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Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (schools)/Archive 6

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Latest comment: 17 years ago by Dahliarose in topic Defining "Unique"
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Use of Hatnotes

Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I have a problem with this part of Wikipedia: Naming conventions (schools)#Choosing a name:

In these cases, if only one other article with a similar name exists, both articles (School Name and School Name (___location)) would use hatnotes to link to each other.

This seems to suggest that one should put an unnecessary hatnote on the article with the unambiguous name. This is in direct contradiction to the Manual of Style (Wikipedia:Hatnotes#Disambiguating article names that are not ambiguous).

Also in the main this guideline seems to copy the general guidelines that might be relevant to schools. What unique rules does it include (except the aforementioned one)?

Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley talk contrib 17:46, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

The major thing is the format for the Parenthetical parameter so that we don't get Golden High School (Colorado), Golden High School (Colorado, USA), Golden High School (Golden, Colorado), Golden High School (United States), and Golden High School All at the same time. (PS, What is a hatnote?) Adam McCormick 23:39, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Read the guideline Adam!  ;) Hatnotes are another name for top of the page disambiguation...which is what the guideline says should be done in certain cases. Miss Mondegreen talk  08:59, June 27 2007 (UTC)
Sorry I didn't get to you early Joe, I thought I'd replied already :(....
If you accidently get to the article War (band) and you should have been taken to War, you know what went wrong and can not only get to the right article but can fix it. This isn't true with schools. The issue isn't notability in terms of unique, it's that they're both about the same thing--they're both school articles. Links have a propensity to be done wrong, especially when there's so much article moving. If someone gets taken to the wrong school article, if they don't know the subject--they may not know that they're at the wrong article, though something may seem off to them. And if they do know that they are at the wrong article, they may be unsure as to what to do next. Given that school articles that share the same name--whatever their other qualities will always be two school articles, hatlinks should go both ways.
I'm not quite sure about your other question. Can you elaborate? Miss Mondegreen talk  08:59, June 27 2007 (UTC)

Consensus

Latest comment: 17 years ago9 comments3 people in discussion

Do we have consensus that as a pure naming guideline (no preemptive disambiguation) this page is still valid? Adam McCormick 23:21, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

The guideline still calls for preemptive disambiguation:

"If the school name is not unique, the ___location of each school should be added as a qualifier in parentheses."

"Unique - When there is no other article on Wikipedia with a significantly similar name, and it cannot be reasonably shown that another school with a similar name exists."
*shrugs* I think so. There haven't been any issues raised in awhile--not with the idea of the guideline at any rate. The problem is that we moved the issue of writing a guideline for figuring out if a school is unique, and guidelines for naming (by region)--which were the two contensious issues, to the School naming task force, and no work has been done there. I started it up, but I didn't even publicize it with the other wikiprojects or anything else--I've been busy, and we just don't seem to have a lot of manpower on this issue. Miss Mondegreen talk  04:43, July 2 2007 (UTC)
OK, it's just I disappeared for two weeks so I thought I'd check. I'm going to do some significant rewriting and repose the guideline. I'll be including specific parameter guidelines for the major english population centers so if someone could extend or fix problems with the following list (Please just edit it directly) that would be great:
  1. Australia - (City/Villiage, State/Territory) such as "(Perth, Western Australia)"
  2. Canada - (Town/City, Province/Territory) such as "(Victoria, British Columbia)"
  3. United Kingdom - (Village/Town/City/London borough), eg, Forest School (Winnersh), Forest School (Horsham), Forest School (Manchester), Forest School (Walthamstow)
  4. United States - (Municipality, State) such as "(Loveland, Colorado)"
Was unsigned, signing Adam McCormick 23:02, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I think we all recognise that a guideline is needed. There is consensus that there should be no pre-emptive disambiguation. However, as discussed above there is already an existing guideline which covers the naming of places at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements), and I think we should be following this guideline for school disambiguation. In practice, schools in Australia, Canada and the United States would have the double ___location as shown above. However, I think UK schools should only have the one ___location parameter, in accordance with the settlements guideline. UK schools are already disambiguated in this way and I think you will end up with all sorts of problems if you go against current practice and common sense. UK places are not automatically identified by county in everyday usage in the same way that, for example, American places are qualified by the state. I've therefore amended the UK entry above to give the single ___location parameter. I would have thought that it is highly unlikely that there are two schools of the same name in two different places of the same name in the UK. If further disambiguation is required then the following format should be used:
- School (town/village, county) or School (borough/suburb, city) ,eg, Forest School (Newport, Monmouthshire) or Forest School (Walthamstow, London).
School naming guidelines for other countries need to be worked out on a case by case basis in collaboration with the associated Wikiprojects. Dahliarose 09:15, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

In re filling the paranthesis...

I'm fine with this, except that I think we need to add back in the part about "if the ___location is not unique". I used Georgia (U.S. state) and Georgia (country) as an example a while back, and I really don't have a good example off of the top of my head, but not all of these place names are unique.
When the name of the ___location of the school is not identifiably unique, additional ___location information has to be added.
The guideline had read:
Of course, that's a bad example in re the guideline. I'd chosen it specifically for the Georgia part, and both schools are unique, IIRC, and that aside, the examples should read (Georgia) and (Georgia, United States) because both schools are named after their locations.
At any rate, schools in places like Surrey are an exception and should include the country/territory/province in the disambiguated name. Cases like this should be pretty rare. Both the school name and the ___location name would have to not be unique in order for this to be an issue. Miss Mondegreen talk  11:25, July 2 2007 (UTC)

reply to dahliarose in re disambiguation

Woah...now I'm confused. You're not ok with saying that schools whose names are not unique being pre-emptively disambiguated? I though you were only against non-unique disambiguation.
My two cents on the disambiguation v. naming issue. For starters I think that they're connected. We're now starting to cover naming pretty well but we've barely touched disambiguation.
We have not touched anything other than really simple disambiguation and redirect standards (two or more schools, same name, name without ___location is disambiguation page, no redirect pages). We don't tell them what to do when it's not standard--where redirect pages are needed, where they're ok and where they're bad because it becomes too easy to link to the wrong article via redirect. And we have no real guidance yet for how to figure out if your school name is unique or if it's not. Some of it needs to be set down in guideline form--is the XXX Academy of the Performing Arts similar enough to the XXX High School to be on the same disambiguation page? Are they too similar for redirects to the disambiguated page name? Or are t=redirects necessary? We've discussed nothing about disambiguation other than pre-emptive, yes or no, and the guideline is seriously lacking for that.
Which is one of the reasons I am uneasy removing the line about pre-emptive. The disambiguation part of the guideline hasn't bee formed at all and has been barely touched in discussion. I'm against making major decisions (I'd switch this back to a proposed tag maybe) when we have so few people discussing this on a regular basis, and when so little of the meat is there. We should be discussing this in context and we aren't. We haven't written the context yet.
The second reason I'm against removing the line about pre-emptive naming is I'm very much for it, and it's one of the main reasons that I restarted the guideline. I've had experience moving pages down the line and it causes real problems. It's an immense amount of work for starters. We don't just need to fix article links, but talk page links (it's not like there's a redirect in most cases), and the talk page links need to be piped so that the discussion looks the way it did before (one more added layer of complications we don't need). And in addition to the fact that doing this is time consuming and hard, there's a lot that can't be done. We can't fix links in histories, off-wiki links, etc. And those are just some of the problems with the links. If we know that there is more than one "Apple Valley High School", even though none of them have articles yet, when writing the first, it should be pre-emptively disambiguated. If we only do this with school names that aren't unique what's the problem?
My one concern is that at the moment, people are left on their own to figure out what unique is. They're left on their own to figure out much of disambiguation and I think we need to fix that. Miss Mondegreen talk  11:25, July 2 2007 (UTC)
You've lost me here. I'm not sure that I quite understand your comments. If a school name is not unique then some form of disambiguation is required. All we're trying to do here is to decide what should go in the brackets in different countries if disambiguation is required. I think Adam is quite right to focus in the first instance on the main English-speaking countries. In any case, America is really the main problem, simply because of the sheer number of schools involved. If we can get America right, we can sort out the other countries later. Surely a Google search is all it takes to establish if a school is unique. I don't quite understand the problem. There can't be many schools now which don't have websites, apart from those in third-world countries which are highly unlikely to have similar names to English-language schools. Dahliarose 23:08, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Eh, I should stop wiki-ing when tired. My first point was that there's a lot that's missing. My second was that you said you were against pre-emptive disambiguation which confused me because I thought you'd said earlier, and your comment now seems to support that you are, as long as we only pre-emptively disambiguated school names which are not unique, which is what the guideline calls for.
Yes in most cases a google search is all that's necessary but we should give some guidance on how to search. The number of people who are search engine inept is quite astounding, and there are specific things people have to think about. One issue is that the more the name is not unique, the more other things will pop up instead--the harder it will be to find alternate schools. For example, University High School--there's not a single unique word there. We also need to write into the guideline how similar names need to be in order to be disambiguated--we mainly deal with indentical names right now, not similar ones.
And yeah, America is the main problem, but my point about non-unique names goes to point there too as I mentioned earlier with Georgia. That's just a generic rule that applies everywhere. The problem is it was removed from the guideline because the examples were bad. I don't care if we put it in using Georgia as the example or Surrey or Surry--we can use anything from the ambiguous place names category. It would be helpful if we could use a real example--two schools that are not unique (therefore require disambiguation) in each of the two places that share a name (requiring further diambiguation). We can obviously use in the example schools that are unique just to show what to do in the event that they were, but I'd prefer not to. Miss Mondegreen talk  02:30, July 3 2007 (UTC)
I suspect that there are very few, if any, schools which have identical school names and identical but ambiguous place names. I'd be interested to know if you can actually find any examples. In any case Surrey is not a problem as the county wouldn't be included for English schools and for the places in America, Canada and Australia, we're already using the municipality, state/province format so there is no confusion. Surrey is also a county in Jamaica but there is currently not a single Jamaican school with an article in Wikipedia. Jamaican schools would in any case be disambiguated by place name rather than county. There are also no school articles on Wikipedia for Georgia. I imagine too that Georgian schools will have distinctive-sounding Russian names and it is pretty unlikely that any will share a name with a school in the American state. Dahliarose 09:06, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Comment: Although I haven't been involved with this discussion, I'd like to weigh in with some comments. I've created a fair number of dab pages for high schools in the US. I've tended to dab schools only with the state as long as there are not multiple schools of the same name in the same state. In the case of "county" high schools—i.e., schools with "County" in the school name—the state by itself is a better dab than the community, which is quite often obscure and sometimes is not an incorporated place or even a post office. — Dale Arnett 20:11, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that the state isn't specific enough for a general guideline, and putting a lot of exemptions in just complicates matters. I would also argue that a small school in an unincorporated area may not be notable enough for an article anyway. The point is that every school in the US can be disambiguated using municipality and state and that there are very few for which this wouldn't be enough. Adam McCormick 23:01, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
If you could show a few good examples, we might mention this in the task force. there are going to be obscure exceptions that shouldn't really be dealt with here, but that we could list in the task force Miss Mondegreen talk  21:40, July 4 2007 (UTC)
You may have misunderstood me... I was saying that for many schools in the U.S., especially high schools and even more specifically "county" high schools, the state is enough of a disambiguation without the city being necessary. I agree that elementary and even middle schools are so numerous that the "city, state" dab is probably necessary, but once you get to the high school level, there are noticeably fewer examples of multiple high schools of the same name in the same state. This is especially true for "county" high schools, since there can be only one county/parish of a given name in an individual state (although there can be "directional" high schools—for example, in the state I live in, Bullitt and Oldham Counties have a "Foo County/Central High School" and two schools with the county name and a compass direction). Also, if a school shares its name with the city in which it is located, it normally need only be disambiguated with the state, IMHO—for example, in my state, I believe that Paris High School, Paris, Kentucky could just as easily be rendered as "Paris High School (Kentucky)". That being said, however, I could see the case for uniformity... — Dale Arnett 00:47, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
In the case of county schools, this guideline only calls for the state name as the "municipality" is already part of the school name. Paris High School (Kentucky) is correct Adam McCormick 06:26, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Proposed currently?

Latest comment: 17 years ago10 comments3 people in discussion

I have changed the tag from disputed to proposed - the dispute was over the previous version of this page, not the current one. Currently, as far as I can see, we are just tinkering with what the final guideline is going to be. As soon as consensus is established for adoption of a proposal - the accepted tag can be put on. Camaron1 | Chris 17:04, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

It's a pity we can't get some input from editors from other countries as the debate is currently dominated by American editors. I'm still not convinced that we should be recommending the double ___location parameter 'in a nutshell' as the disambiguation method for all schools. The US, Canada and Australia are probably exceptions rather than the rule because in all these countries people tend to use the double parameter in everyday speech in a way which they don't in other countries. We don't want to make disambiguation unnecessarily complicated. Dahliarose 22:14, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Not to be nationalist, but those three countries together comprise the largest population of english speakers in the world (Much more than half) so by definition, they are the rule. Adam McCormick 04:03, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
We do have to look for the longterm though - most schools on the En Wikipedia might be in English speaking countries now, but eventually En Wikipedia will have better coverage of schools in other very large countries such as China and India. It is going to be very difficult to simplify world ___location parameters without been to vague. Camaron1 | Chris 08:36, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Ok, well then how about we adjust the guideline as follows:
The general form for a disambiguated School article title is: [[School Name (___location)]]
___location disambiguation is municipality if none of the following apply:
  • us, canada and australia use (municiaplity, state/region)
  • if there are multiple schools with the same name within the same municipality then further disambiguation is required (borough/suburb/? municipality)
  • if the place name used for disambiguation is ambiguous, it needs to be disambiguated one name further so that people know which surrey and which georgia
  • if a school is named after an ambiguous place name and it needs to be disambiguated, the name should not be repeated in disambiguation (this one is already in the guideline)
all of the rules have been stated before at some time or another--some are in the guideline right now but need to be rewritten. the issue of disambiguating some places (UK?) to (borough, municipality) was raised, so that should be decided. but if we can sort those things out and find examples for the ones we're missing I think we're good, no? what do people think of this? Miss Mondegreen talk  10:29, July 6 2007 (UTC)

There is no place for nationalist prejudices on Wikipedia. Just because the vast majority of school articles are American we should not produce US-specific guidelines and then inappropriately enforce them on the rest of the world. There is already an existing Wikipedia project for countering such bias. See: Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. In the absence of input from editors from other countries I've been looking at the List of schools by country to gauge what the current practice is as this is presently our best measure of common sense usage. I have not gone through every single country, and in fact many large countries, such as China, don't even appear to have any school articles at all. For many other countries the sample size is not large enough to establish what the current practice is. However, as far as I can establish most countries use just one place name qualifier. The format varies from country to country. Here are a few examples:

Therefore, as I've already argued, on a country count the dual parameter format used for American, Canadian and Australian schools is the exception rather than the rule. There are inevitably going to be differences from one country to another and I think all we can hope to do is establish consistency within countries. If we can't reach agreement perhaps we should go back to my original suggestion and make this a guideline for US school names only. Dahliarose 10:40, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

In reply to Miss M's comments I agree that the nutshell should show School (___location) as the preferred form for disambiguation. We should then list specific exceptions (such as US, Canada, and Australia), separately in the guideline. Surrey and Georgia would not be a problem as the English county would not be included in English schools and the country would not be included for schools in Georgia. The North American places would all have their own distinctive double ___location parameters.Dahliarose 10:46, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree that we should not be bias to-wards specific countries. However, I think we should cut down the world-wide guideline to School (Location) with School, Location been ruled out. I don't think there are any cultural reasons between the choice of either style - until now it was just up to the article creator! I say to stick to brackets as that appears to be used more and allows for double ___location parameters (such as School (Place, Place)), unlike the comma. Camaron1 | Chris 15:48, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
I think I remember reading somewhere that a decision had already been reached about the use of brackets rather than the comma format. (I have however noticed that most UK churches seem to use the comma format rather than brackets). I propose that the nutshell should read as follows:

We would also need to have separate sections with disambiguation examples for all the main English-speaking countries. Dahliarose 17:17, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree whole-heartedly with that, but it's a little long-winded for a nutshell. I would just make the ___location a link to the section/page on settlement naming and on what to do for each country like so:
That way we don't show any national bias, one way or the other Adam McCormick 17:45, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
I think Adams is my choice - I am glad we are reaching an agreement. We can then go on to specify the rules for every country in the article itself. Camaron1 | Chris 21:53, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Moving forward

Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I'm pleased we're finally getting somewhere. I've had a go at redrafting the page based on Adam's revised nutshell. I've set up a framework for providing examples for each English-speaking country where I believe we have consensus. (I'm not too sure what to do about New Zealand. A lot of work is still needed, but at least it's a start. I would imagine most of the existing overview section could be incorporated into the US section. Dahliarose 22:29, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

OK, here's a problem

Latest comment: 17 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion

How do we disambiguate Dartford Grammar School for Girls and Dartford Grammar School when they are in the same city located near each other, both only admit girls but are very different schools. Help? Adam McCormick 03:35, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

We don't need to as both schools have unique names! It might help, however, if both schools had 'hatnotes' with links to the other school. The intros and infoboxes are not very clear on either article. One is a boys' grammar which admits girls only in the sixth form, and the other is a girls' grammar, but neither article makes this very clear. Dahliarose 09:59, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't agree, they could both be called "Dartford Grammar School" and anywhere but Dartford itself, noone would know which was which. Adam McCormick 18:36, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
But they're not both called Dartford Grammar School. Both articles use the actual school names. There are quite a few of the old grammar schools which are named in this way. Under the old grammar school/secondary modern system, most towns had their own grammar school(s), and quite often there were separate grammar schools for boys and girls. There are a few more named in a similar way in Category:Grammar schools in Kent. I've added the appropriate hatnotes to the two Dartford school pages. I still don't understand the problem. We can't be responsible for the way schools are named. There are presumably only two Dartford grammar schools in the whole world, and with hatnotes on each page, it is easy to go from one article to the other. Dahliarose 19:27, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
I didn't understand the issue completely, sorry. Hatnotes should be plenty of disambiguation. I am just of the opinion that we should disambiguate anywhere that there could reasonably be a misunderstanding. If this was Somename High School and Someday Secondary School wouldn't they be disambiguated? It just seems like adding the extra word doesn't do enough in most cases, especially for schools that go by a lot of names (Not that these two fall under that group) Adam McCormick 20:13, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes and no Adam. It is the same or similar names, but there are only two in this case, so hatnotes are the way to go. There's no need to move dartford grammar school, create an unnecessary disambiguation page and break a lot of links. If there were a lot of dartfords, then yes, this would be proper. But it is often the case that there are two schools with the same or a similar name and it stops there. They are often close by, or related in some manner. Generally, if they are completely unrelated and there are at least three, it's a sign that there are or will be more. But, yes, it is important to disambiguate similar names. The unique part of the name is often one word, and system changes often change the type of school---the lengthy addendum which makes the name specific enough, unique enough. It's important to look at the specifics of a case before going full speed ahead. While disambiguating early has a lot of positive benefits, we don't want to unnecessarily. Miss Mondegreen talk  23:07, July 11 2007 (UTC)

Massive Disamb issue

Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The schools listed at Lasallian_educational_institutions and this search are in need of a major reorganization and disambiguation effort Adam McCormick 04:10, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

US schools

Latest comment: 17 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion

Am I right in thinking that we are currently recommending that American schools which have the ___location parameter in the title only require disambiguation by state rather than municipality as well? I'm just wondering if for the sake of consistency it would be easier to include both parameters for all US schools which need disambiguation. If we don't we could end up with potentially confusing disambiguation pages. Have a look at the disambiguation page for Lakewood High School as an example. Some of these schools are named after a place called Lakewood and some aren't. However, they nearly all seem to have used the single state parameter for disambiguation purposes. Dahliarose 10:23, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

As per earlier discussion about TPS, I don't think we should ever see Lakewood High School (Lakewood, Colorado) but we should see Lakewood High School (Hebron, Ohio). As for as the Disambiguation page goes, it should just be:
  • Lakewood High School:
    • <list of cities and states>
  • Lakewood Secondary School:
    • <list of cities and states>
Does that sound right? Adam McCormick 18:34, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Are you saying that the layout of the Lakewood High School disambiguation page is incorrect? If so, we could really do with setting up a model disambiguation page to show the preferred format. On the current disambiguation page for Lakewood High School the schools are all listed with their full Wikipedia name showing in brackets. Anyone starting a new article for another Lakewood High School would probably look at what had been done before and follow the existing examples. If they see a school called Lakewood High School (Colorado) they might then think that the usual format is just to disambiguate by state, without realising that the Lakewood place name has been omitted to avoid any duplication. Dahliarose 19:34, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
I am saying that a format as I wrote it above seems easier to understand. And, as long as the redlinks are right, there shouldn't be a problem with creating new pages. I'd think anyone wanting to write an article about a "Lakewood High School" from the list would use the link and, hopefully, would follow this guideline otherwise. If this is an issue then we need to rethink the ___location exemption. Adam McCormick 19:52, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
The format you propose does seem easier to understand but it is not the format which has been followed on any of the school disambiguation pages I've looked at. I don't have any strong feelings either way, but I would have thought it would be easier to follow current practice rather than to have a wholesale re-organisation of all the existing disambiguation pages. The priority is probably to make sure that all the existing red links are properly named so that people will give a new school article the correct title. I change them as I come across them but I'm only scratching at the surface. Dahliarose 22:59, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
There isn't any particular format followed for school disambiguation pages (in general) so I should think it needs to be covered in the guideline. I'm not saying every disambiguation page needs to be changed, but it would at least be nice to have something from here on out. Adam McCormick 23:38, 9 July 2007 (UTC)


ambiguous place names

This goes back to the ambiguous place name problem. If there's more than one school in the same place the name of the municipality is irrelvant. It needs more specific disambiguation in order to specifiy the differences. If there was more than one Forrest School in Berkshire--

Going back to the Surrey example. This is what happens when there are two schools of the same name that need to be disambiguated, and then the place that they need to be disambiguated to (in this case Surrey) is ambiguous)

[[Example school A (Surrey, British Columbia)]]
[[Example school A (Vancouver, British Columbia)]]

[[Example school B (Winnersh)]]
[[Example school B (Surrey, England)]]

[[Example school C (White Plains, North Dakota)]]
[[Example school C (Surrey, North Dakota)]]

[[Example school D (Middlesex, Jamaica)]] also fully diambiguated--not ambiguous
[[Example school D (Surrey, Jamaica)]]


What we're talking about is when the name of the school is not unique and the schools are named after place names that are not unique. And sometimes, like with the example, there are schools named after places that are just located someplace completely different. Sometimes this is because the school is chain like, or because they are emulating a school or whatnot. At any rate, this is what happens:

[[Surrey Acadamy of the Performing Arts (Los Angeles, California)]] -- Los Angeles, California

[[Surrey Acadamy of the Performing Arts (Jamaica)]] -- Surrey, Jamaica

[[Surrey Acadamy of the Performing Arts (England)]] -- Surrey, England

[[Surrey Acadamy of the Performing Arts]] -- Middlesex, Jamaica

[[Surrey Acadamy of the Performing Arts (Winnersh)]] -- Winnersh, England

[[Surrey Acadamy of the Performing Arts (British Columbia)]] -- Surrey, British Columbia

Does this make sense to everyone now? We just don't have the stuff on ambiguous place names written in yet Miss Mondegreen talk  22:59, July 11 2007 (UTC)

Defining "Unique"

Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I would like to add the following section before the disabiguation section (with less equal signs than seen here of course) Adam McCormick 18:21, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

That looks fine. I've just added a few tips about searching. Dahliarose 19:48, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
One should search for notable and verify that none of the results are schools regardless of level, ___location or qualifier? Guess what happens if you search for notable on wikipedia? You're taken here--no list of search results, just here. In order to search on Wikipedia and get a realistic set of results, you have to search wikipedia through a search engine. We should provide to searching within Wikipedia with the top search engines and instruct people to do their wiki searching in a search engine. Besides, getting a list for notable and looking through it for schools would take forever. But searching for the unique word or phrase AND school seriously cuts the list down. Is school enough or do they need to try multiple searches? "unique word or phrase" AND school / "unique word or phrase" AND university etc.
But this won't work for certain schools--like "The Notable Secondary School of Florence". Notable isn't a unique (should it be an unique? it looks right but it's impossible to say!) word--and I know that the rest of the name isn't unique either, but when the school is made up of a string like that, using one word doesn't work. For example, University High School. Not a single word in their is unique, although the university part is what the school is named for, searching for university would be folly itself. Searching for "notable" or notable AND school is ridiculous. Miss Mondegreen talk  04:11, July 12 2007 (UTC)

Determining if a school is unique

First, verify that there are no other articles on Wikipedia about schools with the exact name of the school. If there is no such school, try removing any qualifiers from the name and repeat the search (for an article on The Notable Secondary School of Florence one should run a search for "Notable" and verify that none of the results are schools regardless of level, ___location, or qualifier). Finally, if no other article exists, run this search on a search engine such as Google and verify that no other school is substantially represented in the results. When searching on Google, place the search terms in quote marks to narrow down the results. A search for "De La Salle" will yield results from pages containing only this precise sequence of words. If none of these methods produces a result, the school should be considered "unique".

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