Talk:Eva Moskowitz

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Controversial figure with laudatory article[edit]

Especially given the great deal of discussion on this very point -- now conveniently removed to a talk page archive -- the lack of any critical coverage of this controversial figure is disturbing. Interestingly, the article does contain a couple of swipes at the teachers union, but Ms. Moskowitz comes off sounding like one of the great intellectuals of our era. The inordinate summaries of her writing -- in particular -- seem overboard. In dire need of some deep NPOV editing and perhaps some close monitoring of edits. 76.15.69.217 (talk) 22:23, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Various criticisms are in the article now. Criticisms about her that are not in this article are generally about her work with Success Academy Charter Schools and should be brought to that article or to the talk page there; to add them here would be coatracking. Regarding her apart from most content about the schools, this article reflects sources. I don't know of any controversy about her that is not about the schools and that is missing from this article. What is said about the union and about her intellectual and other achievements is sourced and is not, to my knowledge, exaggerated. Wikipedia can summarize works by notable people; please indicate how these are overboard or edit accordingly. NPOV has been maintained; if there are good and bad things to say about her, we reflect sources, we don't report only the negatives or only the positives. I don't think the article is any more or less laudatory than the sources support. If you believe sourcing has been omitted, please cite it or add accordingly.
Archiving is appropriate under Help:Archiving a talk page. The archive's contents are more than three months old (some over three years old) and no longer pending. The archive is linked to, which provides convenience to readers, and that is one means by which monitoring of edits is already supported. Feel free to monitor edits when you wish; watchlisting and syndication are available for your use.
Nick Levinson (talk) 16:43, 10 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'd have to agree that the tone of this article reads like a campaign flyer. Sources are cited, but cites can be cherrypicked to support biased viewpoints. And given that she's a controversial figure, the archiving of critical comments is troubling. Archiving is not required.
And given that Nick Levinson created the page on February 27, 2013, and was its only contributor through May 5, 2013, his archiving of the talk page in July 2013 was inappropriate since it essentially removed criticism of his own writing and editing here. There seems to be some WP:OWN behavior, with the essay (neither guideline nor policy) WP:COATRACK being used to avoid criticism of the subject. It seems reasonable to wonder if Levinson has some connection to the subject. --Tenebrae (talk) 18:02, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The article was begun in 2005; I first edited it in 2010; there was a history merge and a history split leading to userfication of the older set of revisions.
Neutrality is achieved when the article reflects the range of sources, not just negative sources. I have not cherrypicked from any source or in choosing sources. I have relied for a long time (although not exclusively) on Google Alerts, which omits some media that Google searches would likely show, but that's not likely to be because of positivity or negativity. In maintaining neutrality, I recently (back on March 15, 2014) added Gale Brewer's criticism. If anyone thinks sourceable criticisms or sourceable achievements have been left out of this article, if they deserve weight, please add them. I don't know of any that are missing.
Content from one article should not be in another article (with major exceptions, like summaries); and when it is, that's generally coatracking, a concern based on a sound principle consistent with the policy that an article's scope is approximately circumscribed by the article's title) and the concern appears to have been generally accepted in Wikipedia. If the content is about the schools, then most of it should not be in the personal article. Moskowitz stated her views on education both in the context of the schools she runs and before she ever ran any school but while she was chairing the City Council education committee. Both sets of views deserved weight since she is now running schools. I kept the two sets of views separate, with the set from the Council years being in the personal article, which describes her Council service. But the separation can make it harder for readers to find all her views, so I added cross-referential hatnotes to help readers and prevent coatracking. Her views in the schools article were later deleted (which was not my decision), so I rephrased this article's hatnote to avoid overpromising. However, given the other article's state, this article's hatnote is less useful for now. I haven't figured out how the coatracking concern avoids criticism of Moskowitz.
Tone is different from substance. I've avoided promotional tone and apparently no one disagrees. But substance is allowed even though it's not critique. For example, she won some elections; we don't have to omit that on the ground that it promotes her political abilities.
Archiving of talk page topics/sections may not be required but it is helpful in keeping the current talk page focused on what's current. Whether to archive does not depend on whether the article's subject is controversial. Archiving by bot based solely on dates of posts is common across Wikipedia. Displaying the discussions already held is exactly what the archives are good for. No discussion was prematurely terminated by archiving here and new discussions can still be started.
I have no conflict of interest regarding Moskowitz. Where I had a COI with another subject, I said so and acted accordingly. Any other kind of connection that can be meant would likely apply to most editing of most articles; being interested in a subject is not a disqualification or we'd hardly have much of an encyclopedia. And I don't own the article. I haven't told anyone not to edit the article, you already have been, and you're welcome to continue, as are others.
Nick Levinson (talk) 20:19, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

UFT as powerful, 2017 race, middle name, DoB, and thanks[edit]

A few points about recent editing:

  • I didn't add "powerful" regarding the UFT but it's probably sourceable. I'm not sure being powerful is debated but, if it is, then the proper place for both views would be in the United Federation of Teachers article. I was going to look for a source as I doubt the one present was it, but now there's no need. If it's re-added to this article, it should be sourced and it should be added to the union article besides being added to this one.
  • Her possibly running in 2017 is verifiably sourceable, so the constraint on future predictions may not apply and it was due weight when added, but the sources are probably not recent, so weight may no longer apply for the lead. I don't think anyone but the newly-elected incumbent is publicly running in 2017 as of now, but saying so would be original research.
  • Her middle name is not "sometimes" omitted; it's absent from almost all sources I've seen.
  • Her date of birth appeared in this revision (since userfied) before my editing and without a source. I have ideas for where it might be sourced and I plan to check soon.
  • Thanks for catching the syntax error (which I think was mine) and the link being no longer valid (I replaced it).

Nick Levinson (talk) 20:30, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

With respect to her middle name: most people's middle names are not used most of the time. To mention in the first sentence of the article that her name is (sometimes, usually, often) omitted gives inappropriate emphasis to this trivial (and not Moskowitz-specific) fact. Also, it's a classic piece original research, unless you have a source that says something about the usage of her middle name. --JBL (talk) 21:58, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Criticisms section added in June, 2014[edit]

The Criticisms section that was newly added is primarily about Success Academy Charter Schools, which has its own article, and should, with some rewriting for substantive neutrality and a neutral tone, with review of the Ravitch material to avoid use of non-RS blogs (Ravitch has been a critic but a secondary source is needed for that), and with reformatting of citations, be moved to the schools article, with portions distributed across the destination article where relevant, and only a summary or perhaps just a cross-referential hatnote left in this article, in order to avoid coatracking. Similar treatment probably should be accorded regarding the film and the documentary. Nick Levinson (talk) 00:19, 23 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's not coatracking, it's a WP:POVFORK. You delete everything critical about Eva Moskowitz in this article, and move it to the Success Academy Charter Schools article, and then it gets deleted there. The Success Academy Charter Schools article itself has been nominated for deletion, with a consensus for deletion, so you can't do that any more.
Success Academy Charter Schools is the main part of Moskowitz' career, so it's appropriate to discuss it here. It's as if you went to the article on Dwight D. Eisenhower and deleted everything about the Normandy invasion, and said that it belongs in the article on the Normandy invasion.
I think any fair reading of this entry would conclude that it's overwhelmingly favorable to Moskowitz, so much so that it violates WP:NPOV.
Ravitch's blog does meet WP:RS, because it's a blog by a published author and recognized expert. According to WP:RS:
Self-published material may sometimes be acceptable when its author is an established expert whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable third-party publications.
--Nbauman (talk) 11:24, 27 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The Success Academy Charter Schools article is not under a consensus for deletion since it has been standing for some time now since that discussion was held. There is plenty of content and sourcing available for the schools article and sufficient notability for the schools article to be separate. Therefore, that subject belongs in its own article. It would likely be appropriate to have a separate article on the Normandy invasion and move content from the Eisenhower article to the Normandy invasion article, too, were that needed today. In both cases, the appropriate treatment in the Moskowitz and Eisenhower articles would be summaries about the schools and the invasion, respectively, with links.
I don't think it's anything like nearly correct that I deleted everything negative, and that's the case with the schools article, too. The massive deletions from the schools article were not by me and you can take that up on the talk page there.
Being overwhelmingly favorable to Moskowitz, if the personal article is, would not be a POV violation if that is what the sources support. My editing supported NPOV treatment, as it did in the schools article, because it is not our job to have, say, 50% each of pro and con but to reflect sources. Putting schools content into the personal article instead of into the schools article is coatracking, except for keeping a summary.
If Ravitch’s blog meets the RS standard, fine. She is a published author outside of the blog.
Nick Levinson (talk) 21:07, 6 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Date of Birth[edit]

I noted that this article did not have her DOB, and then saw that it appeared in the text but with "" so that it would not appear in the public version. Can anyone explain why? Thanks. Bangabandhu (talk) 07:11, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Because someone wrote it there but no one has ever produced a reliable source. (It is mentioned above on this page.) --JBL (talk) 13:37, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, should have seen that. Anyway, I found a source, added, and removed tag. Bangabandhu (talk) 17:56, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! --JBL (talk) 19:20, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Concerns about recent expansion, puffery, whitewashing[edit]

JesseRafe, I'm glad to see you're still watching the article. Your trimming in January of last year, followed by that of Tangledupinbleu chs, was a major improvement: the article was bloated and overly promotional before. I regret that I have not had (and probably will not have) the time to carefully examine Oceanflynn's edits over the past week or two, but the one or two checks I've done have been somewhat concerning: for example, here we've got the addition of the promotional "her star rose ...", this edit appears to selectively remove negative content (see the final block of removed text), plus the weird puffery around Stuyvesant in the early life section. Thoughts about how to proceed are welcome. --JBL (talk) 22:08, 26 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I also did not review them as a block of edits or interact with Oceanflynn (but they seemed to be receptive to my comments and tags and acted neutrally, only removing the tags that they seemed to in good faith believe they addressed and leaving the others) but just did a gestalt review of the current state of the article as it was, rather than an old versus new look through. I agree on the large that there is more promotional-ish content here than there should be, and will trim the Stuy intro, there's more than enough plaudits on that school on its page and it's hardly controversial to call it the best public HS in NYC, so I don't think we need a newspaper, besides which the quote is kinda hearsay. Cheers, JesseRafe (talk) 15:28, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Edits made to quotes[edit]

Hey there,

I have made some edits on quotes within this article. These were mainly done in the following way:

• Rephrasing some passages where a direct quote was not necessarily needed.

• Shortening quotes where key words from the quote were sufficient in explaining the point being made.

Example 1:

The word "reimagined" was quoted, but I simply removed the quote and wrote "form new conceptions of".

Example 2: "We simply do not believe that because children are low income or come from certain neighbourhoods that they cannot achieve at the highest levels" to "cannot achieve at the highest levels".

Considering the beginning of the paragraph states "Moskowitz believes that many underestimate the aptitude of inner city, low-income students" - I felt the beginning part of the quote could be left out as there was already a sufficient introductory sentence.

Please feel free to check these edits and let me know your thoughts!

(Vikster28 (talk) 01:01, 23 March 2022 (UTC))[reply]

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