Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amesbury Middle School

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 of the debate was Keep. Rob 10:22, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Amesbury Middle School

A lengthy building history does not notability make. Mandel 05:28, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

• Keep. Several marginally notable things about it. --Daniel C. Boyer 19:02, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. Non-notable. jni 07:12, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Non-notable indeed. But the article at least has enough in it to please anyone curious enough to look it up. And, I think the material is too voluminous to merge into Amesbury, Massachusetts. Wait. That long section almost too good... better check for copyvio. Nope, not obviously. Identical material does occur—but in a Wikipedia mirror. If the contributor reads this I'd appreciate a brief statement here saying that the material on the building history is not directly copied from anything. If the article survives VfD I'd add that with all the stuff about the building history it would sure be nice to have a picture of the building and/or the Doughboy statue (which by the way is probably the strongest claim to notability for the school. The statue by the same sculptor of the Gloucester Fisherman's Memorial, http://www.wainwrightfamily.org/Images/cenotaph.jpg is genuinely famous). [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 13:17, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • I guess good prose is distiguishable from notability? So a good prose entry on something non-notable would merit a keep, always? Mandel 13:37, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

I haven't quite figured out what's going on in my mushy mind about this. I vote on schools on a case-by-case basis. There is no consensus policy to cite or appeal to, so that's appropriate. I'm thinking that being "encyclopedic" has something to do with thoroughness and scholarship and good writing, rather than topic area. I'm also thinking that an accumulation of low-quality articles that don't get improved hurts WIkipedia, while high-quality articles on topics of interest to very few do not.

• Delete: I agree, of course, with rewarding the good ones. They shine like diamonds against the dark velvet of the rest of the articles. However, my charity got burned up above, so I have to vote delete. The big, fine interest in the building is not sufficient to make up for the lack of notability of the article itself. Instead, the material would be good for "Architecture of Amesbury educational buildings" or "The 1960 school expansion." Geogre 15:06, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

One of the arguments that is made by those in favor of keeping school articles generally has been that people will check out Wikipedia by looking up their home town and their school and say "awesome!" when they see it's included, and this will attract contributors and supporters. My counter-argument has been that nobody is going to get a warm fuzzy from a stupid three-sentence article that says "Central High School is located in Anytown at 4321 Main Street. It is one of six high schools in the Adams County School District. It has 1234 students, its school colors are black and blue, its mascot is a bulldog, and its principal is John M. Doe." Certainly I would not keep an article that is vanity, or advertising, or original research just because it was well-written. On the other hand, I'm thinking probably yes, I would keep articles that are factual, interesting, and well-researched on almost any topic area. The question is: are articles about non-notable schools intrinsically vanity? Anyway, yeah, for the time being I'm going to vote "keep" on non-notable school articles if the article seems to me to be otherwise encyclopedic. But I don't object at all to articles like this being listed on VfD. My $0.02. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 15:02, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Delete. It doesn't matter how well written an article is, if it's not notable, it doesn't belong here. --Improv 15:12, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Delete:Id have to agree that elementry schools are not really things that are notable in an encyclopedia. BoomerangBob

• Delete. Best I have seen so far today, but not good enough to keep. As I have mentioned above I might vote to keep a well written article, if non-notable, but this is still well short of my bar. MarkS 20:11, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep: The article is well written. A truly complete encyclopedia would have an article on everything that has ever existed. And notability is very subjective. There are many articles in the Wikipedia that I would not consider notable. DCEdwards1966 21:19, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. My source for this article has been myself, I have spent the last few years working on a history of this school district and I thought that it might be interesting to others if I included some of the facts I uncovered on this page. I thank all of those who feel that this was well written. --TEMcGee 06:10, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Not terribly notable, but good content. Cool Hand Luke 01:35, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • So some feel that as long as something is written well, it deserves to stay in an encyclopedia even if it is not notable? Runs contrary to how I feel. Mandel 03:15, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
• Keep The Steve 03:11, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
• D This is a good encyclopaedia article in the quantitative sense. There's plenty of information, and it's well-written. In terms of overall quality of WP, it's a different matter - in amongst this well-organised well-written information, you realise that this is just another school with no notable achievements to its name. Chris 06:29, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. Just because the article is long doesn't make this school any more notable than any other school. RickK 06:50, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. Yes, you may be old, but damn, you look like everyone else. 02:03, 2004 Oct 15 (UTC)
• Keep. lots of information RustyCale 11:48, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  <!-- For those that haven't been paying attention, the information is mostly pointless, and nothing more than any other school could boast. Actually read the information before making your vote. I hope whichever admin ends up looking at this will disregard the misinformed votes to avoid setting a precedent. Chris 14:59, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Keep. As notable, if not more so, than the thousands of non-notable albums, assorted computer equipment, and assorted crap on Wikipedia. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 15:01, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

  If it's notable, this article certainly doesn't provie it. There's the name, address, stats, a brief history of the all-too-ordinary buildings, and some pointless trivia. Nothing sets it apart from other schools. Chris 15:06, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• Delete. A riviting history of building construction. They forgot to tell us how they mixed the mortar, though. Gamaliel 06:31, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Merge with Amesbury, Massachusetts, without the trivial stuff like the phone number and the names of the guidance counselors. Fishal 04:06, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Keep, encyclopedic. Non-notability is irrelevant. arj 12:28, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. Non-notable. -- WOT 21:25, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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.