Wikipedia:Requests for comment/University High School (Los Angeles, California)

Request for Comment: University High School (Los Angeles, California)
I've changed this Rfc as the old Rfc was about language that's no longer on the page, and the still ongoing issue of clarity and NPOV is mute until this larger issue gets solved.

WhisperToMe and I were in a debate and the clarity and NPOV about the Filming on campus section, when Swatjester came in and removed almost the entire section because: "'The information was half unsourced, that was deleted per WP:V. The rest was sourced, but by an unreliable source. Per WP:RS Reliable sources are credible published materials with a reliable publication process; their authors are generally regarded as trustworthy, or are authoritative in relation to the subject at hand.. That website is written by students. They are neither generally regarded as trustworthy, nor authoritative. Their information is not fact-checked, which is critical regarding negative material. As the information fails to meet WP:RS, it cannot be included'"

This led to an edit war, during which I was rewriting the section to add some additional sources and try and deal with the issues whisper had raised.

Miss Mondegreen's version

Swatjester's version

Please note that there are several other sections of the article which use the school newspaper for sources. No one section relies on it, but much detail relating to how issues have applied specifically to the school comes from these articles. Were these articles viewed as unreliable sources, not only would the filming section be serverly affected, but the Ficus tree preservation section and the Mascot controversy section would most likely need to be removed.


 * Statements by editors involved in dispute
 * Now: Now this dispute is going way out of control, and someone needs to step in and help us reach a resolution on this. I am not sure if high school newspapers are acceptable, so I am asking other people to help me figure this out. WhisperToMe 22:36, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Any version that is contains defamatory information, sourced unreliably by a high school news paper, is unacceptable. &rArr;    SWAT Jester    Denny Crane.  23:50, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The article quite clearly states that an editorial has said x. It's verifiable.  We're not taking sides by saying that the editorial is right, nor should we take sides by not mentioning it.  I also don't buy that this is the only thing that swatjester has a problem with as a lot of other sources have been removed as well.
 * Contrary to swatjester's belief, student's can't just write whatever they want.  They have to look up facts and get actual quotes.  And, work from the wildcat, on the issue of filming has been picked up by The Christian Science Monitor, and one of the things that the administrator interviewed about the filming boasts is that the newspaper staff gets to interview film stars.  The newspaper is overseen by the faculty--meaning that nothing goes to press without an adult seeing it first, and the administration has banned editorials before.  Miss Mondegreen  talk  00:13, May 24 2007 (UTC)
 * Comments
 * I'm coming here from the posts on ANI, and I haven't read the talk page of the article. As a general principle, I don't think that high school newspapers meet WP:RS, regardless of the level of faculty supervision, because they are not professional publications with a true editorial staff. That said, I don't think it's problematic to note the existence of editorials in the school paper complaining about filming on campus--it's tantamount to saying "students sometimes complain about filming on campus." But the Wildcat should not be relied upon as a source for any factual material. So the stuff about remodeling the school needs to go, unless that's appeared somewhere else.
 * By the way, there are some awful spelling mistakes and grammatical errors that need to be corrected. The worst is "Moniter" for Christian Science Monitor, but there's also an "it's" where there should be an "its", not to mention some run-on sentences. --Akhilleus (talk) 01:41, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'd just rewritten the section, and was in fact still rewriting it through most of the edit war. (If you catch the page at the version it had been you don't even know it's goin on).  I knew that it needed proofreading when I posted it, I think my edit summary said as much, but that's what happens when a page gets locked.  I've copied it to a subpage to work on.
 * It would be great if you could just take a quick glance at the talk page. If you look at the two versions (above), you'll notice that we generally rely on the school paper for things specific to the school which aren't mentioned in the latimes.  All of the articles on filming that aren't from the newspaper, aren't just on uni high, and while there is detail on filming at uni and detail about filming that is true for uni, the school newspaper has a lot more of it and with a lot more regularity.  If you look at the article you'll also notice that we use the school newspaper as fill in sources.  For example the mascot controversy section is based entirey on LAUSD documents and proposed bills and articles, except for the one key detail--this school in particular changing its mascot from x to y.  That one detail isn't anywhere else and we either have to leave it unsourced, remove the section altogether or let the newspaper be a reliable source.  Are there some bad opinions and some really hideous grammar in there...yeah.  But can we trust them to interview people and get the facts straight?  I think so.  They print corrections and retractions and the administration and teachers have written response pieces before--proving both that the newspaper is a respected forum, and that people are paying attention to what goes in there.
 * Also, journalism is an elective class and the class works full time on putting the paper together. There are two periods I believe, one which is learning the ropes and writing, and the other is the editorial staff.  You cannot be on the staff and not in the class and you cannot be in the class without getting approval of the journalism teacher.  Miss Mondegreen  talk  02:12, May 24 2007 (UTC)


 * Ok, two things: first, I have no problem using a school newspaper to source notable school happenings as the only other source is likely WP:OR; second, for most things about the school (demographics, legal issues, more community-centerred issues, a school newspaper is a trivial, editorial source at best.
 * Regarding the reliability of school newspapers in general: I am absolutely of the opinion that the vast majority of school newspapers are NOT authoritative enough to be reliable. One (or even a few) overworked faculty member isn't enough to make a reliable source. I wouldn't trust the faculty member to do more than check for obvious lible and particularly inflamatory articles; moreover, there are many Student run newspapers with no oversite whatsoever. It's also worth noting that having an article "picked up" by an authoritative source only means that noone had more coverage of the topic and since it was a student who wrote it they wouldn't have held it to as high a standard. My standard for reliability (in news sources at least)would be the point at which the source can be counted on to cover most major news stories and could be relied on as a unique source (As one's only source for news). In general (for news sources), if you can be well informed reading nothing else, the source is relible.Adam McCormick 02:24, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Well editorials are only referred to in one small section and it's made very clear that they're student editorials. There is a very clear difference between where we take facts from the articles and where they're standing on their own editorial feet.
 * The issue at hand is whether or not we can trust students to report basic facts, quotes, etc correctly, and it extends beyond this individual issue. Would you be willing to look at the article (you'd have to look at my version, the version it's locked in now has these refs removed) and let us know what you think of the references. You can also find my version in my sandbox User:Miss Mondegreen/Uni filming, where I'm fixing the typos etc and cleaning up what I didn't get a chance to do earlier.  Miss Mondegreen  talk  03:18, May 24 2007 (UTC)
 * In this particular case, the issue is whether to allow the article to say that some students complained on the basis of a quote from the school newspaper that some students complained. I think that's one of the things we can trust them for. I wouldn't trust them for an article on LA politics, or an evaluation of the merits of the filming. But they do know wether the students complained. The article can be specific: According to an editorial in the school newspaper, ... and then the reader will decide how much weight to give it. Our readers are not idiots. They know about school newspapers. DGG 06:19, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Absolutely. School newspapers are reliable sources for student's opinions.  There is no doubt about this.  I am a little concerned, based on the one article I read (footnote 31 in the version of the page linked above as Miss Mondegreen's version) that the text may be presenting a biased view of the content of the articles, however.   This particular article is linked to support the statement "Past articles in the Wildcat focused not only on the distruption to students [...]", implying that this article focuses on disruption to students and articles linked later on in the sentence focus on other things, but the primary thrust in this particular article, I'd say, is on the improvements to the campus made during filming of the particular production in question.  It mentions disruption, but downplays its significance, IMO. JulesH 06:37, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * are you referring to the drillbit taylor article? Miss Mondegreen  talk  06:45, May 24 2007 (UTC)
 * hmmm, would it be better if the language was changed to "past articles in the Wildcat addressed" instead of focused?
 * There's also this source, but I hesitated using it because while it does talk about it (i.e. construction going on in the middle of the school year), it focuses more on the colour pallette of the distruption. Miss Mondegreen  talk  06:51, May 24 2007 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) That's exactly how the two lines dealing with the editorial have been handled.
 * But, if you look at the talk page, that's not the only issue that's been raised. The issue that's been raised is whether or not we can trust the students to report accurately on what movies filmed there, and how much the school made for letting companies film, and what kinds of changes were made to the campus for filming and who paid for them and what the school mascot used to be.  It's an issue of everything, and the kinds of sources we're using--well we're trusting them to know basic facts, to be able to observe and report accurately (if they say that a film crew changed the front of the school to say something else, we believe them), and to accurately gather data and quotes.
 * This is a version of the article in my sandbox where I've taken every article written by a student and removed the source. Then, if I didn't have anything else for a source I put in a fact tag.  This gives you a general idea of what sort of information we are getting from the newspaper.  In some places it was a duplicate source and no fact tag was needed, in some places there are fact tags but it's clear that the line could be rewritten not to include quotes from the articles and so the remaining source would do.  And there are some that I probably could find alternate sources for, some of the movies maybe.  But the rest, we're dependant on the school newspaper to provide the filler data and connect the dots.  (see the mascot section in particular) Miss Mondegreen  talk  06:43, May 24 2007 (UTC)


 * Question for all commenters When you pick up a school newspaper--a high school newspaper, a college newspaper, a middle school newspaper--and you read a few articles, do you automatically assume that facts in the newspaper (ones that you would have no other knowledge on) are incorrect? That quotes are wrong or made up and that facts and sources are inaccurate or simply ficticuous...because the article is being written by a student and you have no way to ascertain the level of adult oversight?  (or for some other reason)  You have no way to ascertain the level of oversight at a "real" newspaper, but you assume that the writers are adults and were hired for a good reason and that there are fact checkers and copyeditors editors etc, and that since you have no idea what's in place at a student newspaper you shouldn't trust any of the facts?  Or do you recognize bad copyediting and poor writing when you see it, disagree with opinions when you, well, disagree, but still assume that unless there's some real reason not to, you can trust the facts and quotes in the newspaper to be as accurate as any other?
 * This is obviously a step from the question at hand, but I was just wondering. Miss Mondegreen talk  19:08, May 24 2007 (UTC)


 * General comment by uninvolved user R. Baley: I don't think we should dismiss HS publications.  Especially when the subjects they cover are unlikely to be covered elsewhere.  I won't go into the length of the criticism (filming at the school) which seemed a tad long in Mondegreen's version, but in this particular case I would think the reporting of negative info by a school sanctioned paper is pretty credible.  It's hard for me to imagine that school administrators wouldn't have found a way to either shut the paper down, or at the least assert control, if they were reporting negative info and it was false negative information.  I would be far more suspicious of positive reporting by the official school newspaper.  Just my 2 cents.  R. Baley 19:30, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * "I would be far more suspicious of positive reporting by the official school newspaper"...*snerk* Miss Mondegreen talk  20:43, May 24 2007 (UTC)


 * General comment by uninvolved user Wl219: I agree with R. Baley and Miss Mondegreen in that student newspapers should not be automatically dismissed as failing WP:RS. To do that is ageist, contrary to the spirit of assuming good faith toward editors citing such sources, and a manifestation of WP systemic bias. Let us start with the presumption that most student journalists (high school, university, whatever) are not idiots, and that they do understand the basic journalistic concepts of WP:NPOV and whatnot. With that being said, I think the appropriateness of citing school newspapers (both for news and editorial opinion) should be directly proportional to the purpose of the citation. I.e., if an article deals with a subject of local interest, as most school articles do, I think there should be a presumption in favor of citing school newspapers (where available), especially to avoid the problem of WP:OR as someone mentioned above. It should also be entirely appropriate to cite school newspapers in articles related to the school that are of interest beyond the school's locality, such as Kaavya Viswanathan (where a school paper broke the story). Wl219 09:11, 28 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Update After talk died abruptly, the page was unprotected and updated. The other involved editors appear to have left the discussion, and so I don't know what will happen here, but in the meantime the article is being edited normally and will be until and unless a decision is made here that will change that.  In the interest of this ongoing discussion, I am continuing to update my sandbox version that doesn't have high school newspaper sources so that it's easy to see what role this source type plays in this article. Miss Mondegreen  talk  08:54, May 29 2007 (UTC)