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A fact from Great Falls High School appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 13 May 2011 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that when Great Falls High School in Montana was built in 1896, a herd of sheep was used to compact earth around the foundation?
The guidelines at WP:ALUMNI are quite clear: IF there is an existing Wikipedia article about an alumni, they may be included in the list of notable alumni without the need for citation. If there is not an existing article, then notability may be established by using the guidelines at WP:NOTABLE. The edit history comment "it's possible to have notables without Wikipedia biographies but when all of the names are red links it's likely something is wong" is a blatantly incorrect application of the WP:ALUMNI guidelines. The edit history comment "a single reference to a non-independent source, an article in the Great Falls Tribune or brief coverage in a book" does not violate WP:NOTABILITY guidelines. The presence of redlinked articles indicates a failure on the part of Wiki editors to create articles of notable individuals; it does not indicate lack of notability. If there is concern that existing citations do not meet the standards of WP:NOTABILITY, then the request for additional citations should be made. Wholesale deletion of cited text is inappropriate—especially when Montana is a small-population state which receives little national media attention. - Tim1965 (talk) 17:14, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The observation that when all the names in a list of notables are red-links it's likely something is wrong is not an application of WP:ALUMNI, it's just an observation about probabilities. Retaining red-link names simply because they have a citation is an incorrect application of WP:ALUMNI. Those names need citations that support notability. Which in the general case requires significant coverage by multiple independent reliable sources. So a single reference fails the multiple sources aspect of the guideline, brief coverage fails the significant coverage aspect and a non-indepent source fails the independent coverage aspect.
While we could tag that additional citations are needed it's not clear that would be helpful. When multiple editors removed red-link names they felt were not notable Tim1965 promptly restored them without providing any improved or additional citations. Gab4gab (talk) 19:33, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I did a fairly careful, independent review of the list. I put the folks I think could pass GNG into redlinks, then made a narrative paragraph of the rest, as they are important to the history of the school but probably lack stand-alone notability. A comparison is NSPORTS, where an article on a team may list many non-notable members, they just don't get a link, but the roster would look absurd if they weren't included at all. Here, statewide award winners are the pride of a school, just like winning sports teams. So do not just mass revert stuff, time to discuss. Montanabw(talk)01:10, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
While there has been discussion there hasn't been consensus for restoring the names removed as non-notable. Perhaps Montanabw could share some of the new sources discovered while reviewing that help show the redlinks are notable. It's not difficult to add a stub for a redlinked name once sources sufficient to pass GNG have been found. WP:LISTPEOPLE says that typically a list of people only includes those who are both meet the Wikipedia notability requirement and the lists membership requirements. A list of 'Notable faculty' who are not notable seems to fly in the face of that guidance - even if the list is in prose rather than bullets. I don't see lists of non-notable faculty in other school articles. While the sports team analogy has some merit I'm personally not in favor of making school articles more like the sports articles. Gab4gab (talk) 20:14, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Significant time has passed without any additional evidence provided to establish the notability of the red link names in the Notable faculty list. The idea that we should include a long narrative listing of non-notable names in the notable faculty section conflicts with the school article guidelines. I'm inclined to clean things up following our usual practices rather than continue to do thing so differently here. Gab4gab (talk) 17:29, 17 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
