Talk:Chippewa Middle School, Shoreview, MN

Latest comment: 14 years ago by TerriersFan in topic Middle schools and Wikipedia

Article? edit

I think an article on the school may be useful, as it may include important information on it. Also, the article on Mounds View Schools provides very little information on Chippewa Middle School, so a redirect there may be useless. Possibilities would be to;

1. Add information on Chippewa to the Mounds View Schools article. Pros: Totally folows notability guidlines. This redirect would lead directly to the information. Someone at the Mounds View Schools page would not need to follow links to find this. Cons: Information would be needed about all of the schools listed there. This may get in the way of simply listing the schools on the Mounds View Schools page.

2. Create a soft redirect to Chippewa's website. Pros: This allows people to access Chippewa's information easily. This is not violating the notability guideline. Cons: This will not include information from other sources. This would possibly show people slightly biased information.

3.Create an article for Chippewa. Pros: This provides the information to anyone who searches for it. The list of schools on the Mounds View Schools article will not become overcrowde. This may attract more people who know information about Chippewa; if Chippewa is simply a section, people may not write about it. Cons: This may be violating the notability guidelines.

Also we should consider that that Pinewood Elementary and Turtle Lake Elementary have existing articles about them. If creating a sole article for Chippewa Middle School would be helpful, than Wikipedia's Ignore All Rules policy may allow us to have an article on it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ratburntro44 (talkcontribs) 20:57, 22 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Middle schools and Wikipedia edit

It has been consistent practice that middle schools and elementary schools are not ordinarily considered suitable for separate Wikipedia articles, unless there is some special notability, As our general WP:N rule, the notability must be shown by references providing substantial coverage from 3rd party independent published reliable sources, print or online (but not blogs or press releases, or material derived from press releases, or routine notices of events in local newspapers. Experience has been that very few such schools do have such sources. The sort of information that has proven significant in the past is Blue Ribbon status, or some award at a national level. State level awards are sometimes, but not always, taken as significant. Pinewood Elementary School (Mounds View, Minnesota) was named one of the "Minnesota Schools of Excellence" for 2008-2009 Turtle Lake Elementary School received a GreatSchools rating of 10. Sometimes that level of a GreatSchools rating is considered significant; the Minnesota rankings by the state's association of elementary school principals might possibly be. but I would personally be reluctant to support that, because. There are 950 elementary schools in the state;[1]; 140 of them have been endorsed as schools of excellence, which is not a very high proportion. [2]

My advice is to write expanded sections in the article on the school district for each of these schools, including the ones with existing articles, and then make a redirect from the school name. The first step in expanding them would then be to make a separate combination article for the elementary schools, and one for the middle schools. It will be possible to expand these eventually.

I'm just saying what we normally do, and giving you the best advice I can as an editor with considerable experience here with all sorts of school articles. DGG ( talk ) 01:16, 23 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

  • Pinewood was named one of the "Minnesota Schools of Excellence" in the years of 2008-2009, which is probably the main reason whay the stub was allowed to stand. N,evertheless, there is very much else about it that really argues for inclusion. It's also been tagged for over a year as requiring improvement. A quick check in Google does not appear to reveal any of the required sources stated by DGG for Chippewa Middle School, and the school's own website (not admissible anyway) does not seem to list any particular awards of note. Alsi in the UK and Australia, primary and middle schools are not de facto notable either. Any stubs that are created are often merged into an 'education' section of the article on the local community they serve. --Kudpung (talk) 00:48, 24 March 2010 (UTC)Reply
  • Turtle Lake Elementary School: The article is a stub with little content that asserts notabiloity. The sources of information that have been provided are not generally acceptable (school's own web site, directory websites), and the school, like Chippewa, does not list any special awards or rcognition that is worth of notability for the encyclopedia. It has been tagged for notability issues since August 2009. It has been missed for further action partly because it escaped the attention of the Wikipedia Schools Project. The project banner has now been added to the talk page and the article might now come under closer scrutiny for possible inclusion. I will give the article a few days for improvement, failing which I will recommend merging any valid content with the parent school district article, and deleting it.--Kudpung (talk) 01:09, 24 March 2010 (UTC)Reply
I would support the sound advice given by DGG, above. A section on each school in the district article is the best way to go. However, I have had a look at the available sources and this, for example, has the makings of notability. If someone is prepared to put the time into a sourced article by all means give it a go. A caveat, don't go off half cock since it will simply generate a premature AFD. Better to develop the page in user space and only spring it on a surprised and delighted world when you are confident that it will survive. TerriersFan (talk) 03:26, 31 March 2010 (UTC)Reply