User talk:Ryan Sadfa

November 2020
Hello, I'm 4thfile4thrank. I wanted to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions&#32;to Norfolk Academy have been undone because they did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use your sandbox. If you have any questions, you can ask for assistance at the Teahouse. Thanks. 4thfile4thrank {talk} :? 21:16, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

June 2022
Hello, I'm Julietdeltalima. Wikipedia is written by people who have a wide diversity of opinions, but we try hard to make sure articles have a neutral point of view. Your recent edit to Norfolk Academy seemed less than neutral and has been removed. If you think this was a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Please gain consensus on the talk page (and please proofread for WP:MOS and spelling) before re-adding.  Julietdeltalima   (talk)  02:32, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Neutral point of view is the hardest thing ever
A less discreet person might just come out and say "we're on the same team here." So you know, I went to undergrad and law school on the I-81 corridor in the early 1990s and lived in Arlington for a long time before I moved west. I do pending-changes review and occasional basic proofreading on Wikipedia while I take snack/lunch breaks at my desk at my law firm. I assure you that I am not treating you any more harshly than any young attorney who writes for me.

Reading this article from top to bottom, I think the most impressive thing about NA is the first-grade-forward public-speaking training. You will do a genuine service to NA, Tidewater residents, and the encyclopedia, forever, by finding some article in the Virginian-Pilot, written by an actual Virginian-Pilot reporter (and not part of an advertising section!!), documenting this. Please read WP:SECONDARY. Jeez, surely somebody has had a slow news day and has written this up. I wouldn't be a 20+-year regionally recognized litigator if I hadn't gone through four years of high school JROTC just to get out of P.E., and we were required to do public-speaking training every year. That's huge!

The notion of whether Wikipedia should or shouldn't respond immediately to local news incidents is an ongoing debate. What I can tell you is that you're going to get reverted if you try to go all TMZ. The fact that you went back and redid it is really meaningful; I am taking half an hour on a Sunday afternoon to encourage you to take it up another couple of notches by getting a better sense of what Wikipedia isn't.

I'm not going to do your work for you here (I'm told that if I had a penny for any time I'd said this in the past 30 years, I'd be driving something "better" than a Tucson) but off the top of my head, a relatively well-done (not perfect but a more comprehensive example) article regarding a private school is Harvard-Westlake School. Note that the cheating-scandal section is a sentence, although with multiple citations, presented as the most recent part of the generally-time-sorted "History" subsection", not as a separate "extra! extra! read all about it!"-type special section at the top. If I had time, I might add a sentence a month to that section of that article, because I think it's interesting at a cultural level. Seriously: a sentence a month. We're not not on a deadline here; it's an encyclopedia, not WaPo or even the R–J or Slate. This isn't the place for journalism. If you want to be an encyclopedia content creator, one well-phrased, well-sourced sentence a month is reasonable. If you want more immediate rewards than that on Wikipedia I recommend proofreading and copyediting, but, augh, you have to rise above "Febuary" if you're going to take that approach.

The other essay about Wikipedia editing you should read is WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Yeah, content like this gets into other schools' articles; fascinating. There are not enough volunteers here to get rid of it. I don't even know why NA was on my watchlist except for the architectural issue.

You took the correct approach here by redoing your edit. You have two non-mutually exclusive paths: (a) do the best you can for NA on this global encyclopedia, and get a better sense of style manuals and editorial guidelines, which I assure you will never be a bad skill, ever, and/or (b) advocate for the victims of this horrific nonsense at your school, on some other platform that I'm not equipped to give you more advice about. Wikipedia just isn't the place to do (b).

Again, don't assume we're not on the same team! I was more abrasive than I needed to be to you; you have an entry in your contribution history that made me assume you were also a lawyer, but now I am pretty sure that isn't correct. WP:TEAHOUSE people are far more accessible than I am in terms of quick and comprehensive answers regarding immediate editing questions, but if you stay on this path of thoughtful responses (which is so rare you can't even believe it, except you probably know exactly what I mean), I am happy to be a resource for you here.

--JDL (who went to high school with a guy who got a 1600 on the SAT back in that era and he spelled it "Febuary" too and he has a Ph.D. in astrophysics, so what do I know)

 Julietdeltalima   (talk)  22:52, 26 June 2022 (UTC)