Draft talk:Success Academy Charter Schools

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propose deleting Lead Rewrite tag[edit]

I propose to delete the Lead Rewrite template. It was appropriate for an editor to add it. I believe I have now conformed the lead to meet Wikipedia's needs. Further editing can be done at any time without the template. I'll wait a week for any comment. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:01, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:47, 15 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This article has a number of problems...[edit]

I would like to try and improve some of the issues here, but the extreme, and in my opinion, excessive number of citations makes that daunting. The edit window reminds me of spaghetti code; the WP:CITECLUTTER can make it difficult to figure out where one sentence ends and another begins. Grayfell (talk) 23:44, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, a problem is that Success Academy Charter Schools and their CEO are themselves controversial and that has led to problematic editing in the past. Therefore, information and citations have to be added, although I am still selective.
Removing a distinction between contracts and expectations leaves the statement as inaccurate. A contract can set expectations without requiring compliance with every letter.
Leaving in what many families would consider a criticism but deleting the balancing statement leaves a misimpression of what the sources say overall. Not all families would consider the former a criticism, but enough would.
Removing a citation allowed the impression that the supported point was supported by a different citation, when it was not.
Moving a citation to be after a statement that is after the statement it supports results in the citation supporting a statement it does not support.
It is common to place a citation only at the end of a paragraph, but this is confusing when we need to edit, because we can't tell if the first part of the paragraph is supported or not. Therefore, I cite in more locations even if the referent is identical.
The Twitter statement was from a reliable journalistic source cited elsewhere in the article via non-Twitter URLs.
For the Infobox temlate, I'm not a fan of spreading out parameters because it makes scrolling through the edit field annoying, but that's just a style issue and I can leave the spread. I kept many empty parameters in case values for them turn up in the future and so I don't have to keep going to the Template page to see if there might be something I should add. Values should be consistent with the article body, as on funding, albeit in summary form, which they were.
I'm not clear on what was wrong with the values for the parameters for fees and tuition. Leaving them blank can lead people to think (unless they read the article but the infobox is for people who don't) that fees and tuition are unspecified, which is not the case.
For the parameter on communities, I guess we could name all the communities, but that list has already grown beyond what's given; and, as the schools' intent is to serve neighborhoods and districts but they also serve beyond them, I think the previous formulation, which meets the template specification, is a bit more apt.
On grades, 8th is part of the official plans and supported in the article body and sourcing and it being in the future is consistent with the template specification.
I'll check the tonality although you're probably right about the instances.
I'm not sure I've addressed everything, but I'll likely get to this over the next few days. The edits were well-intentioned. Mainly, I tend to be more cautious than many other editors.
Thank you very much. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:02, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, well, I'll start with a couple of points now, and come back to some of the others later. I removed the twitter thing primarily because it didn't strike me worth mentioning. That it was sourced through twitter was secondary, although I still believe it fails both wp:primary and wp:sps, since it is a tweet linking to a Facebook page.
The 'community' entry on the infobox is intended to be for specific information, as is the funding entries. Having "Neighborhoods, districts, and other" as the community entry doesn't provide enough meaningful information, as that description applies to the vast majority of schools (especially with 'other'). Between listing specific communities, or something so vague it doesn't inform, I would choose to leave the field blank instead. Another option would be something like "Several districts in the greater New York metropolitan area" or words to that effect. As for the funding info, the way it was before looked like it was trying to explain what a public charter school is in the infobox, which isn't built to handle that amount of detail.
As for the formatting of the infobox, I changed it only so that I could have an easier time editing it. I removed many of the entries that I didn't believe would ever be applicable, such as religious school info, as well as some that seemed redundant to me, or unlikely to be useful.
It is common to cite at the end of a paragraph (or at least sentence) for a reason, which is that it makes the articles much easier to read. For example, we have two citations that are placed to support the fact that The Lottery came out in 2010. This needlessly interrupts the flow of the article to support an extremely minor point which is then (re)supported by one of the exact same sources later in the same sentence. This isn't helping anyone read the article, and I don't believe that this kind of thing is helping anyone understand the greater topic, either.
I'm not contesting that 8th grade will be supported by the school in the future. I just don't think it should be in the infobox until then. I'm not trying to make the school look worse, I'm trying to make this article look better.Grayfell (talk) 23:23, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
In reply:
  • The Twitter source was to GothamSchools, a journalistic source, and it was cited for that, not Facebook. About all it said about Facebook was that it was "not about closings". Thus, it's a GothamSchools source, as it says, and thus it's a secondary source. I thought the reference made that clear, but I'll try to clarify that further.
  • Communities being neighborhods is because that is the wording used by the CEO, as sourced; districts, because the city is organized into districts and they're used for preference in siting schools and feeding students, and districts are sourced in the article body; and the two are not exclusive, thus "other" (or we could say "mainly"). To list all the districts would be too long for an infobox and the information is given in the article body. To list entire boroughs is misleading. To say something like "City districts" (you didn't propose that but it seems to fit) would sound like multiple cities supply students, which is mostly not the case, if at all. Many schools are not neighborhood- or district-oriented in where they get their students; these schools are. The template value is supposed to be "[c]ommunities served", so either approach is acceptable; and either approach is informative but listing in this case would take length.
  • It's true that fewer citations are preferred by many readers; many prefer that there be few or none, because they don't like footnotes at all and won't read anything that has them. And a book or journal author can place references at the ends of sentences, entire paragraphs, or multiparagraph passages (many do) because the author is usually a sole author and thus has much less probem with editing. But in Wikipedia challenges are periodically raised that points are unsupported and having fewer citations leads to more challenges and therefore more searching through off-Wikipedia sources in order to prove that a challenged point was supported all along. Having more notes greatly reduces that, suggesting that the challenges are well-intentioned even though the challengers do not check the sources cited further along in a paragraph. Thus, citing more saves editors time, both for me and for challengers. I suppose I could bury some citations inside comments visible only to editors, but that's nonstandard and probably not a good idea.
  • I'll take a look at the Lottery citations (I prefer to do that at home, for time reasons).
  • The 8th grade (which by now is only next year anyway) is also immportant because the schools group is controversial and the plans for growth, both horizontally (into more neighborhods) and vertically (into more grades, thus for more students) underlie part of the controversy, thus the importance for the infobx. Opposition to the schools and their growth is probably one reason people read Wikipedia.
On new edits:
  • Quotations especially must be supported with citations; they should immediately follow the quotations.
  • Attributions should be consistent with sources and with what the endnotes say. We could always put the attribution first in a sentence and usually I do, but when that makes for more cumbersome reading because then multiple points would have to be broken into separate sentences, it is okay to put the attribution at the beginning of a clause it modifies.
  • I'm not clear why, in discussing student admissions, the lottery should precede deciding whether to apply, admissions preferences, and testing not being required. The lottery is not before all that at the schools and I don't see why it should be first in the article section, just as we don't open the lead with it, even if it were the schools' most controversial feature, which it's not.
  • You're right about the dead link (I assume you mean the one about the waitlist); it is dead and misformatted and I should have caught it when I checked some links a while back but missed it because of the misformatting, which was probably my error long ago.
Nick Levinson (talk) 17:10, 14 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
As I said, my primary reason for removing the sentence cited by the tweet was because I felt it was an unnecessary point. I'm not sure why we need to explain it at all, it seems slightly defensive. If people are saying that "the school is so strict, they would stay open during a hurricane" or something absurd like that, then we need sources explaining that controversy, not preemptive rebuttals of unsupported arguments.
I maintain that the previous wording on the 'communities' infobox entry is too broad to be informative. The explanation you gave for that wording is valid, but it's not an explanation that fits in the infobox. If I called up the school and asked them what communities they served, I would feel frustrated if they responded with "neighborhoods, communities, and other." If you feel that listing specific regions is incorrect or misleading, we need either a third alternative, or to leave the field blank. The article would be in good company, as I have seldom seen it used.
It is clear that the quotations are part of the same source. I understand your desire for clarity on that matter, especially since so many articles are lax in that regard, but I don't think there's confusion on this point. From context it was clear they were from the same sources. When two quotations are back to back, with only minor clarification between them, I don't think we need to repeat the source. That is my understanding, I may be mistaken on this.
The Lottery documentary issue was given as a broader example of the type of over-citing I am referring to. I'm not suggesting that you necessarily cite less on every point, and I am certainly not suggesting that sources should be hidden in comments! Having citations be (arguably) convenient at the expense of accessibility seems to somewhat defeat the purpose of having an article at all.
I moved the lottery point to the head of that section because it is discussed in later paragraphs, and I think it helps that section to briefly mention it before then. As it was before, the section explained in detail information about the lottery (zoning issues, number of applicant vs. number of students, and ELLs) before actually mentioning that it exists. It's a readability issue, not a controversy one.
Grayfell (talk) 03:33, 15 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Preemptive additions to content are likely common and, if well done, are relevant only to an editor's motivation, which is generally irrelevant to Wikipedia. If you like a subject, you might add criticism before someone else does, because you know an article should include it and you might come across it in researching the subject before writing the article; and if you normally criticize the subject you might look for material favoring the subject in order to report it favorably as well as critically before someone says the article suffers from POV. As many editors probably edit mainly on subjects that interest them one way or the other, failure to preemptively edit probably results in failure to cover both sides of the issues presented by the subjects. Preemptive is simply anticipatory of other editors' likely concerns.
I often glance through blogs, which tend to be mostly critical, although I skip many altogether. I get from them a general nature of the criticisms they state. Even though I don't quote or cite them and they're not reliable, they give a flavor of what should be addressed under the due-weight prnciple when usable sources have reportable material.
The weather point is helpful to parents and prospective staff as an indication of commitment to longer schedules and reasonableness when weather conditions are difficult especially for children's welfare. Although I was motivated by the claim (not in the article) that the schools might unreasonably expose the children, the wording about the storm does not depend on the unstated claim. I'll consider rewording to avoid even an apparent dependency (if any) on what's not said.
Commenting out citations was not your idea, but the more I think about it the more it looks like a useful compromise. I may raise a question at an editing guideline talk page, but, for now, the technique will do as an editing aide. It does have a drawback in that if a ref element is named and the name is only used once outside of a comment it is tempting to unname it, but I think unnaming is not frequent and, when I do it, I usually do a text search within the whole-page edit field, so I'd see the name even within a comment.
Nick Levinson (talk) 19:37, 15 December 2012 (UTC) (Corrected my mistyping ("notr"): 19:47, 15 December 2012 (UTC))[reply]
On more rather than fewer citations for statements near each other: the guideline on citing sources strongly favors more, especially for quotations but also generally for challengeable content (this article has lots of challengeable content if sources are not evident) and has almost nothing favoring fewer (the lead being an exception that I think is contradicted in another guideline). I may comment out only temporarily while we consider this, but I think havng more is consistent with the guideline.
For the Infobox:
  • For the parameters "fundingtype" and "schooltype", the template presents a problem by overriding one with the other. Because part of the controversy around these schools is the raising of private funds in addition to public, it's important to include that fact; and I included grants since there is government granting to this schools group in particular on other than a per-pupil basis, so the infobox avoids misleading readers.
  • I commented out the parameter "opened" with its intended value because founded and opened are different, even though in this case the schools group were both in the same year. I don't know why the "founded" parameter is not displaying; I'll get to that another time.
  • I restored the spelling of the parameter from "schoolcode" to "school code", per the template's specification.
  • Instead of saying "8th grade to come", I said it's "planned". That's consistent with sources, none of which express doubt about the plans. Other than that, I restored the previous value.
  • Consistent with the style of separating parameters onto separate lines, I separated the parameters "classes" and "avg_class_size" and did the same for "website" and "footnotes".
  • For the parameter "Hours_in_Day", for the value, I replaced your spaced hyphens with unspaced en-dashes, I corrected my syntactical error by replacing "grade" with "grades", and I added another "grades" for clarity.
  • For the parameter "vision", I restored part of the previous value as more representative of the schools and sourcing. The ACTION statement is visionary for students while in the schools, but I shortened it for the infobox. And, when quoting, changing a capitalization is acceptable but only if bracketing surrounds the changed letter/s for accuracy of the quotation, so I restored the brackets.
  • For the parameter "communities", I used wording rather like the previous, favoring brevity, but reworded for more clarity. See what you think of it. Perhaps blank would be better (with a comment for other editors), but I think the article is read (judging by past edits) by a good many readers other than families considering enrolling and prospective staff, because the controversy is political. A good deal of the controversy is about the schools moving into places not known for poverty and presumed to have good public noncharter schools already. (E.g., Diane Ravitch's blog is roughly along those lines.) I don't think the schools reject student applications from elsewhere in the city, but the group doesn't operate school buses and instead simply provides transit fare cards (mentioned on their website), which practice, combined with longer school days and higher levels of poverty, probably discourages applications other than from fairly nearby (the relevance of poverty being that families probably can't drive children to and from school every day or pay taxi fares). If you think the infobox wording is still bad, then blank with a comment would be better.
  • Linking is probably pointless within an infobox because it's inaccessible to readers with visual impairments and the same term should be linked only once on a page, so the links should be in the article or templates but not in the infobox.
  • I added spaces and a period to your new comment.
  • I plan to propose to amend the "sports" and "athletics" parameters to let them take values of "Yes" or "No" each. I don't have the more specific information the template's specification now seeks. The proposal is to be at the template documentation's talk page. It'll likely appear in the next few days and then I plan to wait a week for replies before editing the template's doc.
Other editing:
  • I restored on being against boredom because it came from a different source and answers a criticism about charter schools, and to some extent this schools group, being very disciplinary.
  • I edited about inaccessibility of knowledge to children to it being lacking, since the former reminds me of disability accommodation.
  • On the storm and Twitter, I reworded so as not to seem contradictory (that might have seemed like something was unsaid) and I clarified the citation as to the origination from a reliable medium.
  • On the waitlist, I added new citations and deleted a sentence that's no longer supported. Thank you for catching the dead link.
  • On The Lottery, I deleted one reference in the pair, moving it to replace another in the paragraph, and unnaming the element.
  • I've generally refrained from more than 3 citations per point, that being Wikipedia's general limit.
  • I'm considering other edits per your posts.
Nick Levinson (talk) 22:19, 15 December 2012 (UTC) (Corrected a mistyping and deleted an unnecessary paragraph: 22:29, 15 December 2012 (UTC))[reply]
I think the wording in the community field is perfect. Much improved from what I had, and it addresses my concerns.
There are specific guidelines allowing for additional wikilinks in infoboxes, I think it's in WP:MOSLINK. It appears to be a matter of discretion; it seems like some editors hate them, others feel they should be added for every field. I don't find them distracting, and, as you point out, there are many readers who will read the infobox but only skim the main article, so having some redundancy seems prudent. I guess this is a matter of personal taste, though. It should also be noted that some of the fields are designed to automatically generate a link, so it's clearly acceptable from a policy perspective. 'fundingtype' does this, for example. Since I often use infoboxes to find more information about topics, I feel that they should have links if available.
I still feel that the 'schooltype' field is verbose. In a general-audience aimed, summary style, I don't think we need to elaborate in the infobox that the school is funded per-student or receives gifts. This is supposed to be an overview, and explaining these points with this level of detail seems counterproductive. I think the infobox should generally align with other articles' infoboxes as a matter of consistency, and few schools use those fields in such a way.
I removed the line about being 'against boredom' because it was not related to the rest of the sentence. She did not say that in regards to the field-trip issue, so it is out of context and therefore doesn't belong. It is not up to us to answer every single criticism, and selectively using quotes to support a point of view is not acceptable.
I understand what you are saying about the general tone of criticism, and attempting to preemptively address that. I think a great deal of restraint is called for in such cases, though. It's a cliche, but blogs can make fringe arguments seem legitimate, and answering fringe theories often only serves to give them weight. I think we should let the facts speak for themselves. Grayfell (talk) 00:37, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
On the infobox's school type and funding type parameters and the value being too detailed (I should have addressed this yesterday), I replaced the displayed entry with a shorter one. Saying just "School type[:] Public Charter" says nothing about funding or implies that it's all publicly funded, but part of the controversy is that wealthy donors are giving private funds to Success Academies and the infobox statement should not be so short that it's misleading. I wish the "schooltype" and "fundingtype" parameters didn't have one overriding the other, because it would be easier to phrase one as "Public charter" and the other as "Public and private", but maybe the present formulation works.
Linking within infoboxes generally makes sense except for the accessibility issue and perhaps there's a conflict among guidelines. I'll try to check. A solution may be to make an exception to the limit of one link per destination per article so that infobxes can have the same links, too. It occurs to me that whatever impedes accessibility into infoboxes might be true of all templates that link to other destination pages, and therefore that a similar exception should apply to them as well, but I haven't looked into that.
The Admissions section seems jumbled now (perhaps some of it was so before). I might use a list structure for preferences and the like and bring all of those together; they're now sprinkled up and down the section. The sentences on fees, tours, and ratios should be moved within the section; or making the list might cause that to happen as a passive consequence. Putting the lottery first seems to confuse things since I think preferences (sibling, etc.) come before the lottery, but I'll try to accommodate putting the lottery first, maybe by keeping the mention of it in the section's opening and then making the main discussion of it after the prefs, to keep a chronological flow of the admissions process. (The lottery is already mentioned in the article's lead.) I expect to work on that soon.
I'll look for a better positioning for the boredom statement. It's an important part of educational philosophy (some teachers believe in being strict with no attempt at fun because, they might say, learning is serious work). A point about joy is made in a book by the schools' CEO and a staffer but that might be primary, whereas this statement is from a secondary source, and a teacher saying it is not as important. Parents often want schools where their children will be happy and that may be causally related to learning, so the philosophy is likely relevant to the schools' high achievement rates on statewide tests.
I don't try to answer every criticism, just those that are reasonably likely to arise and when sources are available. I don't source to blogs or report fringe views, but blogs do provide clues to why people would read Wikipedia articles and can provide key words useful for Google searches for relatively obscure material that might otherwise be missed. In whatever way we do research, the article itself should depend on reliable sources and it does.
What did you mean by "selectively using quotes to support a point of view is not acceptable"? We're supposed to select for what the aerticle needs and I did not select for one sourced view but fail to report a contrary view in the same source or in any other source I knew of. The latter is a serious charge and I'd like to understand better what you meant by it. If you're simply stating a general principle, I agree. If I missed a source, please let me know its name.
The facts should speak for themselves, but, when part of the facts are sourced and part have no sources acceptable for Wikipedia, a problem arises. Many times, a source reports a fact that was true long before any known source reported it, so the article was, in a sense, deficient before the source came out. We do the best we can.
On editing around citations: I encounter the same problem you have when trying to edit and seeing many midsentence citations in the edit field. My solution in a browser is to open two tabs, one for the edit field and the other for the page as visitors see it, and go back and forth as needed, usually reading one and editing the other. Similarly, for offline editing, I open two text files and switch between them.
Nick Levinson (talk) 20:39, 16 December 2012 (UTC) (Added paragraph on boredom statement: 21:25, 16 December 2012 (UTC))[reply]
If you want to move the mention of the lottery around, I have no problem with that, it just seemed very odd to have it introduced after it's already explained, if that makes any sense. I moved it to the head of the section because most of the section dealt with the lottery, and I thought that would make it easier to follow, but moving it to the head of the first paragraph about the lottery makes more sense. I'll try and tidy it up with that in mind.
As for the boredom statement, it is a valid quote, and it could belong in a paragraph about the school's (or Moskowitz's) general philosophy. I think it is misleading to have it be part of a sentence about a different (albeit related) issue, such as farm field-trips. The sentence starts with "Moskowitz discounted criticism that other learning opportunities are needed more," but when she said the school was against boredom, she wasn't even addressing that issue. Having it directly follow, in the same sentence, creates the false impression that the quote was directly about farm field-trips as learning opportunities. It was not, so I don't think that sentence belongs there.
The schooltype entry looks good. Grayfell (talk) 22:49, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I changed the flow in the admissions section, but I am not particularly happy with it. My difficulty is in including enough info in a logical order without making it read like a brochure.
I wasn't sure before, but after reading WP:MOSQUOTE, I am confidant that changes in capitalization should not be indicated with brackets. Specifically, "formatting and other purely typographical elements of quoted text should be adapted to English Wikipedia's conventions without comment". There is also an example given. Grayfell (talk) 23:50, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The boredom statement is about the school, so it wouldn't go into an article about her personally.
Commenting out sources reduces the number of references for readers but it does not help editors trying to get through all the text in the edit field. But I'm concerned about cases on this model: An article says, "He was at the top of the hill. He crashed at the bottom of the hill.[5]" I decide to insert this sentence between the other two: "He slipped down the side of the hill.[4]" But that means the top-of-hill information seems supported by note 4, whereas before it seemed supported by note 5. And it may have been original research, such as if note 5 supported only the bottom-of-hill crash information. I could add {{Citation needed}} to the top-of-hill sentence, but the original editor may be gone and checking may be difficult if the source was only offline, and so it would have been better if the first sentence had had its own citation way back when it was first added to Wikipedia. The result may be the deletion of the first sentence, resulting in Wikipedia telling about the slip down the side and the crash at the bottom but not about the beginning, which could have stayed if we knew the older citation supported both sentences. This editing model is fairly common across Wikipedia, especially because so many people edit. Thus, I think it's necessary to cite more rather than less. I may ask on a talk page somewhere else whether commenting out is an acceptable alternative to citing more often, but, in the meantime, would you prefer commenting out or explicitly citing more often?
Moving around citations is problematic where the result is that a citation is given as supporting a point it doesn't, even if it makes for a simpler layout. When I recall doing the editing, unless you've looked at a referent and found that I erred on content, this is, in effect, sending me back to check my own work again and, almost certainly, to restore the note placements. If you have found that I erred in understanding what a referent says, please let me know. In one case, I think the source is offline and it wasn't replaced with an online source, so it appears that you didn't find an error of content.
A solution to the placement problem is to combine referents into a single note, separating them with a <br /> element, and preceding each of them within the note with a distinguishing statement. A hypothetical example: "Chris and Pat said ....[9]" "9. Chris: [http://www.example.com This source].<br/>Pat: [http://another.example.com That source]. This has the drawbacks of making notes more cumbersome to maintain and read and generally of requiring more separate ref elements instead of named elements, but it simplifies page display. In situations where we could either combine or separate, which would you prefer?
Nick Levinson (talk) 17:44, 17 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the edits are risking or causing unsupported synthesis, which isn't allowed even if it eases reading. If you can please review your recent edits for the synthesis and misplacement and re-edit to solve the problems, that would help. On the other hand, I may have time to do something shortly, and will do as much as I can and hopefully come back another time to finish it.
One edit (re "6 p.m.") deleted secondary sourcing and left only a primary source. A primary source can be used but only with additional care, which I think may now have been lost. Secondary sources are generally preferred. You may well not have realized it was primary because it was a short-form ref element; but it would be apparent on the displayed page in the endnote, which is why opening two browser tabs or two browser instances can be advantageous while editing.
Thanks.
Nick Levinson (talk) 16:39, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I restored the beginning of the first paragraph in the Methods subsection, because the rearrangement of citations in the recent editing was erroneous, but delinked "uniform" per your editing and I plan to check whether the source said that parents were "required" to sign the contracts (if so, I can re-edit to add that word). This was faster than combining refs and annotating the different citations (using the method with the br element, described above) but I may do that later. I did similarly for the 2 weeks of behavioral training, leaving the separation you provided from the next sentence. I did likewise for the "grooming conformism" sentence and the sentence re "six books a week" but will likely combine and annotate the references for each sentence. I did roughly the same for the weekly tours but kept your "on a weekly basis" in lieu of "weekly" (some would say that the former is excess verbiage but we can see if anyone says so for this), and expect to look at combining and annotating refs. I restored a ref element regarding "6 p.m."
I put back about "the result is not 'frightening'" because it is relevant to whether disciplinary levels are useful or excessive, a discussed topic regarding these schools, but structured it as a separate sentence.
I put back the citation for a quotation about lateness for a wedding even though the same citation appears at the sentence's end because the amount of intervening content is substantial, making it reasonable to believe that the citation is not for the quotation.
I'm still working my way through the article.
Nick Levinson (talk) 17:54, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Done.
If more citations should be bundled, go ahead and do so (while preserving their associations with exactly what each citation supports, such as by annotating and formatting) or post onto this talk page which sentences should have the bundling. I'm not a fan of bundling because of the maintenance burden, but if it substantially makes particular passages in the article more readable, then please suggest or do it.
I re-added "Yes" to the infobox for sports and athletics, having amended the infobox documentation to permit it explicitly. I proposed the amendment, no one objected, I amended, and no one reverted, so I re-added to the article. (While I was at it, I also clarified the documentation about "colors" and "colours"; and I also asked about the parameters "schedtyp" and "campus_Bound" but didn't see a response.)
The infobox still fails to display for the parameters "established" and "founded". The latter used to. I don't know why they fail now. Maybe it's the change from vertical to horizontal layout in the edit field, but I didn't change that back. I've asked at Template talk:Infobox school#parameter .22founded.22 or .22established.22 not displaying and preventing others from displaying but no one replied yet.
Nick Levinson (talk) 20:56, 6 January 2013 (UTC) (Corrected lack of space between two words: 21:03, 6 January 2013 (UTC))[reply]

new tags of February 11, 2013[edit]

I just this afternoon saw the new templates on the article and plan to reply either tomorrow or this weekend, when I expect to be online. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:31, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

At least 134 secondary sources are cited in the article. A more precise recount would likely reach a significantly higher number, since I was deliberately undercounting this time. Primary sources are also used and may be used, as long as they are used carefully, especially that no statement goes beyond what the primary source supports in its literal wording. If you believe any statement is supported by a primary source but inadequately, in other words that a statement supported by a primary source goes beyond what the source says, please edit or please point to any instance of that.
No original research is present, I think. I've made consistent efforts to source every challengeable statement and to rephrase for consistency with found sourcing. If you believe any original research is present, please edit or please point to it.
The article is longer than many others. I'm not sure it's too long for navigation. However, I have further sectioned the article, which should make finding information through the table of contents easier.
The only content I've recently thought of deleting is on now-concluded controversies over collocations of schools already opened, but I think some of that still warrants weight as still relevant for readers understanding the schools today, so I think it's premature to delete that kind of content.
If you have suggestions, please edit or please post them.
Nick Levinson (talk) 17:09, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

propose to delete tag for original research[edit]

I propose to delete the Original Research template from the Multiple Issues template for the article. No one has identified any original research, although that information was requested. I'll wait a week for any response. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:45, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:06, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

propose to delete tag for promotional tone[edit]

I propose to delete the Newsrelease template (for a promotional tone) from the Multiple Issues template for the article. Being informative, as the article is, is not what is meant by a promotional tone, as has been discussed and apparently resolved on promotionality by a lack of contrary sourcing or subsequent disagreement, and specifically a promotional tone has not been identified in the article. Whether the article is overly informative is a different matter and is being addressed separately. If anyone knows of an instance of a promotional tone, please edit or point to it. I'll wait a week for any response. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:45, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:09, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

propose to delete remaining tags[edit]

I propose to delete the Multiple Issues template and its included templates because the sourcing and length issues seem to have been resolved, because of the extensive use of many secondary sources and the appropriateness of the use of the primary sources that are used and because of the deletion of less important details and the additional subsectioning to ease navigation. Editing can proceed with or without the templates. I'll wait a week for any response. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:16, 30 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:46, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

how to proceed[edit]

This is a article of the type I edit most, and it needs some major revisions.It needs so much work, in fact, that having done the first few steps, I am not sure whether I should go further. The work in involved includes but is not limited to implementing the many suggestions made above by neutral editors. I'm not going to enumerate them again: they've all been said adequately, but I'll say some general concerns.

Viewed as an article on a group of schools, we normally handle such articles rather concisely, but for school groups where there has been some controversy, like here, more is needed. We include only schools that are actually implemented--the basic criterion for including a school is that it at least exists, though it's true that controversies over planning for schools that do not yet exist or that have been cancelled can sometimes be worth covering. We normally do not go into general principles of education--in an article on a group of charter schools, it is not necessary to discuss the merits or controversies respected this manner of educational organization. Links to general articles handle this. We normally do not discuss routine details: all elementary schools in a country normally teach the same subjects, and all schools of a type normally teach them in the same manner; if there are exceptions, they can be discussed. Otherwise, they go on the group's website. The article can also be viewed as the article on an organization. For those articles too, we do not normally discuss detailed organizational details, or the general principles of the industry or other activity. Again, inks to general articles & organizational websites deal with these. References are intended to indicate sources that support the material. they do not discuss the qualifications of the author or unnecessary details of the manner of publication. They give the necessary detail,but unless it is reasonably challenged whether they support the text, they do not contain quotes, or need to give over-exact locations. (There are obvious exceptions: print-only references need page numbers; foreign language references sometimes need translations of key parts; sometimes specific wording can be better given here than in the text when the wording is critical). And external link sections are the place for a few key links to the best online sources, not extensive web directories.

The article is so highly promotional, and the principal editor so obvious reluctant to make changes in conformity with our normal practice, that it would be much easier to delete the entire article and start over. I could probably write an article from scratch in an hour or two--it will take much longer to carefully remove all the improper material and clean up the reference structure without losing important material or getting the references mixed up. And I considered another option: if the material is promotional, and it cannot be fixed by normal editing, WP:CSD#G11 speedy deletion criterion G11 can apply. I've deleted thousands of article on that criterion, and this is well within it. But, frankly, I enjoy a challenge, and rewriting this certainly will qualify as one.

I hope the editor principally responsible will realize the advantages of having a good article on the subject. If not, I'll have to recommend it for deletion so a fresh start can be made. I can no longer do it myself as an admin, because I'm editing the article. DGG ( talk ) 02:27, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Flatly: I am not paid a penny by anyone to do anything with anything in Wikimedia Foundation properties, including any article on Wikipedia, never have been, have never asked for it, have never been offered it, and did not receive a copy of the education book coauthored by Moskowitz and cited in the article although it appears some bloggers did (I borrowed a copy from a library, by interlibrary loan). The Success Academy Charter Schools article, even under its preceding name, Harlem Success Academy, was never about an organization that had not yet started a school teaching students and it had always been about one or more open schools it runs (the individual schools in the group do not have their own articles so they have always been covered by the article about the group); within the group, while some schools were aready open, some more schools have been proposed and controversy arose over those, which was reported. The reverting to a much older version omits much criticism. The article did not discuss general educational philosophies applicable to most schools; it discussed what was particular to this group of schools, some of which is similar to other schools' philosophies and some of which differs; for example, some people think that good schools focus on reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, but this group has a different philosophy. I have indeed moved some content to more general articles in past years. Linking to the schools group website does not substitute for discussing what secondary sources discuss when secondary sources are available, partly because the schools group website does not, and is not expected to, present controversies. Precisely because both Moskowitz and the schools group are controversial, as the deleted content and the talk topics showed, there is a demand that criticisms be present, and they were; therefore, neutrality requires that both sides be presented, requiring more content. The External Links section was of links about the schools group. It is false that I, as you say on my talk page, "have shown total resistance" to editing; I have left some edits intact even when I disagreed. I have solicited input; I do not own any article and never have. I will review where you say I have violated standards. I don't mind deleting some citational detail but I provide it because of claims over the years for various articles that sources are not appropriate or do not support statements; however, that can be solved by providing and then trimming the detail, as I have done for some kinds of detail in the past, so that it can be recovered by any editor via the article's history and edit summaries. To save time now, I am posting this at both my user talk page and at the schools group talk page. I have to do some of my work offline and return to where I can access the Internet, so I can't respond to everything now, but will act. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:24, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't believe that Nick Levinson is a paid editor. In general, I have to agree with DGG, though. I gave up attempting to clean up this article because (as can be seen above) every edit I did was challenged, even ones that, to me at least, seemed straightforward. As I see it, that counts as, if not total resistance, than at least strong resistance. I never felt like I was collaborating so much as being asked to defend my actions. I guess that's one form of collaboration.
The reason this article appears so promotional is because it displays a serious lack of editorial restraint. The kitchen sink approach of throwing huge amounts of information into the article with the rationale of being neutral and balanced is at odds with the goal of writing a summary-style article in an encyclopedia. It is not a good thing to include every single criticism in an article, and answering every single criticism, even ones that are trivial or taken out of context, is even worse. By providing this platform for responding to irrelevant criticism, the article is essentially just giving more speaking time to Moskowitz and the schools. This false sense of balance is partly responsible for giving the impression that this is a promotional article. Beyond that, the article is giving excessively large amounts of space to fairly mundane things. As one example (I could give many), the section on the Masters' degree program should be shortened to two or three sentences, at absolute most. By stretching it out and giving many details it's giving the impression that this is significant or unusual. It's neither. This pattern is repeated over and over. Grayfell (talk) 21:06, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Where I most disagreed with editor Grayfell was in moving citations from statements they supported to statements they did not support, and I fixed those by either bundling or moving, and asked where else that would be helpful. Nor was I as described by Grayfell: see the last post in the topic Grayfell began (the topic titled "This article has a number of problems..."). I kept some of Grayfell's editing even if they were not my preference, such as the layout of the infobox causing one or two items to disappear, probably because of a technical fault with the template.
Specific suggestions help. A tag claiming there is original research when I have not found any needs someone to point to it, which I requested, but it has not been pointed to. About the master's program: that is a specific suggestion and helpful in that regard.
You raise an interesting point about two-sidedness.
Time limitations, such as the brevity of online sessions, mean it'll take me a few days or longer to get to all of this, but I'll try to get to it incrementally. Nick Levinson (talk) 00:58, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Better articles, even without a Good Article designation, in my observation, do not generally get written in one or two hours, even if an editor is a speed-reader and a fast analyst, but I wish you the best. I can't work that fast on many subjects, this one included, on which I often spent a couple of hours in a day just for a revision, including finding, getting, and reading sources. What I plan to do with the Moskowitz article instead is to copy the last revision I edited into a subpage of my user talk space (with a link from my current talk page), update it, and apply suggestions that have been made. I have no conflict of interest for editing either the Moskowitz or schools group article and produce what I think is both standards-compliant and responsive to suggestions. There has been a relative paucity of specific suggestions that are within policies and guidelines. For example, someone said the article is problematic under WP:BOMBARDMENT, I replied point for point based on that essay, and yet an editor said it violates that essay without saying how my response was wrong, which leaves me uninformed about what that editor still thought is a problem. My development of the userspace article draft is planned to be incremental and may take a few weeks to complete. I think it will be easier and more efficient to edit from a longer but up-to-date revision than to repeat the extensive research needed to go forward from a seriously outdated reverted-to revision. We'll see what the result is.
You refer to editors as neutral. Editors are almost never neutral. To ensure neutrality by editors, Wikipedia would have to assign articles to editors either against their interests or randomly, and most editors won't accept that for long, unless we pay them. Neutrality applies to articles taken as wholes.
I look forward to collaboration. I've noticed that someone might say something, if I disagree I reply in detail, and often the person does not reply in detail, but maintains their position. That's not much of a two-way discussion. If you can suggest ways of keeping discussion open and moving, given that disagreements reasonably exist, please do.
Those schools with the SA group that have not been built or opened are appropriate for reporting because the principle of collocation is itself controversial as sourced, specific address decisions are made and controverted by opponents of the schools, protests are held, and lawsuits are filed, all of that is sourced, and, I think, construction was sometimes delayed (I think that delay in renovation occurred in one or two schools) (and student applications are accepted long before consruction). Apparently, most schools do not go through that, the decisions being quiet and sourceless except for final outcomes, and therefore Wikipedia would not report it for most other schools. The opposition in SA's case was reported without my help (possibly in the Moskowitz article before the SA article was created). I don't think editors are going to agree not to add that criticism if it is removed. In short, I think the functional consensus would be to report it. So, both sides need reporting or the article would not be neutral.
I assume the audience is more than high school students writing papers (you didn't say that but I think that's a commn perception). For this article,the audience likely includes potential teachers, potential students' families, and the teachers' union and union membership who oppose the schools, often quite vociferously. The union itself has a hand in runnng a charter school (not SA). While the union's opposition may apply to all nonunion schools and charters usually fit that decription, the UFT has been especially attentive to SA, whch is very visible, such as by collocating. But if your view is approximately that the article should not be written for audiences other than readers who know nothing beforehand, I'm interested in knowing what in Wikipedia says something like that. I might have missed it but I definitely don't remember it. It's not meant for leading experts so they can glean one more fact, and it's probably not meant primarily for graduate students already studying the subject the article is about, but I've read Wikipedia (as a starting point only) for fairly advanced scientific information, or to find sourcing for it, and I assume I'm not an outlier in doing so.
If the article is overly detailed, I can look for ways to trim. I already raised that question and asked for specifics, but they did not get posted until the last few days. I'll work on it.
Duplication between articles is rarely appropriate. Overlap is more common, in this case because the schools group and Moskowitz both are in sourcing relevant to views on education in which some views are attributable only to one and not the other or vice versa, and I maintained that distinction. For example, if she was speaking as a Councilmember and not as a CEO, the view belongs in the Moskowitz article, although when of interest to a reader of the schools group article linking is sufficient.
Citing to page numbers applies not only to print-only sources but to print sources for which unpaginated online versions also exist, because we cite to what we actually read, so if we read the hard copy we don't cite to the online version except in unusual cases when we cite both and distinguish. For audio sources, I thought we're supposed to cite to a location stated in minutes and seconds, but I can check what the standard is for that.
I plan to copy the Moskowitz discussion in this post to that article's talk page, but not now, as time is running out.
Nick Levinson (talk) 17:36, 26 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I made a mild example edit of the kinds of changes that I think needs to happen in this article. As I've said, there's too much stuff in this article, and serious, broad criticisms are given just as much space as passing mentions and obscure tid-bits. Grayfell (talk) 01:30, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The following is copied in relevant part from my last post at User talk:Nick Levinson#February 2013. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:04, 2 March 2013 (UTC))[reply]
.... You [[[User:DGG|User DGG]]] are correct in this, your statement: "What a company or anyone else plans to do is not appropriate content until it becomes the subject of significant outside discussion". I think almost every plan I stated in the article met that requirement; exceptions are rare, as in listing particular schools before secondary sources listed them but most of the yet-unopened schools were already controversial in secondary sourcing. I accept your point that a small number of the particular schools, not being in secondary sources, can be omitted until they are in secondary sources, although that doesn't change reporting on them even before construction (construction does not take long, being largely renovation rather than ground-up construction, since they collocate in existing biuldings, as reported in the article). You wrote, "I think almost nobody here would include one [a particular school] on which no physical work has yet been made unless that particular plan one had extensive public controversy, which does happen." That controversy did happen and the article gave sourcing for it. You wrote: "All US public charter schools, teach the same basic group of subjects, though the emphases can differ." Correct; listing what this group teaches shows those differences in emphasis as well as the sources do. You wrote: "The reason ["all US public charter schools, teach the same basic group of subjects, though the emphases can differ"] is fairly simply: there's in the US and almost all other countries a legally required curriculum for public support or approval. The general curriculum orientation of a school is of encyclopedic interest--but not the details." That's self-contradictory. To the extent the U.S. imposes common standards, "the general curriculum orientation" would go into a more general article about U.S. education; and likewise for other or all nations. But if "a school" (your singular) has differences in its "general curriculum orientation", "the details" may very much matter. Judging from sourcing, the inclusion of, e.g., yoga, robotics, and block-building in a lab may be just such details, especially if no national curriculum includes them (and maybe, in the case of two of these, shouldn't). I don't know how common the 3R model (reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic) is in curricula, but it's probably common in parents' thoughts and should be implicitly acknowledged at least as an unwritten contrast in discussing other general curricula.
You wrote: "The usual rule is that a WP article should include only material that would be of interest to a general reader coming across the mention of the subject and wanting the sort of information that would be found in an encyclopedia, not material that would be of interest only to those associated with the subject, or to prospective clients or students--that sort of content is considered promotional." That misdefines promotionality in Wikipedia and that is not how vast numbers of articles are edited. An article's content may be for readers with in-depth background, although it has to be understandable to people at a lower level (and some articles are over my head if I don't get reference works like dictionaries out, but we shouldn't delete them). Therefore, while we should write for clarity, we should not omit content so as to exclude readers who are knowledgeable in the subject. See the essay on readers first, which, to my knowledge, is uncontradicted by any policy or guideline. It is legitimate to include content for prospective students and their families, prospective teachers and managers, prospective union organizers (referring to the criticism of this and many other charter schools as nonunion), people involved with other schools who might want to study models either positive or negative, and people interested in educational policy (because particular charters' success or failure is important in selecting or illustrating policy needs) because promotionality is not defined by who might become a reader (cf. articles about musical albums) but by content and style (see on being like advertising). The Simple English Wikipedia is possibly only for readers with limited cognitive ability if that's due to language limitations, but I doubt even that. I have not found any statement about Wikipedia that directs editing so as to limit its audience to what you posit. If there were, a lot of articles would have to be deleted, such as many in the sciences. I have not seen a proposal to delete articles for overcomplexity of content. I have not included content of interest only to people already inside the schools group; they may be interested but so would outsiders be.
Clarity, of course, is laudable as a goal. I'm happy to look for ways to make what I write easier to understand without omitting substantive content. Some of the new critiques of the Moskowitz and schools group articles seem to suggest a need for clearer identification of content to show its relevance to the article it's in.
You wrote, "the duplication of content in the article on a person and their organization is generally not a good idea." Agreed; and it did not happen. Moskowitz spoke of education before founding the schools group; her earlier views belong in the Moskowitz article unless we're to add to the schools group article a section on the founder's history, an unusual approach in Wikipedia, especially given that she is notable even without having founded any schools. And anything Moskowitz said on education even after the founding but while not in her capacity with the schools group probably would belong in the Moskowitz article, and I edited by that principle, based on sourcing. If anyone knows of even one failure to assign content to the proper article, please point to it.
I have seen the editing but have not completed reviewing it. Some I have no intention of changing. Some I may question. And I plan to continue editing per useful suggestions.
. . . . .
Nick Levinson (talk) 18:03, 2 March 2013 (UTC) . . . .[reply]
Additional issues:
  • The Masters' program section can perhaps be substantially shortened; I'll review it. However, Moskowitz joined the widespread argument that schools of education fail to do a good job of teaching future teachers and started this Masters'program. I don't know that most or even many charters have similar programs, and if they don't an employer of teachers starting its own is significant, since that encroaches on what colleges are supposed to be better than anyone else at. We would not expect to find NASA running a Masters' program in astrophysics.
  • Audio source citations include minute-and-second locations because of Wikipedia:Citing sources#Film, TV, or video recordings and/or Wikipedia:Citing sources#Sound recordings.
  • Some of the External Links section that was deleted should be restored, although not all of what was deleted was very important; its inclusion was consistent with the guideline on external links, which allows judgment. For example, test scores are important to the controversies around the SA schools group and how they educate but are generally too detailed for the article yet should be linked to, and those links were deleted; I'll probably restore them. On the other hand, the school portal links serve rather like the schools group's official website within constraints, but probably the portals are not maintained as much.
  • We don't send content to anyone else's website. Perhaps someone thought I had that means, but I don't.
Some proposed or recent edits and discussions clearly need separate discussion, and I'm breaking them out into subtopics/subsections below.
Nick Levinson (talk) 19:04, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
On our audience and the complexity of an article's subject, I have not found a limit on Wikipedia's intended audience but did find an article evidently written for a more knowledgeable audience, a link being provided to a more accessible one: the string theory article (see a hatnote); the destination article in turn links back. I mentioned these points somewhat more extensively at my talk page in response to your topic.
Whether some criticisms were trivial is something I'll review. I don't think any were (I disagreed on some substantively but not on whether some people would see them as significant), but I'll reconsider, since previously editors wanted them all and now one suggests some are trivial.
Respecting the Masters' program, that Moskowitz joined the debate was reflected in recent edits not by me, thus that point above should have been phrased to acknowledge that, although the point about the unusualness of a charter setting up a Masters program remains, to my knowledge, valid.
Nick Levinson (talk) 17:31, 4 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The citations should now be satisfactory. I deleted some details, many of them locational. Citations containing quotations justifiably do (I spot-checked them), such as to support challengeable statements or, in bundled citations, to clarify which statement is supported by which citation. If there is further trimming that should be performed, please edit or post to here. I'm glad to help.
Declaring what is to be done as if that is how it is always done is incorrect unless a policy or guideline has established it or it is empirically demonstrable, the latter essentially impossible given Wikipedia's number of articles. My degree of specificity is due to extra effort in ensuring that citations will provide information sufficient to withstand challenge, which is consistent with Wikipedia:Citing sources, which does not forbid what was included. I don't object as much to a view that citations should be simpler (although I prefer precision) as I do to the assertion that it must be done another way. Policies and guidelines are better for drawing conclusions on standards of praxis and if they are not satisfactory they may be amended. Preferences if already within policies and guidelines can, however, be decided within article consensus.
Nick Levinson (talk) 18:18, 10 March 2013 (UTC) (Added qualifying phrase: 18:29, 10 March 2013 (UTC))[reply]
On citations with quotations, on Mission Possible, and on the audience:
  • That quotations sometimes appear with citations is consistent with endnotes being both bibliographic and discursive, and permissible. And while the two kinds of notes are often separated, they need not be.
  • The book by Moskowitz and another from the schools group and, until lately deleted, cited in the Further Reading section was critiqued in the Edit Summary for the deletion as "advertising by ceo, not NPOV suitable for listing in Additional reading". Incorrect, because not every source and not every statement in the article need be NPOV (only the article as a whole need be NPOV), because while the book partly serves to promote the SA schools group for the most part it does not (I read it), and because it has been reviewed in a reliable secondary source (I did not cite any reviews by bloggers or paid reviewers). While I did not re-add the section with the book because it is already cited elsewhere in the article (appropriately so) and Further Reading sections are not for books cited elsewhere in the same article (thus the deletion would have been valid on that ground), I have now added a citation to the review. I have an impression, possibly mistaken, that the editor deleting it did not read the book and merely speculated on the ground for deletion; were that valid, no Wikipedia article about a living author could list their bibliographies of works for sale. It is legitimate to list the publication, as it has substantial content directly and extensively related to the article's subject and not available elsewhere.
  • On Wikipedia's intended audience, I found this: "It combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias ...." (as accessed March 14, 2013). That "specialized encyclopedias" are reflected as part of the design means that substantially knowledgeable readers are presumably part of any article's readership and we should expect to satisfy such readers when feasible.
Nick Levinson (talk) 19:47, 17 March 2013 (UTC) (Corrected a missing space: 19:53, 17 March 2013 (UTC)) (Corrected placement of the correction explanation: 19:58, 17 March 2013 (UTC))[reply]
I reviewed the article for future plans that don't belong in the article and they are not present. They may have been in the past and, in that case, were deleted. Some, of course, belong (such as on opening individual schools when already controversial and on planning on a total number of schools, that being controversial) and those future plans stayed. If I didn't delete something that should have been, please edit or post accordingly. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:59, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

whether to reduce criticisms and therefore both sides[edit]

The consensus up to this point was functionally to include many criticisms, since they were being posted especially to the Moskowitz article and some moved here because of this article's creation and they were in a substantial number of sources, and therefore including both sides meant including more content. Consensus can change and if it is then perhaps both sides can be shrunk somewhat. However, I'm not sure consensus is changing, given that one of the most recent objections to the Moskowitz article leading to the AfD nomination was that she is "a very controversial figure in New York and nothing in this article reflects that", and that was before the post-AfD reverting. As long as we maintain balance consistently with sourcing, we could legitimately have more of both sides or less of both sides. What is the consensus on whether more or less?

I don't think this is necessarily a neutrality issue but it is a weight issue.

I'd like to know what we think the consensus will be on more-vs.-less before I try to select the criticisms of less interest to editors who think there should be more.

Nick Levinson (talk) 19:04, 2 March 2013 (UTC) (Moving (with editing) a paragraph in my post (there's no reply yet) that I should have put into the parent section as a list item: 17:24, 4 March 2013 (UTC))[reply]

(The following is also expected to be posted virtually identically at Talk:Eva Moskowitz#whether to reduce criticisms and therefore both sides.)
While no one voted or expressed any view at this talk subtopic/subsection (other than me), I have collected all the stated views I know about on this question and collected them here, having searched the Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy Charter Schools current and archival talk pages, talk Edit Summaries, article Edit Summaries, and the Moskowitz AfD discussion and Edit Summaries. I included some quotations that may not have been intended by their authors to be about this issue because I wanted to be sure to include all stated views that might be relevant, so I may have overincluded. I have added to each view my characterization as favoring either more or fewer criticisms. They're in chronological order by first appearance except that views by the same editor or from the same IP address are grouped together under one more/fewer characterization. I excluded my past view from the search as unnecessary. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:30, 17 March 2013 (UTC) (Corrected unintended boldfacing due to self-referential link: 15:43, 19 March 2013 (UTC))[reply]
  • [More:] "In my view, this article is a difficult one to write and will inevitably have NPOV issues.... I think it is within the protocol of BLP to include the controversies associated with the charter schools run by Eva Moskowitz. These controversies are not slanderous or libelous, and from what I can tell, are embraced by Ms. Moskowitz herself in her life work. What makes Ms. Moskowitz' case different than other leaders of charter schools is her high standing in NYC and the leadership role she has taken on this issue. There isn't a reason why Moskowitz' BLP can't reflect, in a reasonable and respectful manner, the controversies generated by career. As the article originally stood, I would argue that there was a point of view bias hyping the schools she has created.... [T]his is not the place to argue on the merits and demerits of charter schools. But given the complexity of NCLB and testing, simple statements regarding high test scores, although seemingly factual, contain inherent biases. Although I imagine that her schools aren't involved overtly in cherry-picking students, my own experience in teaching has demonstrated how students with more stable socioeconomic backgrounds will gravitate toward charters and magnets, thereby creating hamlets where test scores will be high. Meanwhile, as the students with higher ability leave traditional public schools without lottery (or PR hype), test scores go down in the traditional school, more students leave, funding declines, test scores go down, in a continuing downward spiral. I don't mean to suggest that the traditional system has benefited all the students and that there shouldn't be reform. However, given how irrational the testing regime plays out under NCLB (which in many urban contexts does not succesfully delineate between good and bad schools), a simple reporting of test scores is inherently biased.... I would imagine that there is a way to edit the section in an unbiased manner." Corey (talk), 2010 March 8, 9:58p UTC, per Talk:Eva Moskowitz/Archive 1#Keep neutral .28not POV.29 .26 support any criticism.2C especially in BLP
  • [Fewer then more and more:]
  • [Fewer then more, more, and more:]
    • "Nocera article on Brill's book is a good introduction to this section. It summarizes and weighs the criticisms, rather than listing a laundry list of charges and counter-charges." Nbauman (talk), 2011 November 9, 11:00a local time, per Success Academy Charter Schools article Edit Summary
    • "This is not 'contentious', it's well-sourced WP:RS and required by WP:NPOV to prevent it from being an advertisement." Nbauman (talk), 2012 June 27, 8:54p local time, per Eva Moskowitz article Edit Summary, portion of quotation delinked here
    • "Eva Moskowitz is very controversial in NYC, she has many critics, and many critical articles have been written about her in WP:RS, which should be reflected in this article under WP:WEIGHT and WP:NPOV.... All of the criticism of Moskowitz in this article seems to have been deleted, leaving the article looking like a press release. Please read WP:NPOV before you delete the criticism. Under WP:BLP, we are required to include only material supported by WP:RS, but we are not required -- or allowed -- to delete substantive criticism that is supported by WP:RS." Nbauman (talk), 2012 June 28, 1:02a UTC, per Talk:Eva Moskowitz/Archive 1#WP:NPOV, title & portion of quotation delinked & further posts by same user seek more information with criticism
      • I replied elsewhere to this and the next posts that I had preserved the criticisms if sourced but had moved some of them, and had deleted unsourced criticisms. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:30, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Nick, everything critical seems to have been deleted from this article...." Nbauman (talk), 2012 July 3, 8:37p UTC, per Talk:Eva Moskowitz/Archive 1#Criticism
  • [Fewer:]
  • [More:] "She is a very controversial figure in New York and nothing in this article reflects that." 71.108.135.193 (talk), 2013 February 13, 5:03p UTC, per Talk:Eva Moskowitz#NPOV
  • [More:] "[F]or school groups where there has been some controversy, like here, more is needed.... [I]t's true that controversies over planning for schools that do not yet exist or that have been cancelled can sometimes be worth covering.... [On] general principles of education--in an article on a group of charter schools, it is not necessary to discuss the merits or controversies respected this manner of educational organization. Links to general articles handle this." DGG (talk), 2013 February 25, 2:27a UTC, per Talk:Success Academy Charter Schools#how to proceed
      • My comment made elsewhere was that such general education principles articles were not found and sourcing associating this schools group with one or another set of principles (other than being chartered) has not been found, so that the content, and not just linking, would likely stay in this schools group article minus some detail. That would determine where criticisms and neutral content on those points would appear. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:30, 17 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In conclusion:
I found 6 voters, including some commentary that may not have been intended to be relevant. The views and votes appear equally applicable to both the Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy Charter Schools articles, no one distinguishing between the two articles in their reasoning and the two article subjects being and having been so closely connected, so a single consensus applies to both. The votes as I imputed them were more by Corey; fewer then more and more by 24.185.198.61; fewer then more, more, and more by Nbauman; fewer by Grayfell; more by 71.108.135.193; and more by DGG.
Weighing what was written, I think this means that the consensus favors more rather than fewer criticisms but that minor nearly-trivial criticisms need not be reported (trivial criticisms, like any trivial content, would, of course, not be reportable).
Consensus can change, editors quoted above who believe their views were mischaracterized here may self-recharacterize their views, and any editors may weigh in.
Nick Levinson (talk) 20:30, 17 March 2013 (UTC) (Corrected a missing bracket (my error): 20:38, 17 March 2013 (UTC)) (Corrected wording: 21:13, 17 March 2013 (UTC))[reply]
I reviewed the article for nearly trivial criticisms to delete and none are present. They may have been present in the past but, in that case, they are gone. If there's a disagreement on this, please edit or post accordingly and consistently with the consensus. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:06, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

school types according to overarching curricula[edit]

New York State has, I think, minimum academic and other requirements for all schools and maybe there tend to be types of schools such that one type focuses on math and literacy most of each day and another type is more varied, like for this SA group, but I haven't seen such a typology in Wikipedia or anywhere else. Wikipedia refers to a core nonelective curriculum, so presumably there are noncore nonelective and elective curricula, but that's not clearly recognized. If a typology exists, I can't write for Wikipedia on the types, in the curriculum article, until sourcing is found. And to classify SA into such a type would need a source typing SA and I haven't seen that. If you've seen either kind of source, please add it or post about it. We could describe SA's academics as varied and leave out the details about it, but that would sound like an advertisement, because the specifics would be missing.

Illustration on 3R: A few years ago, in Williamsburg, a large-scale intense debate over educational policy arose between mainly White gentrifying parents who wanted the local public noncharter school to have a varied program including art vs. mainly people of color who were long-term residents who wanted to keep an existing 2-hour-a-day penmanship class; one of the latter parents said that they have crayons at home. The likelihood is that both sides wanted their children to graduate and get good jobs. Lately, the SA schools group decided to open in Williamsburg (and, I think, so did another charter operator with help from Moskowitz's husband) and that was followed by a concern that the local public noncharter school would lose students to the charters and therefore that the noncharter school would lose funding, as state funding follows students. Opposition arose to SA's Williamsburg school. This Wikipedia article is not the place for the pre-SA dispute (although it is for the opposition to SA), but, on academics, I think the 3R model (reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic) is the first choice in many parents' minds. So that model is not far from widespread implementation, even if most or all schools within given grades also teach science and civics. So 3R would be a type, SA uses another type, and Williamsburg opposition forming a criticism of SA is reportable.

Requests:

  • Sources for creating an article on curricular types so that content can be moved from this article to that in the event we ever find a source typing SA as to overall currculum.
  • The right terminology. For example, SA has a literacy curriculum it developed itself and a math curriculum. The word seems to be used for both specific and general descriptions of what is to be taught.

Nick Levinson (talk) 19:04, 2 March 2013 (UTC) (Corrected my unintended positive to negative and corrected my misspelling: 19:15, 2 March 2013 (UTC))[reply]

deleting unopened uncontroverted schools[edit]

I've identified list items about specific schools not (yet) opened and not (yet) subjects of controversy that I plan to delete from the article. I see how the precision of their content complicates reading the article, and that the complexity would grow as more schools are proposed. I may keep information about them offline in order to ease restoring and updating information as they open or are controverted, but I don't promise to do so. In the meantime, deleting will take me a ittle more time, as I want to do it without disrupting citations that may apply to multiple statements. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:51, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm taking as a given that individual schools that are neither open nor controverted deserve weight once there are several schools open or controverted within a group that is the subject of one article. I have not found a policy or guideline on this, but it seems a reasonable criterion for an article's consensus. For this article, however, I would suggest adding one more criterion: schools newly proposed although neither open nor controverted, because within about a week or two of a school being proposed for opening in Queens it was controverted, suggesting that there's reader interest in schools that are merely proposed, but that after a month or so such a school should be deleted if not controverted and not open, the school restorable later when opened or controverted. For schools that are proposed but not qualified for being listed, communities they would serve may be listed (in my view), to serve the informational needs of people who might apply to study or teach there. I've added these criteria to the essay Wikipedia:Schools/Arguments. (In the meantime, I'm still working on the list of likely deletions of schools from this article, which numbers about 8 at the moment, and I should be taking care of it soon.) Nick Levinson (talk) 18:15, 9 March 2013 (UTC) (Edited a word to avoid confusion & clarified 2 statements: 18:22, 9 March 2013 (UTC))[reply]
My error: I should have said "don't deserve weight" in my post, in "I'm taking as a given that individual schools that are neither open nor controverted don't deserve weight once there are several schools open or controverted within a group that is the subject of one article...." Nick Levinson (talk) 16:18, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Done, in that all schools that are neither opened yet nor controverted are now deleted. Some information about multiple schools was combined into entries for single schools. Part of what is still to come, a review of the whole article for possible general overdetailing, may result in further editing of the same schools content. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:47, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

recent edits not by me[edit]

This is based on the most recent consecutive edits that were not by me.

The infobox before the lead is supposed to have certain values filled in if the article supports them. That's the template's consensus and supports consistency and comparison of school articles across Wikipedia.

  • The parameter "schooltype"'s value no longer says "with public & private funds". The parameter "fundingtype" would say that but using schooltype (needed for the value "public charter") causes an override of fundingtype (as noted in the article's comment with that parameter), so the funding information should be in the schooltype value. We presumably should use both parameters, so putting the information appropriate to both parameters in one is the likelier solution. Unless there's an objection or an alternative in the infobox, I plan to put the deleted information back with schooltype.
  • For the parameter "staff", the value gave the count "in or before 2012" because that is what the article says and, in turn, that is what the source supports. That's semantically a little different from "as of 2012". I propose to restore the previous wording.
  • For several parameters, the parameters and their values were deleted or the values alone were deleted. The values were proper for the parameters, in accordance with the template documentation and the article. I propose to restore them:
    • "status" with the value "Open"
    • "Hours_in_Day" with the value as a schedule
    • "athletics" with the value "Yes"
    • "sports" with the value "Yes"
    • "fees" with the value "No application fee"

The Demographics subsection has lost much of the controversy, that some other schools of the group also are diverse, the schools group's rationale for diversity, the comparison to a nearby school, and all the political consequence of student diversity, which relates to whether families, communities, and politicians will continue to accept the presence of the controversial schools. That's important to the article's subject. If it would benefit from rephrasing, edit or suggest it; otherwise, I propose to restore the subsection.

Some edits specifically remove neutrality because one side of a controversy is retained but the other side is deleted. This relates to the pending question of consensus respecting whether to report more controversy generally or less as long as we report both sides of whatever controversies we do report. So far, answers to that question have not been posted there. Unless the consensus is to reduce criticisms to fewer so that even remaining criticisms on point are deleted, I propose to neutralize by re-adding for two-sidedness.

  • That the contract with teachers is not a unon contract was kept but that pay and benefits are in some ways better and that management maintained flexibility, including the discretion to fire, were deleted. On the one hand, the point of a union contract from members' viewpoint is to create and protect workers' rights. Therefore, stating the lack of a union contract is implicitly to criticize the schools group in the eyes of teachers, prospective teachers, and at least one union, not trivial for many readers, while the pay and benefits levels, the large numbers of applications and job interviews even for small numbers of openings, and teachers not having to buy supplies out of pocket are on the other side of that controversy. On the other hand, the point of not having a union contract from the schools group's viewpoint is to have flexibility in running the schools in order to achieve their goals, as illustrated by the now-deleted description of the nonunion contract that is used, and the other side of that controversy is the higher cost of attracting and retaining good teachers who otherwise might seek union-protected jobs elsewhere, and relevant to that is also that the higher level of pay and of some benefits was deleted.
  • Another contrast to the deleting of the high numbers of teacher applications and interviews even for small numbers of positions was that the Turnover subsection was retained.
  • The work-home life imbalance criticism was retained but the passage on parental leave was deleted. Both are important to teachers and potential teachers, so deleting both would remove content important to readers; and the latter neutralizes the former.
  • That the schools group prefers to hire teachers who prefer feedback was deleted but that a teacher who left complaining of micromanagement was retained in the Turnover subsection.
  • A judge's analysis that marketing was performed was deleted but the criticism about marketing was kept. That the judge so ruled as part of dismissing a lawsuit against the school means it was relevant and is legally stronger than the schools' own claim of need to market.

That when teachers are hired the final decision is by the principal is a contrast to schools in which permanent teachers are assigned without the principals having much say about particular candidates, as in New York City noncharter public schools, where seniority generally determines where teachers may teach. That's an area of controversy discussed extensively in Class Warfare and that part of the SA schools group's method of hiring is thus important and should be restored.

An attribution was deleted from "the [Masters'] training program is funded by Success Academies"; the same sentence describes a statement by Moskowitz but the attribution about fundng was by the reporters, so not attributing is confusing. I plan to re-add.

A quotation no longer shows as such, so "more than $1,100 per child from 2007 to 2009" needs quotation marks.

That the spending of "more than $1,100 per child from 2007 to 2009" was "effectively" such (without quotation marks) was edited to no longer say "effectively", but the cited source as re-accessed March 5, 2013, says, "In effect, Harlem Success [now Success Academy] CEO ... Moskowitz shelled out more than $1,100 per child between 2007 and 2009 to fill the first 900 seats in her schools." (This is quoted here without the newspaper's linking.) The "effectively" therefore has to be restored for accuracy based on consistency with the source.

That teachers get 12–13 weeks of vacation was deleted. It's, for some people, a criticism. I was ambivalent about the deleting of that, but I'm leaning toward re-adding. The school year is longer at these schools and includes about a month more of pre-opening training than noncharter public schools provide. It's part of compensation and is shorter than in the noncharter schools but much longer than in probably most private-sector jobs, including jobs in teaching corporate employees.

The External Links section deletions are partly consistent with the guideline and partly not.

Some other edits I don't challenge. Examples: I don't think there's anything wrong with having empty infobox parameters that might be used later so that editors don't have to revisit the template documentation as often, but their deletion is only inconvenient, and I think describing the nonunion contract somewhat specifically was useful, but since editors are concerned about overdetailing then that can go, as can the teacher-applicants' providing of writing samples.

Respecting pre-kindergarten and the infobox parameter "gradeK", which was deleted (it lacked a value but had a comment about including and identifying pre-K since it is relevant to the schools group and an appropriate value may become available), a template proposal on pre-K is pending. Feel free to participate there.

I'll wait a week for any response here.

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:32, 7 March 2013 (UTC) (Corrected 2 misspellings, rephrased, & linked: 16:51, 7 March 2013 (UTC))[reply]

Mostly done.
I also restored the school colors qualification to the infobox although at first I let it pass. Some schools proclaim having designated official colors. But this schools group, as far as I know from any source, has not. However, their uniforms and logo clearly use these two colors predominantly and sources describe the uniforms as orange and blue. Arguably, the proper information being in the body of the article is sufficient, but an infobox is supposed to be informative on its own for comparison with other schools. Therefore, even though the point is relatively minor, the qualification is needed for the infobox's accuracy.
In the sentence about "effectively" spending a sum on marketing, I also re-added the attribution to the reporter who stated the distinction.
I thought again about re-adding under External Links a link for grants because of controversy over private funding that noncharter public schools often don't receive, but decided against it because it seems limited to Federal and State grants and arguably has too little value for the article.
I'm delaying (re-)adding under External Links some links for the N.Y.C. education department because I had technical difficulty getting to their website to determine the current URL/s.
Nick Levinson (talk) 19:57, 16 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Done, now that N.Y.C. education department links are in. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:20, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

propose to resubsection External Links for news outlet link[edit]

I propose to subsection the External Links section to separate the journalistic link from the schools group's official link. For a while in the past, the External Links section had many links and was subsectioned, including separating the press link. Most of the links were deleted and only two were left, making subsectioning more or less unnecessary, but now some of those links have been restored and subsectioning was applied to most of them to ease navigation by readers, thus giving the erroneous appearance of the unseparated journalistic list item nearly being an official link for the schools group. To prevent a misunderstanding among readers, I plan to add a subsection, probably for Press or Journalism. I'll wait a week for any response. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:58, 28 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:42, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Increasing the readability of this article[edit]

This article is still extremely difficult to follow. It looked like it was improving for a while, but that's stalled. It has huge amounts of info with no strong indication what is vitally important to understanding the schools, and what isn't. One simple method to make this article much, much easier to parse would be to place the individual schools in a Wikitable. This also lends itself well to very brief summaries, which would also be easier to follow. Keep in mind that this is a rough first draft of what that might look like, and I'm obviously not an expert in wikicode. It would need to be expanded somewhat, of course, and sources would have to be copied over, but that would be the easy part.

Other alternatives would be welcome. Grayfell (talk) 00:57, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Making a collapsible section may be appropriate but deleting the criticisms, their context, and related information is not, as already discussed and adding them into a table would, I think, make it harder to read. However, I'll probably make the existng section collapsible, maybe in the next few days. Thank you for the idea. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:30, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I only made the table collapsible to keep the talk page more manageable. Sorry, I should have made that clear. Yes, the table would have to be made somewhat more informative, but if there really is enough content to justify this level of information, the article needs to be split into multiple articles. If not, well then something needs to be removed from the page, and I don't think that is an unrealistic task. My suggestion was to prune the section on individual schools to fit into a table. To reiterate, I think this article is too difficult to read. Maybe I'm way off-base here. If you really don't see why the article's length is a problem, then I would like to get other editors involved. As an aside, just to make it crystal clear, I am not talking about Eva Moskowitz at all, I am only talking about this article here. Grayfell (talk) 01:59, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What would make a good split into multiple articles and is there precedent for that regarding an institution (other than breaking criticism into its own section and article, which is generally discouraged)? For example, should the Locations section be made into its own article? I'm not sure there's much precedent to guide us on that, but perhaps you know of some. The article is still within Wikipedia's length preferences, but I'm happy with increasing readability. There seems to be a view that encyclopedic means 'short' and thus 'less informative', and that's not Wikimedia's position. There was a suggestion that instead of describing some of the schools group's ways of working that we simply link to an article about that way of working and then classify this schools group accordingly, but I have not seen such an article and I have no source for so classifying.
I thought about writing simpler sentences and thus more sentences but the requirement for attribution would increase the number of attributive clauses. Bundling citations is a lot of work and maintenance and makes the references section longer.
In response to your clarification, I won't do the collapsibility.
Nick Levinson (talk) 16:13, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am saying this article is too long. There is a large amount of information that can and should be omitted from this article. I do not believe that 'short' always means 'less informative', especially if being shorter means that the article is more readable.
I understand that other stuff exists, but for comparison, the article is currently 241,786 bytes. The article on Ancient Egypt, which is a featured article, is about half that. I admit it's a silly comparison, but it does underscore just how big this article has become. Getting this to the point where it could be considered a good article seems like an attainable, positive goal. I feel like I have already explained my position several times, and it seems you feel the same way, that's why I think a third opinion would be helpful.
As for specific sections that could be spun-off into their own articles, I am not thrilled about the idea, either. LENGTH, and specifically SIZERULE suggest that if the readable prose size is over 60 kB, it's big enough to consider splitting. According to a script I just ran, the current r.p.s. is 67 kB. I think that the list-items for the individual schools are complex enough to be included, which would bump that number up another 5 or 10 kB. This isn't a hard and fast rule, of course, but it's worth considering.
Grayfell (talk) 23:42, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'll probably try a table this weekend.
On which content is important and which is not, the article is for multiple audiences. For someone who never heard of the schools at all, only basic information is needed, and for them the lead alone is about enough. However, other audiences include childrens' families, prospective teachers, unions, political office-holders, other schools, journalists, and community organizers and they all need different kinds of information. Wikipedia is written for multiple readerships and so is this article. Everything in the article is meant to meet the needs of a significant audience (although there is a sentence I intend to trim in my next edits). Both the schools and the CEO have been controversial for years and that brings many kinds of people to being interested in them, pro, con, and neutral.
I don't use the argument that some other article has something and therefore this one should too. I stay within policies and guidelines and some essays. If I had the time, I'd like to do comparable articles for other schools, but the time commitment is too large.
The length is still within the limit of what does not need splitting although it's getting close; but my main concern about splitting is that it will result in an AfD leading to the spinoff being deleted or merged back in, causing a lot of work with short-lived benefit. But if we can come up with, say, a group of sections that can constitute an article that would be kept, that's still more work than maintaining a single article (many sources would be in both) but maybe that's a better readability solution. I'm just not clear which content would be enough for notability for AfD (only the whole subject of an article need be notable, part of the article does not have to be, the test for parts being due weight).
I don't want to pursue getting into the top 1%. The article won't have the required stability because of controversies present for years (some editors seem to want mostly criticisms and more like a laundry list or indictment). We don't have edit wars but because Moskowitz has indicated a likelihood of running to be Mayor in 2017 and this schools group is central to her bid and to the opposition from the teachers' union, stability will likely not be achieved for years and therefore GA status won't be, either. If it was nominated for GA status, I'd probably have to point that out.
The third-opinion procedure does not apply since "more than two editors" are already involved, but we can address issues here, and that has already helped.
Nick Levinson (talk) 16:13, 9 May 2013 (UTC) (Moved and edited a link: 16:21, 9 May 2013 (UTC))[reply]

I am fully aware of who Wikipedia is written for! Right now, anybody who is looking for specific information in this article is going to have a hell of a time finding it. It's not serving a broad range of readers, it is only serving the very patient ones who are willing to sift through a lot of redundancy and verbosity to find what they need.

I agree that it may be more trouble than it's worth, but I don't accept that controversy is a reason why an article can't reach GA status. Almost the entire population of Wikipedia:Good articles/Social sciences and society#Politics and government are good counter examples. Regardless, striving towards GA status seems like a positive approach, even if it's not currently an attainable goal. If nothing else, it gives a good basis for comparison within Wikipedia as a whole.

I suppose it's true that at least one other editor is involved, but you and I are the only editors currently discussing these issues. Unless I'm missing something, other than DGG a couple of months ago, the only other editors to have edited the page recently are either uncontroversial maintenance edits, or drive-by taggers. Neither of those seem relevant to me. Regardless of the procedure used, I would like to see more editors involved. Grayfell (talk) 21:37, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Past editors including on the talk page are normally still considered part of a consensus even after they stop posting, which is why many talk pages refer new posters to past, even archived, discussions of issues they raise. Thus, an old consensus tends to remain in effect until it changes. The narrower-audience view of Wikipedia seems to have been implied in editors' advice on how to edit and I accept that it wasn't your view, but I was responding to what is discussed on this talk page so as not to exclude editors. But, it not being your view, then I'm even less clear on how shortening the article by much wouldn't simply delete information that various audiences would be seeking and contradict the consensus to report more criticism (and therefore context). I've tried to keep the text concise and specific, so I'm not clear how it's still verbose or redundant. Could you please point to some examples?
I think the relevant GAs would be those on controversial organizations in any field and I had intended to look for recently-approved ones. I may not have time today but should be able to do that soon.
Nick Levinson (talk) 16:57, 10 May 2013 (UTC) (Corrected syntax and clarified for antecedent: 17:02, 10 May 2013 (UTC))[reply]
Well, I'm at a loss for what to tell you. When I look at the article, it is very obvious to me that it has a large number of problems. I have made my suggestions for what I think might be done to fix it. Perhaps they are not ideal solutions, perhaps they're terrible, but they're a start. The problems with this article are wide-spread, and to explain and justify every edit that I think needs to be done on a line-by-line basis is beyond my patience; there are too many of them. If Moskowitz does run for mayor, the added attention is going to make this article a nightmare (if the article even lasts that long). I posted a comment on DGG's talk page asking for additional input, because I'm getting too frustrated by this. If you really can't see any problem with the article, maybe I'm completely off-target. I think DGG's comment above suggests that I'm not alone here. Grayfell (talk) 20:37, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Canvassing aside (you should solicit not only an editor who agrees with you or vice versa but also editors who disagree, and they were listed on this talk page), for one thing, you're not completely off-base, considering that I've applied some of your suggestions and did not change other edits, and, for another, we're all essentially bound by policies, guidelines, and the consensus at various pages (when we dislike them we can edit them or propose changes to them). In the event that the maximum length is reached for this article (and it probably will be sooner or later) then that will a reason to delete some less-important content, but we don't delete prematurely solely on the ground that eventually the article will get too long. Instead, when we get there, we apply expected editorial judgment applicable to that problem, and, until then, we apply expected editorial judgment applicable to the absence of that problem. The article now reflects sources and should and doubtless more will turn up. DGG's comment that you referenced was replied to, I hope to his satisfaction. Nick Levinson (talk) 23:07, 11 May 2013 (UTC) (Corrected misspelling: 23:12, 11 May 2013 (UTC))[reply]
I notified the only other person to have contributed to this talk page in months that this discussion was happening. Are you really accusing me of canvassing?
The article is a mess. If we can keep it the same length and clean it up, great! Quite frankly I strongly doubt it's going to be worth the effort. So, the easiest way I can see to get it into shape is cut it down to a manageable size. Grayfell (talk) 00:48, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm saying precisely what I'm saying. We should not ignore some holders of views just because some editors didn't post recently. But I was saying what I said about it as you perhaps were unaware of that issue and I thought it more important to focus on what we can accomplish.
If you'd like what is a manageable size to be redifined downward from where Wikipedia sets it now, feel free to recommend accordingly at a talk page where those limits are set. This article need not be shorter than that if it otherwise qualifies, e.g., if its content is on point. But, as perhaps you see that it can have essentially the same content as it has now (I think you're saying that) as long as it's organized differently so that it's more readable, please suggest how. I thought subsectioning it would help and you haven't disagreed with that. I'll likely try more of that; I've identified a few sections that I can work on offline. Should the lead be rewritten to highlight or emphasize differently than it does now? I'm used to reading fairly dense material in books and, although I generally try to aerate my public writing, sometimes I might still be too dense stylistically, since aeration usually adds length.
Nick Levinson (talk) 19:04, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

propose to restore to the External Links section[edit]

I propose to restore the external links recently deleted. This was discussed before but perhaps the most recent discussions were missed, not being in their own talk topic/section. They are all relevant under the WP:EL provision that says, "4. Sites that fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources.". The most relevant recent discussion was this: "The External Links section [content newly deleted is] ... consistent with the guideline ....

I'll wait a week for any response.

Nick Levinson (talk) 15:39, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry to be blunt, but you might have better success getting people to read your comments if you made them a bit more succinct. Regardless, I am familiar with your position, and I stand by my edit. I understand your desire to make this article comprehensive, but the link section was excessive. We need more input on this, apparently. I suggest a third opinion. Grayfell (talk) 02:02, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Could you please explain how the links did not "contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources"? I'm assuming the most important content at the links cannot be integrated into the article without greatly increasing its length with extensive detail, but, if it can be, is that the case? I'd rather try to achieve article consensus before we invoke another procedure.
I thought from the edit summary that you probably hadn't seen the prior point; I did not mean to take up your time if you had. I am not always brief but I am concise because when an editor makes a point or especially numerous points that require/s response the response may require explanation for the sake of AGF and the benefit of other editors.
Nick Levinson (talk) 16:19, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not saying they don't contain information, I'm saying that the link section was excessive. If you really feel that these links are crucial to an encyclopedic understanding of the schools, then we can debate that, but adding a paragraph of commentary to each one of them is not informative. It's distracting and confusing. For one thing, to make the article readable it should be formatted similar to other articles, and the external link section is off-base in that regard. Going into that in-depth level of detail about what is and is not contained in the link section is a distraction, so is speculating on what may be added in the future. Additionally, the New York State Department of Education subsection linked to a directory of all the charter schools, [1] and then proceeded to link to every individual school anyway. That kind of text-block is redundant, difficult to navigate, and confusing. Anyone who is capable of navigating that section is capable of navigating the directories, so we should let them do it themselves. The New York City Department of Education subsection does the same thing, except most of the school are listed but don't have entries. While I see the theoretical benefit, trying to accommodate a badly designed website is a recipe for frustration on everyone's part. Grayfell (talk) 02:07, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The third-opinion procedure does not apply since several editors are involved, not just two. We can work here, at least to narrow down the disagreement.
The formatting can probably be solved without deleting most of the links. I'll separate the discussion here.
You're right that familiarity of layout eases reading. That suggests a list format but the previous lists looked lengthier than paragraphing. If the problem is unusual, we may need to customize a solution that still is readable. Would a table be better?
You're right about the New York State Education Department links being redundant; it looks like we don't need the specific links, the general link being sufficient, and I don't know why I didn't catch that earlier. I'll check if some specific links were not on the general page.
With the N.Y. City Department of Education website, the major problem is that school names are different, which may not be anyone's fault. Unless we provide those school names, the information about the schools' quality is almost inaccessible and omitting the school names is almost like omitting the City's evaluations altogether, and they're valuable to several readerships. No alternative website that I know of has the information and the authoritativeness.
I can take out about what may come in the future and rephrase to the effect that these were currently available (i.e., the list is likely not static). I was trying to reduce the maintenance burden.
The paragraphs were, I guess, misunderstood, so we can rephrase. All the paragraphs say (other than on the future) is what information can be found through the links and, where not obvious, how to get the information. Getting the information is not obvious when school names are not the well-known names. I'm not sure how I'd rephrase and if you have suggestions, please offer, but I'll think about it and see what I come up with.
On the substance of the external links, much of what makes these schools controversial is their students' high achievements on statewide tests. Instead of adding yearly math and English results into the article directly for each school tested, by now probably dozens of scores, external links let readers find the results while saving editors here the maintenance of updating that particular content for every new test. Government evaluations of the schools are not just promotion; they include ratings of student progress, school safety (relevant in light of shootings near one SA school, sourced), and achievement gap closure and what parents and others think of the schools according to the city Department of Education's survey. We could add all that directly into the article, perhaps a sentence for each school, but the updating would add to maintenance, partly because we'd have to keep visiting websites to see if there is new content. N.Y.S. has had two or three authorizers of charters (depending on the year), so knowing who authorized a particular school is relevant but would add a level of detail to the article that can be avoided with the external link. Managers' names are less important but the links providing them are useful for other information, so saying that they also provide managers' names is costing us only four words and two commas and has some utility.
Nick Levinson (talk) 16:38, 9 May 2013 (UTC) (Clarified phrasing, rationalized abbreviations, and corrected misspellings: 16:46, 9 May 2013 (UTC))[reply]
I do not think a table is appropriate. I think that would be even less predictable and consistent than what was there before. Adding a link to a directory seems like the limit to what is called for in a EL section. Giving such complicated (an frankly, confusing) instructions on how to use a website which only includes partial information seems excessive. You would have your work cut out for you including these report cards in the article, since they are WP:PRIMARY documents. Since they are of limited use as sources, I'm not inclined to give them that much space in the article. If they are vitally important, you should be able to find secondary sources discussing them (as I'm sure you already have). Making it as easy as possible for people to choose a school for their kids is outside the scope of Wikipedia. Grayfell (talk) 22:05, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'll try another version of the External Links section, probably tomorrow or Sunday, and without a table.
I have not seen many sources on government evaluations and have reported what I have found in reliable secondasry sources, except for redundancy. But those reports are occasional and the external links take readers to a complete body of them, which researchers will generally prefer, since they reveal whether high performance in one time period was followed by a severe drop that was not reported in news media and they permit school-to-school comparisons. (I don't think there is such a severe drop or poorly-performing individual school, but I haven't done comparisons through most of the link destinations.)
If "adding a link to a directory" is "the limit" (other than linking to the official website), then perhaps I missed a guideline or policy saying that; could you point me to where that limit is said? Perhaps it overrides the guideline I cited on point.
What motivates readers to use Wikipedia is not important; they may use it almost entirely as they see fit, including to choose schools and to complain about them. This article is not replacing any other website for either purpose and no website or source has nearly the range of information this article has, all of which is within Wikipedia's scope. But, while we preserve its utility, I'm glad to make it easier to read.
Nick Levinson (talk) 17:12, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

what is needed[edit]

A few months ago I said here "This is a article of the type I edit most, and it needs some major revisions.It needs so much work, in fact, that having done the first few steps, I am not sure whether I should go further. The work in involved includes but is not limited to implementing the many suggestions made above by neutral editors. I'm not going to enumerate them again: they've all been said adequately, but I'll say some general concerns.

Viewed as an article on a group of schools, we normally handle such articles rather concisely, but for school groups where there has been some controversy, like here, more is needed. We include only schools that are actually implemented--the basic criterion for including a school is that it at least exists, though it's true that controversies over planning for schools that do not yet exist or that have been cancelled can sometimes be worth covering. We normally do not go into general principles of education--in an article on a group of charter schools, it is not necessary to discuss the merits or controversies respected this manner of educational organization. Links to general articles handle this. We normally do not discuss routine details: all elementary schools in a country normally teach the same subjects, and all schools of a type normally teach them in the same manner; if there are exceptions, they can be discussed. Otherwise, they go on the group's website. The article can also be viewed as the article on an organization. For those articles too, we do not normally discuss detailed organizational details, or the general principles of the industry or other activity. Again, inks to general articles & organizational websites deal with these. References are intended to indicate sources that support the material. they do not discuss the qualifications of the author or unnecessary details of the manner of publication. They give the necessary detail,but unless it is reasonably challenged whether they support the text, they do not contain quotes, or need to give over-exact locations. (There are obvious exceptions: print-only references need page numbers; foreign language references sometimes need translations of key parts; sometimes specific wording can be better given here than in the text when the wording is critical). And external link sections are the place for a few key links to the best online sources, not extensive web directories.

The article is so highly promotional, and the principal editor so obvious reluctant to make changes in conformity with our normal practice, that it would be much easier to delete the entire article and start over.

Some specific points that have not been handled that I specifically mentioned

We include only schools that are actually implemented--the basic criterion for including a school is that it at least exists, though it's true that controversies over planning for schools that do not yet exist or that have been cancelled can sometimes be worth covering.
We normally do not go into general principles of education--in an article on a group of charter schools, it is not necessary to discuss the merits or controversies respected this manner of educational organization. Links to general articles handle this.
We normally do not discuss routine details: all elementary schools in a country normally teach the same subjects, and all schools of a type normally teach them in the same manner; of course, special subjects need to be mentioned, and other exceptions. if there are exceptions, they can be discussed. Otherwise, they go on the group's website.
References are intended to indicate sources that support the material. they do not discuss the qualifications of the author or unnecessary details of the manner of publication. They give the necessary detail,but unless it is reasonably challenged whether they support the text, they do not contain quotes, or need to give over-exact locations.

Some additional one, obvious to anyone who looks at it, are

excessive repetition of material in the lede paragraph
excessive emphasis on the philosophy behind the schools, much of which is not all that special
excessive quotes from Moskowitz -- and in general the use of quotations for things that do not require quotation.
citing multiple sources to prove the same thing, often by referencing individual words, where a reference for a sentence would suffice.
a criticism section devoted primarily to refuting the criticisms
excessive detail throughout -- a particularly bad instance is the section on the construction problems at Cobble Hill

I said earlier, that the article is so highly promotional, and the principal editor so obvious reluctant to make changes in conformity with our normal practice, that it might be much easier to delete the entire article and start over. I do not like to use AfD to force improvements, because that's not its primary purpose, but it does work sometimes.

But I have decided , in consideration of the guidelines of deletion policy, that an effort should first be made to reduce the article to reason. If the principal ed won't do it, I will. I shall start in a few days to give him a chance at it first, to show he understands. DGG ( talk ) 05:35, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For you to repeat some of your charges when I already showed you their falsity suggests that you did not read my replies and therefore that you are refusing to collaborate. I am working within policies and guidelines and have already explained how. Instead of my repeatng my replies on the points you originally raised, I refer you to the replies I already posted.
You newly wrote: "Some specific points that have not been handled that I specifically mentioned": You newly added as repetition: "We include only schools that are actually implemented--the basic criterion for including a school is that it at least exists, though it's true that controversies over planning for schools that do not yet exist or that have been cancelled can sometimes be worth covering." That was done about two months ago and a hatnote in the article section reinforces that. You newly added as repetition: "We normally do not go into general principles of education--in an article on a group of charter schools, it is not necessary to discuss the merits or controversies respected this manner of educational organization. Links to general articles handle this." This article covers this schools group's principles, not just anyone's, and there is no source aligning this school with a philosophy stated in another Wikipedia article; and I already pointed this out on this talk page more than two months ago. You newly added as repetition: "We normally do not discuss routine details: all elementary schools in a country normally teach the same subjects, and all schools of a type normally teach them in the same manner; of course, special subjects need to be mentioned, and other exceptions. if there are exceptions, they can be discussed. Otherwise, they go on the group's website." Either some schools emphasize the 3 Rs or some parents expect they will and therefore this school group's selection of subjects and emphasis is due weight; the manner of teaching certainly varies (e.g., chalk-and-talk is a common method not sourced for this schools group and probably not the main method employed by it); we do not edit the schools group's website, we edit Wikipedia to be of use to a variety of often-conflicting audiences; and exceptions are discussed in the article; and all of this I already discussed on this talk page. You newly added as repetition: "References are intended to indicate sources that support the material. they do not discuss the qualifications of the author or unnecessary details of the manner of publication. They give the necessary detail,but unless it is reasonably challenged whether they support the text, they do not contain quotes, or need to give over-exact locations." The section is of References and Notes and may and does include other content appropriate for endnotes. I corrected the section title almost two months ago so that no one would be confused. Discursive notes are allowed to be in the same section and within the same numbering scheme and any single endnote may be both referential and discursive. We do not have to wait for challenges and then have to leave it to me to go find the original information that would have precluded the challenges; I already edited the notes downward and deleted what I think you call "over-exact locations" and author qualifications. Please review the history and search for the word "detail". Please read replies to your talk posts on this talk page and you can then be well informed when undertaking work on this article. All of your foregoing points were already resolved. If you believe they were not, then please do not just repeat erroneous charges but, instead, write specifically what issues you wish to raise in light of the current state of the article, the talk page, and any other consensus that applies.
You raise as a new issue what seems to be a repetition of the above, but I'll address it anew:
  • "excessive emphasis on the philosophy behind the schools, much of which is not all that special": Probably many schools do many things that this schools group does (I'll call it an approach for convenience here) but then to describe SA by linking it to that aproach we'd need an article or sourcing that describes that approach generically for other schools, regulators, or other institutions and we'd also need a source saying that SA follows that same approach. One would not be enough. We need both. I have neither. It would be a good idea and perhaps someday there will be a generic article. Or, if it is in Wikipedia and I missed it, please point to it and I'll be glad to edit accordingly. And, if you know of any source that says that the SA schools group follows that particular approach, please cite it. I asked for that over two months ago, none was cited, and I have not seen it.
You also raise new issues:
  • "excessive repetition of material in the lede paragraph": Do you mean repetition within the lead (which is four paragraphs long, not one)? Or do you mean that the lead repeats (or states first) what is in the body of the article? If you meant within the lead, I just read it again and I don't see internal repetition, so please point to an example of what you mean. If you meant that the lead says some of what the body says, that's what the lead is supposed to do, in summary form.
  • "in general the use of quotations for things that do not require quotation": Paraphrasing is usually preferred and I did it throughout most of the article. However, it's not a good idea when readers, especially critics, are likely to challenge paraphrases as not being what someone said and, if we're going to use exact words, we need to present them as quotations. Short phrases by U.S. copyright law do not have to be quoted but even for those marking them as quotations is a good idea. Many sources are interviews or are about what was said, and quotations are in this article if they're useful as content, represent statements accurately, and avoid promotion; and anyone can check by comparing quotations to the sources from which they came.
  • "excessive quotes from Moskowitz": Organizations differ in the extent to which a top person is a frequent spokester or delegates organizational representation to various executives, and that is without counting people whose jobs are primarily to be publicists. Car manufacturers, for example, are often spoken for by executives other than the CEO or C-level, probably because the C level is usually too busy. Political organizations run by elected officials, on the other hand, each mostly rely on an elected office-holder to speak for the organization to such an extent that the electorate or the public often hardly notices that there is an organization, especially in the cases of legislators and candidates. Moskowitz comes from that background and that probably explains why she is so frequently representing the schools group herself in discussions about what it does. It is not up to Wikipedia to exclude statements because they come from the CEO but include them if they came from, say, a teacher or principal under her; I reported according to sources. I have presented other people's statements whether they're from inside or outside of the schools group and whether they're spokesters or not, according to sources.
  • "citing multiple sources to prove the same thing": Three is the limit permitted by Wikipedia (more is allowed for exceptional cases) and there are not more than three in any place in the article (there are no exceptions), and mostly there are only one or two. Because of the controversies, multiple citations are often needed to ensure proper coverage. These are not merely redundant citations; for example, if the identical story appears in several sources, I cite one.
  • "citing multiple sources to prove the same thing, often by referencing individual words, where a reference for a sentence would suffice": To make a single reference for a sentence in some cases would require bundling into a very large ref element and would require a lot more editorial maintenance, since, for example, the convenience of naming ref elements would usually be lost, annotations would usually have to be added, and editing any part of the sentence would often require editing the ref element for what other referents cover or don't cover in that sentence. A sentence in the Methods subsection is an example of citations for words, but, given the need to say what the schools group teaches because not all schools teach the same thing, to find a source that says that yoga is taught would require studying a long endnote to find it, so, in that case, it's more useful to researchers to cite next to the word and therefore have separate, convenient, endnotes.
  • "a criticism section devoted primarily to refuting the criticisms": In the first paragraph, every sentence states criticisms and only some sentences state context. Generally, the whole section states both. Neutrality of points of view requires that if sourcing reports both then we report both. To write one-sidedly negatively can cause a BLP issue and to write one-sidedly in either direction is nonneutral. The section is hardly primarily refutational. The criticisms are fairly stated and sourced, so are the contexts, and they should be.
  • "excessive detail throughout": Details that have remained are relevant to various issues raised, for example, how the schools accomplish student achievement levels despite poverty or because they relate to topics of criticism. I deleted other details.
  • "excessive detail throughout -- a particularly bad instance is the section on the construction problems at Cobble Hill": The Cobble Hill coverage is relevant to a criticism that charter schools such as SA's get better facilities than the noncharter schools get and because the renovations involved the possibility of exposure to chemicals that could endanger children and adults. This was not coverage about (to be hypothetical) delays in construction that no longer matter.
If I have not answered all of your concerns adequately, please reply informatively. I have been applying numerous suggested edits, explaining editorial issues, and soliciting views and requests and would appreciate all editors doing likewise. If we maintain for this article the same adherence to policies and guidelines expected throughout Wikipedia, escalation will not be necessary and we'll have a more useful article that meets readers' expectations.
Nick Levinson (talk) 19:11, 12 May 2013 (UTC) (Corrected misspellings, syntax, and a link and clarified clauses: 19:37, 12 May 2013 (UTC))[reply]

I have no desire to argue interminably with you or anyone. I'm dealing with it at AfD, so the community can decide . DGG ( talk ) 00:22, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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