User talk:Postdlf/Archive6

Categories

Here on WP there is a unwritten rule, that birth and death categories are at first then birth location, heritage, profession, religion categories and so on. --ThomasK 10:39, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

• No, there isn't. Birth and death categories are frequently first because the bots that remove/add categories have put them there. A few also think alphabetization is the way to go, so of course the numbered categories go first. I have my own system, which I think places the categories roughly in the order of their significance to the subject matter, so that the main reason(s) why there is an article about this person in the first place comes first, and if I'm already in an article for another purpose, I'll often fix things that way in the category. But there is no rule, unwritten or otherwise, as to how they should be, as a previous discussion revealed.[1] So what's the logic behind your system? Postdlf 17:20, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm with you. I think the order of categories should be: category(ies) related to why they have an article, other categories of interest, boring statistical categories. Gentgeen 04:03, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

As I said at the other talk page: You are stupid. That´s a silly thing. There is a trend reflected in many articles. First the birth and death dates, because this is about a person, then heritage, following profession. The bots on WP are doing this for a reason! Remember: This is a encylopaedia! --Mabm 08:29, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

"How insane" by User:Postdlf is actually a personal atack, too. Quote of the wp policy: Users have been banned for repeatedly engaging in personal attacks. " Do you want already abuse your admin power? This was my first time and last time. I made my point about the categories order. Let´s agree to disagree. --Mabm 08:48, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Category: British Hills by Height and Category:Mountains by_Elevation (km)

I am posting this to all the particants of the Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Category:Books by title discussion and debate. (Where the categories were voted for deletion).

This earlier discussion has been cited as an example as to why the category Category:Mountains by Elevation (km) (and sub cats) should be deleted.

Could you please take a look at the following CFD and vote. Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 September 1#Category:Mountains by Elevation (km) and its subcategories

A complication could be that Category: British Hills by Height seems be to liked by the actual British Hills content contributors. By contrast the category Category:Mountains by_Elevation (km) is not liked by User:RedWolf who seems to be a major Mountain page contributor.

Special note: the Ocean trenches by depth categories were added after the all of the people had voted. But frankly these have no real contributors and would probably get deleted if another vote was taken. You should specifically mention these to ensure there is no confusion in future.

ThanX ¢ NevilleDNZ 11:02, 6 September 2005 (UTC) ¢

Alleged causes of Hurricane Katrina

Postdlf! My God, man, I haven't seen you in ages! How are you? With respect to your note, I'd be surprised if there was not some good source out there already pointing out the irony which caught your attention. Before you invest any effort in this article, however, you may want to check out the deletion vote (they're calling them AfDs now instead of VfDs). Cheers! -- BD2412 ^talk 21:27, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

• Hey yourself. I had to take some time out for the bar exam in Albany (and during my stay there I accidentally got locked in Albany Rural Cemetery trying to find out when Wheeler Hazard Peckham died of all things), and immediately following that was packing and then moving from DC to NYC. And then painting and unpacking and buying furniture. And then a camping trip with my GF's family in Oregon. And then a week in Maui. And then back to Oregon. And then to Ohio for a wedding. And finally back to NYC, for more painting and unpacking. I'm ready to just sit on my ass for awhile, watch TV, and play on the computer. Oh, and meet Law & Order stars on the street. How've you been? Postdlf 21:53, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Images for deletion

The images in article Sarah Michelle Gellar are now a GFDL and DVD cover. Can we let the image Image:Cosmopolitan August 2002.jpg be deleted? Image:SMG Buffy season 2.jpg was put back in the article. Thanks --Nv8200p (talk) 23:12, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I will consider no response to mean you no longer care if Image:Cosmopolitan August 2002.jpg is deleted. Thanks --Nv8200p (talk) 14:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alleged causes of Hurricane Katrina

I realize that there were strong feelings on both sides with respect to the outcome of the AfD for this article, now located at Alternative theories regarding Hurricane Katrina. I would like to assure those who expressed concerns about the content, tone, and potential for degradation of this article that I intend for it to continue to exist only as long as is necessary to draw the contributions of fringe theorists away from the more substantial Hurricane Katrina articles. Once interest in this topic dies down, I'll quietly trim and merge this information into the appropriate general-topic articles. In the interim, I will carefully watch this page to prevent it from being abused, and I will continue to work towards making this article NPOV, properly sourced, and useful to those seeking an accurate record of the hysterics that so often follows catastrophe. Cheers. -- BD2412 ^talk 00:50, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Puppet taggin'

Just wanted to take a moment to thank you for taking the time to tag all the puppets in the Rory Conroy debate. There are a few of 'em and it must be a bit of a daunting task to wade through the history for that long, but it's a useful part of the historical record at the very least. So, kudos are due. Lord Bob 18:57, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

• You're welcome...it's always been one of my personal pet peeves on here. Plus I know how much work it is to close out deletion discussions, so it's important to make sure whoever's doing it can immediately spot whether a vote should be considered or not. Postdlf 19:03, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Objectionable usernames?

User:Asswhipe newly created. Block? DS 19:44, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Centipede on the Roof ready for deletion?

Just noticed that the bogus page Centipede on the Roof has crossed the five-day mark since its AfD started. Since you closed the Rory Conroy AfD, I thought you might be the guy to finish this one as well. Thanks. | Keithlaw 22:37, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

User:LevKamensky

I noted that you removed the AfD tag left by User:LevKamensky on Markian Popov. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Markian Popov still there; I suspect that the AfD nomination was malformed. (I removed his yelling when I saw it.) His reasons are both inconsistant and incorrect, I saw nothing at all wrong with the article. When I looked at his talk page, I was surprised at his "rules"; they seem inconsistant with what I have come to expect on Wikipedia. (I call them "requests" on my talk page, I first said called them rules and realizied that was a bit much.) His first edits were in July (3 dates, I think) then nothing until a batch of edits today, so I would think he's still new. This AfD does appear that it may be the result of an agenda on the part of this user. -WCFrancis 22:21, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

All the AfD pages he created (28 in a span of minutes) have now been deleted; this was all bad faith disruption on his part in revenge for the deletion nomination of an article he wrote about a relative. He's been blocked from editing and will not likely be coming back. Postdlf 22:24, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

You placed a 24-hour block on LevKamensky for then a one-week block. The way that MediaWiki software works (unless this has changed recently) is that when there is more than one block, when any block expires ALL the blocks are removed.

So he is really only blocked for 24 hours. The only way around this is to unblock him (using Special:Ipblocklist) and then re-block again. -- Curps 22:39, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip; I've fixed it so he's blocked for a week. Postdlf 22:55, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Mailing lists?

Occasionally I see things about folks posting stuff on mailing lists. Mailing lists? Is that something I should be familiar with? -- BD2412 ^talk 22:22, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

I've heard about those too, but I'm not on any myself. Policy discussions seem to happen there sometimes, but obviously nothing can get decided on the lists without first being posted and discussed on this site. Postdlf 22:24, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for probably the most calm and collected comment yet over the whole school thing. At the time I didn't see the other options open to me, now I do and am, I hope, a bit wiser for it. Dismas|^(talk) 06:28, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Categorising by city

hi there. my criteria and i suppose those of others who have done so (there have been about ten other users to have done so i ve come across) would be the same as those for categorising by state, county, or region (that individuals catted have spent some time living there while growing up or considerable time there as an adult/made significant contribution to the city as an adult (being aware what is meant by the adjectives 'some', 'considerable', and 'significant' is entirely and rightly debatable). cats listing people by state are rather full and catting by city is a useful way to subcat and thereby reduce the clutter. (i ve doing this for about a month now and you are the first user to question it, by the way.) regards, -Mayumashu 14:30, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Every day is exactly the same.

Postdlf, Hopefully this is the appropriate way to contact you, I only have a simple question, really. You updated the wiki entry on Mark Romanek to include a video for an upcoming Nine Inch Nails single. Is there a source you would be able to divulge for this information, on or off the record? Let me know. --Leviathant @ The NIN Hotline 209.74.55.194 12:54, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

The source was Romanek's entry at the Music Video Database. Postdlf 20:40, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Image Copyright Problem RE: Image:Jodie Foster.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Jodie Foster.jpg. The Wikimedia Foundation is very careful about the images included in Wikipedia because of copyright law. We need you to specify two things on the image description page:

• The copyright holder, and
• The copyright status

The copyright holder is usually the creator. If the creator was paid to make this image, then their employer may be the copyright holder. If several people collaborated, then there may be more than one copyright holder. If you created this image, then you are the copyright holder.

Because of the large number of images on Wikipedia, we've sorted them using image copyright tags. Just find the right tag corresponding to the copyright status of this image, and paste it onto the image description page like this: {{TAGHERE}}.

There are 3 basic ways to licence an image on Wikipedia:

• An open content licence
• Public Domain
• Fair Use

• The copyright holder gets the best protection of his work by licencing their work under an open content license like the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence. If you have the express permission of the copyright holder to licence their work under the above licence, use the image copyright tag: {{cc-by-sa-2.5}}. The GNU Free Documentation License is another choice for licencing one's work. Again, if you have the express permission of the copyright holder, use the tag: {{GFDL}}.

• The copyright holder can also release his work into the public domain, see here for images released into the public domain.

• • Images from certain sources are automatically release into the Public Domain. This is true for most governments like the federal United States government. (See here for images from the government of the USA and here for other governments) However not all governments release their work into the public domain, such as the UK government (See herefor images from the UK government). Non-free licence governments are listed here.

• Also, in some cases, an image is copyrighted but allowed on Wikipedia because of Fair Use. To see if this image qualifies and then how to tag it, see Wikipedia:Fair use.

For any other sources of for more information see Wikipedia:Image copyright tags. Please remember that if you don't tag your images, they will be deleted.

P.S. If you have uploaded other images without including copyright tags, please go back and tag them. Also, please tag all images that you upload in the future.

If you have any questions, just leave a message on my talk page. Thanks again. Extraordinary Machine 17:18, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of songs about body parts

I'm not too familiar with AfD procedure, so I apologize if I'm talking to the wrong person or something. It appears, though, that you closed the AfD for List of songs about body parts with the conclusion that there was no consensus. A rough count (though I might have missed something) gives 18 votes to delete and 9 to keep, which seems to me like a reasonably strong consensus. What do you reckon? EldKatt (Talk) 19:52, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

2 to 1 is considered by most to be the bare minimum of consensus, and when it's on the edge like that, I look for something else to add to the raw numbers. In this particular case, however, there were 11 keep votes (1. Longhair, 2. BenFrantzDale, 3. Gene poole, 4. BD2412, 5. Stevie is the man, 6. Kappa, 7. Meelar, 8. Klonimus, 9. Starblind, 10. Super Dude, 11. muriel@pt) against 19 deletion votes (including the nominator); only 58% in favor of deletion. Absent sockpuppets or something kind of precedent against keeping (I and others have tried to nominate similar song list articles, which were kept), that's no consensus in my book. Postdlf 07:26, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Optimus Prime's back on VfD again

Thought you might like to know, an article you once voted to "keep" has once again been placed on VfD. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Optimus Prime (person) Bryan 20:01, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Needed catagory

I see that you created the bridge category and was wondering if I could recruit you to create a movable bridge category, for inclusion into articles referenced in movable bridge. Just put a reference into the movable bridge article and I will take care of the articles referenced. Thanks in advance, - Leonard G. 02:16, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Re:Category:United States civil cases

Thanks for the suggestion. I shall implement it post haste :-) --TimPope 16:32, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Bound image

Hi do you have the source for Image:Bound Gershon and Tilly.jpg. Thanks Arniep 01:38, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

It's a publicity still from the movie Bound, as the image description page and article image caption illustrate. I'm not sure I understand the confusion. Postdlf 02:00, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi, we are discussing whether we should allow promo photos without source at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fair_use and Wikipedia_talk:Fair_use.The problem is if we allow no source a lot of people will abuse the tag. However as this is clearly a scene from a film I would have thought it was a publicity photo, however others disagree. Cheers Arniep 10:17, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Twitterpated

You delted this, with no explicit reason given in the delete log. It doesn't seem to me to quite fit any of the CSDs, although it would be very unlikly IMO to survive an AfD unless drastically rewritten. What was your reason for deletion? Would you consider restoring and listing on AfD? DES ^(talk) 17:38, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

I thought it had little or no context—its only content were a couple phrases described as "relative meanings," not even synonyms, and an external link. I don't think anything is gained by restoring it. Postdlf 20:12, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

people who have never been in my kitchen

Browsed to your page after your edit on the West Virginia article. Awesome obscure Cheers reference. Youngamerican 00:39, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Two requests; image of WTC7 and copyright law clarification

Greetings. User:Edcolins suggested that you might be able to answer some questions I have regarding U.S. copyright law.

I came across a user page recently for a wikipedia editor who is a minor as defined by U.S. law. On the user page was an image of the editor. The editor used the {{PD-self}} tag for the licensing of the image. I am curious if legally speaking there is a problem here in general. Can a minor hold copyright, and can a minor release their works into the public domain? As part of my regular job, I regularly take photographs of people in a variety of contexts. I have been trained and am especially careful in photographing minors; my training teaches me that minors must have a signed release by their parent or guardian for me to use the photo in a number of cases (though some cases not). Thus, it is my impression that minors (at least in my state) can not transfer their rights.

In investigating this, I found a reference at [2], where it states that minors can hold copyrights. However, individual state law may govern how those rights may be handled in business dealings. Wikipedia tends to use laws as they exist in the State of Florida. Perusing their legislative site [3], I could not readily find an applicable state statute.

There's a potential for this question to be significantly larger; if Florida law restricts the transfer of copyrights of minors, then can Wikipedia accept the contributions of minors under the terms of GFDL?

Also; I noted on your userpage that you're a resident of NYC. I grew up in the area, but have long since moved away and my closest contacts there now live >50 miles away on LI. There's been a request (Talk:7_World_Trade_Center) for a picture of the new WTC 7 building which is completing this quarter. If you would please, could you take a digital photograph of this building, upload it to Wikipedia and place it on the 7 World Trade Center article?

Thank you, --Durin 13:05, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

That's a very interesting issue. Prefacing this with the disclaimer that I am not a licensed attorney, I offer this summary simply from a scholarly point of view. I don't see any reason why minors would be unable to own copyrights; there is nothing in the Copyright Act that would suggest such a result. You're right that minors typically lack the capacity to enter contracts, but the modern rule is that such contracts are voidable, not void from the outset. In the copyright context, this would mean that anyone who received a license from a minor to use a work would be subject to the minor revoking the license up until the time the minor reached the age of capacity (usually 18), but the licensee wouldn't be liable for infringement claims until that revocation happened. I believe that most states also consider the right to revoke or disclaim a contract waived if it isn't exercised within a certain time period after reaching 18 (or maybe by that time?).

There's an interesting Florida statute—Fla. Stat. § 743.08(d)—which allows for courts to approve a contract entered into by a minor, or his parents on his behalf, "to purchase, sell, lease, license, transfer, or otherwise exploit literary, musical, or dramatic properties, whether tangible or intangible, or any rights therein for use in motion pictures, television, the production of phonorecords, the legitimate or living stage, or otherwise in the entertainment field." This was part of a law passed to allow children to enter into binding entertainment and athletic contracts and to prevent their parents from taking all of their earnings (generically called "Jackie Coogan laws"). On its face, it doesn't appear to apply to an endeavor such as Wikipedia, and it may also be a stretch to read visual works into "literary" (though the Supreme Court has read them into "writings"—see Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony), but the fact that it expressly includes "intangible" properties suggests that it's aimed at copyrights. California and New York are the only other two states that I know of that have similar laws, though New York's lacks a provision similar to Fla. Stat. § 743.08(d) and so is silent on intellectual property.

There's also a choice of law issue is which jurisdiction's law would determine the minor's capacity to contract. Traditionally, this would be determined by the law of the minor's state of residency, not where the party being contracted with resides. I believe the modern trend is to focus on where the contract was made, even for issues of party capacity. Choice of law rules differ from state to state, however, so the law that governs a particular dispute doesn't really get decided until it is actually in court.

I'm also wondering if federal preemption might apply in some way to prevent state law from voiding a minor's licensing of a copyright. The Copyright Act is silent on this matter, and I'm unsure of the power of state law to fill in the gaps in this manner. However, I think preemption may be limited to the scope of exclusive rights a copyright bestows, and to matters of the disposition of the copyright that are expressly designated under the act.

Thanks for raising the issue, and I'll let you know if I come up with anything more. I'll also see if I can get around to taking a picture of WTC7. Postdlf 16:36, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Possibly unfree Image:Samuel Alito.jpg

An image that you uploaded or altered, Image:Samuel Alito.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images because its copyright status is disputed. If the image's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. Please go to its page for more information if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. MetsBot 20:05, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

--Mm35173 15:43, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Image:Drew Barrymore Premiere Nov 2000.jpg has been listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded, Image:Drew Barrymore Premiere Nov 2000.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you.

Thanks for supporting my cfm on the revolutionaries, you might want to check out the discussions we have had on the Drew Barrymore article and a ton of other fair use issues at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fair_use. Thanks Arniep 02:33, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

No offense, but I consider that discussion on the fair use talk page to be more just an exchange of conclusory opinions rather than a substantial analysis. I'm not going to bother with the screen shots/publicity stills; those simply happened to be the ones easily available on the web because the studios happened to use those for promotion and illustration in other media (e.g., newspaper reviews, etc.). I think your interpretation of the magazine fair use is too cramped, however, as I explained under your IFD listing.

BTW, please don't unilaterally remove an image from an article and then list it as an orphan without setting forth that you were the one who orphaned it—it seems misleading to say the least. Also, I may be wrong on the process for this, but I also don't think you should unilaterally remove an image's copyright tag when you list it for deletion, as that may confuse other editors as to whether there was in fact a rationale given when it was uploaded. Thanks. Postdlf 02:44, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Undoing merges

Redirects and categories do not work together. People need to be able to find the schools in predictable manner (e.g. in a category) *before* they can be expanded. Also, ordinary users, looking to expand an article don't know how to undo redirect. Finally, by notable alumni in the district article, you're destroying the attachment to the individual school. People don't necessarily know to look in the school district article. Wikipedia relies on categories for navigation, and that's where schools should appear. --rob 13:40, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

About my category rationale, people looking in Category:High schools in Ohio would expect to see Oak Hills High School (Cincinnati, Ohio). They have no idea what article to look at. All schools should be listed under sub-cats of Category:Schools --rob 13:44, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Added: Please also consider the possibility that if people don't find the school in a predictable category, then they may simply create a new school article with a slightly different article name. Also, the approach of merging schools into other articles, risks inconsistancy, and putting info on the same school in two+ different articles (e.g. one for district, one for community). Also, not everybody is familiar with school districts, and their boundries. --rob 13:49, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

You're putting the cart before the horse—the existence of a category doesn't dictate what content must be maintained as an independent article, but categories instead simply exist to house the articles that do exist. The existence of a category such as Category:U.S. Army soldiers does not mean that an independent article must be maintained on every such individual, but only that the articles about individuals who happened to be U.S. Army soldiers should be placed in that category once the articles are written.

However, your problem of navigation has an easily solution—create a list article of high schools (with links to the district article that mentions them, if contained therein) and include that list article directly in Category:High schools in Ohio.

Apparently, there already is such a list of high schools in Ohio. Problem solved.

The possibility of duplicate creations of the same school in different article should be solved by preemptive redirects of likely names. Why wouldn't someone furthermore be searching for a school without regard to articles about the community of which it is an inseparable part? From which the district itself would be found... No one is going to search for a high school without knowing anything more about it than its name and state.

Regarding your other arguments, if there is enough independent information about a school to merit an independent article, then it should have one and be linked to from the school district article. But the school articles I merged were mainly presenting information that was true of the district rather than specifically true of the school. They were really rather poor and insubstantial stubs, and it is destructive rather than constructive to try and present them as stand-alone articles when it makes much more sense to integrate them elsewhere, at least for the time being. Please note that I did not merge articles such as Princeton High School, Sharonville, Ohio, which are more than a bare stub easily contained elsewhere (though to be honest, much of even that consisted of an unencyclopedic course list and a paragraph about the district itself).

Perhaps "not everybody is familiar with school districts," but they should be if they are interested in a school or a community, as these are significant government entities, of which schools are merely a functioning and often interchangeable part. The community articles should link to the district articles, though there is no problem with them also listing what schools within the district sit within that community. The district article itself should then contain the school-specific statistics, possibly in a table format. And those schools about which a substantial article can actually be written should then receive their own independent articles.

I think you'll agree with me that lots of poor articles on schools are created that have little or no valuable content. Deletion controversies have raged uselessly for at least a year over this issue, with one side parroting "schools are inherently notable" and the other side parroting "schools are not inherently notable." Both sides rarely take the time to actually address the content of what article they are specifically considering. The serious editorial decision should instead be made, in light of how we handle articles on Wikipedia generally, whether it might be better to incorporate it elsewhere, based on the subject matter hierarchy of which it is a subpart. Merging insubstantial articles about individual schools into articles about their districts is the best solution, because it preserves the content in a form and structure that is undeniably useful. No one is going to deny that school districts are notable, and for those who want each individual school to be documented, district articles satisfy that until such time as there is sufficient independent and encyclopedic information about that particular school. Postdlf 00:09, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Suggest short-term compromise

I don't like "winning" by being the most persistent. If you feel its important to do, I will not undo a merge of Cardinal High School, Ohio. There are no alumni in this case, and that was the major reason I was/am totally opposed to a merger for Oak Hills High School (Cincinnati, Ohio). I still feel merging means info on the school will not be found by ordinary readers, but I'll concede there's not a whole lot of info to be found. I also concede I'm not going to be able to personally expand Cardinal High School, Ohio. However, I do still think Oak Hills High School (Cincinnati, Ohio) is a valuable stub, even in it's current state, and think its essential that it remain its own article (without have its info mixed-up with a district). I think it's on it's way to being a Northern Secondary School (which is a good case of piece-by-piece modest expansion). I honestly don't understand why Oak Hills was picked when there are countless one-line stubs floating in wikipedia (including many unwikified, with no category). A central discussion for merge discussions is good, although I personally worry about expert wikipedians discussing an approach (merging/demerging) that's beyond the grasp of novice wikipedians (who can't possibly know how/when to demerge when appropriate). --rob 21:48, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

About discussions

You talked about starting up a discussion on mergers genrally. Given that there's already been lots of merger debates, perhaps, you should make a specific US school district proposal (or even one narrower than that) in common place. This keeps the number of people with high interest down slightly, and avoids the need for people to explain what a school district is in their respective area. I still don't like mergers, but I'm always in favor of useful discussions. For example, you could spell out the criteria in a clear way, as to when to merge, and when to de-merge. --rob 22:43, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments and concessions. I do plan on setting forth a clear policy proposal on this issue. In the meantime, I promise I won't merge any more individual school articles, and I'd appreciate it if you'd simply promise not to remove information from any district articles.

The reason why I merged the stubs that I did, and not other one-line stubs, was because those were the ones I happened to find in Category:High schools in Ohio while I perused the subcategories of my home state one day. So I created or expanded the appropriate school district articles... The article on Newark City School District is a good example of how substantial such an article can become; kudos to the district for having a great website with detailed information about its history and governance.

You stated elsewhere that no one cared about school districts, but anyone who is a tax payer, property owner, or parent of a school-age child cares, or should at least, because which district you reside in will dictate which schools your child attends, how much you pay in property taxes, and how much your house is worth. School districts not only administer the schools within them, by allocating budgets, hiring and firing personnel, and locally enacting state curriculum directives, but they also frequently have the power to raise taxes and use eminent domain. They are governmental bodies, and information about how they operate is central to local democracy. Most community articles need to be expanded to describe the public services they offer; from most, you can't even tell if they have their own independent school districts (as does my hometown), if they have their own fire and police departments, or if they purchase such services from their neighbors (as does Marble Cliff, Ohio). These are important, encyclopedic facts.

Objectively speaking, each individual school within a district is but an interchangeable unit. Now many individual schools have independent histories and characters that can be detailed in a manner that doesn't simply state what is true of the district as a whole (Torrance High School is an excellent example). Perhaps this is even arguably true of all individual schools. Accordingly, there should be no per se bias against individual schools having their own articles.

But what still remains is the necessity to make an independent editorial judgment on each particular school article as to whether it has enough independent content at present to justify separate existence. For example, Sheridan High School does not, because nothing is said of it that isn't true of its parent district; the high school obviously doesn't serve any towns that the district does not.

I would say that Oak Hills High School (Cincinnati, Ohio) also does not, because it only sets three bits of information forth.

First, its enrollment. Every school is going to have an enrollment statistic, and so there is no reason not to simply list these, perhaps in table format, in the parent district article within the list of schools. This school's enrollment is a notable statistic for the state, but this is also something that can simply be listed in the district article, as I did in a rather prominent place, because it's a significant statistic for the district as well.

The second fact is the high school's alumni. These are in fact alumni of the district, and would be presented just as well under a "graduates of X district" section in the district article, or an "alumni" section that has, in parentheticals, which specific schools they attended if there is need for separation. The district article, which is itself currently a stub, can easily incorporate all of this at present without any reduction of information, and so there is no justification for separate treatment of a subtopic at this time.

The third fact set forth in the Oak Hills High School article is its principal. I would argue that this is just as unencyclopedic as listing who manages the local McDonald's franchise; principals are not notable, and aside from those who personally know them, communicating their name adds no informational value. Even if you disagree with this, just as with enrollment statistics every school has a principal, so this is again something that can be compiled as part of a table of the schools for the district as a whole.

My chief concern is simply making Wikipedia better. One of the ways of doing so is deciding how best to present and organize information. I'm not trying to destroy or bury information about individual schools, just to put it in the proper context, and the proper context is as a functioning unit of a school district. Start from that point—expand the district articles—and then see what can be independently said about a particular school. When the school district article can no longer efficiently present that information, that's when splitting off is justified. This is general editorial policy on Wikipedia, nothing new.

Postdlf 00:34, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

This is not general editorial policy on wikipedia. But, you're entitled to your personal opinion. Your analogy to a McDonald's franchise is a common one, by those who delete schools. You keep on trivializing the signficance of individual schools, and unfortunately, I have to give up trying to understand this approach. --rob 12:52, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

I think you're selectively reading my comments, and confusing my judgment of a particular school article with a particular school. Notice that I said there should be no per se rule against maintaining separate articles for individual schools, but an article that fails to adequately stand on its own should always be merged into a proper parent topic, whether it's about a public school, a Star Wars character, a city neighborhood, etc. Re: "general editorial policy," compare my explanations above with the reasons given for why it may generally be a good idea to merge certain articles, in Wikipedia:Merging and moving pages. Merging content into a larger structure is not deletion. Postdlf 16:07, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

You selectively talk of a "neighborhood". Let's instead talk of official municipalities. Compare a school to a municipality of comparable size (e.g. 1000 students in high school = 1000 people in village, 100 in elem = 100 pop in township). Every municpality of a 100 people gets its own separate article. If we used your approach, we'ld be merging countless townships into counties. Little old Perth, Towner County, North Dakota is hard to expand, but it will also never be merged. One benefit of that, is when I link a bio to a person's place of birth, it actually links to the actual place of birth, not some article it was merged into. Your neighbord example (I assume you mean merge neighborhood into city) would work for *campuses* of *some* schools. Ocassionally, I've supported/made one article for two or three so-called schools, when there really was in effect just one school (with separate buildings). Also, I haven't seen you, or any merge supporter address the issue of overlapping/parellel school districts. Imagine if somebody looked for Northern Secondary School in Toronto District School Board, if all 427 schools were listed there, with their alumni comingled. Note, that while the Northern article is now complete, it started with less alum than Oak Hills High School has now, which you would have insisted be merged into a list of alumni from the district. Also Northern is inside the physical boundries of four different government run school districts (though obviously run by just one), and you would expect somebody to know which article to look for it. If you wish to keep doing mergers, I ask you at least pick better cases than Oak Hills, as there are countless unwikified/uncategorized/non-alum school articles, and I'm mystified why you picked Oak Hills. --rob 16:43, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

If one district nonetheless runs a school in Canada, then that's the likely parent topic for it, though I'm not familiar with Canadian special-purpose districts or the Canadian public education system, so I can't really speak to those.

But I am familiar with those structures in the U.S., and what the relationship of a school within the district is to that district, so I know there is a clear merge target for a school article if it is to be merged. And it should simply be merged, like any other subject, only when it has little to no independent content from its logical merging target. Merging and redirecting isn't a determination that something can't be expanded, only that it hasn't yet and no one knows how at the moment. Re: Oak Hills, that was simply a stub I came across while browsing through Ohio subcategories, and as I said, I don't see any material benefit in listing the alumni of the high school on a separate high school page, as opposed to listing them as alumni or gradutates of the district, with parentheticals, if preferred, detailing which particular schools they went to. You couldn't go to Oak Hills High School without attending Oak Hills School District, but the converse can be true; the high school alumni are thus a mere subset of the district alumni.

Municipality articles are a different issue, because, thanks to Rambot's census dump, none of them are mere stubs. Also thanks to Rambot, most municipality articles are certainly characterless, but we nonetheless have substantial independent statistics for each one that could not be incorporated into an easily useable table (and even if it could, it would simply be a lot of work at this point). The subject matter of a municipality would be more analogous to a school district than a school, because municipalities are locally independent governing bodies (perhaps subordinate to counties as well as to the states, but never merely administrative subdivisions), and with otherwise independent lawmaking abilities that make them inherently notable as a structure. School districts hire and fire school principals and dictate individual school budgets, while municipalities independently tax and independently elect officials. But even given that, let's say there's a village with no census data, no apparent recorded history, and its municipality article only contained nothing more than the following:

"Bobsmithville is a village in Hamilton County, Ohio. Its mayor is Bob Smith. Bobville has a local government and passes laws that must comply with the state constitution. Hamilton County has tons of Mennonites."

Absent expansion, there really wouldn't be a reason to just redirect it back to list of villages in Ohio, or perhaps Hamilton County; it adds nothing but the name of its mayor to either of those topics, which isn't much if the only known fact about Bob Smith is that he's the mayor of Bobsmithville. That's the kind of stub that should be merged. That it is not always easily to tell where to merge some stubs (e.g., private schools, or perhaps, Canadian schools) is not an argument against merging those that we can find a logical parent for.

I really don't know why you've lumped in my focus on school districts as merely another deletionist attack. I accept that many Wikipedians want individual schools documented. But it also must be accepted that all individual articles must justify their individuality by setting forth independent, encyclopedic facts. School districts are notable, encyclopedic topics, and the logical place to document individual schools until someone does the research to warrant separate treatment. The information gets preserved, and when it is scant it isn't left to stand alone as an incomplete article. You seem to be operating from the position that I'm diminishing a school's importance by treating it as a mere subtopic, but the insubstantial stubs have already done that by not setting forth enough content to justify individual treatment outside of its parent district. Postdlf 22:41, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Keira Knightley

Your opinion is needed on Talk:Keira Knightley (Two pictures section). Thanks in advance. --Viriditas | Talk 10:32, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Image:SMG Buffy season 2.jpg has been listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded, Image:SMG Buffy season 2.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you.

Rangerdude

There is an active arbitration case concerning user:Rangerdude at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Rangerdude/Evidence. I have presented evidence of Rangerdude's attacks about other editors, and I included a negative personal comment he made to you. The ArbCom is seeking greater involvement in their cases. -Willmcw 07:22, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Elgin School district

It was an experiment to have a hierarchial list of schools such that feeder status was explicit. The rationale was to have a template format such that the basic iformation could easily be cut and paste to a new article when someone wanted to expand one of the schools to its own article. I tried to exaplin the idea on the talk page. I still like the concept if not the format. Any ideas on how to do it such that it actually works? David D. (Talk) 08:24, 8 November 2005 (UTC).

I'd have to take more time to look at it, but my initial thought is that you may have simply been too ambitious. Why not just make a simple, separate flowchart graphic to show the relationships? Postdlf 14:04, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ernie Wetzler

Postdlf, you were a law student not long ago - would you agree that the guy in the above styled AfD is not notable? I've been accused of bias in the matter, as he goes to the school I went to. BD2412 T 21:33, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Image:Pentagon City.jpg

Where did you take Image:Pentagon City.jpg from? Looks like it would be a nice spot for some photography of my own if it's publicly accessible... SchuminWeb (Talk) 22:12, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

It was from the balcony of my former apartment in the Warwick House apartment complex on S. Eads...the lead picture in lightning was also taken there. It did provide a lovely view, with amazing views of the sunset every night. Postdlf 22:22, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Nautilus Middle School

I noticed you added information about the school's uniforms and demographics. What was your source? And is this information specific to this school, or does the district as a whole use uniforms and have the same racial demographic? Thanks! Postdlf 03:48, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi. The information about the uniforms was from the school's website. As far as I know the uniforms are specific to the school. The demographic information is specific to the school, but I'm not quite sure where they came from; it might have been the school web site or the school district web site. Hope this information helps! Pburka 04:55, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Yep, thanks! Just making sure it wasn't based on original research, or using district statistics to pad the school article. Postdlf 19:13, 12 November 2005 (UTC)