User talk:Charterwonk

Welcome

Hello, Charterwonk, and welcome to Wikipedia!

Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask at the help desk, or place {{Help me}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or or by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Also, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! Grayfell (talk) 21:57, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Getting started
Introduction Contributing to Wikipedia The five pillars of Wikipedia How to edit a page Intuitive guide to Wikipedia
Finding your way around
Table of contents Directories and indexes Department directory
Editing articles
How to develop an article Simplified Manual of Style

Getting help
Frequently asked questions Cheatsheet Our new user help forum, the Teahouse The Help Desk, for more advanced questions Help pages Article Wizard – a Wizard to help you create articles
How you can help
Community Portal Join a WikiProject Follow Wikipedia etiquette Practice civility Discover what's going on in the Wikimedia community

Charter school

Hello. I have (again) reverted your changes to Charter school. I did this for a couple of reasons. First, I moved your additions to the section about the United States (Charter school#United States), since the source has specific strong ties to the US system. Articles are intended to be for an international audience, and since the article covers multiple countries, the overview should be broad enough to cover those countries.

The other reason I restored the previous lede is because it is a lengthy quote with many specific details. Since Wikipedia is a tertiary source, it's almost always better to summarize sources than to quote them, especially for the lede. Additionally, I fear this would be too much "wonk" too soon, making it unnecessarily difficult for a general audience to understand. We should define concepts when needed, and jargon should be avoided.

I should also mention that lengthy quotes can, potentially, raise copyright violation concerns. I don't think this is a clear example of that yet, but it's another good reason to summarize instead of directly quote, whenever possible.

I recommend discussing this further at Talk:Charter school. Thanks. Grayfell (talk) 22:21, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Grayfell. I don't want to enter an editing war. But I do want to protect Wikipedia's reputation. The previous definition of charter school under this article, international or not, is biased and misleading. Charter schools in the US are NOT privately owned and are actually based on progressive principles. If you look at state statute you will see a clear pattern: charter schools only exist because state law allows them to exist. That is in contrast to private schools which have existed with or without statutory authority.

When someone Googles "charter school," this misleading concept (the concept that charter schools are private schools, which they are not) pops up. Does this matter? Does Wikipedia care that such a biased and misleading opinion defines such a contentious issue? I don't want to get blocked, but I do want to support accurate articles and the previous definition is not accurate. --Charterwonk (talk) 23:07, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. The lede currently says that a charter school is in some cases is privately owned. This is accurate, as even in the United States, charter schools are operated by independent non-profit and for-profit companies, even if they are under more-strict regulation than fully private schools. The simplistic definition of a charter school is that it is "publicly funded but privately operated".[1] This blurs the lines between public and private, and arguably that's the entire point. I'm sure we both have strong feelings about what this means, and how significant it is to the topic, but the article's lede is intended to be a simple overview of this complicated issue. How progressive these principles are is both hotly contested and irrelevant to this particular discussion.

Internationally speaking, "public" is so ambiguous it's always going to cause confusion (see Public school (United Kingdom) and Delhi Public School Society as a couple of examples). The lede of the charter school article isn't a good place to try and explain this ambiguity. If you would like to expand on the lede to include a summary of the points added by this or other reliable source, we should discuss how to do that, but this one source doesn't over-ride other sources. The definition provided by the Education Commission of the States is not the only definition we should consider. Additionally, it's not necessarily appropriate to use a narrow definition when discussing a complicated, controversial issue.

Again, I invite you to discuss your concerns on the article's talk page (Talk:Charter school), so that other editors are more likely to see this and participate. Grayfell (talk) 00:31, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There is not a single case of a charter school being privately owned in the United States. Not one. Every charter school in the US is responsible to an authorizer or sponsor whose responsibilities are defined in state statute and the large majority of those sponsors are local school districts. I can see that you feel as strongly about this as I do. However, the line "in some cases is privately owned" is misleading because it does not distinguish between the international definition and the US definition. "Operated" and "owned" are not the same. Charterwonk (talk) 03:23, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. Operated and owned are not the same thing, but that's not answering my concerns. The lede isn't the place to make assumptions about the existential difference between public and private schools. The place to discuss this is, for the third time, the article's talk page. Grayfell (talk) 03:28, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad that you say the led is not the place to make assumptions about the existential difference between public and private schools. Therefore, we should move the line "in some cases is privately owned" to lower in the article. As you have pointed out, such definition (given the controversial nature) should not belong in the lede. Charterwonk (talk) 03:34, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, but there is a lot more that needs to be done with this article. I posted a new section on the article's talk page, but I didn't notice you had copied this there. To avoid confusion, and since the previous section was over a year old, I have moved those comments, to a new section at the bottom, per WP:BOTTOMPOST. Wikipedia's talk pages are not very user friendly, unfortunately. Thanks. Grayfell (talk) 04:05, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

February 2018

Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. You appear to be repeatedly reverting or undoing other editors' contributions at Charter school. Although this may seem necessary to protect your preferred version of a page, on Wikipedia this is known as "edit warring" and is usually seen as obstructing the normal editing process, as it often creates animosity between editors. Instead of reverting, please discuss the situation with the editor(s) involved and try to reach a consensus on the talk page.

If editors continue to revert to their preferred version they are likely to be blocked from editing Wikipedia. This isn't done to punish an editor, but to prevent the disruption caused by edit warring. In particular, editors should be aware of the three-revert rule, which says that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Edit warring on Wikipedia is not acceptable in any amount, and violating the three-revert rule is very likely to lead to a block. Thank you. Grayfell (talk) 22:23, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]