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Sikorsky S-76

Closed discussion

Focus on the Family

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Bane in other media, Bane (comics)

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Water fluoridation

Closed discussion

Thomas Sowell

– General close. See comments for reasoning.
Closed discussion

This is PiL

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Closed discussion

Die Roten Punkte

Dispute resolved successfully. See comments for reasoning.
Closed discussion

List of countries by beer consumption per capita

– General close. See comments for reasoning.
Closed discussion

War on Women

Dispute resolved successfully. See comments for reasoning.
Closed discussion


Alan Chambers (Exodus International)

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Closed discussion


Deftones

Dispute resolved successfully. See comments for reasoning.
Closed discussion

Wheel Hub Motor

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Closed discussion

Chickfila, Winshape

Dispute resolved successfully. See comments for reasoning.
Closed discussion

99 Flake

Dispute resolved successfully. See comments for reasoning.
Closed discussion
– General close. See comments for reasoning.
Closed discussion

Female disciples of Jesus

Dispute resolved successfully. See comments for reasoning.
Closed discussion

Northwestern High School (Hyattsville, Maryland)

– Discussion in progress.

Have you discussed this on a talk page?

Yes, I have discussed this issue on a talk page already.

Location of dispute

Users involved

Dispute overview

I have been trying for many months, to get the Northwestern HS article in question, reassessed in both WikiProject Schools & WikiProject Maryland. It makes no sense that it's taken almost a year of effort, to try and get someone from either projects to reassess the article. I regularly check the Assessment sections on both WikiProjects, and I'm seeing completed reassessments on a daily basis. I asked someone to reassess Northwester about a good FOUR or FIVE times, in just one of the projects, alone. I was blatantly ignored.

I finally contacted Wikipedia and asked them what steps I had to take, to request a reassessment. Wikipedia responded to me on two separate occasions, in regards to my inquiry. BOTH times, I was told that Wikipedia recommended I—myself—reassess the article, since no one else seemed to be willing to do so. Furthermore, Wikipedia stated the encouraged me to be an active member of WikiProject Schools and WikiProject Maryland. They said that I was the ideal person to do the reassessments. Upon reassessing the article, myself, my biggest fear ended up coming true: I was concerned that as soon as I conducted the reassessment, all of a sudden there would be a flurry of interest and participation for other editors, in regards to the article in question. Sure enough, less than 24 hours after I reassessed the article, the editor this dispute is about, went trigger happy with the flagging of photos to be deleted; practically wrote me thesis telling me about how I was out of line for doing the reassessment; and then lowered the articles rating back to a C-Class. The editor erroneous flagged many of my photos for deletion, many of the photos were identical to types of photos found in FEATURED ARTICLES from Stuyvesant High School and Baltimore City College.

He also said Wikipedia DOES NOT encourage people who have done extensive edits to an article, to do assessments on the same article. That one statement in its self took away any credibility.

Have you tried to resolve this previously?

I have responded with comments to ALL of the photos which were erroneously flagged for deletion, as well as commenting on talk pages. I informed CT Cooper I'd be seeing a dispute resolution.

How do you think we can help?

I would like a third party to (A) make sure that that the editor in question is truly in a position to be a prominent editor, considering all of the erroneous claims made. (B) I'd like another editor, besides CT Cooper, to reassess the article, if it is determined I can not do the assessment myself. (C) It needs to be soundly determined that the editor in question, is thoroughly up-to-date with their understanding of United States copyright laws.

Opening comments by CT Cooper

I've been asked to shorten my statement, which I'm happy to do. My original for the record is here, and the revised version is below at just under 2,000 characters:

I do not accept Maryland Pride's description of past events, for reasons I have already explained at Talk:Northwestern High School (Hyattsville, Maryland)#Reassessment (July 2012).

I've been assessing articles for WikiProject Schools for five years and it is a fair point, for which I do not withdraw, that people tend to overestimate the quality of their own work and having an additional set of eyes is appropriate - and I'm far from the only person which believes that - see User talk:CT Cooper/Archive 1#Recent Assessments for example. What Maryland Pride does not appear to understand is the need on this project to recognise ones own conflict of interest, and act as appropriate, and he should have interpreted my comment as advise not as a person criticism.

When I am assessing an article I always go through the images both locally and Commons, because I have lost count the number of cases in which I have encountered copyright problems with the school articles. The alternative is that I just ignore uploads and pretend it isn't an issue, but that would be irresponsible.

I do not accept Maryland Pride's claim that he has attempted to previously resolve this issue. This dispute has only flamed up in the last 24 hours, and Maryland Pride's comments have done little to help resolve it, given the abusive behaviour, including personal accusations about myself which lack evidence.

On Maryland Pride's requests, points (A) and (C) seem to be a demand for retribution rather than to resolve this dispute. Point (B) would be reasonable, except that Maryland Pride has not actually read my assessment beyond the first paragraph per his own claims - and hasn't indicated what parts of my justification for the current article rating are problematic. That said, I would be happy to see someone else review my assessment and find fault in it, if it resulted in Maryland Pride dropping the accusations against me and other editors, and dropping the demands for retribution. CT Cooper · talk 11:40, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Northwestern High School (Hyattsville, Maryland) discussion

Hmm. Look. I think you need to take a deep breath.

As far as I can see, this dispute orbits around a couple of points: (a) You feel that the article should be assessed at B, and CT Cooper feels that it should be assessed at C; (b) You feel that your images at Commons were erroneously tagged for deletion.

In regards to the assessment of the article, you say that CT Cooper has suggested that editors who have been heavily involved in working up an article should not go on to assess the article. I agree with CT Cooper's position.

The purpose of assessment isn't to differentiate between whether the subject of an article is good or not, or whether the work on the article has been good or not or whatever. The purpose is to bring attention to things that can be further improved about the article's content. It's just a way to make sure that we keep improving our articles.

Rose Bay Secondary College is an article that I have worked on in the past, and needs to be assessed (it is currently unassessed), but I'm not going to do it because that wouldn't serve the purpose of assessment. Someone else will hopefully do it at some stage (or I could ask someone to go over it, but (a) there's still a few things I want to do with it; and (b) I wouldn't have time at the moment to act on anything suggested by an assessment at the moment). Someone could get to it eventually I suppose, no rush.

The tagging of the images over at Commons seems to be a misunderstanding, but you're culpable there. Looking at Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Northwestern_High_School_campus_aerial_view,_Hyattsville,_Maryland.jpg, CT Cooper explained why he tagged in quite a reasonable tone. Take what was said as advice instead of taking it personally.

In regards to what you want in terms of "how we can help"... There's just too much emotion there. But, in regards to (B), I agree with the recent comments made by CT Cooper on the article's talk page. There is a pretty good to-do list in terms of areas where the article should be improved to meet the requirements at B, being (and noting that I'm quoting CT Cooper and occasionally paraphrasing):

  • the school address in the infobox is over the top (city, county, state, and country is sufficient);
  • "rivalries" need to be sourced or removed as WP:SCHOOLCRUFT;
  • inappropriate formatting (i.e., bolding of yearbook, newsletter) in the infobox should be removed;
  • the Lead has to be a summary of the article with less focus on the school's achievemente per WP:LEAD;
  • The history and campus sections should be rewritten per WP:WPSCH/AG to be less fragmentary;
  • Further discussion on school uniform, as this is unusual for an American school (btw, wtf);
  • Academics section needs a rewrite (besides what CT Cooper has said, I also take issue with each of the academies having logos included in the article, and, if all the points of paragraph are from the same reference, put the ref at the end, not repeatedly all the way through, and it's also way too overly finegrained, not everything needs to be listed);
  • Performing arts should be briefer, with less promotional language, and inserted into Extracurricular;
  • The language of the article needs to be more neutral; and
  • There needs to be more referencing, particularly of interesting/contentious points, and, in fact, extant referencing has to be improved too.

None of the above to-do-list should be especially hard or contentious (because it's all based in wikipedia policy and guidelines). Uhh... Get to it?

As an aside... You really need to try to be a bit more civil. Be WP:CALMer. ˜danjel [ talk | contribs ] 11:05, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Comment - Maryland Pride: I can see that you are passionate about this article and subject. You want the article to have a higher assessment grade: that is great! I've gotten several articles to WP:Featured article status, and that is quite rewarding. One thing I can suggest is that you go through a review process on the article. There are two processes that you can use: WP:PEER REVIEW (PR) and Wikipedia:Good article nominations (GAN). Both processes involve an independent editor evaluating the article and giving you constructive feedback. You can use PR anytime. If you use the GAN process, and achieve GA status, the article is automatically assessed at "GA" status (if you look at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Schools, you can see that GA status is one level above B status). In other words, you can bypass the project assessors. The project people, I can see, are acting in good faith, and their criticisms are well-intentioned. But, project members do not own articles, and they cannot prevent you from getting the article to GA status. I suggest that you carefully absorb the constructive criticisms on the article you have gotten so far, implement as many as you can, and then nominate the article for WP:Good article status, using the WP:GAN process. Then the article will be assessed at the GA level. If you need help with the GAN process, let me know and I can help. (PS: I concur with just about everything that user Danjel wrote immediately above ... my comments should be viewed as augmenting their comments). --Noleander (talk) 14:53, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

While I'm sure it well intentioned, I'm afraid I do take issue with treating project assessors, which spend hours and hours of time assessing articles and giving feedback, as some kind of obstruction. There has been a note at WP:WPSCH/A#R for years about WP:PR and the good/featured article processes. Project assessors do not own the article, and nobody has said that they do, but it is completely appropriate that action is taken to ensure that article quality ratings continue to mean something. If Maryland Pride wishes to skip C-class and go straight to GA then he can do so, although it is a far greater jump, and this will not necessarily "bypass" the project assessors. Anyone can be involved in a GA nomination process, and take an article to WP:GAR if it is felt that it has dropped below standards or has been promoted inappropriately. However, I should point out also that I and other editors that review articles have often encouraged editors to go for GA, usually once the article is at safe B-class level, and we have had some successes. CT Cooper · talk 20:55, 29 July 2012 (UTC)