Talk:Dame Allan's School, Newcastle

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Assessment: Hello all, and thank you for contributing to this school article. I'm part of the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Schools/Assessment team, and I'm reviewing this page. I'm currently giving it a grade of Start on the Wikipedia 1.0 Assessment Scale and an importance of High on this importance scale. For information on improving this article, please visit the WikiProject Schools Project Page. My reasoning is as follows: What's here is somewhat referenced but could use signifiacant expansion with pictures and referenced materials. Adam McCormick 05:44, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

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[edit] State of this article

Currently, at a glance, this article seems to fall down on many levels.

• It's not verifiable; most of the content is unsourced and probably unsourceable (it may be common knowledge, but we need it published knowledge)
• It's biased; there's a definite lack of neutrality to it
• It's not a good encyclopedia article; it's too long, it rambles, and it covers in great detail matters which are subtrivial at best (the code of conduct? The name of the head of the sixth form? I ask you).

I'm going to hack it down to a shorter article today, and let it be built back up again bit-by-bit with citations; in its current state it simply isn't any good. Shimgray | talk | 10:08, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I've made it shorter (though it's still longer than I'd want) and much more verifiable - please make sure that anything you add, especially if it's controversial or disputable, is given a source. I've also archived the existing talk page, above. Shimgray | talk | 12:43, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your attention to this article. Although, by and large, I like the changes you've made, I do have a few points and questions:

• 'It's not verifiable'- fair enough. You seem to appreciate how hard it is to get published sources for controversial topics when the only significant, authoritative source is the school itself- 5 of your 9 references are from the school's website.
• 'It's biased'- in part, yes. But again, where the options available are attempting to try and merge biased comments into the existing article or outright delete them, I've tried to do the former. I believe the dispute resolution guidelines support me here. As is clear from the discussion archives, I haven't exactly been ignoring other people's points of view.
• 'It covers trivial matters in detail'- hold the phone, there's a policy against this? I know Wikipedia maintains flexible guidelines rather than a rigid ruleset, but the closest thing I could find that would support this as an actual criticism is this, which really has nothing to do with an article about a school that hasn't even been suggested for deletion. There's no real objective standard for this- a single click on the 'random article' link turned up this page. I'm sure many people would agree it's pretty trivial to know that 'The distribution system includes 110 regional feed mills, 26 warehouses, and 7 research farms', but I'm sure it's important to fully appreciate that particular organisation.
• What criteria have you used to decide which external links to keep? I can understand the removal of some of them, but the deletion of the 2000 inspection link (although you do reference it, it isn't nearly as clear) and the planning permission application for the sixth form centre (including detailed descriptions of the facilities) and the retention of the link to the small, abandoned 1705DAS website perplex me somewhat.
• Is a 'certain amount' of 'verifiability' required for each new topic? For instance, I see that the entire 'Important Events' section is still unverified, but some of the information in the previous article that has since been removed can be verified from the 2000 inspection- for instance, the slow uptake of IT resources and some concerns about sexism.

In summary, most of the old article wasn't verifiable, and thus challenged and removed according to Wikipedia policy. The new article is much easier on the eyes, granted, but in several ways you may have inadvertently produced an article more biased than the original. If you could address these concerns as soon as possible, I'm sure we'd all be grateful. 81.179.71.127 19:50, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Running through these in order...

a) The problem is, there are almost no verifiable sources for any of this stuff. I've tacitly assumed that stuff I wouldn't know from Adam, stuff that no-one would have reason to misrepresent, like the building structure was true... because I couldn't even find references on the school website for it. But given the tone of the article as it stood before, I felt it best to go for a cite-or-die policy for anything that seemed overly positive, overly negative, or weird (like the claim about an "unofficial motto").

b) I could have merged biased comments into the existing article, yes. But they would still have been biased comments, and they would still have been unsourceable comments. I played around with that this morning, and didn't have a great deal of success; I kept looking at drafts of merged paragraphs and they just looked like attempts to conceal a hatchetjob.

c) Yes and no. This is partly editorial preference, but the article was way too long, it rambled, it needed tightening. A lot of stuff is simply not appropriate for an encyclopedia article; it's fine to note the staff-pupil committee system, it's quite an interesting approach and I haven't seen it before, but it's simply too great a level of detail for an encyclopedia to discuss the meetings it goes to and what the specific order of business is. It's important to remember that we're not writing a handbook to the school here, we're writing an encyclopedia article on the school.

d) I ran with a practice of "get rid of any external link that's in a reference", and made an exception for the school website since it seemed an obvious thing someone would look for. I did screw up here, though - I didn't realise the planning link actually contained useful information, I merely glanced at it. Sorry about that one. I'm not entirely sure why I left the 1705 site there; possibly an oversight.

e) Important events falls somewhere under the "laxness" concept above; it didn't seem the sort of thing anyone would contest so I didn't feel it needed citing. (I wouldn't cry if someone removed it, mind). I didn't read through the 2000 inspection report fully - I didn't have all day - but please do feel free to reinstate anything which can be cited from there - just stick in <ref name="inspection"/></ref> at the end to generate the citation. (cite.php is a wonderful, wonderful thing, but I digress). I remember noting something about disparity of resources between the schools, but it didn't (at least in the summary) suggest this was attributable to sexism, rather than to a simple disparity between two organisations not working identically.

f) I'm very acutely aware of the fact that I essentially whitewashed the article - indeed, I got a couple of other editors to read it over to check it wasn't simply a "sanitising" - but the problem was that almost all the negative material was contentious and contestable statements, and they were unsupported, whereas it was relatively easy to source positive comments (with the exception of one figure, I think). A neutral article is as always the goal, but I don't see that goal being served by leaving in material which is unverified and reads as rumour and hearsay to give a misleading impression of "balance" to verifiable but positive text.

I hope this explains my position, and do feel free to start re-adding material I removed - but source it, please, and write it neutrally. Most of the preceding article was neither. Shimgray | talk | 21:35, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification! Okay, I've gone through the article in detail, and I've identified the following sections as currently unverified:

• The Motto
• The Staff Pupil Committee
• Diamond Structure
• Everything under Facilities except the year in which the sixth form centre was constructed
• Notes about the study of non-Christian religions
• Clubs
• Prospectuses and The Allanian
• The whole of Important Events
• The whole of Notable Alumni

I'm sure there are verifiable sources for most of these things, but they aren't cited at the moment. I don't have all day to dig up half a dozen sources right now, but if anyone else wants to contribute that would, as always, be welcome. I'll put the 2000 inspection and sixth form centre planning permission links back on the bottom of the article for some extra factual backup. I'm away this weekend and won't have access to a computer, but when I return I'll get editing this article again. I'll also have a good read through the 2000 inspection to see if we can backup any existing sources from the school's website with some more neutral ones from the report. 81.179.71.127 23:06, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I would like to remind all newcomers to Wikipedia, particularly 86.144.162.235, to read Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research, and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. In particular, we've debated the policies and guidelines and how they apply to this particular article ad nauseum, and we finally pinned down the exact extent to which verifiability, no original research, and neutral point of view apply:

• Is this latest bullying incident verifiable from a reliable source? Yes- it's a publicly circulated newspaper. It quotes both the police and the school, and would not misquote them as this would leave them open for a libel case. We could put on our Sherlock Holmes hats and, for example, phone up the school and police to check if these quotes are accurate, but this is *actively discouraged* by Wikipedia:No original research.

• Has any original research been included in the paragraph I added? No- I used two sentences, the first of which was summary of the first few paragraphs, and the second was an explanation for the event copied and pasted out of the article. I added a current event tag because the investigation is ongoing, and if any more verifiable information becomes available we'll add it in here to clarify and add detail. If you want to argue that we should include more verifiable sentences to make the article more neutral, I agree! Find some!

• Is this from a neutral point of view? Lord No! It's an article written by a newspaper that hates private schools about an accusation of bullying in one! The editor hasn't exactly sat down and carefully weighed up the pros and cons of the argument presented in the article and then decided whether or not to run it. However, *THIS IS IRRELAVENT*! Sure, we could say that we all think it is unlikely this could happen to the extent claimed in the letter, but this would be original, unverifiable research. The fact it would make the article more 'neutral' does NOT allow Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research to be overridden. See the discussion above for details of this.

You accuse me of deliberately not including other verifiable information, and then fail to provide any extra yourself! There is simply very little verifiable information, and practically NO unbiased verifiable information, out there about one school in one area of one country. You don't seem to want to apply your abstract concept of 'fairness' to the fact that half the sources we're citing at the moment come from the school's website- do you think this is a totally unbiased, balanced source, carefully weighing up the pros and cons of all the school has to offer? We have to take what scraps we can find out there and do our best to weave them into a neutral article. But, when only one newspaper runs a short article on a single topic, this is simply *impossible*.

Do I personally agree with the hierarchy of these policies? No. If you check back in the edit history and compare the page I was writing with Wikipedia:Neutral point of view in the forefront of my mind to the current state where Wikipedia:Verifiability is the deciding factor, you should at least see that, by and large, we had a factually correct, unbiased, detailed article on the school. Now we have a much shorter article, totally verifiable (except for the third paragraph which was so integral I merely added a citation needed tag rather than deleting it, on the basis no one could be bothered to challenge it), but fleeting from one end of extreme bias to the other as sources become available.

I don't begrudge Wikipedia this- I can totally understand why they wouldn't want to have unverifiable information in an encyclopaedia, regardless of truth. I'm not going to start arguing they should restructure their policies for this very reason, and, as a guest in their community, I will abide my their rules to the best of my ability in exactly the same way I would obey the laws of a foreign country I was visiting. However, when someone then comes along out of the blue, vandalises an article I'm working on, and concludes with the comment 'You should try to be more objective', quite frankly, it makes me very, very angry.

So! If you have something to contribute, welcome to Wikipedia, borrow my pen! If both your edits were due to a lack of understand of Wikipedia Policy, please refer to the links I've provided, and then you're more than welcome to make further changes. If you just want to vandalise things you don't like the sound of, Wikipedia may not be the place for you. 81.179.101.32 13:40, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I've been informed recently that there's been a *lot* of extreme vandalism to this page, so I'd just like everyone to know I'm totally sick of it and refuse to touch it with a barge pole, and/or make any edits, reverts, or corrections from now on- indeed, I haven't touched this page for months. Shimgray, is there any merit in requesting this page be locked at the last vaguely acceptable edit? 81.179.94.179 22:11, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Independent School or Public School

As suggested in your edit summary, I looked at the defintion of public schools.

From Public school:

"In the England, Wales and Northern Ireland the term "public school" refers to fee-charging independent secondary schools."

and

"The term "public school" is generally used now in the United Kingdom to refer to any school that is a member of the Headmasters Conference..."

and from Independent school (UK):

"An independent school in the United Kingdom is a school that relies for all or most of its funding on non-governmental sources."

and

"The term public school has traditionally been used in England and Wales because these schools, although often originally founded on charitable lines, developed into institutions open to any in return for the payment of fees."

Dame Allan's is a fee charging independent secondary school which is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference originally founded on charitable lines, which has developed into an institution open to any in return for the payment of fees. It may describe itself as an independent school, but it meets any definition of a public school I can find, and I fail to see the two terms are mutually exclusive. Anilocra 11:44, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, you are right. According to the def on Wikipedia DAS is a public school. That surprised me. Sorry for reverting me, but I can't help but think that Wikipedia has got it wrong. --SandyDancer 11:45, 7 November 2006 (UTC)