Talk:Newton Public Schools/Archive 1

Archive 1

Yellow pages

Please see Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a directory. Specifically, Wikipedia is not the yellow pages. Addresses and phone numbers should not be included. The external links to each school and maybe the principal of each should stay. Any thoughts on how to trim this article down and format it as a list? Maybe a table? --Geniac 19:49, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Textbook controversy

SQGibbons, it would be nice if you would actually wait until I finish an edit before you revert it, and not do so when I am obviously in the middle of writing. This is especially true when your edits change the meaning of the article and introduce inaccuracies. This is only common courtesy. What you are doing constitutes vandalism. --SurfRI (talk) 20:55, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

I realized that in addition to removing text I was in the middle of writing, SQGibbons also removed an entire subsection without noting so. I am going to have to revert the changes in order to find and add the subsection that was removed. --SurfRI (talk) 20:55, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

It was by no means obvious that you were in the middle of editing the article. It had been 30 minutes since your last edit.// Of course it was obvious - I left off in the middle of a sentence because I accidentally saved the edit too soon. No one walks away from a editing session in the middle of a sentence. And 30 minutes is by no means a long amount of time when editing an article which needs a lot of work.//

"This is especially true when your edits change the meaning of the article and introduce inaccuracies." What inaccuracies did my edit introduce? I thought I provided a neutral and concise summary of the issue without going into tons of unwarranted detail.//The inaccuracies were: you changed what the conflict was about from anti-Israel class material (which includes handouts, films, etc. - you would have known this if you knew anything about the subject) to an inaccurate description of the issue as a single instance of an anti-semitic (different from anti-Israel) phrase in a single textbook. There was no textbook involved in the original controversy, and anti-semitism is not anti-Israelism. You didn't make the summary any shorter, you just changed the details from accurate to inaccurate.

As per WP:UNDUE most of the content in this article should be about Newton Public Schools and not about what amounted to a few students and families protesting a small amount of content in one textbook which was then removed from the curriculum.//As described below, concern about the issue is international and not restricted to Newton. The organization Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), which has 65,000 dues-paying members, wrote a series of articles and featured the Newton controversy in a "Call to Action" asking members to contact NPS administrators. Other organizations which have publicly weighed in on the issue include the American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, Fordham Foundation, Textbook League (a respected independent organization dedicated to educational accuracy), Verity Educate (same), and I'm sure other groups which I'm not aware of.

Do you understand the difference between an organization of 65,000 which asks its members to take action on an issue, and "a few students and families"?

As well, the issue does not involve a "small amount of content in one textbook". If you knew anything about the subject of the article, you would know that it concerns at least twenty items (and possibly more) of material and at least two textbooks. TWO of those items have been removed, the other eighteen haven't.

Do you understand the difference between a single textbook and twenty items of material (including handouts and films)/two textbooks?//

In the grand scheme of things this is nearly, if not entirely, a trivial incident (even if the people involved didn't feel that way). Sorry, but an issue about which three major Jewish organizations, five national organizations devoted to educational advocacy, and a major organization devoted to media accuracy have PUBLICLY addressed is not 'trivial'. You may not care about the issue, but the fact that organizations representing literally millions of people have publicly weighed in on the matter means more than your decision as a single individual that the matter is 'trivial'.

If it belongs in the article -- and I'm not sure it does -- it does not deserve anything more than the two lines I devoted to it. Now, if you can find where the national media (NY Times, for example) wrote a large piece describing the incident and its impact on the world at large with follow up articles on the resolution and how the rest of the world responded to that then maybe it would be worth expanding upon but without that the incident deserves only the barest of mentions, if that. This is beyond ludicrous. If only articles where the subject has been written about in large articles in the NY Times or similar newspapers were permitted in Wikipedia, at least 99% of the articles would need to be removed.

"This is only common courtesy. What you are doing constitutes vandalism." No it doesn't. Please read WP:VANDAL for what vandalism actually is.

"I realized that in addition to removing text I was in the middle of writing, SQGibbons also removed an entire subsection without noting so." Not true. I noted reasons for all my actions in the edit summary along with links to the relevant Wikipedia policies and guidelines.

"Actually, you ignored the provisions of WP:BRD which involves bold editing and disputes. That guideline links to a page which encourages editors to revert only only when 'edit makes the article clearly worse and there is no element of the edit that is an improvement'. Adding accurate and timely facts to an article is clearly not 'making it worse'.

Regardless, WP:BRD also instructs editors who revert to discuss their reasons on the Talk board. You began to revert edits I was in the middle of making less than an hour after I began (obviously you were watching the article - why is that, and what is your connection to the Newton Public Schools? you seem to be more than just an interested parent). You did not follow Wikipedia policy by posting on the Talk board, however; it was not until I posted six hours later asking you to allow me to finish my edits before deleting them that you deigned to post, falsely stating that your edits were accurate (they weren't) and accusing me of bad faith. These are hardly the actions of a disinterested editor, which is what you make yourself out to be. A truly disinterested editor would discuss the issue instead of coming out swinging and accusing me of all sorts of nefarious actions in their VERY FIRST POST on the subject. I gave you the benefit of the doubt with respect to your edits and asked only that you allow me to finish an edit (and that you read it) before deleting it. An editor who deletes an editor's first edit to an article BEFORE IT IS EVEN COMPLETED obviously has an agenda other than making the article better.

"I am going to have to revert the changes in order to find and add the subsection that was removed." Please do not do so. As per WP:BRD you made a bold edit, I reverted stating some very serious concerns I have with your edits (including links to the relevant policies and guidelines), and the next step is to discuss the issue and achieve a consensus within the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. Continuing to revert will be considered edit warring. SQGibbon (talk) 21:52, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Again - you never made any attempt to discuss the matter, which is your responsibility as an editor who reverted a clearly beneficial edit made in good faith. Instead, you waited until I started a discussion, and then made numerous false claims and accused me of bad faith. These are not the acts of a disinterested editor. __________________________________________________________________________

Actually, you changed my uncompleted edits TWICE while I was quite obviously still editing - the text was broken off in the middle of a paragraph. It's ridiculous to complain about an edit that's NOT COMPLETED. Common courtesy dictates that you at least give someone the opportunity to finish an edit before you start to complain about it.

The reason I had to revert your edits was because you took out a sub-section without indicating so on the description of your edits. Since I had no idea when you did that and did not want to spend several hours going over the last six edits you made, I reverted the three edits you made today. Had you been honest that you delete a subsection, I wouldn't have had to make any reversions.

Reverting three edits - especially when it was your fault that I had to do so because you were dishonest - does not constitute an "edit war". Even if it did, you are certainly the one to begin the "war" by deleting edits that were made minutes before, by deleting edits when I was very obviously in the middle of an editing session, by being dishonest about the edits you made.

With respect to the inaccuracies made by your edits, you indicated that the NPS had removed the Arab World Studies Notebook and that there were no further issues after that. In reality, even though the NPS stated that the Notebook was removed, a teacher's website showed a full year later that it was still in use. That's an important fact that your edits removed.

With respect to neutral POV, it seems clear that your POV is anything BUT neutral. Inaccurate and deprecatory opinions are totally out of place. Let's go through what you wrote:

"a few students and families" - in addition to the fact that numerous students and families protested (were you at any of the School Committee meetings and other meetings where this was discussed?), numerous organizations such as the ADL, CAMERA, American Jewish Committee, Jewish & Community Research Council, Textbook League, American Educators Association, Jewish Telegraph Agency, StandWithUs, Clarion Project, Fordham Foundation, Verity Educate, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and I'm sure a few other organizations I've forgotten have weighted in on the matter. BTW, these represent a wide variety of religious and political orientations - Jewish, Catholic, conservative, liberal, etc. For you to say this is just the concern of "a few students and families" is truly shocking.

"one textbook" - you obviously don't know enough about this issue to make ANY comment or edit about this. The Verity Educate report reviewed twenty-six items of material; this was only a small proportion of those reviewed by CAMERA, the ADL, and parents. You obviously didn't even bother to read what I wrote - you were too busy deleting it to inform yourself as to what the controversy is about.

"in the grand scheme of things this is nearly, if not entirely, a trivial incident (even if the people involved didn't feel that way)". Maybe anti-semitism and racism (there's anti-Arab material as well, which you would have known had you bothered to read what you pretend to know something about) is "trivial" to you. As someone whose family lost literally hundreds of relatives in the Holocaust, it's not trivial to me or millions of other Jews and non-Jews. Your statement is truly sickening and indicates a tolerance, if not support, of genocide.

"If it belongs in the article -- and I'm not sure it does". I believe that in an article about a school district, the fact that the district was shown to have used deceptively edited documents (including a deceptively edited version of the Palestinian National Charter, which had one of its articles removed and the numbers removed from other articles to hide the deception), handouts obtained by a radical Islamist website and a ARAMCA public relations brochure from the 1960's, a timeline described as "neutral" that was prepared under the auspices of an avowedly anti-Israel professor, a text that falsely claims that Israeli soldiers indiscriminately murder innocent Arab women, plus about twenty more examples of similar issues - are certainly relevant. Maybe you think that falsifying primary source documents is "trivial". Most people don't.

"it does not deserve anything more than the two lines I devoted to it". Do you really think you get to decide what's important and what's not? Sorry, you don't.

"Now, if you can find where the national media (NY Times, for example) wrote a large piece describing the incident and its impact on the world at large with follow up articles on the resolution and how the rest of the world responded to that then maybe it would be worth expanding upon but without that the incident deserves only the barest of mentions, if that..."

This is ridiculous - only a tiny percentage of Wikipedia articles are world-important. I certainly understand they're not important to YOU. Who are they important to?

- CAMERA - American Jewish Committee - Middle East Forum - Fordham Foundation - Scholars for Peace in the Middle East - Anti-Defamation League - Clarion Project - Jewish Telegraph Agency - American Educators Association - StandWithUs - Textbook League - Verity Educate - Open Newton Schools and the parents and other residents on their mailing list - Parents for Excellence in Newton Schools and the parents and other residents on their mailing list

Here are a few of the newspapers and magazines, other than the local Newton Tab and Jewish Advocate, that have reported on the issue: Boston Globe, Jewish Daily Forward, Jerusalem Post, Israel National News, Times of Israel, Washington Times, MetroWest Daily, Baltimore Reporter, American Thinker, The Heights, Jewish Link, Jewish Ledger, Jewish News Service, Algemeiner, Jewish Journal, Russian Jewish Telegraph, New English Review, Jewish Star, Jewish Press, American Israelite, and I'm sure others.

BTW, this list DOESN'T include blogs or web-only sources. If it did, you could add dozens more.

In sum, SQGibbon, it is clear that your REAL objection to including this information in the article is that you believe it's a Jewish issue. I happen to think that racism - including anti-Arab racism - and anti-semitism are, or should be, of concern to everyone. I don't know what your problem is. Maybe you think there aren't enough Jews around to matter, or maybe you just don't like Jews, period. Certainly there are enough veiled (or not-so-veiled) comments in your diatribe to make any half-aware person suspicious.

I'd like to think there is no room for racism or anti-semitism on Wikipedia (in fact, I KNOW there isn't - otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to edit the article), so I'd appreciate not hearing any more remarks about how "trivial" this issue is and how it effects only a "few families" in town. For those of us who it effects - and for decent people anywhere - it's far from trivial.

Editors/staff, I apologize that this what I've said here isn't as 'nice' and neutral as it should be. But when confronted with what seems to me to be overt anti-semitism, plus an attempt to deceive with falsehoods ("only one textbook", attempt to say the issue has received no press, leaving out the major organizations which have weighed in on the issue) I do become a little heated.

I'll be happy to answer any questions about what's written here.

SurfRI (talk) 01:02, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Actually, you changed my uncompleted edits TWICE while I was quite obviously still editing - the text was broken off in the middle of a paragraph. It's ridiculous to complain about an edit that's NOT COMPLETED. Common courtesy dictates that you at least give someone the opportunity to finish an edit before you start to complain about it.

As I said, it was obvious to me that you had finished editing since it had been at least 30 minutes since your previous edit. But it didn't really matter because the edits you had made were clearly already problematic.

The reason I had to revert your edits was because you took out a sub-section without indicating so on the description of your edits. Since I had no idea when you did that and did not want to spend several hours going over the last six edits you made, I reverted the three edits you made today. Had you been honest that you delete a subsection, I wouldn't have had to make any reversions.

Again, I noted the reasons for all my edits in my edit summaries.

Reverting three edits - especially when it was your fault that I had to do so because you were dishonest

Believe it or not, Wikipedia is not the place for personal attacks (please read WP:NPA). If you continue to make personal attacks against me you will be banned. Note, I have not made a single attack against you, only against your edits and I have fully explained why your edits are problematic. It's not a personal attack to point out instances of dishonesty and false statements which actually happened.

Even if it did, you are certainly the one to begin the "war" by deleting edits that were made minutes before, by deleting edits when I was very obviously in the middle of an editing session, by being dishonest about the edits you made.

Please read WP:WAR to learn what an edit war actually is. You made some bold edits (again, reading WP:BRD is useful here) which I found highly problematic and reverted. At that point there was exactly only one appropriate way for you to respond which is by starting a discussion and achieving a consensus view. That you reverted means that by every single definition at work on Wikipedia you began edit warring.

Again, you did not follow WP:BRD and related policies. Had you done so, and refrained from attacking me from the very beginning, this problem would not exist.

With respect to the inaccuracies made by your edits, you indicated that the NPS had removed the Arab World Studies Notebook and that there were no further issues after that. In reality, even though the NPS stated that the Notebook was removed, a teacher's website showed a full year later that it was still in use. That's an important fact that your edits removed.

Great! Then that's content that can be modified. I fully admit that I didn't research the issue to its fullest extent but based on the smaller edit I made it's easy to fix the content.

So let's fix it!

That is exactly what I am trying to do. However, every time I DO fix it, you or John from Idegon revert it. In fact, he opposed this change just a short while ago (on December 1, 2015).

If you agree it should be fixed, then you and John from Idego, who are playing tag-team on this, SHOULD LET ME FIX IT. Right now you agree, and I agree, that it should be fixed. John from Idego doesn't (although I don't see how NOT fixing an inaccurate statement would 'improve' the article).

THIS is the type of discussion we should have been having from the beginning. Next time, how about starting a conversation on the Talk page about edits you revert, instead of just reverting them and then accusing the original editor of bad faith when they re-revert?

"a few students and families" - in addition to the fact that numerous students and families protested (were you at any of the School Committee meetings and other meetings where this was discussed?), numerous organizations such as the ADL, CAMERA, American Jewish Committee, Jewish & Community Research Council, Textbook League, American Educators Association, Jewish Telegraph Agency, StandWithUs, Clarion Project, Fordham Foundation, Verity Educate, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and I'm sure a few other organizations I've forgotten have weighted in on the matter. BTW, these represent a wide variety of religious and political orientations - Jewish, Catholic, conservative, liberal, etc. For you to say this is just the concern of "a few students and families" is truly shocking.

I read the one source I could manage to get to load that also looked like a reliable source and that was the conclusion I drew. By far the most important fact here is that I did not include it in my edit. So whether it was 10 people or 1,000 people has absolutely no bearing on the quality of my edit vs yours.

I can't respond to this because I don't know what source you looked at. All of the sources are readily available online. If you are having trouble finding a listed source (which should not be the case, as all of the links were working the last time I checked), then let me know and I will direct you to the source and fix the link

"one textbook" - you obviously don't know enough about this issue to make ANY comment or edit about this. The Verity Educate report reviewed twenty-six items of material; this was only a small proportion of those reviewed by CAMERA, the ADL, and parents. You obviously didn't even bother to read what I wrote - you were too busy deleting it to inform yourself as to what the controversy is about.

Once it became clear that you were using Wikipedia to promote a cause I went directly to the sources that you supplied (see above). I based my edit on what I read there. If there are important facts that need to be addressed to make my edit more accurate then let's do it.

"What 'cause' am I trying to promote? I am trying to make the article more accurate, which includes making including changes such as substituting the word 'elementary' for the word 'primary' and adding several sections about the school. I have been unable to add these sections (which include information depicting the school positively) because I have been tied up for literally MONTHS with picayune squabbles such as my attempts to substitute the accurate word 'text' for the inaccurate word 'textbook'. It appears that you want the NPS to appear in a positive light. Well go ahead and write something positive then, no one is stopping you. Instead of doing that, you are fighting tooth and nail on the most trivial of issues to prevent me what you appear to regard as 'negative' information from appearing. So it doesn't seem that you want a balanced and fair article, with both positive AND negative information about the school; you are only interested in shutting me down. If you and John from Idegon truly cared about the accuracy of the article, you wouldn't be acting the way you are, and would be adding true and accurate positive information instead of taking issue with almost every single word that I write.

Maybe anti-semitism and racism (there's anti-Arab material as well, which you would have known had you bothered to read what you pretend to know something about) is "trivial" to you. As someone whose family lost literally hundreds of relatives in the Holocaust, it's not trivial to me or millions of other Jews and non-Jews. Your statement is truly sickening and indicates a tolerance, if not support, of genocide.

Again, these personal attacks are not going to go well for you. If your position is that the content in this textbook is the equivalent of the Holocaust in terms of scope and importance then instead of using this article as a coat rack (WP:COATRACK -- please read), ie, highjacking this article in order to discuss a greater issue that isn't directly about the subject, you should create a new article about this issue and we can link to that article from here. That this school school district used this textbook seems less of an issue, since they didn't write the book, than the people who did write the textbook. Given your position here on the importance of the content of this textbook and the vast response to it, this is far more important than this one school district and needs to be addressed in a more meaningful way in another article. If not a separate article about the textbook itself then maybe in the article about the publisher.

I am explaining why this content is not "trivial". You are the one comparing it to the Shoah. See below for the reasons why this content belongs here rather than in another article.

This is ridiculous - only a tiny percentage of Wikipedia articles are world-important. I certainly understand they're not important to YOU. Who are they important to?

Please read WP:UNDUE for some guidance on how to deal with this. World War II was a big deal with tens of thousands of reliable sources discussing the event in excruciating detail and people continue to study and write about it. It makes sense for its article to be very large. If an incident is only covered by a handful of reliable sources and people do not continue to write about it and study it for another 80 years then it only makes sense for it to receive a more modest mention than the WWII article. But in continuing with the undue weight issue, the Newton Public School district has, presumably, been around for a very long time and has a long history containing both good and bad moments. All of these that can be reliably sourced need to be in this article. Devoting 75% of the article to this one incident just does not make sense.

What does World War II have to do with this? If you believe that every single article and idea mentioned in Wikipedia has to be connected with a larger issue, then you can connect this content with the larger issue of anti-Israelism and anti-semitism in general. But as you have already agreed that the content SHOULD be included (see above), there's no point in discussing how it fits into the world at large.

In sum, SQGibbon, it is clear that your REAL objection to including this information in the article is that you believe it's a Jewish issue. I happen to think that racism - including anti-Arab racism - and anti-semitism are, or should be, of concern to everyone. I don't know what your problem is. Maybe you think there aren't enough Jews around to matter, or maybe you just don't like Jews, period. Certainly there are enough veiled (or not-so-veiled) comments in your diatribe to make any half-aware person suspicious.

So you are convinced that my concerns just cannot be that your edits are not in line with Wikipedia policy and guidelines but must be part of some nefarious racist conspiracy/plot? Please read through my absurdly long history of edits on Wikipedia and if you can find anything to support this position of yours feel free to list them here and alert the Wikipedia admins that I am an anti-Semite bent on persecuting the Jews. They will take the appropriate action. Or, of course, it might be that I do actually have legitimate problems with the quality of your edits based on Wikipedia policy and guidelines and the fact that I am a very experienced editor intimately familiar with said policies and guidelines and that you are a new editor who, completely understandably, isn't as familiar with these policies and guidelines should give me the benefit of the doubt instead of seeing my actions as racist and anti-Semitic. Ie, given your lack of experience/knowledge you should be willing to entertain the notion that you are not editing following the best practices of Wikipedia. SQGibbon (talk) 15:10, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

If you have legitimate issues with my editing, then you should DISCUSS THEM IN THIS SECTION (which you didn't do until I brought it up after you made numerous edits and reversions) instead of just reverting them and accusing me of acting in bad faith. It does appear at long last you are finally doing this. Thank you.

Update: I've asked people from the Wikipedia Schools project to weigh in here. If you and I cannot find a reasonable way to discuss the issue then more people will have to become involved. Ideally that project will be able to help out otherwise we'll have to alert the entire community via a request for comment WP:RFC. SQGibbon (talk) 15:59, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

• I am here due to the note at the School project. Arguing like you two are is never going to solve anything. STOP. There are better ways to be constructive.

1. Discuss the edits, not the editors. This is not the place for that. That being said, removing text that it is reasonable to disagree with, and stating the reason, is Never vandalism. Accusing an editor of committing vandalism that has not is a personal attack, and can lead to sanctions. SurfRI, you need to strike those comments, along with all of your comments implying that SQGibbon's actions are racially motivated. You have no way to know his motavation and without numerous diffs to show that motivation accross many articles and spans of time, that is another personal attack, a particularly heinous one. This is your opportunity to remove those attacks. There will not be another one. Any further copy along those lines will be immediately referred to the appropriate noticeboard.
2. If you are trying to compose your thoughts, it would be advisable to use a sandbox. It is beyond me why anyone would think that another person should have any way of telling that an editor "is in the middle of a paragraph".
3. WP:BRD is very clear that when an editor challenges an edit, the proper thing to do is to stop editing, and start discussing.
4. Again, per BRD, it is not up to an editor to defend removal; it is up to the editor wanting the content in to defend inclusion. How else could it work? If the assumption was the other way around, no-one would have any time to actually write anything. Every editor would have to spend all his time defending his removal of "Principal Smith is a CACA head."
5. WP:TLDR definitely applies here. Discuss your points one at a time, do it succinctly by actually citing references and policies. I came here wanting to help, but my eyes glazed over about a quarter of the way down the page.

Assuming the main issue here is WP:WEIGHT, which it certainly appears to be, lacking any sort of concise referenced arguments to the contrary, I find the current content of the article in regard to a political issue that occurred 4 years ago to be fine. John from Idegon (talk) 16:44, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

• I echo the sentiments of User:John from Idegon. First, the article needs its statistics updated and other cleanup, plus it needs a history section. All of these "controversies", if included at all, should be in the history section and without subheadings, though most of them could quite easily be removed completely. None of them drew attention from any national media and only one (superintendent not citing a speech) drew a single article from the Boston Globe. Further, none of them appear to have drawn attention for any extended period of time. In other words, the events fail WP:N so while they certainly could be mentioned as part of the more recent history, their mention should be brief if at all. Anything beyond a sentence or two seems a bit too much based on the current sources provided. The point of these school district articles is to give a thorough, but not detailed overview of the district. What schools are part of it? How many students attend the various schools? Where are the schools located? How did the district form? These articles are not a forum for every little news item that comes up. --JonRidinger (talk) 06:31, 30 June 2015 (UTC)