Talk:Ethical Culture Fieldston School

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Edited most recently by David Cummings. If any of you have any suggestions, be sure to let me know (or edit them yourself, this is Wiki!)

Peace

[edit] Removal

I removed the notable alumni section. If there are notable alumni, merge them with the appropriate sections and provide reliable sources. Those types of sections are not only unencyclopedic they attract all kinds of non notable additions. IvoShandor 01:00, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, but many schools have notable alumni sections, and there is no proscription on it: see the guideline WP:Notability (people)#Lists_of_people, for example. The people who have been editing this page have not decided to remove it, so I am reinstating it. There are people monitoring the page who remove non-notable names when they appear. I don't see any justification for wholesale removal of such a section - and the suggestion to incorporate names into sections of the article doesn't make sense. There was a discussion a few months ago which was tabled, but gives an idea of what some Wikipedia editors were thinking at that time: see Wikipedia:Notable alumni for historic purposes - this was also only to be a guideline, not policy, and it was not finalized. the general feeling among those editors was that people who have or could have their own Wikipedia pages are reasonable to include in a list of notable alumni. But there was certainly no consensus anywhere that these sections should be removed. Tvoz |talk 03:45, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

It's a list for one, and should be split off at the very least, second it provides no references, so there is no way for anyone to check its accuracy. Its really long right now, another reason for its removal, Wikipedia isn't an indisriminite knowledge which is what this appears to be without references. Just my opinion but it makes the article worse, not better. Really consider moving it. IvoShandor 03:59, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

This section is not any longer than that of many schools - if it were to get significantly longer it could branch off as a separate "List" article, I agree, but I don't think this one is sufficiently long to warrant that at present. As for references, almost none of the schools I've looked at have these sections referenced, nor do individual biography articles usually have references to verify where an individual went to school. It's good if we have the refs, of course, but not having them is widespread. As far as notability -the goal, I think, is to have all of the names be blue - the ones that appear who are red are people of note who could have wikipedia articles but do not as of yet. Tvoz |talk 04:12, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems your whole rationale is everyone else is doing so this article should, maybe they are all wrong, or less right? I am not contesting their notability, just that the list adds to the article anything of value. Especially if its all unreferenced and will never be referenced. IvoShandor 04:19, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Also it doesn't really conform to the manual of style about lists either. IvoShandor 04:24, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying - I just don't agree with you. I think notable alumni are of interest when reading about a school - many schools include such information in their own literature - it's an interesting sidenote to see where people who end up as notable members of society got their education. That's presumably why we include such information in indivdual bios, and in my opinion also seeing the range of people who were educated in a particular place tells us something. For example, some of NYC's specialized science high schools have renowned scientists including among their alumni, and listed as such - it is of interest to see where alumni of those schools ended up. Just my opinion. I'll keep an eye on the length of the section in any case and fork it off if it gets too long, compared with others of a similar nature, and I'll take a look at the MOS that you mentioned. Tvoz |talk 04:38, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Forms-->Grades

The text doesn't indicate what will happen to the traditional method of referring to the Upper School levels as Forms once the middle school gets established. Will 7th grade still be referred to as First Form? It would be too bad if Fieldston dispatches this longtime tradition without significant discussion taking place. Drgitlow 03:57, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

• I am given to understand that they plan to call the 7th grade "7th grade", etc.Morris 01:29, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

And what happens to the Forms for the Upper School? Are they doing away with that tradition too? Tvoz |talk 16:17, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, they are. My 'Form' was the last 'form' to graduate, now its 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, etc. Mattburlage 00:46, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

No, they are not. As of January 2008, the seventh and eighth grades are still referred to as first/second forms. High school students still refer to their forms; I've only heard the mention of "grade" when used to refer to sixth graders. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JulianHess (talk • contribs) 22:38, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I can see why they're not telling the alums about this decision. I know we were all pretty ticked off about it at HM when we discovered that forms had vanished years before without anyone being told. Drgitlow 18:40, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citations??

The sentence which someone tagged as needing a citation comes from the same source as the rest of that paragraph, it seems clumsy to mention the source (New York Review of Books) several times. If anyone has a better way of explaining it, that would be great. Morris 01:29, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

I sometimes add a note to the ref that it is for the entire graf. IvoShandor 01:44, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Repeating the citation is not really necessary - it could all have been one ref moved to the end of the paragraph - but it's ok to do so, as I fixed it. But a more serious problem with that section is it was a verbatim lift of words from the Singer item, without indicating that it was a quote - you can't do that, even with attribution. Either put it in quotes or paraphrase, otherwise it is plagiarism. (I hope whoever did it is not an alum...) Tvoz |talk 03:04, 2 July 2007 (UTC)