Talk:Riverdale Country School

Erica Tishman?
I fail to see how she is anyway famous. She may be well respected in the world of architecture, but she is not well known. I believe she should not be among the famous alumni.

Correct wording about balance?
"Riverdale Country School puts very little emphasis on balancing a student's academic, arts, and athletic careers."

This might well be true, but the sections on athletics and arts seem to suggest that much emphasis or at least some emphasis, rather than very little, is put on balance. Shakescene (talk) 08:23, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

sheeeeesh
Wow. This article is a mess. It reads like a marketing tool for the school. Just a warning: It is not going to stay that way. There are guidelines about what should and shouldn't be in a school article. They can be found at WP:SCH/AG. There are also policies on neutrality (WP:NPOV) and promotion (WP:PROMO) that this article clearly violate.

Be advised this is an article about the school. It in no way belongs to the school, nor is it for the school. Its purpose is to summarize what others have written about the school in a manner that informs the entire English speaking world about the school.

I am writing this here to give others who may care about the school a chance to try to clean this article up. I have no access to anything about this school that is not on the internet, so be advised. Within a week, I will begin to re-write it using the information I have available to me. Given that that is not very much, the article will be about 4 paragraphs long. And that will be a big improvement over what is here now! John from Idegon (talk) 04:14, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 August 2015
Under Notable Alumni I notice Edward Rendell (past Mayor of Philadelphia, Governor of Pennsylvania, DNC Chairman) is not mentioned but should be. Please include him.

71.230.244.25 (talk) 17:52, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * There is no referenced content in his biographical article here on Wikipedia connecting him to the school. Provide a reliable source reference to his attendance and I will be happy to add him.  BTW, his bio is at Ed Rendell. John from Idegon (talk) 19:15, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Riverdale Country School. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070913221412/http://www.nypost.com:80/seven/05252007/news/regionalnews/perp_school_regionalnews_denise_buffa__jennifer_fermino_and_dan_mangan.htm? to http://www.nypost.com/seven/05252007/news/regionalnews/perp_school_regionalnews_denise_buffa__jennifer_fermino_and_dan_mangan.htm

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 09:57, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Here are some more people I think should be under notable alumni:
Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky, Jr., both of whom created the first practical color transparency film, Kodachrome. Sean Altman, founder of Rockapella. Varian Fry, a journalist. John Lahr, a theatre critic. Neal Conan, a journalist. Philip Proctor, a voice actor. Lee MacPhail, a baseball hall-of-fame former front-office executive. John Kao, author. Josh Appelbaum, television writer. Claude Kelly, singer-songwriter. Fred Melamed, actor. David Levin, CEO of McGraw-Hill Education. Jeffrey Vinik, owner of Tampa Bay Lighting, and minority owner of Boston Red Sox. Robin Pogrebin, journalist. Francis Fukuyama, political scientist. Jackson Harris, singer. My source is http://www.ranker.com/list/famous-riverdale-country-school-alumni-and-students/reference. I have many more notable alumni I can add to the page, but these are the most notable of them. http://www.ranker.com/list/famous-riverdale-country-school-alumni-and-students/reference 173.77.203.231 (talk) 23:45, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
 * In order to be included as notable alumni, a person has to be notable (shown by having a bio on Wikipedia) and an alumni (attended the school for any length of time. Graduating is not necessary.) If they have a bio on Wikipedia they are notable, but reliable sources are required to show their attendance. These can be in their bio but if not must be here. Ranker, a search result and Wikipedia itself are not reliable sources. After checking half a dozen of your additions,  I reverted them all. John from Idegon (talk) 04:11, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Change description of notable alumn to neutral language
In the notable alumn section of the school's page, Virginia Abernathy is described as 'white supremacist'. Since the term 'white supremacist' is quite incendiary today, I'd argue it makes sense to change it to something less hostile - akin to her description on the Vanderbilt University and Wellesley College pages. RCSDevs (talk) 17:57, 24 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Please sign your posts.
 * Please declare your WP:COI or WP:PAID status as required by Wikimedia's terms of use. This is in no way optional.
 * What should be listed as a description for notable alumni is detailed at WP:ALUMNI and at WP:SCH/AG. Note that institutions of higher education are subject to different guidelines than secondary schools.


 * Thanks, . John from Idegon (talk) 20:31, 23 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Apologies, I don't edit articles often. I am no longer affiliated with the school, but I was a student. For neutrality, and logic really, I'd say she's more notable for being 'a Vice Presidential candidate in the 2012 Election`, and a `Professor emerita of psychiatry and anthropology at Vanderbilt University`, not the fact that she is a white supremacist. RCSDevs (talk) 16:03, 23 January 2018 (EST)
 * , you sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~ ). That automatically adds your links and a timestamp. Thanks for your disclosure.  What is in other articles is for discussion at the other articles, not here.  Her bio's lede prominently describes her as a white supremacist, which is well sourced in her bio.  Lacking any further input, I'd opt for keeping the description here.  Perhaps someone else will comment here, and if not you are welcome to eventually request some sort of WP:DR, but as of now, I oppose the change and we need to wait to see if anyone else chimes in. The guidelines call for wikilinked name and primary notability.  If it is significant enough to be in the lede of her bio, I'd say it is primary. John from Idegon (talk) 21:36, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd say there's an argument for both. Her wiki page intros her as a professor and vice presidential candidate aligned with a party that advocates white supremacy, in that order. Is the opening paragraph what you are referring to ? Perhaps some combination of the two, since I'd say the reason she is relevant is not solely due to her white supremacy, but due to the fact she was a VP candidate who aligned with white supremacist views. TheMasterGabriel (talk) 06:31, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * , also would you mind linking me the different guidelines you mentioned? I can't seem to find them, and I want to do things correctly. Thanks for the tip about signing. RCSDevs (talk) 17:57, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Already have. See above. John from Idegon (talk) 18:10, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * , they are also referenced in WP:ACADEMIC. Also not to be nitpicky, but one of the cited pages doesn't mention Virginia Abernethy at all, while the other used describes her as a 'white nationalist', not a 'white supremacist'. Additionally, if we can't reach a consensus for what her short description should be, it would follow Wikipedia's guidelines to simply not describe her. The apparent guidelines (WP:SCH/AG) you mentioned,, do state that if the alumn has their own article in mainspace, which she does, then it is sufficient to only link to that page. (As long as that page references her as an alum, which is already does.) TheMasterGabriel (talk) 18:24, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Suggestions for improvement
@Gbabuch added a whole plethora of tags, so can we discuss which of them is really necessary, or in some cases: what do they actually mean? Melchior2006 (talk) 07:22, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Which ideas, incidents, or controversies are UNDUE?
 * Which facts are disputed?
 * Where is the promo?
 * What is not sufficently neutral?
 * What's the point of the "biography of a living person" tag?
 * Where do we need additional citations for verification?
 * Since no one chimed in on this, I will take the tags out. --Melchior2006 (talk) 07:54, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

In the Media section
This section is appropriate to the extent that it neutrally informs readers of some controversies about the school but some of the language failed to make clear the distinction between facts and allegations. I attempted to make it neutral and to remove trivial/redundant information. D.Holt (talk) 22:29, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I disagree. The replacement for the Pledge of Allegiance and naming Bion Bartning who withdraw his children from the school, protesting "a kind of religion taking hold in American education" is well-sourced and relevant detail, certainly not trivia. Then we have the use of "leftist indoctrination" as a quote from a source. This accurately reflects the criticism coming from parents. --Melchior2006 (talk) 16:33, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Since no one chimed in on this, I will restore the original version. I did, however, keep D.Holt's "allegedly" to tone down a bit. -- Melchior2006 (talk) 10:05, 20 March 2024 (UTC)