You even acknowledged the problem yourself by adding a tag. You should know better than to remove an AfD without fixing the issue. 86.169.210.72 (talk) 19:43, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

School arms[edit]

I've removed the following:

The school arms consist of a shield with the Cross of St George between two dragons segreant, with the motto "Domine dirige nos", which translates as "Lord, guide us".

It used to be cited to Remembrance of the Daleks. Redrose64 (talk · contribs) noted that this appeared to be WP:CIRCULAR. I suspect that the editor intended to cite not the Wikipedia article Remembrance of the Daleks, but the episode itself, perhaps hoping that someone else would come along and fill out {{cite episode}}. That's a questionable practice, of course; it's always better to cite secondary sources than to interpret the primary text ourselves. Anyway, although the description of the arms on the school sign does appear to be accurate, it also looks to me to be the same as this. I have no idea whether a school in Shoreditch would fall under the auspices of the City of London (or would have done so in 1963), but the entire question is fairly peripheral anyway. That said, if anyone can find a reliable source about these arms, they can be added back into the article (assuming it survives AfD). —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 02:52, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You just have to walk around the City for about five minutes (as I did a few weeks ago) to realise that those Arms are everywhere in the Square Mile - on buildings, bridges, street name signs, lampposts, bollards (there are five Coats of Arms in this picture, four in this photo and three in this one). I think that it's the City of London Corporation (whose Arms they are) declaring that no matter what Boris believes, he's Mayor of London but not Lord Mayor. So the presence of those Arms on a school does not mean that they are the Arms of the school itself. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:03, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I thought something like that might be the case. Ta. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 11:21, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Kim Newman quotation[edit]

Though this is probably moot, given the way the AfD is going, I thought I'd spell out what Kim Newman had to say about the school in Doctor Who: A Critical Reading of the Series. Here's the full quotation. In the unlikely event that the article is kept, people can discuss whether the current summary is accurate and adequate.

Our way into the box, a doorway to the infinite, is through Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, teachers at Coal Hill School. From the lack of uniform, mix of boys and girls, the fact that Ian teaches Science and the frankly drab-sounding name, we take Coal Hill to be a secondary modern, which means alien genius Susan (Carole Ann Ford) failed her eleven plus exam or entered the British tripartite educational system without enough documentation to get into grammar school. Though Coal Hill looks like a forerunner of Grange Hill (1978–), BBC-TV's comprehensive school-set soap, it was a television rarity in 1963, when children's programmes tended towards fantasy fee-paying schools, typified by Gerald Campion cadging buns in Billy Bunter at Greyfriars (1952–1961) or Jimmy Edwards thwacking bottoms in Whack-O (1956–60). More savvy about its audience, Doctor Who expected viewers to dislike little toffs: Cyril (Peter Stevens), a sinister schoolboy dressed like Billy Bunter, is a hateful menace in an early serial, 'The Celestial Toymaker' (1966). Decades later, Romana (Lalla Ward) and Turlough (Mark Strickson), companions of the Doctor, would model St. Trinian's or Greyfriars' uniform; that they (like Cyril) are obviously adults dressed up in fetish gear suggests a misty vision of British education — recently revived at Hogwarts — years away from credible, unlovely Coal Hill.

With a dress code progressive for its day and teachers committed enough to spot an alien in class, Coal Hill was nevertheless uniquely like the schools the bulk of Doctor Who's young audience actually attended. These sequences anchor "An Unearthly Child" in a reality from which the show could take off.

Newman has more discussion of the school in the subsequent paragraphs, but this is the key bit; the rest mostly relates to Ian, Barbara, and Susan. Tagging @Eleventh Doctor: so he can determine for himself whether this constitutes "significant coverage", as defined by WP:GNG. I think it does. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 01:39, 10 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Just to recap here what WP:Notability says of significant coverage " addresses the topic directly and in detail,....Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material". The footnoted example is that a 300-page book on a subject is at one end of significant coverage and a one-sentence mention of a subject is at the opposite (trivial) end. GraemeLeggett (talk) 17:07, 11 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
PS for those not acquainted with programmes mentioned Grange Hill, Whack-O! (a sitcom), and Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School (TV series)

Notability tag[edit]

Now that the AfD has closed as "no consensus", what should be done with the {{Notability}} tag? On the one hand, there was no consensus that the article meets the GNG; on the other hand, there was no consensus that it doesn't. I have no idea what the usual practice is in cases like this. Anyone? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 14:32, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the template page says "If you find an article that is tagged as having notability concerns, and you are certain that enough in-depth, independent sources have been published about the subject to overcome any notability issues, then you may remove this tag" which is still kind of on the fence. It's not really a badge of shame on the article if left and the key point of the message at the top of the article is "Please help to establish notability by adding reliable, secondary sources about the topic" which is quite a positive statement, and inducement to others to help. The AfD is only recently closed, and a few more weeks of TV, and or perusing books etc may well provide more material ("No Deadline" and all that). GraemeLeggett (talk) 17:26, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 18:16, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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