Talk:Presbyterian Ladies' College, Perth

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[edit] Controversy section

The school attracted unwanted national attention in 2003 when three 13-year-old girls attending PLC were caught attempting to sell a homemade porn video to a group of Hale School boys for $90. The school principal mentioned at the end of an assembly shortly after the incident that most of the details of the scandal (that were prominently published on the front cover of the local newspaper The West Australian) were, in fact, highly inaccurate. These included facts involving the number of girls involved and an exaggeration of the degree of explicitness of the tape. In fact, the video had no relation to the college in any case, and was filmed in the student's personal time. The students involved deeply regretted committing an immature act that did not reflect the college's attitudes and values enforced what-so-ever.

• Schoolgirls caught with homemade porn

I removed the controversy section and associated link to allow for a discussion about whether it is relevent to this article. I have received a message on my talk page questioning my reinstatement of the information. This section records an incident that occurred three years ago and I believe that PLC should have more notable things to be written about than this and hope that the article will be expanded. Should this information be included in the Presbyterian Ladies' College, Perth article? Blarneytherinosaur 13:20, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Are there any more sources you might have to prove it was a pretty wide-spread controversy? I know it was 3 years ago and might be hard to dig up. But I think that if you can prove it was pretty bad press for them, it can definitely be in there. Metros232 13:39, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

If anyone outside of the school circle has heard about the school, this is likely to be one of the things that they've heard and the reason why they'd look up the article, to see if it was true, what happened, how it was dealt with, etc. I'd say it is relevant to the article. --Stephane Charette 16:35, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

It was a loss of face for the school, and I remember hearing about it on the national news at the time, but I don't think it became a matter of national concern. Talk back radio may have been stirred up, but it wasn't the Port Arthur massacre or the Beaconsfield mine collapse. You could compare this information to creating an article about someone who made the national news one day for receiving a bravery award, but was forgotten the next. Neither a google search nor a google news search of "Presbyterian Ladies College" turn up any references at all. The article links to Free Republic. It is a discussion site, not a news service. There is a copy of an article there from The West Australian but I can't find a copy on the West Australian's website. Even if I could find it, our own article discribes the West Australian's report as "highly inaccurate". If we can prove that these events happened, should we be worried about reporting a private school losing face? The information doesn't tell us anything about the school, except that its students make mistakes like the students of numerous other schools that don't have articles on Wikipedia to record them. Blarneytherinosaur 10:37, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Update: I'm chasing up opinions about whether the link used as a source for the controversy section is a reliable source. Blarneytherinosaur 01:50, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Bulletin_boards.2C_wikis_and_posts_to_Usenet says we can't cite newsgroups, forums, discussion groups, or blogs. If a piece of information is widely published it will be widely available. If it is narrowly published and narrowly available then, perhaps, there is no need to include it in an article because it presents the opinion of a very small minority of people. WP:V Terryeo 02:49, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I maintain that this matter relates to young people who made a silly mistake and desrve to get on with their lives without having this hanging over their heads forever. I can understand the desire of people to maintain a resource like Wikipedia and I also understand that people can cause some mischief by deleting factual information. But I don't think Wikipedia deserves to be dragged down to the level of the "Gutter Press", I think it should be more noble and authoritative than that. By the criteria of "Notable and Accurate" I think this article fails on both counts. As mentioned in the article the press had exagerated their claims, this is reason enough to not post the article because the person who posted it had no idea by how much the article was exagerated. Thank you for removing the article to the discussion page it is a suitable outcome. I think that PLC should contribute all the great things their students do and the opportunities they provide for the education and development of young women. I will contact their community relations people to see if they can contribute. Regards G Moran 03:12, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

The removed information is both verifiable and relevant. As for the issue of what these young people deserve, the legal and moral position of the wider community is that the incident may be reported as in the public interest, while the names of the involved young people are suppressed in the interests of protecting them. Wikipedia's position has been consistent with this, and I really see no reason why it should do otherwise.

Here, the problem with mentioning the incident is that it creates an imbalanced representation of PLC, simply because the article is so short. I'm prepared to see the incident omitted from the article for now, with the understanding that once the article grows to a reasonable size it must be re-inserted. In particular, if Mr Moran succeeds in inducing PLC to put a positive "spin" on this article, then I will insist on redressing that imbalance by reinserting information about the incident.

Snottygobble 06:23, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Dear Snottygobble, Your assertion that the information is "both verifiable and relevant" is unsupported by evidence. Do you have the links to the reliable publications that have reported the incident and if you do is it the presence of the article that is verified or are the facts verified? As for your claim of relevance, I have spent some time looking at the articles for deletion pages and I think that when you step back and think about what is notable, and what is not, I think this matter is not. I don't think Wikipedia would benefit from every student's misdemeanours being posted to their school's entry, do you? I think that this posting is not notable now, and I cannot see how it would become notable as the length of the article increases over time, if indeed it does. I am not intending to "induce" anyone to put their "spin" on any article as I don't think that will benefit anyone. Ultimately from my reading of the guidelines I strongly support the principle that what you read in Wikipedia should be the kind of information you should expect in an encycopedia. Therefore I don't support the placement of spin and so it follows that I also don't support the placement of the article about some girls that made a mistake. Regards G Moran 15:24, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the references currently provided are not acceptable. Wikipedia's policy on biographies of living persons states:

"Be very firm about high quality references.... Unsourced or poorly sourced negative material about living persons should be removed immediately from both the article and the talk page. These principles also apply to biographical material about living persons in other articles."

In saying that the information is verifiable I meant that a suitable reference could be provided. One need only dig up the relevant newspaper editions. As for your question of whether the "facts" are verified, Wikipedia does not and cannot independently verify every "fact" that it references, or nothing would ever get written. If all sources report the story in basically the same way, then we can fairly report it that way. If sources contradict each other, then we summarise each position. If you think that the reporting was inaccurate, then you need to find a reliable source that states that the reporting was inaccurate. Your personal opinion that the reporting was inaccurate holds no weight.

Regarding your comment

"I don't think Wikipedia would benefit from every student's misdemeanours being posted to their school's entry, do you?"

this is of course a blatant straw man. We both know that this particular misdemeanour was front page news in WA and was reported nationwide. I can take the view that this is encyclopaedic content without being obliged to take the silly position that you've laid out for me.

I apologise for misunderstanding your intentions regarding "spin". But on re-reading your comment above:

"I think that PLC should contribute all the great things their students do and the opportunities they provide for the education and development of young women. I will contact their community relations people to see if they can contribute."

I really can't see any other way to interpret it other than an inducement to spin.

No-one is proposing to write an article about these girls. The issue under discussion is whether an incident that gave PLC terrible press nationwide merits reporting on the PLC article. I think it does. Whether or not the involved parties will be unhappy to see the article reported on Wikipedia is utterly irrelevant.

Snottygobble 00:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I do not feel that this information should be included in this article. The incident was three years ago, which in my opinion makes this 'controversy' no longer relevant. Surely there are other 'controversies' that have ocurred in the long history of this school, all of which have not been included. Had a news article praising the school for something as trivial been included, it probably would have been deleted by now as it may be interpreted as 'spin'. Further, had this incident occurred in a public school, I doubt the media would have bothered with the issue. I have no association with the school, and I had never heard of this incident until reading it here. Its really not worth inclusion. --Loopla 08:09, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Whether this information should or should not be included, I believe that it cannot be reinstated without another source. Wikipedia:Reliable sources and the now archived discussion of this issue at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources entitled "A web forum citing a newspaper article" (or similar naming) mean that we cannot use the Free Rebpulic forum link as source. Blarneytherinosaur 01:43, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Make that "Web forum quoting a newspaper article", item 22 in archive 4 of Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources. Blarneytherinosaur 00:16, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Boys and girls

The school website's 'About' page says that is has offered education to boys and girls since 1915. However elsewhere it mostly refers only to girls, except when talking about Pre-K to Year 2. What happens to boys in other years? Are they expelled at the end of Year 2, or is the school co-ed throughout? Could someone please, please, cite sources that are less vague than the school's own site on this question? --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 16:02, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

The web site seems fairly clear to me:

Presbyterian Ladies' College, Perth, a Uniting Church College, has been offering outstanding educational opportunities for boys and girls from Pre Kindergarten to Pre Primary and girls from Year 1 to Year 12 since 1915. PLC Internet - About PLC

That is, boys and girls before year 1 and girls only thereafter. I have children at the school and can confirm that this is the case. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.161.91.85 (talk • contribs) 00:24, 24 August 2006 (UTC).

Thank you! That is pretty much what I thought. I seem to be unable to read English this week. Boys do seem to stick around for three years until the end of Year 2, in the 'pre-primary' "Early Learning Centre". Is this Early Learning Centre page accurate? --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 11:15, 24 August 2006 (UTC)