Talk:West Hills High School

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject California, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to California on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page to join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.

[edit] Day of Silence controversy

Is there a reference for this or any source that demonstrates notability? It doesn't seem NPOV either - both due to wording and undue weight. --130.63.128.248 (talk) 17:57, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Templates for neutrality/accuracy and referencing added. Here's the breakdown:

• "West Hills was supposed to hold" - according to whom?
• "An announcement of the annual day of was submitted by the advising teacher that runs the annual event at West Hills, Laura Preble, to be part of the weekly school news bulletin, read to students by their 3rd period advising teacher. The bulletins were already printed out and set for distribution in the teacher inboxes, but the principal, Brian Wilbur, ordered for the bulletin to be taken out of the inboxes, scrapped, and reprinted not including the notice of the day of silence." - This reads like a story, and has no sources or references.
• "This has been the first time in recent history that the school has not fully participated in the event." Reference?
• "And has been reported that West Hills was the only school..." reported where? By whom? Is there a reference for this?
• "do to Wilber's actions." POV, unreferenced, and poorly written.
• "A formal complaint, and possible protest, are thought to be in order by the schools GSA." Again, the phrase "thought to be in order" needs a reference - who is doing this thinking, and how do we know that they are thinking it?
• "It been reported that Wilber's actions are based on hate" - very POV and no reference.
• "and that he gave a speech at his church, saying that the day of silence is a "sin", but this has yet to be confirmed". If there are no sources confirming it, and no sources even confirming that this rumour exists, it isn't ready for Wiki publication.

CoolJuno411, as per Wikipedia policy on verifiability ("Do not leave unsourced information that may damage the reputation of living persons or organizations in articles") I am removing some of your section content. If you can source it, you are certainly welcome to add it again. Please add references to this section or it may be deleted. Thank you! --99.231.118.172 (talk) 20:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I got all these statements from the schools GSA meeting that was held the week following the Day of silence event. I can see if i can get a sourcing from them but here is a break down of each quote you have brought to my attention.

• "West Hills was supposed to hold" - according to whom?
  • The event was planned and already approved by the school.

• "An announcement of the annual day of was submitted by the advising teacher that runs the annual event at West Hills, Laura Preble, to be part of the weekly school news bulletin, read to students by their 3rd period advising teacher. The bulletins were already printed out and set for distribution in the teacher inboxes, but the principal, Brian Wilbur, ordered for the bulletin to be taken out of the inboxes, scrapped, and reprinted not including the notice of the day of silence." - This reads like a story, and has no sources or references.
  • These facts came directly from the advising teacher, Preble.

• "This has been the first time in recent history that the school has not fully participated in the event." Reference?
  • I have attended the school for 3 years and can confirm it, and it was brought up at the meeting that the event has been held in the past and why was there an issue this year.

• "And has been reported that West Hills was the only school..." reported where? By whom? Is there a reference for this?
  • One of the leaders of West Hills GSA contacted other schools GSA leaders to see if there was issues with administration during the event, and there was not.

• "A formal complaint, and possible protest, are thought to be in order by the schools GSA." Again, the phrase "thought to be in order" needs a reference - who is doing this thinking, and how do we know that they are thinking it?
  • A formal complaint, protest, or some other form acknowledgement is in the works by the schools GSA.

• "and that he gave a speech at his church, saying that the day of silence is a "sin", but this has yet to be confirmed". If there are no sources confirming it, and no sources even confirming that this rumour exists, it isn't ready for Wiki publication.
  • This was brought up as a "friend of a friend" kinda of source and the advising teacher said that she would need written evidence by the witness for it to be confirmed.

Once again, i will see if i can get this on paper for a source. [--Cooljuno411 (talk) 03:19, 1 May 2008 (UTC)]

Brian Wilbur's, name is necessary in the article, the whole concept was that HIS actions caused the controversy not the school in general. I am re-adding his name. He was the one who exclusively ordered the bulletins to be scrapped and reprint. That is the whole reason for the controversy. [--Cooljuno411 (talk) 03:27, 1 May 2008 (UTC)]

My main concern at this point is about the notability of the controversy. Are there any published works out there that mention this event (or rather lack there of)? Perhaps an official statement from the school or board of education, or possibly an article published in a local newspaper that could be cited (I'm not completely sure what Wiki policy would say about this last one, but I'm mentioning it for the moment because it came to mind)? If there's enough info out there then perhaps it deserves a mention, but as things currently stand the section is completely unsourced and appears to be little more than your own personal account of the situation. I'm also having a little trouble seeing how this event is important in the grand scheme of things (I'm sure there are many things that have happened in the school over the years that are much more encyclopedia worthy). —MearsMan ^talk 03:41, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

This event is too new to have any published data on it, the day of silence was last week. Like i said, i can get the statements confirmed from the advising teacher of the club. And it this not my personal opinion, i give it how it is, he scrapped the papers and reprinted it, what is not neutral about that? [--Cooljuno411 (talk) 04:12, 1 May 2008 (UTC)]

I have emailed the advising teacher about the sourcing predicament and asked her to write a formal document to touch on the events. In addition, i have asked a student to email me pictures from the day of silence, of students who still participated, regardless of the removal. And i will be sure to take pictures of the potential protest. --Cooljuno411 (talk) 20:37, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

To be entirely honest, I can't say at this point whether this document would work as a source or not. Still, it seems like a step in the right direction. I know you are genuinely trying to improve this article with this information, so I'm sorry if at times I've come across as a bit of a nuisance. I think I'm going to ask for an administrator's input on what kind of source would be needed for this article, and if this formal document might work. Hopefully we can get this thing sorted out soon. —MearsMan ^talk 20:56, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Well i would think here word would be legitimate, she is a teacher at the school, and the club advisor.--Cooljuno411 (talk) 00:00, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

It may be possible for her to email her statement to WP:OTRS. (I'm not entirely certain at this point.) However, that still would not give us a reliable third-party source (it would be a first party source, of course), and the notability seems very questionable. If a local newspaper wrote about the event, we could certainly use that. Aleta ^Sing 03:28, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Cooljuno411, thanks for responding to my edits. The only problem is that your word alone isn't enough to publish something on Wikipedia, even if you're 100% right - we need a third party source, like a newspaper for example, to confirm it. For example, let's say I saw a soccer game and noticed one of the players kicked another player in the knee. Even though I saw it, and even though my friends saw it with their own eyes, we can't write on Wikipedia that the kick happened for two reasons. #1) We need to prove through third-party sources (like a flood of news articles) that the kick was important enough to go into that soccer player's wiki. #2) We need to prove through third-party sources that the kick happened like we say it did. I think it's awesome that you're looking for more sources, but that's what I meant in my comments when I asked things like 'according to who' - according to which reliable third-party sources. It's one of the frustrating things about writing in Wikipedia, and it's also one of the things that makes Wikipedia strong - everything revolves around those third-party sources. --99.231.118.172 (talk) 02:09, 5 May 2008 (UTC)