Talk:Hamilton Boys' High School

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[edit] Edits 09:56, 20 June 2006 (UTC). Removing boastful tone of the article

This comment is the one referred to in the Edit Summary for this article. The aim of the edit was to clean up the excessively "School ABC is the best/greatest/exceptional ..." tone of the article, something I am throughly tired of---Wikipedia is NOT a trophy cabinet. I've done edits to the sports etc to keep it to what it does and not to what it wants to be shown as. Statements such as "HBHS is the best at ..." have been removed since they add no substance to the article. Also, minutiae regarding uniforms etc. has been cut, since the information is not that crucial, and certainly not unique. Also, data redundancy was minimised. Adjectives used subjectively have been edited too.

Names of alumni have been cut to five though I admit my selection was somewhat arbitrary in this case, though unlinked/redlinked names and non-notables were the target.

The edits may seem to be brutal (comparing before-after), but it is for the best. 202.180.71.156 09:59, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Well I made most of this page, and although I am a parochial Old Boy, I was very careful not to use phrases such as "HBHS is the best at" unless it was verifiable and true, such as saying that it is one of the top rowing and cricket schools which can be verified by the number of times it has won trophies. And yes, I think it is fair that you can put that claim on certain other schools entries too. The point of editing is not to remove claims that can be backed up, but those that are just assertion such as X is prestigous, X is great etc, which were NOT made here. To a certain extent Wikipedia IS a trophy cabinet in the sense that articles about schools often describe the character of the school. If a school has a focus on a particular sport, such as HBHS does on rowing at the moment, then I think it is quite reasonable to include that information if it is true.

If you feel that there is speculation or untruth in the article, then by all means cut those down individually. But your edits are quite over the top. As such I have reverted the entire article. If you want to justify individual edits, please do so Ham21 11:48, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. My comments about trophy cabinetting were not just directed at this particular article, I agree, it is something which is spread throughout WP. However I respectfully disagree with your comment that comments like "X is the best..." belong even with citations. I would suggest that in the place of those comments it should say "School won competition Y in [rugby/hockey/etc]" and leave it up to the reader to decide for him/herself to decide as to the particular strengths of the competition. As for focus on rowing/cricket, if I had to include it I would say that as it is, that "School has a focus on rowing and cricket", and for the statement "it is the best in..." even if it is true and verifiable imho it would do better to remove it and just state what competitions its won (as I've said above)--again, if it is indeed the best at ABC the names of the competitions should be enough.

No hard feelings, its just me taking to heart the advice "Only You Can Fix WP", I saw something that I thought was not right and I was bold and edited! :D If I have time later on I might add a bullted-pointed list of issues. 202.180.71.156 05:50, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I have pruned it back a bit. I think in principle we both agree that boasting shouldn't go on in school pages in principle. The problem comes when there are schools that can legitimately boast - for example HBHS' record in rowing recently is fairly enviable. Equally a school like Wanganui Collegiate or Kings College should, I think, fairly be able to claim to be prestigous, because by any definition of the word they are. The problem comes when every school tries to claim to be prestigous.

That being said, i've pruned back any vanity claims, so that now it is quite factual. If you want to go over it with a fine tooth comb, please do so, because as I say above, I am not unbiased. Ham21 12:49, 21 June 2006 (UTC)