Talk:Fayetteville High School (Arkansas)

message: Seriously, quit screwing around and STOP deleting our alumni.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fhsbulldogs (talk • contribs) 04:42, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  seriously people... 

message: The New York Times Article has prompted must uproar over the Fayetteville Public School system. However, care should be taken while recording the event so as to avoid bias and include the School District's response as well. Furthermore, the section should not be at the beginning of the article as it was originally. Accusatory and inflammatory remarks should be left out of the article. Jon (talk) 09:35, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you should assume Good faith here. I've been reconciling twenty different, constantly updated news sources to write this addition to the article, have repeatedly come back to update it with the families' and the administration responses, and only included information, events, and quotes that could be directly sourced. In addition, I've repeatedly removed inflammatory comments by upset contributors. I also note that you graduated from Fayetteville High School, which is walking the tight rope of violating Wikipedia's NPOV on contributing to controversial issues. While I think your moving the section was a very good idea and the section definitely needed improvement, the implication that it was full of accusatory and inflammatory remarks and bias was hurtful. I honestly did the best I could with the news sources available at the time and the shortened time frame available. 71.176.231.129 (talk) 16:50, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It is true that I am a graduate of Fayetteville High School. However, you will notice that I posted the warning for bias in that section. I am not trying to victimize Billy Wolfe or skew the article to be pro-Fayetteville. As a citizen of Fayetteville, however, I have access to local news sources, all of which lack the prestige and audience of the New York Times. Aside from re-locating the article, I rewrote passages in more neutral terms. One statement incorrectly states that "After years of systematic and documented abuse, the parents have filed a lawsuit against the district. " However, this is false, as the article prompting the controversy states "This month they sued one of the bullies “and other John Does,” and are considering another lawsuit against the Fayetteville School District." The phrase "years of systematic and documented abuse" lends no more credibility to the article than the phrase "After years of abuse," and introduces a negative bias against the Fayetteville School District. Changing "Students had set up a Facebook page" to "Some students had set up a Facebook page" removes the suggestion that it was an action of a majority of the students and instead shows that is was the work of a few students not representative of the student body. I added the sentence "Currently, Fayetteville High School has a Gay-Straight Alliance, which, in 2004 was picketed by members of the Westboro Baptist Church." to the end of the section to illustrate that the status of gay rights in the high school has been resolved, which was brought up negatively in the article and not resolved. The fact of the matter is just that there is a majority of people who know very little about the situation who are inflamed by the article and most people in Fayetteville feel that this scrutiny is completely unfounded and an attack on the city. The latter viewpoint was largely unaccounted for and I was trying to bring balance to the article. I do not currently attend Fayetteville High School and so offer no original research or view into the situation. Jon (talk) 19:38, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Again, as I stated, I didn't have any problems with your edits, I thought some of them were needed and very good. I just thought you should realize that this was a complicated and changing issue and that the attempts to address it by editors was being met with good faith; labeling early attempts at it as biased, inflammatory, and accusatory was premature. I know it is very difficult in these cases when you have a personal connection to the subject to retain neutrality, just as it also difficult for Wikipedia editors to praise work done by others. Again, I'm sorry you are unhappy with the work done so far and glad that you are here to point out and correct our obvious shortcomings over this "must uproar". 71.176.231.129 (talk) 20:24, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Billy Wolfe Controversy