Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools

Infoboxes for School Districts...

I have been working on school articles for a couples of months here in Wikipedia, and until the other day was only aware of a few Infobox templates for school related subjects. The ones I knew were the handful of ones mentioned in the instructions on the WikiProject page. The main one I am aware of is {{Infobox school}}. What I discovered the other day was that there are a few for Districts ({{Infobox School district}} and {{Infobox School District}}), however they are specifically not mentioned in the WikiProject instructions.

I made this edit the other day switching a {{School district}} to {{Infobox school}} and adding some data. A fellow editor reverted it, acknowledging a good faith edit, but saying that articles about Districts should use a District Infobox.

So the question is what is the preference, if any, of the community here?

My opinion is that Infobox school is a monster. It was built to handle everything and in doing so is almost unwieldy. It does however have some fields not in the current versions of the other District Infoboxes. I have no objection to refining another District Infobox and making it the standard for District Articles.

While this may not be the most pressing issue for the WikiProject, I feel that if there is going to be a standard, it should be declared, and the WikiProject moved towards that standard. Also, if there are elements that should be discouraged, the documentation for those elements should make that clear. --Arg342 (talk) 10:49, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for pointing this out. I agree that Infobox school is a monster, but would you mind explaining that directly on the box's talk page at Template talk:Infobox school? Your feedback is important and it will probably get more resonance there. Thanks. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:31, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

I've semi-protected {{Infobox school district}} since it is used on over 500 pages. On the issue of merging, I don't really mind either way. School districts are rather different from articles on single schools and having a separate template for them is not unreasonable, as long as there are no duplicates. CT Cooper · talk 11:53, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

I'll stand up and raise my hand: I was the editor who reverted Arg342's edit.

As has been mentioned here: this is murky area. There are certainly a lot of school districts which are one school districts. However, there are also a great many districts which encompass many schools, and in these cases especially, the difference between "the district" and an individual school in the district is big ... part of the reason why we have separate articles. The parameters in the school infobox, IMO, don't always translate well to the district, and vice-versa.

Kudos to Arg342 for bringing this up though. I had no idea there were two infoboxes for districts. I just went in and added the more detailed one to the article that Arg342 was referencing earlier. It looks nice, and certainly gives room for some more data.

I'm hardly married to either, and am very open to what the consensus on the issue comes to be. LonelyBeacon (talk) 15:07, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

The school and district articles need rather different material although there are a number of ares where they overlap. I see districts needing more emphasis on governance and program management. Arg342 has pointed out the lack of consistency in district direction.
Article guidelines only states that an infobox should be provided. The following section which addresses districts omits any guidance about differentiation. The example district article includes a district infobox in conflict with point 5 of the infobox guidance at WikiProject_Schools.
I propose that appropriate concurrence should be sought to approve the separation of district and school article guidelines to include separate infoboxes. Note that British Columbian and Canadian districts already have their own infoboxes. Both could be merged into the existing district infobox. Template:ISCL support should be considered for the district infoboxes.
SBaker43 (talk) 03:50, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that many school article creators don't fully understand that while we do have different infoboxes for the major word regions, having too many different infoboxes and creating ad hoc ones just serves to confuse new users. These infoboxes also have invisible embedded functions. Over the years there has been a lot of creation of superfluous school infoboxes and over the past months we've been trying to sort this out. I have put one duplicate School District infobox up for deletion - it was a basic school infobox with just its template name changed. Please don't hesitate to update the WP:WPSCH/AG yourselves to reflect these changes, and to update the instruction pages on the templates. Any queries about the actual hidden programmation of the infoboxes is probably best addressed to User talk:Kanguole who is one of the experts in this area for school related infoboxes. Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:13, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

As I see it, here are the selling points between having separate infoboxes for schools ({{Infobox school}}) and school districts ({{Infobox school district}}) versus a single infobox ({{Infobox school}}):

• Appearance:
  • Nearly a draw. Both are fairly nice. {{Infobox school district}} is arguably a little nicer with more headings.
• Maintenance:
  • Single template solution has a slight advantage here.
    • Only one to maintain. {{Infobox school}} is already a monster (I count 260 possible parameters, many of which are currently undocumented and included for backward compatability); it would only need three simple fields added to it to make a redirect from {{Infobox school district}} work 100%.
      • asst_superintendent
      • schools
      • teachers
    • Two templates would mean one monster and one tame domestic pet to maintain. Since there is still a monster, I don’t see the advantage here, UNLESS there is going to be a future effort to untangle {{Infobox school}}, and I don’t know that there is enough energy and commitment in the community to warrant that.
• Usage instructions:
  • This can be a draw with clear instructions to future editors. As it stands now, it is unclear.
• Ease of use:
  • This again can be a draw, especially if {{ISCL}} is improved or variants are created.
  • My idea here is to either add parameters to {{ISCL}} or create variants so that editors wishing to create a new school related infobox would get a blank template with fewer fields, but aimed more specifically to what they want. For example, if ISCL could take a country code, then 1) they can get the country specific infobox, if there is one (such as Canada or UK) and 2) if getting the generic {{Infobox school}}, fields that specifically do not apply can be suppressed. A great deal more could be done here, including making a wizard of some sort to interview the editor and deliver a concise infobox template.

Possible solutions:

1. Clean up documentation and improve/supplement {{ISCL}}:
   1. ALL of the possible solutions would require this!
2. Direct editors to use {{Infobox school district}} or {{Infobox school}} as appropriate, but allow existing articles to stay as they are:
   1. Add a few fields to {{Infobox school district}}, improve documentation, and we can move forward.
3. Direct editors to use {{Infobox school district}} or {{Infobox school}} as appropriate, and aggressively move the districts currently using {{Infobox school}} to {{Infobox school district}}:
   1. While this could be done, I count about 900 articles using {{Infobox school}} that include "district" or "schools" (plural) in the title. This would be a big job and I am not sure it would be worth the effort.
4. Switch to a one template solution ({{Infobox school}}) by doing a redirect from {{Infobox school district}} to {{Infobox school}}:
   1. This would not require a great effort as far as I can tell. It would require the addition of the three fields to {{Infobox school}} and making the redirect and it would be done.
5. Switch to a one template solution ({{Infobox school}}) by editing the articles currently pointing to {{Infobox school district}} and changing them to {{Infobox school}}:
   1. Same as #4, but requires editing about 685 articles

I guess I have a slight preference to #4, with #2 my second choice. --Arg342 (talk) 11:29, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

What this detailed analyis seems to have missed out on is the fact that {{Infobox school}} is currently the 'global' standard, but that there are many localised variants such as {{Infobox UK school}}. Personally I see school districts as a very American construct and the proposed changes would solidify that. Certainly itwould have no real application within the United Kingdom for instance. The equivalent structure in the UK would be the Local Education Authority which, by current convention, are absorbed into the standard UK county articles. So ditching the school district infobox would mean that there may be a need for more localised infoboxes in the future. This is not really the worldview that we should be striving for. Fmph (talk) 11:56, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the School District infobox should be scrapped. School districts are an intrinsic part of the US education system. What we don't want is people going off and creating district infoboxes for their own districts. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:11, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

As I read the comments, #2 above is the way to go. In that spirit, I have made some minor improvements to {{Infobox school district}}, and some major additions to the documentation. Please feel free to take a look and make further improvements as you see fit! Thanks for all your efforts here! --Arg342 (talk) 03:38, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

• Why in the info box school district are we pairing established/closed. Should it not be established/disestablished?John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:40, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

List of Old Guildfordians (Royal Grammar School, Guildford) FL

I've currently got this article (well list) nominated as a Features List candidate the comments page is here.

I would welcome any comments/suggestons/opposition/support on that page so it has the best chance in the process.

Thanks, Glanis^Talk 15:57, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Creation of new article on a Greek school

Hello everyone:) This is the first time I have ever written on English Wikipedia, but I have been quite active on Greek Wikipedia since 2007. My question regards the school I teach at, which is the Evening High School of Argostoli, located on the island of Kefalonia in Greece. What makes our otherwise ordinary school special is that we have been active in (Greek) Wikipedia editing since 2007, and our work has played an important role in the Wikipedia publicity campaign that has been launched in Greece since the beginning of the year. Namely, the "Concise Guide for Wikipedia Editors" that I wrote in Greek originally for our school has become a success all over the country, as it has been printed in 11,000 copies and is being distributed at Wikipedia workshops and events throughout Greece. The guide features material that has been contributed by students of our school. In addition, the poster I presented at the Scientix Conference in Brussels, Belgium won first prize in the poster competition (scientix.eu is a European-Union supported portal for science education throughout Europe and beyond). Again, the poster showcased the work we have done on Wikipedia. In view of all the above, I think an article on our school and its achievements in the Wikipedia movement would be of interest to the general public, perhaps even serving as an example for other schools to follow (demonstrating that even "second-opportunity", working adult students are "welcome" as Wikipedia editors). Should I proceed with creating the article? If "yes", could you offer some guidelines as to what templates/categories/etc. are applicable? Thanks very much, greetings from Greece:)--Saintfevrier (talk) 18:15, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

We take the general notion, which someone will disagree with below, that all high schools are notable. This is not a rule, but merely understood. Editors will quote otherwise if you read down.  :)

You seem unique because it is aimed (solely?) at adults, unusual for Europe. In the U.S. there is a second chance for everything everywhere!  :) Adults would attend classes at a regular school, work online, or attend same school at night.

Since you are involved, I would suggest putting your book in "External reading" and mention it on the talk page. School articles are not about people. They are about the school itself. Okay to mention the "principal" or major school leader that is on the spot responsible for the school, whatever the title. The templates have options for adding titles (and omitting others which will be absent).

A line might read "The school has received attention for being the only high school...." Then cite news sources that are clearly neutral. Educators that are not connected to the school system okay, but regular news preferred. Please understand that Wikipedia itself is not looking to pat itself or other contributing editors on the back! We have people with doctorates and near-illiterates editing. So editing itself, is no big deal.

A Canadian school which is "tolerable" Adult High School (Ottawa). A place to start. The templates for regular high schools seem out of place, but you can try looking some up. They have Athletics, notables. History would be germane to your article.

All need citations. Greek if you don't have English.

You might mention it here when you get it online and you're ready to have other eyes looking at it. Or not. Your choice. Student7 (talk) 20:27, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your reply, and advice: all perfectly understood, all makes sense. The Canadian school is quite similar in purpose to ours, but ours is around 1/10 its scale... Adult education in Greece is provided by the Ministry of Education for working students aged 14+; usually (as in our case) the schools operate in the daytime as well, but as separate institutions (i.e. "regular" high schools). Adult students are entitled to attend regular schools, but most often this is not possible, as these students work during the day... hence the need for evening education. The curriculum is the same, save for phys-ed and arts classes (to save time and focus on the more important classes). Junior high is equivalent in duration to regular, high school is a year longer, diplomas are equivalent. (Idea: do you think that maybe it would be useful to include these general details on adult education in Greece in the article? Unless they have already been registered elsewhere...)

Citations are available, only in Greek (apart from the poster competition, there I would link with the EU portal). I think the "The school has received attention..." approach is best. I wouldn't need (or want!) to mention my name, the principal's name OK, I'll check if there are any applicable templates. As for notability of high schools, don't worry, I'm used to it: same debate in Greek Wikipedia;-)

So I'll give it a go and come back to this page to mention it for others to see once it's done. Thanks again!--Saintfevrier (talk) 21:25, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

The material about adult education in Greece should probably go somewhere in Education in Greece or an offshoot of it; in fact that article itself could do with some updating, referencing, and perhaps re-organisation.

It was a surprise to me that Greek 14-year-olds can be in full-time work (as I understood your comments). --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:36, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Hi again:) Yep you're right, had a look at Education in Greece, the article definitely needs work... and there's absolutely no mention of evening education. Your question on 14-year-olds working full time led me to do a little research. No-one is allowed to work full-time in Greece unless he/she has completed compulsory education. Compulsory education in Greece is 9 years, which means that 14-year-old individuals are in the 9th grade and about to graduate from (junior?) High School (we call it "Gymnasium")... so that legalizes them to work (it would make more sense if the age limit was 15 though, wouldn't it?) Most of our students are much older anyway... not many 14-year-olds actually do work in Greece (my daughter, for one:))) Turns out I may have to delay creating the article - I've been requested to make a presentation of how we use Wikipedia in the classroom at a workshop in Prague, so I have to get my act together... I'll be back:)--Saintfevrier (talk) 23:28, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

• Make sure to cite sources. While if you can find English ones that might be a plus, Greek ones work perfectly fine. You amy also consider ones in say French if you feel confortable with such, since being in a language that uses the Roman alphabet they will be more accessible to the English reader than categories in Greek. Also, make sure to use your own words when writting the article, but if you have worked on the Greek wikipedia you probably know about copyright vio issues. Bear in mind even if you are using a public domain source in English they will often delete it if it is a direct copy. It is better to be short and in your words, than longer and in someone elses words and threatened with deletion.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:36, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Scholastic athletic conferences

General question to the project: After trying to assess some articles on the long list of unassessed articles this morning ... I came across a few articles for scholastic athletic conferences. Are these articles that should be covered by the project, or not? I have no strong opinion either way, but thought I would get a general feel. LonelyBeacon (talk) 21:28, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I would support inluding them in the project. Sports is one of the more problematic sections of high school articles, attracting spurious listings of "notable" students and alumni for insignificant accomplishments, even in the context of local news coverage, and for events that never happened. For some schools, sports coverage makes them "notable" at a national level, for others, even though the coverage is entirely local, it is the overwhelming share of news coverage. I think that improved articles about interscholastic leagues and their state organizations, with good references and links to their league, section, and state records, will help editors find encyclopedic information about the schools they are working on and to more easily determine if a new entry is encyclopedic, trivial, or vandalism.--Hjal (talk) 04:04, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Probably a good idea. There is no harm in having an extra project keeping an eagle eye on pages that attract puffery and WP:LISTPEOPLE. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:09, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Agree with editors above.

Note that regional high school athletic conferences are there for driving convenience (budget) and have almost no meaning for an encyclopedia. Big School beats Little School. So what? But conferences by size at the state level, even small states (provinces), have notability IMO. I think a lot of regional athletic conferences for colleges are similar but am not quite so certain.

I know nothing about athletic conferences at any level (if any!) outside of English speaking countries. Student7 (talk) 20:55, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Beijing No.4 High School

While I was paring down the unassessed articles list, I came across this school. I think it may be a "high" priority article, and there is a possibility it may warrant "Top" status as there is a strong feel that this may be one of the best schools in China. It has an impressive list of alumni, and it appears to have played some role (however minor) in the revolution, and even in helping China secure the Olympics. I have engaged with an editor who seems to have extensive experience in editing the Chinese wikipedia, but is newer to the English Wikipedia, and has informed me that, especially in terms of the older historic aspects of the school, third party sources likely don't exist, but that an alumni site might provide some backing. If some more experienced editors could give some advice, I think this is an article about an interesting school that has been witness to some really important history, in a part of the world that still remains less known to much of the English speaking world. I will open a section over on the talk page. LonelyBeacon (talk) 00:44, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Grade-based notability

My AfD of The Fenn School, which serves grades 4-9 in the US, has sparked a debate on grade-based notability at Wikipedia talk:Schools. Raymie (t • c) 19:32, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

RFC for naming of by school student related categories

For a while now, there have been many discussions about the correct naming for categories that contain students of individual schools. We currently are using at least 4 different forms to address various regional differences. These are Category:People educated at schoolname, Category:Former pupils of schoolname, Category:schoolname alumni and Category:Old schoolnicknameians. At this point, there are still some naming issues between the first two and converting the last to anything else. I believe that the parent category for all of these is Category:Alumni by educational institution.

One large group of nominations that drove the creation of this RFC is here. There are about 15 associated individual CfDs there. These discussions link to some of the previous discussions which have reached multiple conclusions. This last set of discussions is also tainted by violations of WP:CANVASS. Historically bulk nominations don't work since the results for different institutions can be different. Conversely, individual nominations don't work since some editors claim that this is trying to bypass what is the common consensus that a bulk nomination would support and oppose for that reason.

CfDs generally don't have the participation that other classes of discussions have with discussions often closing very limited input (similar to what we get for some nominations at WP:RM). So in the interest of getting the input from a wider segment of the community it is believed that an RFC would help.

One example of what a category can look like when there is mixed results is Category:Former pupils by school in England. This category also shows a different issue in that while it is a 'by school' one, using the 'old fooian' naming does not identify for most casual readers the name of the school. This leads to a main discussion point here. Should we retain categories in the form Category:Old schoolnicknameians in violation of WP:OFFICIAL but, while being obscure, likely conforming to WP:COMMONNAME? I'll note that many of the naming policies and guidelines don't really cover category names. So a reading of Wikipedia:Categorization and Wikipedia:Category names may be helpful for some.

I'm not going to list a suggested solution for a survey at this time, but let one evolve from the discussion. The 'old fooian' issue is probably the difficult one. I think the other issues can can resolved by simply agreeing on the name for country parent category and then using that for the subcategories. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:55, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Support the status quo: Over the years, this "Old Fooians" question has proved to be quite a visceral issue, with some surprisingly aggressive debates about it. In my view, we do not need a "one size fits all" approach to naming these school categories for former students or pupils, and the constant pursuit of one is a recipe for a lot more conflict over the months and years ahead. Vegaswikian, you say "using the 'old fooian' naming does not identify for most casual readers the name of the school", but the simple answer to that is to include a link to the school in the category summary, which should be good practice in any event. We certainly need to take casual readers into account, but in an encyclopedia names should not be chosen because people lack the specific knowledge which they come here to find. Moonraker (talk) 01:51, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

And it should be noted that you may be responsible for violating WP:CANVASS. I'll leave it to the closing admin to make the decision on how to deal with responses by those you notified. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:23, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

It is somewhat ironic that the first respondent in an rfc resulting from a cfd 'tainted by violations of WP:CANVASS' should immediately canvass all those who supported 'Old Boodlefoodleians' in the said cfd, eg this diff and 6 other diffs within minutes of each other. Old Boodlefoodleians do tend to stick together. Occuli (talk) 19:54, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

• Rename all this was meant to only by a policy for UK, other places have other issues and have generally reached consensus on the form they use) to People educated at Foo. This is the most functional and useful form. We have debated other forms and come up with this as a compromise that raises the least red flags. People have over and over again explained why many of the terms in the status quo do not work.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:03, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
• Rename all to a more understandable format, such as "People educated at FOO". WP:COMMONNAME applies to article names, and categories can be treated slightly differently for purposes of clarity. The vast majority of the "Old FOOian"-style names are essentially forms of jargon only understood by comparatively few. "People educated at FOO" is simple, clear, neutral, and relatively unable to be misunderstood. Category redirects, of course, should be placed on any alternate names that are commonly used by the "in crowd". Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:08, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
• Comment I have explained this elsewhere and so have others so I did not see why I should here. I will try though since there are no links. People educated at Foo has multiple advantages. "old fooian" is obscure, probably violates WP:Jargon, has no clear connection between the institution and the name in many cases, which makes it hard to detect when we have a disambiguation problem (it was mentioned that Category:Old Cliftonians is a cat that covers 2 distinct and non-related schools, but we are applying it to one although we have an article on the other). There is no rule in how to convert. The majority derive from the name by adding -ian, -ite or such at the end, sometines complicated by dropping an ending vowel. A few add just put old on the fron, so we add -s to pluralize (except Category:Old Lancing, where there is no -s, so it may or may not break rules for pluralizing). However many use names deirved at by other manners. Several use the name of the founder, which is often obscure. Others use a part of the official name which is rarely referenced. Others use an old name of the school and it sometimes is unclear if that can apply to those educated at the school under the current name. Some use a latanized form of the name, in one case creating overlap with a universities Latin form. Others use the name of the town where the school is, in some cases when there are multiple schools in the town. Still others use the name of the town where the school used to be. Others use phrases like "academicals" that could in theory apply to any place with academy in its name. There are a few old fooian forms that I have not even explained their origin.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:29, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
• Comment Well now that I have given a taste of why the old fooian form does not work, I will explain why we should use people educated at foo. "Former pupils of foo" fails because there are certain people who insist that pupil is no longer the accepted term for those being educated at secondary schools in the UK. Former studients of foo fails because another group as vocally insists that no one not yet at university level is a student in the Uk. Both of these terms also have the drawback of saying "former". This would exclude people currently being educated at these schools who are notable such as 1-members of royal families, 2-child actors/singers, 3-possibly some figure skaters and maybe people in a few other sports. Secondly "former" might give people the idea it would be good to create cats like "former politicians", "former doctors" and who knows what else, and it is not, so if we can avoid that word we should. "alumni" is used in almost every other education case, but people vehemently insist that in the UK "alumni" is only used for those who went to a university, and some people seem to want to argue that it is fairly rare even there. "people educated at foo" thus 1-avoids the student/pupil war which has no chance of being settled, 2-avoids former, with its excluding a some potential cat members, possibly spawning persen parralel cats and encoraging former elsewhere where we do not want it, 3- is clearly a way people would describe these things in the UK, and is in many cases the language used in the text, 4-clearly links the category to its parent institution, making it clear when we need further disambiguation based on the disambiguation used in the article name of the school, 5- allows for the term to be altered to the current term when the school changes its name, as we do with university cats like Alumni of Oxford Brookes University, 6- since we pretty much only have this in the UK and we have it agreed to the People educated at form, we avoud the Alumni of foo/foo alumni debate, which we currently have some schools with each of these forms in the UK cat.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:29, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
• Rename all to "People educated at (X)." I think it's time to give up on "Alumni." Over the years I've seen many people complain that "alumni" doesn't cover current students, doesn't cover all grades of students, and doesn't cover all genders of students. While I don't have any of these problems with it, I'm certainly not in favor of a lack of clarity. "Pupils" is equally problematic, as it really doesn't seem appropriate for college students in the US. "Old Whatevers" may be the most egregious bit of jargon I've ever seen in the category system, and I would like to see it completely expunged. That leaves me with "People educated at," which is clean, useful, and true in all cases.--Mike Selinker (talk) 03:20, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
• Support renaming - I have no problem with either People educated at School or "school alumni", or even "Alumni of School". I do have a problem when article/category titles are written in such a way that they are almost meta- in their presentation ... I'm not such a big person on the need for consistency, but I do have a problem when something can be titled more obviously and isn't. LonelyBeacon (talk) 06:03, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
• Support - tentatively - I support the standardisation of the categories, and my preferred is "Former students (or pupils) of Foo", I do not support renaming to alumi, as to me in the UK this implies those with an association to a University rather than a school, unlike in the states where it is the standard - to sum up I support, but not with the word alumni. Glanis^Talk 07:23, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
• Comment I have interpreted this to apply only to the UK school issues. That is the only place where there is not a consensus. Alumni technically can be applied to current stedents, and its use is universal or almost universal in the case of university and college categories. Maybe I have made to many assumptions, but the UK schools is really the only place where we even discuss the various cats. A few other non-university cats use other words, but university and college is universally using alumni, and with Britain where the topic most at hand having clear distinction between school and university there is no reason to think this is meant to apply to anything except primary and secondary schools. Maybe we do need a clearer indication of what exactly we are discussing. However the old fooians do not enter into British universities and colleges, so there was no reason to suspect such were under discussion until Mike Selinker snuck mention of universities into his discussion. I can give long and involved discussions of why alumni should be used at all levels in the US. I guess I should have read the start more closely, but the four forms are all present in the UK, it was from a UK related cat discussion that I came, the other cat discussions have almost all been in the UK, and technically the UK has at least five cat forms, both alumni of school and school alumni. There might be reason to rename everything, everywhere at all levels to "people educated at X", but with everything in the header about "schools" and no mention of universities, there is no reason to think most commentors expected this to apply more broadly, and with Vegaswikian using the uniquely troubled UK cats as an example it is understanable why people might interpret this discussion more narrowly than everything, everywhere.John Pack Lambert (talk) 07:29, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Sorry, I thought you were proposing a discussion on everything, not just on UK pre-university schools. For those, I support getting all of them to one standard, and if we can't get all of them to that standard, then at least all the non-"Old Whatevers" to that standard. It seems the only one not punched full of holes is "People educated at," which has my support if "alumni" is unavailable. But having different standards for the non-"Old Whatevers" is ridiculous, and should be changed immediately to something consistent. The minimum this RfC should accomplish is that.--Mike Selinker (talk) 23:42, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
• Proposal for entire cat tree I have looked at the whole cat tree and have the following proposal. 1- in Category:Alumni by university or college use alumni. This is used for all cats there. The alumni of univeristy/university alumni should be determined on a country by country basis. 2-In case of Category:Graduates of Air Force Academies, I think we should thus move this categories contents into the Univeristy and colleges tree, unless I severly misunderstand what RAF College Cranwell is, in either case drop the "graduates" and change to alumni or if Cranwell is sub-tertiary, change to "people educated at". 3- rearrange Category:Alumni by drama school so that it does not combine secondary and tertiary, then realign the contents into the relevant secondary or tertiary cats and follow their rules. 4-Category:Alumni by secondary school. I do not think there is a world-wide solution for this cat, we should go for nation by nation solutions. A-US, Canada, Ghana, Fiji and other cats that all use alumni- leave alumni unless there is a country specific argument for change. B-Australia, leave as is with all specific cats at People educated at X. C-Ireland, end the old fooian forms. Open to a discussion where we can determine if alumni is apprpirate form since it is used by 8 of the 12 schools, or if we should use people educated at. This introduces another form that has not been mentioned yet Category:Past pupils of The High School, Dublin. D- New Zealnd, leave former students since this is evidently the agreed on form in New Zealand. E- Pakistan. This has 1 old fooian, 1 alumni of school and 4 fooians (no old even, althoug Category:Patricians (St. Patrick's High School, Karachi is not as opague as the others. These need to be renamed, probably all to people educated at X. F- Sierra Leone, there is one cat here, but it is Category:Old Edwardians (St. Edwards). I would say go to People educated at School here, but it probably can go through an individual CfD. G- South Africa, this uses not only old fooians , 1 alumni (out of 15 cats) but also such categories as Category:Paarl Old Boys which may or may not be distinct from Category:Paarl Gimnasium Old Boys. I was told an old boys form would never fly by some of the most ardent defenders of the old fooian form. I would say move this entire country cat to people educated at foo. H- Sri Lanka has three old fooians intermixed with 12 alumni of. I would say shift all to alumni, but it might be worth opening to a Sri Lanka specific discussion. I- United Kingdom- move all to People educated at foo.John Pack Lambert (talk) 07:56, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
• Support status quo. The "Old Fooian" forms are recognisable names for former pupils of schools in the UK and are commonly used - claims that they are jargon are ludicrous, since Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and is meant to educate. "Alumni of Foo" would simply be wrong per WP:ENGVAR, as the term is not used in the UK except for former students of tertiary institutions. It is never used for primary or secondary pupils. This has been pointed out again and again. "Former pupils of Foo" would be mildly acceptable and is the form that should be used for schools without an "Old Fooian" form. Arguments that the British government now refers to students and not pupils don't really hold water, as 1) it doesn't apply to independent schools, which still use "pupils", and 2) government usage in 2011 does not and should not affect the vast majority of categorised articles about people who went to school when "pupil" was still the normal form; Wikipedia is not a revisionist document (unless the language used is actually unacceptable today, which is clearly not the case here). But frankly, there is no need to use a constructed name ("Former pupils of Foo") when an actual name ("Old Fooians") already exists. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:39, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

• Support status quo - Necrothesp makes the very good point that we should not be inventing new terms when we already have actual terms. Alumni would be paticularly unacceptable - an imposition of foreign language usage on a British subject, which is contrary to ENGVAR. Former pupils and former students are not suited for universal use on British schools for the reasons Necrothesp gives - for example, I was a pupil at Penrice School and a student at St Austell VIth Form college, but I have friends of the same age who were pupils at VIth form, and know children now who are variously students or pupils depending on the individual school usage. This is a perennial proposal. Has anyone tagged the cats so that watchers will know about this discussion? DuncanHill (talk) 09:05, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
• Support the status quo as Moonraker and others above. Use WP:COMMONNAME in local countries rather than trying to be procrustean. Why do we need a "one size fits all"? As stated by Moonraker, a brief introduction with a link to the school can clarify as needed. — Jonathan Bowen (talk) 09:14, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

• Rename all the UK ones to "People educated at FOO". (I am not aware of any cfds which have objected to 'alumni' in the States; there have been cfds which advocated deletion of all US (high) school alumni cats but the name has not been seriously challenged.) Apart from 'Old Etonian' and a very few others, the term 'Old BoodleFoodleian' is not used used in UK English except within 'Old BoodleFoodleian' circles. I have never heard Tony Blair described as an 'Old Fettesian' (google immediately comes up with a source for this claim in the Times, no less: "No one refers to the Old Westminster Nick Clegg, or Old Fettesian Tony Blair, but at times it seems as if the Tory leader’s real name is The Old Etonian David Cameron") or John Betjeman as an Old Cholmeleian, Old Dragon or Old Marlburian. "People educated at FOO" is a neutral descriptive phrase, not a 'constructed name', cf 'Category:People from Liverpool vs Category:Liverpudlians or Category:Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge vs Category:Caians. In my opinion the placing of an article in a category should always follow transparently from the contents of the article without any further research: X went to Foo School, ergo 'Cat:People educated at FOO School', not 'Cat:Old BoodleFoodleians'. (By all means let us put at the top of the category "People educated at FOO are known as Old BoodleFoodleians" and by all means keep 'Cat:Old BoodleFoodleians' as a redirect.) Occuli (talk) 09:40, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
• Question - Do we have to have one or the other? Could we use both "Old Fooians" and "People Educated at Foo" and let time take its course? I suspect that within a year or two we'd find one of these atrophying. Then have the discussion again. If we can't have both then:
• Support the status quo since at the end of the day I find little evidence to suggest that what we do now doesn't actually work. It just seems to be something that editors like to look at from time to time. --Teach46 (talk) 09:48, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
• Support the status quo since regional variations should be allowed and it is in accordance with WP:COMMONNAME. Since the categories for USA and Canada uses their own terminology, so should the UK and other countries be allowed to do so. The Old Fooian, with a few variations, is used for a large number of schools in the UK and in a number of countries, so is widely understood. A myth seems to have developed that pupils is not used for secondary schools on the basis of the comments of one contributor. No evidence has been provided to support this, although there is evidence to contradict this, eg the glossary on the UK government website states "Secondary schools generally cater for pupils aged 11-16 or 11-18".[1] Thus I did not think there is any problem with using Former Pupils in categories and I think it is the best option for those UK schools which do not use Old Fooian or Alumni. Cjc13 (talk) 11:16, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
  • I'm a secondary school teacher in the UK - most schools I've been involved with refer to the pupils as "kids" when talking informally (between staff, with parents and the pupils themselves) and "students" on a formal basis. Pupils would, of course, be understood but is seldom used. --Teach46 (talk) 09:12, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
• Comment. Many categories for UK schools have recently been created by one or two editors using "People educated at". Many of these have only 1 or 2 entries. This seems to be a deliberate attempt to sway the ongoing discussions and does not seem to be in keeping with the spirit of Wikipedia. Cjc13 (talk) 11:23, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
• Rename, in general, to People educated at schoolname. "Former pupils of schoolname", in particular, fails the "timelessness" test. The encylopedia should aim to be timeless. When the individual becomes historic, "former" is no longer needed. "schoolname alumni" and "Old schoolnicknameians" may be appropriate where these terms are independantly notable (i.e. where the category can follow the name of a parent article. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:40, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

• Isn't educated past tense, so fails "timelessness" test? In practice, I think there are very few schoolchildren with articles in Wikipedia, and they could be included whatever the name of the category. Cjc13 (talk) 21:53, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

• No it's a passive form that works in the present. And there are nearly a thousand articles in the year of birth categories from 1995-2006 - a mix of child actors, young sports stars, young musicians, young prodigies, families heavily in the public light and so forth. They're disproportionately likely to end up in the school's categories because information about their education is usually easy to find in profiles. Timrollpickering (talk) 22:24, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

• To me it comes across as past tense. People at the school would be described as "People being educated at". Of course many of the ones you suggest would be at American schools where they would all be listed under Alumni, although that is normally considered to be for those who are a "graduate of a school, college, or university." Cjc13 (talk) 23:19, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

• Support a consistent form within each country Where a country has a consistent terminology use that, where it does not then use a clear neutral term that makes the categories understandable and accessible to those not versed in specialist jargon. The "Old Fooians" forms may be used by schools in a lot of countries but that is not the same thing as the individual terms being widely understood in those countries - by and large these terms are known to the schools themselves and those who went to them but to the wider world are opaque (and "Old Etonians" is very much exceptional in recognition).
  It's clear from searching around that some schools in the UK now use "alumni" but many others don't (and a lot don't seem to have formal relations with their ex pupils/students). It's also clear from looking around that there is a mix of use on "pupils" and "students" by schools these days and it's best to avoid that mess. "People educated at" is a term that avoids such a minefield completely and seems the best available compromise.
  The parent categories for each country should best reflect the term used for individual schools in that country and working upwards has been the best direction so far. Timrollpickering (talk) 13:14, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
• Comment. In the UK the use of different terminology partly reflects the different nature of the schools, eg indepentdent and state, grammar and comprehensive, etc, so I think it is reasonable to allow different names for the categories. As regatds "pupils" and "students", even if a school chooses to describe the children as "students" it does not make "pupils" incorrect. I think many schools would use both terms, but for the categories pupils is better to avoid confusion with university students. Cjc13 (talk) 13:36, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
• Don't use alumni for people with master's degrees or doctorates. That's for sure. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 14:39, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

This suggestion wouldn't be applied to colleges/universities, would it (we are talking strictly about secondary schools and below)? LonelyBeacon (talk) 15:42, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I did mention that the top category is Category:Alumni by educational institution, but the problem that we have had is likely limited to the Category:Alumni by secondary school branch. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:31, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I see the point. Thanks to you and Cjc13 for clarifying the position. LonelyBeacon (talk) 19:57, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

GeorgeLouis - why not? Please expand. My Masters is from Durham University and they call me an alumnus.--Teach46 (talk) 09:14, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

• Comment Do I understand GeorgeLouis to be arguing that alumni should not be used for those "with" masters and doctorates? I think he means that it should not cover people who earned masters or doctorates with an institution. I would say these should be included in US cats. We have Category:Harvard Law School alumni and Category:Harvard Business School alumni (basically everyone at least studied for an MBA/DBA) and Category:Harvard Medical School alumni, as well as parrellel cats for at least 50 and probably over 100 specific graduate schools that force this, including Category:Harvard Graduate School of Education alumni and Category:Columbia School of Journalism alumni along with several at other sub-university institutions which are both graduate and undergraduate (Category:Wharton School alumni would be this) so we would make a radical change if we start classifying graduate students as not beoming alumni. In British usage there may be another system (although with cats like Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics it is not closely followed), but in American institutions saying that graduate students are alumni seems to make sense.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:20, 28 July 2011 (UTC)