Talk:King's College School, Cambridge

Schools Stub‑class

	Schools portal This article is related to WikiProject Schools, a collaborative effort to write quality articles about schools around the world. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page.SchoolsWikipedia:WikiProject SchoolsTemplate:WikiProject Schoolsschool articles
Stub	This article has been rated as Stub-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.
	This article has been marked as needing an infobox.

Non Neutral Editing

There has been a lot of back and forth on the article. I tried to removed the puffery, the overly detailed, opinionated analysis (with terms like "worryingly" and "surprisingly" and "highly damning", and improve the flow of the article, which is very poor. These edits are reverted without comment. I will ask that future changes be discussed here first, as there is clearly no consensus being developed, just a back and forth that is not accomplishing anything. If we can't agree, we can then ask for a request for comment from other Wikipedia editors, which may help improve the article. Thank you for your cooperation. Seaphoto^Talk 20:58, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Lengthy non-neutral presentation of a legal matter, coupled with an overly detailed description of one school year. I've tried discussing this, but no response on user or article talk page, simply a series of back and forth reversions. Seaphoto^Talk 16:24, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Neutrality and non-encyclopedic detail

I have a number of concerns about the longer version of the article:

First, from an encyclopedic view, too much weight is being given to the 2009 inspection. If we can distill that to one paragraph with footnotes it would be more than sufficient. The school has been around for many years, surely it is not defined by the series of events flowing from this incident, and yet the mass of detail gives a large amount of weight to it. In keeping with Wikipedia neutrality we try to give undue weight to any one incident. Of course, it is a balance and we are not here to whitewash an incident either.
Second, there are a lot of subjective observations used in the writings; "worryingly", "surprisingly","staggering" rarely have a place in a dispassionate, neutral article, which is the goal of Wikipedia.
Third, the latter half of the article with it's overly detailed accounting of the 2010 reads like a school newsletter for parents. I am not sure that any of this material belongs in an international encyclopedia. By way of contrast, take a look at King's College School, although the description of sports is arguably too detailed there as well.

I look forward to editor's opinions on these matters. Seaphoto^Talk 23:04, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Can I add my voice to Seaphoto's ? Seaphoto's minimal version of the page is balanced and acceptable.

However, kitty is endlessly reverting it to a long and unduly detailed listing of her case against the school. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this case, it just has no place in an online encyclopedia.ClassicsDoS (talk) 23:35, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The new version is briefer, but no real improvement. It still contains opionated phrases like "highly damaging", "total disregard", etc. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this, if the School was as bad as kitty says, no parent would send their child there. In fact, the report that kitty alludes to begins by stating that the School is a happy place. It is questionable whether any of kitty's material belongs in an encyclopedia, but -- if it does -- one or two sentences would be ample.

Incidentally, I have no axe to grind, and am not connected with the School. But, I do take exception to users venting their own particular grievances on wikipedia. Wikipedia would be unreadable if everyone venting their frustrations and anger on it

I have reverted the new version back to Seaphotos ClassicsDoS (talk) 08:21, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've also reverted back to Seaphoto's version. These events have received national coverage so it would seem they probably do need to be in the article - but it's important that their inclusion be proportional to the total history of the school. An article that is more than two thirds about a single incident, as the version I reverted was, is horribly unbalanced when you consider the total length of the school's existence (which I see is minimally 40 years or so. I am not familiar with this particular school at all). Ka Faraq Gatri (talk) 20:38, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV additions

I've reverted back to the version that had consensus back in April. The version I reverted contained unsourced statements (the apology from the Provost to a particular family, the contents of the letter written by the Provost to parents, three pages of problems) and had a slanted feel eg. calling the letter "highly misleading", giving the name of the TES article title in the article text. I believe it probable that there were 3 pages of problems and that a certain family did receive an apology, the problem is that these things aren't recorded in the press. You're clearly upset with the school and the way they handled this but Wikipedia isn't the place for discussing the shortcomings of the school's management. Ka Faraq Gatri (talk) 11:46, 25 June 2011 (UTC).[reply]

The facts that are set out in the entry on King's College School have been independently verified and are based on documents that I have seen and have satisfied myself as to accuracy. This may reflect shortcomings that people don't like to read about, but prospective parents should be aware that the school has done everything possible to hide its failings. The headmaster has damaged the school and brought disgrace on an institution. If parents knew what happened at the school and the way in which governors have tried to airbrush history, they would look at the school very differently. Kitty