Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Sudbury schools

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 was keep. Per WP:BEFORE and WP:ATD, the improvements made while this AFD was open clearly show that the complaints raised were fixable and therefore not appropriate for a deletion discussion. Whether this should be merged to the parent article can be addressed through normal channels of editing and discussion. postdlf (talk) 16:09, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

List of Sudbury schools (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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This is essentially a list of external links to school websites. Only a handful (two?) of the schools on this list actually have articles. WP:NOTADIRECTORY. Jauerback^dude?/_dude. 19:41, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 22:21, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 22:21, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per WP:NOTDIR and WP:NOTLINKFARM. Ajf773 (talk) 07:12, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - If it had been a list with wikilinks to these schools, it would have been fine, but this is not the case, and Wikipedia is WP:NOTLINKFARM not a linkfarm. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:19, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete only serves as a directory of external links, violating WP:NOTLINKFARM and having no encyclopedic value --DannyS712 (talk) 05:49, 17 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete this is an un-encyclopedic directory of links.MadeYourReadThis (talk) 14:44, 17 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

*Delete - There is encyclopedic value to this article most definitely but the current layout is poor and realistically each section needs a few paragraphs .... I've only seen one wikilink which for me isn't a justification for keeping, Delete but no objections to recreation (providing it isn't just one huge long list of schools!). –Davey2010^Talk 23:23, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - SOFIXIT pretty much applies to my own comment - The layout can indeed be fixed, As I said it has encyclopedic value and I still stand by that. –Davey2010^Talk 17:21, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. I would say "Keep, obviously", because this is a valid list-article, as you all can see that Sudbury school is a valid article and it is valid to split out a list of notable examples. Y'all can have complaints about the state of the list (e.g. that it includes external links instead of constructing inline references), which can be addressed by your tagging the list and/or writing your complaints at its Talk page, but it is a valid list. It is simply fine, as an editorial matter, to split this out from the indisputably valid Sudbury school article. Also note that we can have a category of Sudbury schools and to have a list corresponding to the category.

By the way, I don't think wp:NOTDIR applies because the list does not include a bunch of ephemera like telephone numbers, which is what NOTDIR is about.

wp:LINKFARM does not apply because this does not have an external links section which is overgrown. It has an external links section with no entries whatsoever.

Editors should not cite essays which merely have a superficial suggestion from their name that they might apply, when they simply do not apply at all, IMHO, and if they do so repeatedly in multiple AFDs then I think the community should get around to banning them from participating in AFDs.--Doncram (talk) 02:59, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Linkspam is no different to having telephone numbers and thus still fails NOTDIR. Ajf773 (talk) 09:45, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. I would say "Keep, obviously", because of precedent and this is a valid list-article, as you all can see that Sudbury school is a valid article and it is valid to split out a list of notable examples. We have had List of democratic schools since 2006. Comparing with telephone numbers is silly.

One has just opened on my patch- my first question was what is a Sudbury school. That school is notable, in being a first of type, though it not a secondary school- and only part-time- so I would put it on the edge- I needed to know more- the Sudbury school article told me that- and now the question where are they? The list article answers that and influences my opinion on the school in general.

Again the linkfarm argument is attractive until you Google List of Sudbury schools- we are the only entry, the collated information has not been published elsewhere on line. Please read WP:NOTLINKFARM Paragraph 1. "There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to the external links section of an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia." hence this has been broken out into a separate article. ClemRutter (talk) 11:39, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comparing to the List of democratic schools article isn't fair, because that article actually has a list of schools that have their own articles. This is a just list of schools with links to their websites. If I were to remove all the spammy external links (which I actually did to the List of democratic schools article) and what do you have? A stub about Sudbury school, which already exists. If there are ever enough articless on individual Sudbury schools, then this article can be recreated. However, unitl then, it's just a target for spam. Jauerback^dude?/_dude. 17:14, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Per WP:ELLIST it is against common practice to have lists that are comprised of external links. Ajf773 (talk) 23:12, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Right, per wp:ELLIST the list should be edited to remove the brackets. Not a big deal. See the "good" and "bad" examples there. Please do go ahead and make the change. --Doncram (talk) 00:05, 23 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge with Sudbury school and clean up. My suggestions - get rid of external links, closed schools, proposed schools, and all schools that are not known to be Sudbury schools. Aurornisxui (talk) 15:57, 23 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• FWIW, I prefer "Keep" and oppose "Merge" because I think it is a reasonable editorial decision to choose to split out a list of examples in general, and here while there is no dispute that there are many notable examples, the specifics might be debatable. It seems best to keep the main article on Sudbury schools free of controversy over characteristics of specific schools. It's okay for there to be disagreement and discussion and even negative tagging, but better at a split-off list-article, not detracting from the main. --Doncram (talk) 13:53, 25 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - its better to have this list to its own rather than cluttering related pages. Easily fixable for content and format, and matches with lists of schools we have for other education methods. -- Netoholic @ 20:54, 25 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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.