Talk:Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton

message: I no longer see any "Category:California stub" class parameter on the Article page, so I removed the bot reference to it in the Talk page.  Ottoump (talk) 16:30, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Ottoump, thanks for your questions at the Teahouse regarding this article, as well as your disclosure. It looks like you are well-prepared to improve the article. Feel free to pose any questions here about article improvement that you wish; you can request assistance from an experienced user, here or at your User talk page, by posting a question and adding  to your message. You can all on a specific user (or users) with the  template, by adding  somewhere in your message.  For questions about editing Wikipedia generally, that are not about improving this article, please use your article Talk page with "Help me", the Teahouse, or the Village pump. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 06:19, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Rating

message: As editors of this page, I'd appreciate your comments on the proposed move below. Ottoump (talk) 15:36, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal for move 

message: The article appears to have been written by the marketing department of the school, stuffed with unsourced trumpery and promotional puffery. I have hacked some out other stuff remains, but poorly sourced to pdfs etc. Theroadislong (talk) 08:46, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Theroadislong, it's not written by a marketing department, but by the parent of an 8th graderas I disclosed several weeks ago.  Could you please help me by pointing to the specific items of undocumented puffery? Ottoump (talk) 15:35, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  Here , here  and here . Theroadislong (talk) 15:52, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Promotional content 

message: The guiding principles I used in overhauling this articleaside from the overarching pillars, style guides, and Teahouse exchanges of Wikipedia itselfcame from two sources: (1) WikiProject Schools' Article guidelines and (2) articles that have been judged to be exemplary within WikiProject Schools. I'll refer to these in responding to the three main criticisms (on this page and on my user talk page) to the changes that I attempted to roll-out this morning:
=== Length ===
One criticism is that the content "is excessively detailed for what is appropriate for an article about a school" and that I should "please stop adding to what is already a bloated, excessive(ly) long article." The Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton article at the time of this writing is 1,793 words. The full article I had drafted is 4,610 words. By comparison, FA-Class and potential FA-Class school articles in the table below average 5,872 words.  
The Article Guidelines further call for the following sections, as appropriate, and I assume this is to provide some degree of uniformity across articles: Lead, History, Governance, School Structure, Admissions, Curriculum, Extracurricular Activities, Campus, Awards and recognition, Notable alumni, Notable staff, Former headteachers, References. In this article's case, I propose the sections as History, Prep school (with subsections), Lower and middle school, Campus, Spirituality and service, Traditions, Notable alumni, Former directors and principals.
I think we have room for other sections.
=== Sources ===
A second criticism:  "...articles require writing in a neutral tone and must refer to reliable independent sources, we have no interest in what the school says about itself." WP:WPSCH guidelines, however, seem to allow for more latitude:A school's own website is not an independent source, though can be an acceptable source for information sections involving no value judgments, such as school structure. References from third-party sources are preferable and particularly important for school awards and contentious statements.This is probably because the nuts and bolts of enrollment, tuition and curriculum will typically come only from the school itself (particularly for private or independent schools), and is why every school article I've looked at uses these "acceptable" insider references. In the draft, I've tried to use references from the school's website as little as possible, and for exactly the uncontentious points described in the guidelines. The FA-Class articles go beyond that to use club pages, booster pages, parent-teacher association websites, and even yearbooks, none of which I had to resort to. As the table below shows in the rightmost column, insider references as a percentage of total references averages about 16%.
=== Tone ===
A final criticism says that I am "adding volumes of extremely promotional material, some unsourced and some sourced to their own website, this is not acceptable, please stop," with these examples called out. , ,  I honestly don't see the puffery. The first example discusses the spiritual/religious component which, like it or not, is a distinctive part of a Sacred Heart education, and it's relevant to people who wonder if it's hard-core Catholic, nominally catholic, or something in between (the answer is C, but that's just an observation). The note about the board of trustees (again, let me stress: I'm not on the board, not a staff member, not a consultant) is relevant because it speaks to some limit on the board's independencethere's still an obligation to the founding organization. The point about the graduating class of one student in 1899 struck me as interesting, but not promotional. And the LMS section bears directly on the multi-division nature of Sacred Heart Schools and what the relationship is, if any, between divisions. I couldn't imagine a more sober patch of prose, but it will likely be important to some subset of the article's visitors.
=== FA-Class school articles ===
School                                 	Words	Inside refs	% of total
Amador Valley High School              	4,376	18         	12%
Avery Coonley School                   	7,311	19         	10%
Benet Academy*                         	5,795	24         	13%
Caulfield Grammar School*              	4,800	16         	17%
Garden City High School (Kansas)*      	4,455	34         	32%
Judd School                            	7,353	38         	16%
School for Creative and Performing Arts	6,862	15         	7%
Stuyvesant High School                 	6,024	47         	24%
Notes to table
* this includes all five FA-Class school articles on extant high schools, plus the three potential featured article candidates (designated by an asterisk)
* word counts stop just short of the reference lists
* reference counts include all numbered references plus the number of times a named reference is applied
===My request===
 I hope you'll consider the above arguments regarding length, content, and sources, and that I'll be able to roll-out the remaining sections of the draft with your support. 
Also: thank you Theroadislong and David notMD for the edits you've made thus far. From what I've seen (and with a few exceptions that I'd argue on the basis of structure and necessity), the edits have noticeably improved readability. Ottoump (talk) 07:28, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: there appears to be an editing error in the last sentence of the paragraph under Girls sports. Am I able to edit that without getting into trouble? Ottoump (talk) 07:49, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:   As a first response, I'd strip out all the tables about championship years, and replace them with a sentence. That does seem like WP:PUFFERY; ask yourself this: who, other than a parent or student in this school, would have the slightest interest in reading all of this detail in a Wikipedia article? It's hard to imagine who that person might be.  Given that you had to source that information from reliable sources, anybody that was truly *that* interested, could just click the footnote and gorge on all the championship year detail that they could handle. Instead, you could say, perhaps: "the boys' teams excelled in water polo, winning over a dozen championships since 2000, as well as earning titles in baseball, basketball, and football in the last five years", or something like that. Ditto for the other tables.  Wonder if  would agree. Mathglot (talk) 07:51, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: YES, absolutely agree. Theroadislong (talk) 07:58, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Also agree. That a  four-year high school with an enrollment of ~600 (from the Info box) wins league championships says more to the leagues it competes in than it does to newsworthiness, regardless of being able to find a newspaper article as a reference. David notMD (talk) 09:40, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Argument that draft conforms to WikiProject Schools guidelines 

message: I hope you'll consider the above arguments regarding length, content, and sources, and that I'll be able to roll-out the remaining sections of the draft with your support. 
Also: thank you Theroadislong and David notMD for the edits you've made thus far. From what I've seen (and with a few exceptions that I'd argue on the basis of structure and necessity), the edits have noticeably improved readability. Ottoump (talk) 07:28, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: there appears to be an editing error in the last sentence of the paragraph under Girls sports. Am I able to edit that without getting into trouble? Ottoump (talk) 07:49, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:   As a first response, I'd strip out all the tables about championship years, and replace them with a sentence. That does seem like WP:PUFFERY; ask yourself this: who, other than a parent or student in this school, would have the slightest interest in reading all of this detail in a Wikipedia article? It's hard to imagine who that person might be.  Given that you had to source that information from reliable sources, anybody that was truly *that* interested, could just click the footnote and gorge on all the championship year detail that they could handle. Instead, you could say, perhaps: "the boys' teams excelled in water polo, winning over a dozen championships since 2000, as well as earning titles in baseball, basketball, and football in the last five years", or something like that. Ditto for the other tables.  Wonder if  would agree. Mathglot (talk) 07:51, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: YES, absolutely agree. Theroadislong (talk) 07:58, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Also agree. That a  four-year high school with an enrollment of ~600 (from the Info box) wins league championships says more to the leagues it competes in than it does to newsworthiness, regardless of being able to find a newspaper article as a reference. David notMD (talk) 09:40, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: My request

message: In the lifespan of every article there comes a point where it stops struggling to exist and we start to refine it. WP:BITE no longer applies! We are at this point now. We start evaluating it more critically. So I looked at the text, and compared it with Caulfield Grammar School and felt like rewriting that whole article as it is so short of refs and other basic mistakes. I looked at Amador Valley High School which is generally well written but lacking in detail of the core function, teaching, its organisation and the results and value-added achieved. This is a European thing, where extra curricula activities are interesting but not core. Crucially here everything mentioned in the lead is explained and expanded in subsequent sections. They don't give detais of why the AP courses are important. Crucially the tone is right, it does not look as if the history section has been lifted from a parental prospectus and and a few words change to prevent it being a copyvio. It does not give details of the location, and its socioeconomic status, catchments, feeders and destinations.
I then went back to look at Judd School to see how that was written and while generally comfortable with the text, it reminded me of my loathing for my own habit of starting each sentence with a subordinate clause. Wikipedians seem obsessed by writing qualifications before they commit themselves to a fact. But I suggest editors observe the tone of the article it is descriptive not promotional. These lessons can now be applied to Sacred Heart. 
Back to Sacred Heart there are a few things that jarr.
: A prominent reference ranks it -- name it
:consists of --> is composed of
: a prep school for-> differnt meaning in UK
: grade almost doubles f  -what was the starting number  - the use of almost- too vague
:  do not have to apply for re-admission to higher schools - why would they, sounds like prospectus speak
: Sacred Heart is governed by an independent, mostly lay board of trustees -- firstly Mostly-- then where is the governance section
:  Sacred Heart was an all-girls school with a significant boarding component until 1984, when it adopted the Preparatory name, ended the boarding program, and started admitting boys --> Sacred Heart was an all-girls school with a significant boarding component until 1984.  It started admitting boys, and boarding was ended. It changed its name to Sacred Heart Preparatory.
I may join in and make a few aggressive edits- please revert them if I go too far. There is the basis of a fine article here.--ClemRutter (talk) 15:00, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aiming for quality 

message: I think listing tuition fees is approaching promoting the school and is a no-no. Certainly the source you use here should be *independent* of the school. Ref 30 is just to close. See how the Eton College article handles it. I had never heard of FAST (funding body)- fascinating and it needs to be a wikilinked article or explained further. Perhaps if FAST became the subject of the paragraph, then the tuition fees could be worked in there. ClemRutter (talk) 02:20, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I completely agree about the tuition, ClemRutter. I included it purely because it seemed to be called for by WP:WPSCH/AG#OS (see Admissions bullet there). Having no external reference, I've taken it out. My impression is that FAST acts as an independent source for determining financial need. Parents supply tax returns and the like, FAST churns through it, and the school uses this to determine financial aid.  It saves the school from appearances of favoritism, getting lobbied by parents, gaining access to private information, and an administrative burden. Ottoump (talk) 05:50, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

text: Good change. One of the many benefits of fresh eyes. Ottoump (talk) 05:50, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

text: Along those lines, I changed Taking root: 1898-1944 to Establishment: 1898-1944. Ottoump (talk) 17:43, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Tuition fees and FAST

message: Does anyone do any teaching? The curriculum section is absent! Often is is difficult to write the hook- but then everything flows. Try . One can always tie in some text from ISCED and High school (North America). --ClemRutter (talk) 10:16, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I put a curriculum section in, but really struggled with it. My intent is to add a few sentences on distinctive courses. Ottoump (talk) 23:51, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  It was worth the struggle. It reads wells though you are aware that the direction the conversation will now go! References (other than primary source), international readership, completeness to include K-8. 
I would hold back on the distinctive courses until you have a strong independent references. It is always easier to explain the higher level courses than the innovation that happens in the early years.ClemRutter (talk) 09:33, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

text: Good advice, ClemRutter. Thank you. I trimmed the "notable electives" sentence to just the one written up in the Merc. I'm hoping to hit the Stanford library sometime over the next few weeks for independent references that aren't available online re electives, K-8 standards, former principals & directors, and the like. Ottoump (talk) 18:59, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does anyone do any teaching 

message: What's everyone's sense of putting in a graduating class growth chart to the right of the last history section? On one hand, I think it's really informative and would let the article shed its vague indicators of growth; on the other, because every year requires its own source, it requires a ton of citations. My proposal would be to keep the Chart Data as a separate subsection in the Reference section (between Notes and Citations, most likely), but I'm not sure if all those new sources will weigh down the article. 
Please see the example below. In doing so, note that I haven't figured out how to get the starting reference list to begin with a lowercase "a" and I don't really know how to make the text size match that of the other Reference sectionsbut those questions are subordinate, of course, to the larger question of whether the chart improves the article in the first place. Ottoump (talk) 00:14, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice exercise, not to mention great referencing, but I can't imagine who would care to have this much detail. It could be handled in a single sentence: "...the class remained small—a dozen or less—from its inception through WW II, then started increasing slowly but steadily throughout the next half century reaching 80 by 1996, and then more rapidly, exceeding 150 in 2017." Just because the data exists, doesn't mean it's relevant or encyclopedic in an article. I'm not sure there's a slam-dunk policy reason it *shouldn't* be included, so in the end consensus probably should determine its inclusion (or exclusion), but some policies that might play a role are WP:ONUS (""), WP:UNDUE (""), and WP:INDISCRIMINATE ("")  Mathglot (talk) 09:40, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

text: Another thing occurs to me: has anyone else, outside the school itself, ever published such a chart?  I'm not sure that WP:OR requires that it be published in chart form by a reliable source first before we do, since you have amply demonstrated citations for each datapoint; but it just seems outside our role as an encyclopedia to be the first to publish a chart of this nature. There is WP:NOTLEAD, which says, "" Does this mean a chart is a "novel way" of presenting it? It's not clear; might need a comment from someone more familiar with the subtleties of WP:OR policy than I am. Mathglot (talk) 10:01, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  Excellent points as usual, Mathglot. To answer your question, I've never seen the data assembled in one place, much less placed in chart form.  The best argument I can muster for its inclusion is that (1) size is relevant and perhaps even vital to an historical record; (2) the assembly of data is entirely based on secondary research (albeit a tedious amount of it from the researcher's standpoint); and, more important, (3) displaying for the reader all the known data is less interpretive than trying to describe growth within and between fairly arbitrary time periods. Cheers. Ottoump (talk) 16:23, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  This is a pretty sleepy corner of the encyclopedia; you might try posting at a board or Talk page related to the possible issues in order to attract the attention of editors more familiar with the intricacies of policy with regard to something like this. If you do, please post a link back to this discussion, so they can read the backstory first, before commenting.  You could try at WT:OR, where, as it happens, the first discussion concerns a high school issue, although not the same one as here.  I'm not certain which board or TP would be the best, there might be other issues besides OR involved here, but the folks at WT:OR could point you somewhere else, if they don't feel that OR is the issue here. If you post there, or elsewhere, please leave a link here so interested editors here can follow the breadcrumbs. HTH, Mathglot (talk) 20:50, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've posted something on the No Original Research talk page. Ottoump (talk) 01:15, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

text:  The conclusion I've drawn so far from the above referenced NOR talk page is that such a chart isn't OR. That said, we need to be careful to avoid any uncited analysis, however slight, that interprets the data. Ottoump (talk) 06:59, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

text:  I added a few sentences/phrases at the end of each historical period to mark the graduating class size, per your earlier recommendation, Mathglot. This probably suffices to give readers a sense of growth trajectory without going so far as to interpret it for them. While I maintain that the line graph has some advantages, they may not be compelling enough to justify another 40 or so citations. Ottoump (talk) 00:40, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chart 

message: ^ For 1899, see 
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* For 1996, see 
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* For 2019, see 
Collapsed to save Talk page vertical scrolling; User:Ottoump, this is your ref data post; feel free to un-collapse if you prefer. Mathglot (talk) 09:47, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice exercise, not to mention great referencing, but I can't imagine who would care to have this much detail. It could be handled in a single sentence: "...the class remained small—a dozen or less—from its inception through WW II, then started increasing slowly but steadily throughout the next half century reaching 80 by 1996, and then more rapidly, exceeding 150 in 2017." Just because the data exists, doesn't mean it's relevant or encyclopedic in an article. I'm not sure there's a slam-dunk policy reason it *shouldn't* be included, so in the end consensus probably should determine its inclusion (or exclusion), but some policies that might play a role are WP:ONUS (""), WP:UNDUE (""), and WP:INDISCRIMINATE ("")  Mathglot (talk) 09:40, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

text: Another thing occurs to me: has anyone else, outside the school itself, ever published such a chart?  I'm not sure that WP:OR requires that it be published in chart form by a reliable source first before we do, since you have amply demonstrated citations for each datapoint; but it just seems outside our role as an encyclopedia to be the first to publish a chart of this nature. There is WP:NOTLEAD, which says, "" Does this mean a chart is a "novel way" of presenting it? It's not clear; might need a comment from someone more familiar with the subtleties of WP:OR policy than I am. Mathglot (talk) 10:01, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  Excellent points as usual, Mathglot. To answer your question, I've never seen the data assembled in one place, much less placed in chart form.  The best argument I can muster for its inclusion is that (1) size is relevant and perhaps even vital to an historical record; (2) the assembly of data is entirely based on secondary research (albeit a tedious amount of it from the researcher's standpoint); and, more important, (3) displaying for the reader all the known data is less interpretive than trying to describe growth within and between fairly arbitrary time periods. Cheers. Ottoump (talk) 16:23, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  This is a pretty sleepy corner of the encyclopedia; you might try posting at a board or Talk page related to the possible issues in order to attract the attention of editors more familiar with the intricacies of policy with regard to something like this. If you do, please post a link back to this discussion, so they can read the backstory first, before commenting.  You could try at WT:OR, where, as it happens, the first discussion concerns a high school issue, although not the same one as here.  I'm not certain which board or TP would be the best, there might be other issues besides OR involved here, but the folks at WT:OR could point you somewhere else, if they don't feel that OR is the issue here. If you post there, or elsewhere, please leave a link here so interested editors here can follow the breadcrumbs. HTH, Mathglot (talk) 20:50, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've posted something on the No Original Research talk page. Ottoump (talk) 01:15, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

text:  The conclusion I've drawn so far from the above referenced NOR talk page is that such a chart isn't OR. That said, we need to be careful to avoid any uncited analysis, however slight, that interprets the data. Ottoump (talk) 06:59, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

text:  I added a few sentences/phrases at the end of each historical period to mark the graduating class size, per your earlier recommendation, Mathglot. This probably suffices to give readers a sense of growth trajectory without going so far as to interpret it for them. While I maintain that the line graph has some advantages, they may not be compelling enough to justify another 40 or so citations. Ottoump (talk) 00:40, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chart data 

message: Explanatory notes may have a lower threshold of verifiability (or maybe not; not too sure abot this) but you have to at least not mislead. Note 9 about highway 101 and El Camino Real state that they run "generally north-south".  Although that may be the designation on the signs, neither road runs north-south in Palo Alto. Ottoump, was this one of your additions, or does it predate you?  Either way, as you're pretty active on the article, maybe you wouldn't mind fixing it. Mathglot (talk) 10:20, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I have to own up to that dumpster fire of a nota bene, Mathglot. Will take care of when I regain access to a real keyboard. Ottoump (talk) 18:50, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Explanatory notes 

message: I've looked for reliable secondary sources that directly describe certain notable people as Sacred Heart alumni, but have failed to find anything so far that doesn't involve WP:SYNTH.  If you discover a connecting source, please do any of the following: (1) note the reference somewhere below; (2) add the Notable alumnus/alumna to the article, and cite the source; or, (3) edit the bio page to reflect the SHS attendance, cite the source there, and add the Wikilinked name to the Notable alumni list on the Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton article.  When finished, please replace the template in the first column with . Ottoump (talk) 02:19, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notable alumni watchlist