Wiki How:Articles for deletion/List of Victoria Crosses by School

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep.-Wafulz 16:00, 25 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List of Victoria Crosses by School

Cross-indexing of two unrelated topics. List of Victoria Cross recipients is a valid topic, but how is this any more encyclopedic than List of Victoria Crosses by town? Corvus cornix 20:48, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, i see no relevance to this article at all. I see how a list VCs by campaign is useful, but this serves no purpose as far as i can see. It is effectively trivia.Woodym555 20:56, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And we already have List of Victoria Cross recipients by campaign. Corvus cornix 21:08, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

~~We already have [[Category:Victoria Cross lists]], i think the lists there are sufficient.~~ I do appreciate the effort that went into creating this article and your commitment to VC holder articles ~~but i do not see this list as being constructive.~~ I recently got VC through FAC so i understand the sentiment. (n.b. I have alerted WP:ODM about this nomination)

Right. I don't say that there was not a lot of good effort put forth in this article, just that it seems crufty. Corvus cornix 21:18, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

- Keep I have to admit to being persuaded by the arguments of DGG and Dhartung and others. The list is quite extraordinary (which does not in itself merit its inclusion) but it does involve quite a lot of uneccessary duplication. We do already have the list of VCs by campaign which does not discriminate by school. So i am asking for some cleanup, or at least discussion, but i don't think it should be deleted. Woodym555 23:12, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Woodym555, this "does not discriminate by school" suggests a kind of moral judgement against doing so? But the main purpose of Kwib's article must surely be to explore the connection (not a very politically correct one, of course) between valour in the face of the enemy and upbringing. "Discrimination by school" is so much at the heart of the article that you can't have one without the other! Xn4 23:28, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'm leaning delete, but there is a valid rationale for this as at least as late as the First World War young men who received secondary schooling trained through their schools and were called up as school units alongside regular army units. --Dhartung | Talk 21:22, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Maybe that could be included in List of First World War Victoria Cross recipients? Corvus cornix 21:23, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
keep In the UK, a typical officer career was directly from a public school to Sandhurst, and the identification of particular public schools with military service is noteworthy. DGG (talk) 21:41, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ouch, that should be to Sandhurst or Woolwich, DGG! Xn4 22:36, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'm leaning to keep, as the table in this article is so remarkably interesting (though clearly incomplete), and like DGG I find its focus notable. If the article is deleted, could the table I like please be preserved on the Talk page for Victoria Cross or somewhere else? Xn4 22:58, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Having said all that, here is a constructive criticism: among the VCs, there must be men of little or no education, that is, men who went to no school or else to an elementary school only, but they are invisible here. If the article survives, I think this would be a strand worth developing (supposing there are sources for it). Xn4 23:15, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Further to your point, i would like to add that at the moment the number of VCs awarded is roughly even between Officers and enlisted ranks.[1] Most of the enlisted ranks would not have gone to a notable school, let alone a noted public school. This is especially pertinent when we consider that most VCs were awarded before the Second World War. As i said when i changed my mind, i do think it should be kept but it does need improvement. Woodym555 23:32, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

~~Neutral~~ Changed to Keep My main concern is that this really isn't Victoria Crosses by School but rather Officer's Victoria Crosses by School (Subjectively Selected). Woodym555 identifies my primary concerns (especially the inherent bias against Other Ranks, whether educated or illiterate), but unlike him I have difficulty in seeing too much merit to this list (although I appreciate the effort that has been gone to in creating it). I'd be interested in seeing what ideas for change come up in this discussion before I come down on one side or another, but it is my feeling that this information, a worthy fact to include on a particular school's article, is not suitable subject-matter for a list.

Xdamr^talk 00:04, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You know, Xdamr, some of the above, such as the inherent bias against Other Ranks, strikes me as overstated. The only bias which is truly 'inherent' in the incomplete list must be in its incompleteness. The table needs the 'single-VC' schools to be included, and a line for no known school: without them, the whole picture fails to emerge. Xn4 00:44, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Until that happens this list is not from a NPOV. It favours men from the British Public schools. In the case of enlisted men, we may never find the school they went to. I'm inclined towards delete but weakly. --Bduke 01:01, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There you've lost me, Bduke, I don't see any favouring, nor any prospect of any so long as the article is soundly referenced and expands to cover the ground open to it. Just a day after it was begun, it can't be expected to be complete. Some schools, no doubt for complicated reasons, produced a lot of VCs, while others (including most public schools) didn't. That is interesting, and I guess we can be dispassionate about it. Xn4 03:04, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just in case I have misunderstood you, Britiah Public Schools are private schools and traditionally have produced most of the officers in the British army. Officers were more likely to receive the VC than enlisted men, so certainly Public Schools will have more VCs than government schools. That was not my point. That point was that information is strongly biased towards the information for officers rather than enlisted men, so it is virtually impossible to produce a balanced, i.e. neutral list. --Bduke 04:03, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to sound excessively nit-picky (even if I am ;) ) but the VC is also awarded to men of the Royal Navy and RAF - the army don't have a monopoly. (Admittedly the public school/state school division applies to all three services). --Xdamr^talk 04:08, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Officers were more likely to receive the VC than enlisted men..."

No one was likely to receive the VC.

"That point was that information is strongly biased towards the information for officers rather than enlisted men..."

But the list isn't an analysis of VCs from 'public schools' who were officers. The word 'School' in the title includes all schools everywhere, and VCs includes all ranks. Xn4 14:56, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment on above. Am I being that unclear? Of course nobody was likely to receive the VC. Of course I know that the VC was open to all ranks (and the navy, the air corps and air force). There are cases where in one action the officer got the VC and the men, even when acting independently (i.e. not on a direct order), were given a lower medal. The proportion of VCs who were officers is I think higher than the proportion of serving men who were officers, particularly for World War I. However the last point is the key one. The title says "Schools" sure, but every single school on the list is a British Public School or a similar independent school. Look at the sources now added. These sort of schools do not exist for the schools attended by most of the enlisted men who received the VC. Until the list actually contains a reasonable number of recipients from such schools I remain unconvinced that this is not badly biased towards officers and independent schools and stay on "weak delete". It could be moved to user space while people look for sources from people who attended government schools. That would prove me wrong, as would adding such entries now. I have just sampled the List of Australian Victoria Cross recipients. All recipients have an article. Of the first 10 on the list, six are officers and four are not. Only two, both officers, have their school mentioned. This may point also to bias against non-British recipients where again sources on the Schools will be harder or impossible to find. --Bduke 22:34, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Just a day after it was begun, it can't be expected to be complete."

Actually, this line has convinced me - this article is one day old, I'd like to see where it goes from here. Keep from me. --Xdamr^talk 03:25, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - as military service was traditionally a common path for public schoolboys, the two topics are not unrelated at all. Bigdaddy1981 06:21, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - as a worthwhile article of social history. It is noteworthy that these institutions have produced numerous VC holders, in comparison to a great school like Manchester Grammar School that has produced a Nobel Prize winner and famous writers, but seemingly not a single VC. A table of UK schools Nobel Prize winners would be an interesting comparison.
Keep - First, I am the creator of this page and so my vote is obvious. However, I have found this discussion interesting in the extreme. It has been very thought provoking and has raised a number of questions in my mind about the article/list. There seem to be two main objections to the article. The first, that the list cross-references unrelated topics. The second, that the list appears to not be NPOV (if I am using the term correctly). I will address these in turn: First: the list cross references unrelated topics: Having read the debate I can see that this assertion has been robustly challenged already. Many schools and the military were almost inextricably linked and some still are. The schools shown on the list thus far have, almost without exception, a history of having OTC or CCF units that were annually inspected and reported upon to the military authorities. Some of the schools even have their own military colours. These schools were as related to the military as they were to the universities. Coming out of this strand, however, was a thought that perhaps an extremely valid topic for an encyclopaedic article would be the relationship between Public Schools and the Military over time (this is not the proposed title but an embryonic idea) or indeed Schools and the Military over time which might show whether or not the influence of Public Schools has changed and would be extremely valuable in a social context. This leads nicely to the second thread: the list appears to not be NPOV: I can see why this might appear to be the case at first. The schools initially on the list were, after all, nearly without exception Public Schools (in the very British sense of that phrase). However, the list is most definitely not exclusive to these schools and it is hoped that it will be expanded as I see it already has been. If, as the facts are added, they are referenced and verifiable then they remain objective. Perhaps it would be useful to the table to add a total to the numbers and compare this against the total number of VCs awarded which will then show very obviously just how many have yet to be allocated to a school/institution or indeed no known school. The breakdown of the table into chronologically ordered campaigns/periods was an attempt to provide a platform to highlight the waxing and waning of the influence of various schools on the figures. For example, Eton's longevity as a school of size and influence is in some ways mirrored by the fact that it has been consistent from the beginning of the VC in producing recipients (from the Crimean War all the way to the Falklands), whereas some schools whose rise began at the end of the nineteenth century are not represented until the Second Boer War or First World War etc. If awards of the VC were at one time bias towards officers (and I am not suggesting they were) then this is in the nature of the history of the VC rather than in this list. If articles highlight this fact in some inherent way then perhaps they can be construed as providing valuable social commentary rather than a bias view point. I now realise that I have been writing for too long. I will finish by expressing my hope that the article is not deleted, that it is expanded, that it provides a useful reference point, a basis for social commentary and that it will become more valuable because of this robust debate.Kwib 20:24, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.