Talk:Moorestown High School

Hornstine sentence removal

The sentence regarding Ms. Hornstine and Harvard fails WP:BLPGOSSIP. That policy says says "Be wary of sources that use weasel words and that attribute material to anonymous sources." The source cited for the sentence, a New York Times color piece, in turn cites an article in the Harvard Crimson. The Crimson article[1] attributes the information to "a source involved with the decision." The Times provides no independent confirmation and quotes a Harvard spokesperson as saying such information is confidential.

BLPGOSSIP also says we should ask if material being presented "is relevant to a disinterested article about the subject." The subject of this article is Moorestown High School, not Ms. Hornstine. Confidential personal details about individual graduates are neither relevant nor appropriate for an article about a high school.

I would also call attention to WP:AVOIDVICTIM. Ms. Hornstine sued the Moorestown school district alleging discrimination, becoming the subject of a massive media hate storm as a result, but was vindicated in court. Our BLP policy says "Wikipedia editors must not act, intentionally or otherwise, in a way that amounts to participating in or prolonging the victimization." Ms. Hornstine is entitled to her privacy under our WP:BLP policy.--agr (talk) 17:08, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

I firmly disagree. Blair Hornstine has been the widespread subject of reliable and verifiable sources discussing her legal case, her plagiarism and the loss of her Harvard scholarship, ones that have continued for years beyond the incident. Stories such as this one from NPR make it clear that the loss of her Harvard scholarship is an inextricable element of her story as it regards her lawsuit and her high school, and is material that would be relevant to any dispassionate reader of any article about her, and does so using terms that use none of the "weasel words" that might make it fall afoul of WP:BLPGOSSIP. This material regarding Harvard rescinding her acceptance is hardly "confidential" and has been a matter of public record in what could well be thousands of articles. WP:AVOIDVICTIM is intended to protect those "whose notability stems largely or entirely from being victims of another's actions", while Hornstine's case covers someone whose own personal actions in the plagiarism in various notable publications are entirely based on her own actions. As I see it, this material clearly belongs here and even more so belongs in the Hornstine v. Moorestown article, yet you've removed it from both. If it were retained / reinserted into the article covering the lawsuit I'd be more willing to consider its exclusion here, but per WP:NOTCENSORED, I think it's appropriate to take a stand here at an article where the material has been non-controversial for several years. If you prefer the NPR source, I will be happy to use it here, but I think that there is neither a policy basis nor any consensus to deprive readers of a well-rounded, thoroughly sourced version of her story. Alansohn (talk) 20:40, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

As I'm sure you know, NOTCENSORED is limited by Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy. That policy requires high grade sources and has limitations on what material an article can include even if it is well sourced. This is especially true of people notable for one event who afterwards maintain a low public profile.

Even with high profile people, we require quality sources, not anonymous statements in a student newspaper. As far as I know, the Crimson piece is the original and only direct source for the statement I deleted. The NPR article you cite is an opinion piece, a nasty attack piece really, that would never be acceptable as a factual source for any Wikipedia article.

I would also note that the sentence I deleted implies that Harvard's action resulted from her failure to properly attribute her Courier-Post essays. The Crimson article strongly implies this as well, but does not claim that its anonymous source actually gave that a reason. As I pointed out on the Hornstine v. Moorestown talk page, that is exactly the sort of weasel wording the NOTGOSSIP section of our BLP policy warns against.

As for victimization, this entire matter started when the Moorestown school superintendent decided to change the school's valedictorian policy, an action a federal judge found was in violation of New Jersey education department rules and discriminatory under disability laws. Even the Courier-Post's going back an reviewing the essays she submitted under their student writer program stems from the ensuing firestorm. As I understand it the Courier-Post did not review the work of other past student contributors.

Most importantly, there was a discussion on the Hornstine v. Moorestown talk page, then titled Blair Hornstine, on whether there should even be a biographical article about her under our WP:BLP1E policy. The consensus reached was that there should not. That means we are not trying to tell "her story", as you put it, only the story of the law suit. (Note the we do not have a biographical article on Casey Anthony either, even though she was charged with murder and convicted of lesser charges and received as much bad press. I'm sure our readers would love to know more details of her life, but we only cover the death of her daughter and the subsequent murder trial, see Death of Caylee Anthony). Technically, since we don't have a bio on Ms. Hornstine, she should not even be listed as a notable alum, but I'll let someone else make that call.--agr (talk) 14:18, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)

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• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110105120529/http://www.moorestown.nj.us/pubs/140/2669.pdf to http://www.moorestown.nj.us/pubs/140/2669.pdf

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