User talk:Brucelaidlaw

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Hi Brucelaidlaw. I saw that you had made a few edits to Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Hippo pod. Typically, you shouldn't edit other people's comments, even if they contain spelling errors. It's kind of changing what the person said. Also note that that FPC nomination's discussion is closed. Anyways...

MDD4696, Thanks for this! Brucelaidlaw 05:03, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Welcome!

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[edit] CB abuses

Hi there Bruce, Ta for the message, and for approaching me on something that has occupied my thoughts a lot. I’m quite closely involved with certain ministries of the Christian Brothers, so naturally it does bother me that all Brothers can (and are) tarred with the same brush, so to speak. This article as it stands perpetuates this problem.

That said, a section on the sexual abuse cases is absolutely necessary. With regards to Wikipedia’s policies, these abuses constitute a major part of the CBs notability to many people in the general public (sad but true).

You’re right, the section on the Ballarat abuses is indeed too long, though to give you an idea of my thoughts, I think that the summaries of events in the UK and Canada are just about the right length for each country (though these parts could be improved a lot). I was hoping to expand the whole article considerably once I had some spare time, so that this section would not be disproportionately large. Leaving it as it is is just a gross misrepresentation of the works of the CBs over the past 200 years.

So, what to do? First task would be to trim down the Ballarat section to one or two paragraphs on the history of CB abuses in Australia, like you suggested. Justification for our shared point of view can be left on the talk page (I will do this within the next couple of days hopefully). Once that is done, I will protect our revision of this section zealously (in the past, I’ve just been too unsure to weigh into this debate). From there, we simply need to continue expanding the article within reasonable bounds of importance and notability, so that the abuses are placed in a proportionate context within the history of the Christian Brothers.

Any other thoughts or queries, don't hesitate to let me know.

Thanks, Rob Lindsey 23:41, 1 April 2007 (UTC)