Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prelim exams

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 redirect to Prelims. Tone 17:24, 22 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Prelim exams (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Unsourced stub page with seemingly very little (if any) potential for expansion. Its subject is perhaps not significant enough to exist as a good standalone article; a short mention on the Scottish Qualifications Authority page appears enough to cover this relatively small topic. Entranced98 (talk) 00:38, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Education-related deletion discussions. —AE (talk • contributions) 01:35, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Scotland-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 05:06, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Term is too generic for my liking on this article. Plenty of other schools have "preliminary exams". The generic term should not be specifically about Scottish ones. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 09:14, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Agree that the term is too generic and the term should redirect to the dab page Preliminary examination. Bennv3771 (talk) 13:17, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Regarding the possibility of merging, the entire article is unreferenced so there is no verifiable content to merge elsewhere anyway. Bennv3771 (talk) 16:52, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete or redirect: Already covered in a broader context at Prelims. AllyD (talk) 13:54, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete: I think prelim is a fairly generic term and am not sure that the Scottish ones are notable enough to have their own article (they could probably be covered in other articles about the actual examinations they are preliminary for). Dunarc (talk) 19:38, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you think that prelims are like PSATs in the U.S., taken a year before SATs? I am not sure that in actual usage it works that way. Where prelims are mid-course exams, it not always the case that there will be an article about the final exams in the courses, in fact I know of no such articles. It seems to me that this is a general thing, that there is angst about taking them or apathy or many other common reactions, that they are a cultural phenomenon in the U.K. and some other places, and worth explaining to non-Brits. --Doncram (talk) 18:24, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I take your point, but I was not actually thinking of the U.S. example - more the prelims some Universities have. The Scottish prelims, are (or at least used to be), specifically mock versions of the final exam. So a Higher prelim paper would be in the same format as a final Standard Grade and Higher paper (the only difference is the prelim would not include work yet covered). I actually have an issue with some of what the article says as it is unsourced and from a historic certainly does not reflect my experience, or that of other I know, of their operation in the 1990s. Prelims historically did have(and may still) an impact on the final mark in that they were often used as the basis of an appeal against a bad result. For example if someone got a B in a Higher, but the prelim showed a clear A the school would appeal and the grade could be raised (I know several people this happened to). Equally if someone missed the exam due to illness and had a medical certificate the prelim would be taken into account by the SQA, and before that the SEB, and used to award a result. However I think all this could be covered in the generic Prelims and the specific articles such as Standard Grade.Dunarc (talk) 20:14, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge, probably to Prelims, which is found in the disambiguation page mentioned above. Certainly a redirect should be left. --Doncram (talk) 22:20, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Possibly merge to article on Prelims - although that article is itself so badly written it needs work done on it. Vorbee (talk) 07:39, 15 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. The article was started 12 May 2006, with first sentence "Preliminary Examinations (more commonly known as Prelims) are exams set in Scottish high schools after about two thirds of subject's course being completed, often around December for S4 pupils, and February for S5/ S6 pupils." Note it is an antique article (so wp:PRESERVE? comes into play, at least to save its edit history in a redirect), and that it used the "Prelims" term. It definitely should be merged to the Prelims article, which was started 29 September 2005 and initially covered the exams at Oxford University, but grew to cover other usages. It should have been merged any time from 2006 on! It is a very valid encyclopedic topic, helpful for all American readers of zillions of novels set in the U.K. where "prelims" are mentioned, where the term is hard for yanks like me to decipher from context. I !voted "Merge" above. --Doncram (talk) 16:21, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Sure, it should be more developed, it should more comprehensively cover usage of the term. That's a reason to tag the article for expansion perhaps but is not a reason to delete. And that's not really a reason not to merge the unsourced Scottish high school usage, to which a "citation needed" tag can be added. Although note a citation is not needed for every assertion in a Wikipedia article, if it is not controversial and is not challenged. Does someone want to assert that "prelims" don't happen in Scotland? --Doncram (talk) 18:18, 16 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge with Prelims. --David Tornheim (talk) 07:54, 19 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect to prelims, nothing much worth merging. Szzuk (talk) 13:35, 22 September 2018 (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.