Talk:Kilmer Middle School

Feasibility

Here is a perfect test case for my own principles regarding article "feasibility." It seems to me that if we can have an article about Kilmer Middle School, we need to be able to have articles about every Middle School in the U.S., and equivalent schools in other English-speaking countries (at least!). And we need to be able to keep all such articles current (so the teacher lists don't go out of date) and otherwise of reasonably high quality.

Will that be possible anytime in the next, say, few years? How is Wikipedia doing in this regard? We can take that as an indication for CZ. --Larry Sanger 01:32, 30 November 2006 (CST)

This article would not survive in this format even in wikipedia. In general, lists such as faculty should be heavily discouraged since they will be outdated so soon and they are mostly unnotable people (in the encyclopedic sense). I think a google search and the school district pages will always be a better resource. I would suggest we only need articles on the most important schools from a historical or novelty factor. Chris Day (Talk) 02:42, 30 November 2006 (CST)

Well, that's what I fear, but I'd like to see some other viewpoitns on this. --Larry Sanger 13:26, 30 November 2006 (CST)

Am I missing something??

I'm sorry, but what is this doing as an article?? It seems silly to have this. What about this school is notable? I think this should be deleted. Kelly Patterson 22:23, 19 April 2007 (CDT)

I agree with what everyone's said so far: what's the use of merely documenting the bare existence of a school? Even if someone diligently maintained the list of faculty, and even a list of notable alumni, I still wouldn't see the appropriateness of such trivia. I'm particularly interested in seeing articles on schools that document the school's history and the ways a particular school is involved with its surrounding community, and its social contexts (generally speaking). I think any obscure school could make for a fine article as long as its history could be told such that its intersection with larger surrounding historical considerations are clear and worthy of note. If one could document, for example, the way a U.S. school handled racial and ethnic issues throughout the different decades of its history, or perhaps how its educational policies fared through different economic periods, I think that would make for a worthy article regardless of how obscure or typical the school may be. There's probably a better place to raise this discussion, particularly since my comment is going to get deleted along with this article! Nathaniel Dektor 13:02, 20 April 2007 (CDT)

Kelly, this is not a candidate for the use of the "speedydelete" template. See Article Deletion Policy. CZ has no notability policy. Something does not have to be notable to warrant an article; it merely has to be maintainable: see Maintainability. And that's a decision that rank-and-file authors cannot make. I believe that, according to the policy page, only an Education editor can make the decision to delete a page on grounds of maintainability.

I think that we are going to have the Education Workgroup discuss the whole issue about the maintainability of articles about schools. I disagree with any suggestion that we should not have articles about them simply because they are not famous. Who cares if they're not famous? Heck, many recondite academic topics that we will want to include are known to far fewer people roaming the face of the Earth than there are people who know about Kilmer Middle School. But Chris Day made a pertinent observation, namely, that faculty lists will soon become outdated. I agree, and that might be a reason not to list faculty, not until faculty lists can be regularly maintained across the board. Someday in the future they might be--who knows?

--Larry Sanger 21:04, 22 April 2007 (CDT)

OK- noted. Obviously I interpreted the rules on placement of the speedydelete template incorrectly. It does state in the policy that authors or editors may place it based on the "Articles deletable by constables acting on their own recognizance" section and I perceived it as qualifying. I suppose I should have read it more carefully. I understand (now) that it just has to be maintainable to stay--I did not realize that was the ONLY test it had to pass. I suppose I should review these policies from time to time.

However, I still feel it's silly to have this though I realize my opinion doesn't really mean anything. No one has touched this signifigantly in months and I would be surprised if it developed into something more than it is now. In my opinion, it should not be a "developed" article...that's what brought it to my attention to begin with. It should be a stub, but I'll leave the for someone else to decide and stay out of this kind of stuff moving forward.

Kelly Patterson 22:35, 22 April 2007 (CDT)

Only this school, or the whole district?

I personally believe only this school has the rule of no-touching, not the district. I used to go to a middle school in Fairfax County, VA, and that one doesn't have this rule. Yi Zhe Wu 14:40, 18 June 2007 (CDT)

That agrees with what the article currently says when it refers to this school's uniqueness: "the school maintains a ban against touching unique in its county." Nathaniel Dektor 17:26, 18 June 2007 (CDT)

Heh, wonder why the Fairfax district gives Kilmer such autonomy to do that. In the old days (and still now), the district has been called "fascist oppression" by some of us. Also from my personal experience, Fairfax county has a large population of minority groups such as Hispanics and Asians (like myself) while Virginia is one of the reddest Republican/conservative state along with the Deep South. That created a lot of conflicts. Not surprisingly, the murderer in the VA tech was in Fairfax county when he was in high school. The touching policy is probably due to the cultural tensions. My years in Fairfax, arguably, have taught me the importance of cultural toleration. Yi Zhe Wu 19:26, 18 June 2007 (CDT)