Talk:North Sydney Boys High School

Alumni list
This list is excessive and should be cut down I think. Enochlau 12:55, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that Peter Andre never went to NSBHS.

The only reason Peter Andre appeared in list is because the very first version of article, months ago, said he did! Further research does confirm Wikipedia got it wrong as Andre lived on Gold Coast and was at Benowna (?) HS

Old Boys
Thus speaks a Fort St Boy!
 * Your point? This isn't an attempt to push down north sydney boys for the benefit of my alma mater (what benefit anyway?). Just look at it yourself - they take up 2/3 of a very long page. Enochlau 10:55, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * wow i knew an enoch, he was my peer support leaderback in '97 so i guess youre not him. i have fond memories of this school and it is with a sense of pride that i read that list of old boys. however i look forward to seeing more relevant content, such as a list of principals, etc

Criticisms
I went to this school and it was a horrible experience. I don't want to put in a criticisms page however if others feel the same then I will. Perhaps there could be a page on selective schools in general in the NSW education system.Dankru 01:37, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
 * You may write valid criticism, provided that it conforms to a neutral point of view (write in an encyclopedic tone), and balance it with some positives. See for example the section called "evaluation" in Sydney_Grammar_School if you want to see how it's been done before. Enochlau 02:35, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Under the guise of a purported clean up, some person has inflicted major damage on the integrity of the article. This proceeds from ignorance. If you do not know or understand, leave alone! For example, Clive Evatt is altered to Federal Court judge. That is really his cousin Phillip who by chance also was at North Sydney. Clive Junior (to distinguish his famous father) could never be a judge as he was disbarred for many years (although he would claim he had done nothing wrong which could be considered strongly supported by readmittance to the Bar).

This criticism also applies to nasty habit of stating that because Who's Who does not mention. the entry is automatically labelled as suspect. Perhaps the vandaliser is suspect. Huge numbers of Old Boys choose not to state they were educated at North Sydney for at least part of high school years. This does not alter the fact their attendance is forever recorded on the school roll. Eg. Sir Vernon Christie, Peter Coleman, Sir Marcus Loane, Donald Robinson etc etc etc. Surely the correct procedure for confirmation would be to contact the Old Boys via their own web site. If that was done, EVERY name that appeared could be verified (barring Peter Andre which was a mistake from a different source altogether) because (unknown to the changer) the source comes from the School Roll!!!

Using WWIA as a sole source of verification is flawed and leads to serious errors. Eg. What has Sir Robert Madgwick got to do with Judge Rodney Madgwick? Their given names are totally different!


 * Right, first paragraph, you have seen my mistakes/ignorance and cleaned it up. No major damage to the integrity of the article has been caused. Integrity 5, ignorant me 1. Not much integrity without references anyway. I thought I knew which is why Clive Evatt was tampered with. That these problems occur in the first place is evidence that a cleanup needs to be done. Second Para, I label as suspect so people like you can see what I am doing and thinking, and fix appropriately according to what you know. Who's Who does not ask Old Boys about whether their feelings will be hurt if their Education is listed. Every name could be verified once every edition of Who's Who is scoured. If their attendence is forever recorded in gold somewhere else than in Who's Who, please provide references for that. So for all of your talk about the school roll, why hasn't it been cited? Different given names, might be an error on the contributor's part, and given that the list is so messy, one can only wonder. Lack of references doesn't help either. I will obtain an Alumni list, but that doesn't prevent anyone else from doing the same and citing people. Grumpyyoungman01 12:41, 15 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Getting an alumni list, while a good idea, may be tricky. For privacy reasons, they may not give it to you. And even if you have it, of course you can post the results of your findings on Wikipedia, but I don't think you can reference it as such, since it's not a published work as such. enochlau (talk) 13:32, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Culling of Old Boys List
Someone is deemed noteworthy if they are noteworthy enough to justify a wikipedia page on them. This in many cases is not clear cut. But in some cases deletions are obviously required.

"Judges Sir John Moore, Allen, Begg, Conti, Court, Goldring, Fox, Purdy, Roder, Emmett, Brownie, McClemens, Roper, Grogan, Conybeare, Moffitt, James, Levine, Nash, Ward, Raphael, Staff, Marks, Robson, Hutley, Philip Evatt and Baragry" - Arguably none of these people are noteworthy or they would have a individual listing with a line on their achievements/noteworthiness. If one of these people is actually noteworthy, someone or you can re-add them, preferably with a citation.

"Rhodes Scholars astrophysicist Professor Don Melrose FAA, Michael Fullilove, Marc de Rosnay; Sydney University Medical Professors John Read, Clement Boughton, Chris Tennant, Martin Silink, Paul Vincent, Phillip Sambrook, Michael Hooper, Lloyd Ibels, Rod Baber, John Yeo and John Overton; " - Same here, if anyone is noteworthy please give them their own listing and tell the reader why they are.

"Anthony O C Trollope" - A google search on this bloke yields three results, the first is this page and the other two are this page hosted on a different site. Obviously he doesn't exist and therefore is not notable and never went to the school.

"Sir Anthony S Trollope" - See above, another one of Hercule Poirot's fictional Englishmen who never show up to catch the Orient Express.

"Sir Robert Gordon" - A man with a name like this needs an explanation on why he is notable even more so because he is in Menzies shadow.

"Richard Hunstead" can stay, but seriously needs a proper description. Grumpyyoungman01 05:27, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

RE: Article Cleanup
I think now that Sport and Armed Forces entries for Old Falconians needs to be cleaned up and then everything should be hunky dory, of course every entry still needs at least one citation, but I don't think that that is a very high priority in the scheme of things.

The main thing is that the list is kept to a list of noteworthy people, compare with other schools lists such as: Melbourne High School Fort Street High School List of famous Old Sydneians Melbourne Grammar School

An Aside: Look at the names of the people who went to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carey_Baptist_Grammar_School#Notable_alumni Steve Vizard, Kevin "Big Kev" McQuay, John Elliott Doesn't quite rival Cranbrook for failed and disgraced business people, but not a bad effort. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Grumpyyoungman01 (talk • contribs).

Insecurity of current NSBHS students?
It is quite interesting to watch the contiual petty editing of this (NSBHS) and the Sydney Boys High School entries to alter which is the 'highest' and which is the 'second highest' ranked boys high school. The latest is the rather significant defacing of the NSBHS entry to re-add this jibe (and a corresponding minor edit to the SBHS page) by User:60.229.88.195. I expect these edits are all by current students.

The facts are:
 * There are several ways of measuring HSC performance
 * NSBHS ranked higher in the number of Premiers Award winners in 2003 and 2004
 * SBHS ranked higher in this category in 2001, 2002 and 2005
 * Other equally valid measures would be, inter alia, mean/median UAI, number of Band 6 results...

Quite frankly both schools look equally pathetic compared to their respective Girls selective high schools (North Sydney Girls High School, Sydney Girls High School), James Ruse Agricultural High School, Baulkham Hills High School, PLC and Grammar. Both articles would best be re-written "one of the top high schools in the state of New South Wales" - Hornetfig 13:14, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

How about being re-written to "who gives a shit"? Dankru 13:33, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I wonder why the public schools look pathetic compared to PLC and Grammar... oh wait, it's because they are spoon fed. Anyone who has been to uni can vouch for you that they fare far worse during tertiary education. And the fact that PLC has several times more the enrolment of NSBHS could explain their so called "success". But, SBHS and NSBHS, unlike other "top state schools" are semi competent at sport. Enough so to beat Melbourne HS in the Crawford Shield. Thus ends my tired. -anon


 * Is that just an illiterate way of saying tirade? Thortful 03:00, 4 October 2006 (UTC)


 * What nonsense. I know of some intelligent people at uni who went to PLC and Grammar. enochlau (talk) 08:24, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Its an unfair comparison if you used Premiers Awards, l think the Daily Telegraph is the most fairest (we were ranked 9th by both so it really doesnt matter) as takes into account the amount of attempts. You see, Sydney Boys enrols about 200 in Yr 12, but North Sydney Boys only had 153 in Yr 12 this year. So using the Daily Telegraphs method, Sydney Boys will still beat NSB, but it at least its based on the number of Band 6's divided as a percentage to the number of attempts by that year.

What does it matter what the Telegrah and the Herald say. Sydney Boys is higher, taking into the large candidate size or not. But however competent we are at sport, we lost to Melbourne High School.Creat0r 11:17, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Mass deletion of Old Falconians
I am now about to embark on a mass deletion of all "prominent" Old Falconians who don't a) have their own wikipedia entry or b) don't have a citation for their worthiness to be inlcuded. If I have removed someone that you think is prominent, then start a stub on him or find a citation. You can look back in the "history" section of this page to copy and paste the name and description of a person you want to re-admit. Grumpyyoungman01 00:23, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

That's probably because you hang around smart people, not because you hang around PLC or grammar people specifically.

picture
sumone minimize that picture? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.45.84.145 (talk) 11:49, 6 December 2006 (UTC).

Trivia Section
Trivia information cited in The Daily Telegraph 20/12/06 and The Sydney Morning Herald 20/12/06. Creat0r 11:17, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

umm, how did Meredith Ash become the founder of NSB? She happens to be the principal of North Sydney Girls

Building works
I am moving the building works section further down the article because I feel that it isn't as important as the others. I'm also moving two paragraphs from the introduction into the curriculum section. Let me know if there are any problems. Cheers. Wrigleyseclipsemints (talk) 04:32, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Peacockery deletion
I have removed the peacockery warning and deleted the material which was not supported by reliable sources.

Please do not revert the edit without providing reliable, verifiable sources and/or discussing it here.Otherthinker (talk) 03:26, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Occupation of Crows Nest campus &mdash; 1914 or 1915?
The article has an unsourced statement that 84 boys transferred to the new campus at Falcon street at the end of 1914. However, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on 29 December 1914 that building work was still in progress and the new school opened on 1 February 1915 .Otherthinker (talk) 06:55, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * There's photos in the school lobby and along one of the corridors of the school being occupied and building works continuing. It's likely that work continued after kids moved in? I don't have a reference for you though. &tilde;danjel [ talk | contribs ] 08:40, 16 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think an artifact like a photo would meet Wikipedia's requirements for reliable sources even if it were captioned "84 boys who transferred to the Falcon Street site at the end of 1914 whilst building works continued." I am away from my usual institutional library which has a hard copy of Henry Mackintosh Storey, (ca. 1962) History of North Sydney High School 1912-1962but even this is not an independent source (it was published by the school).Otherthinker (talk) 08:13, 17 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think the fact is subject to reasonable challenge and, per WP:ABOUTSELF should be acceptable. Verifiability, after all, is our buzzword. If Storey says that it was 1914 (or 1915), then that'll (should?) be enough. &tilde;danjel [ talk | contribs ] 11:50, 17 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I would be happy to use Storey - I introduced him as a source to the article in the first place. My point is, I don't have immediate access to Storey but will check when I'm at Fisher Library next week, if I have time. Otherthinker (talk) 05:16, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Main photo
I'll take a high resolution picture at the start of next year but for now I'll just change it to a bit of a sideview. Dxwkx (talk) 02:01, 20 December 2022 (UTC)