Talk:John Dewey Academy

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"Attack" or "consumer information" content

A newly registered user has seen fit to add content to this article that came across as an attack on the school that is the subject of the article. The user asserts that their purpose was to provide "information to the consumer." Either way, it's not appropriate for Wikipedia. The Wikipedia policy "What Wikipedia is not" goes into detail about this, explaining (among other things) that Wikipedia is not a guide, guidebook, or advice column and it is not a platform for advocacy, scandal-mongering, or promotion. That page doesn't explicitly say "Wikipedia is not an online consumer guide", but it gives that message using other words. Encyclopedic articles can include information that might be of value to prospective consumers, but articles should not be written with a consumer-information perspective. Another policy states that Wikipedia does not tolerate attack pages, defined as pages that exist primarily to disparage or threaten their subjects. While it was not the entire page, the paragraph added by the user was clearly intended to disparage the article subject.

A couple of additional policies that are relevant to the scope of this page are Biographies of living persons (BLP) and Neutral point of view (NPOV). The BLP policy page says in part:

"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid: it is not Wikipedia's job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives: the possibility of harm to living subjects must always be considered when exercising editorial judgment. This policy applies to any living person mentioned in a BLP, whether or not that person is the subject of the article, and to material about living persons in other articles and on other pages, including talk pages."

Any content added to this article regarding misdeeds attributed to the school needs to be considered in light of this policy -- and the interests of people who might be identified as perpetrators or victims and their families. The NPOV policy is one of Wikipedia's three core policies and applies across all of Wikipedia -- it requires us to ensure that articles are based on good research, use an impartial tone, and do not give undue weight to any particular perspective.

In connection with the above, plus Wikipedia's core policy on verifiability of content, I am removing the subject paragraph from the article. (I removed it once last evening, but it was quickly reinserted by the editor who created it.) It is my judgment that the content seriously misrepresents the information in the cited sources (I will go into detail on that later, if necessary), it gives undue emphasis to some events that occurred a decade or more in the past, and it was added with an intention that is contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia.

Let's not edit war in the article. It's a short stub right now that presents neutral factual information; there's no harm in keeping it that way (but there is potential harm in publishing misrepresentations that disparage the article subject) while we discuss the content on this page. --Orlady (talk) 15:25, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

I get what you are saying. Loaded language is hard to get by when concerning rape and victim blaming is a common theme in American culture. I think it would be a gross misconduct on your part to not accuretly paint the picture of rape, victim blaming and attack therapy found at John dewey. As a victim myself and an advocate of information to all I think it is directly putting youth in harms way to not include this in the full picture of John Dewey. Troutbum898 (talk) 15:34, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with you that leaving out the criminal actions of staff directed towards students and the Attack Therapy style found is not harmful. Dis-information is a common theme throughout human history for people to find themselves in abusive situations. Eitehr way, as uncompfortable as this topic is and can be, it is negligent to leave it out of the picture. What is your opinion on the crimes conducted at Dewey? Are they not worth public knowledge or should we hide it and let more parents get fooled into this "cult"?