Talk:East Richland Christian Schools

August 2007

Version of the article contents as of right before cleanup:

Faith Community Christian High School, or FCCHS, is a small private high school in Belmont, Ohio with approx 20 students and 10 faculty. The high school contains mostly students who have thoughts of suicide or are involved in drug-related activities. Christian counselors as well as preachers mentor the students throughout their high school career in an effort to convert the students to Christianity. The school accepts all students of any religion even though they title themselves as a Christian school. The school has multiple students and teachers that are Islamic as well. FCCHS currently resides in the old Union Local Elementary School, which is located in the village of Belmont. In May 2007, the building was inspected and did not pass local fire and health regulations, mainly due to exposed insulation which was believed to contain asbestos. Several students have witnessed dissection tools washed in drinking fountains. The school is not widely known to the public due to lack of funds for advertising. Currently, FCCHS is soley funded by Mrs. April Woods, who is also the leading Administrator.

Due to BLP concerns and an OTRS complaint, I am going to revert to an earlier neutral version. PLEASE DISCUSS ANY FURTHER CHANGES HERE FIRST. Georgewilliamherbert 06:10, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

i would like to add a paragraph or so about how excellent the enviroment is for emotionaly unstable students and those who otherwise don't fit in to the regular school system —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr.sourluck (talk • contribs)

Do you have a reliable source (newspaper article, etc) for that? Georgewilliamherbert 18:25, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

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I feel like Georgewilliamherbert is violating the third pillar of wikipedia A-shilling-of-crustaceans 18:31, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

it is a very small school the only reliable source on the school are the students who go there and the biased teachers (there pay is directly infulenced by how many students go there)Dr.sourluck 18:37, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I have been watching and trying to keep this page updated for nearly two months now. I appreciate the concern of Georgewilliamherbert about some of the negative tones set in the article. I am a bit confused as to why all "negative" facts must be cited and all positive facts can stand alone. How can one determine if a fact is negative about a particular subject if that person has no connection/knowledge of the subject at hand? A fact stating, "The high school contains mostly students who have thoughts of suicide or are involved in drug-related activities. Christian counselors as well as preachers mentor the students throughout their high school career in an effort to convert the students to Christianity. The school accepts all students of any religion even though they title themselves as a Christian school", may sound "negative" to one that has no knowledge of the school, but as an attendee of the school, I know it as a straight fact. Although I must agree that the last few edits done to this page (speaking of dissection tools being washed in fountains, etc. are truly incorrect). Anyways, perhaps more clarification of this matter would be nice. Thank you False h0pe 01:07, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

The concern started with the Wikimedia Foundation receiving a valid complaint that inaccurate and libelous claims had been made in the article. The foundation has to investigate and respond to those; in this case, as one of the volunteers who does that for the foundation on the English Wikipedia, I picked up this case. Unfortunately, that focused attention on the rest of it as well.

I have several reasons for continuing to work on this:

1. The libel may be reinserted.
2. There seems to be a lack of understanding of reliable sources and verifyability policies among contributors.
3. There is a wider general concern about low quality school articles full of unsourced, inaccurate information, and even as a strong supporter of Wikipedia having articles on schools, I feel that I have to spend some effort to prevent that here having seen it.

Fundamentally, everything in Wikipedia is supposed to have a reliable source. A reliable source is not "I as a contributor know this thing to be true". You may be a perfectly reasonable person, and you may be entirely right and have firsthand witnessed something you're reporting. But we have to as an encyclopedia use information that anyone can refer back to, fact check, and agree is reliable and a reasonable source.

Magazine articles, newspaper articles, books, films, school publications, state eduation department publications... these types of sources, and some others, are reasonable reliable sources for Wikipedia encyclopedia entries on schools.

Wikipedia does not want to become a set of random links, of random facts. We want to have accurate, referenced and sourced, and useful and notable information in articles. Having a bad article may or may not be preferable to having no article at all, but having one which has all its references listed and facts in a row is infinitely preferred.

I appreciate that several of you would like to add more information to the article. Wikipedia-wide quality policies are in place, however, and they're important for this article and all the others. I have no problems with adding any information which has a reliable source (one of the ones listed above, or if you can come up with a good argument for some other source type being reliable), which is significant, notable, and verifiable.

I am here and responding (as time allows, hopefully at least once a day) on the talk page and perfectly happy to discuss it all with anyone here. I'm happy to go over specific proposed edits with you and see what we can do to ensure that if you aren't already in compliance with the verifyability and reliable sources policies, we get you into compliance by finding sources or figuring out a workable compromise.

Thanks. Georgewilliamherbert 01:29, 11 August 2007 (UTC)