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Revision as of 11:51, 26 May 2006

"Loading" the article

I am so strongly against social promotion that I suspect I am "loading" the article to reflect my bias. Please help. --Uncle Ed 19:53, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

May 2006 reversion

Oahc - I significantly revised the article, including extensive use of one of the sources already listed in the article (ERIC digest). You reverted it without any further explanation. I would hope that my changes added SOME value to the article; if you think parts are wrong, please change those, rather than discarding everything.

I'm going to put the page back the way it was; please either make CHANGES to it (explanations in the edit summary are appreciated and reduce misunderstandings) or post something HERE about why you think that everything I did is wrong. Thanks. John Broughton 12:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Oahc - thank you for posting a note to my talk/discussion page. However, you shouldn't have reverted the article. I've explained (on your talk/discussion page) what I did to improve the article, and why it's not an either/or ("Your" version/"my" version) choice. I'm going to revert the article back to the last version I edited.

Please note that you have reverted the article twice already; doing so again would violate the Three-revert rule. John Broughton

Hmm - seems to be problems posting to your talk/discussion page. I'm going to put the text here.

Oahc - you asked What is wrong with the social promotion article that I wrote? I wrote all the sides to it. I don't understand..Don't you agree with what I wrote?

I don't think those are the right questions. An article isn't finished when all the sides are presented. Nor should someone not edit an article because he/she agrees with what it says.

If I had SHORTENED the article, then I could see an argument being made that the version that you last edited might be better, and a simple revert is appropriate. But that isn't the case.

(As I remember - I didn't take notes -) I didn't ignore what was in the article (which had a dozen other editors, so I'm not sure why your refer to it as "your" article). Rather, I used the existing article as a starting point. I added a lot of text that I thought wasn't in the article, or was better written, and then removed text that I thought weren't necessary, either because I'd found better wording elsewhere or because it was redundant to begin with.

In particular, I tried to emphasize in the article that there are numerous STUDIES out there that provide hard facts about social promotion, and thus the debate should NOT be one of "common sense". (I didn't say that in so many words; that would be editorializing.) I also added what I thought was clearly a new argument - that while social promotion clearly has problems, retention may well (in many cases) have MORE problems, and that money could be better spent elsewise than on keeping students back. And I provided additional references as well as additional information.

At this point, you might want to do the following:

• Look at the existing article and see if it has redundant/duplicated information, or information that you consider trivial. If so, shorten it, and so comment in the edit summary. Also, where the wording or grammar is poor, or sentences or paragraphs are illogical, fix those.
• Look at the version that you last edited, and identify the half-dozen (or dozen or whatever) major points that you think should be made. Check the existing article to make sure they are in the article. For each point, decide whether the wording in the existing article is best, or could be improved. (Alternatively, print out the version you last edited, and go through it, checking off the points that should be made.) Where the last version you edited was superior, make changes to the existing article.

Hope this helps. Thanks for posting the note to my talk/discussion page. John Broughton 15:30, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Content deletion

I noticed that an anonymous editor recently removed quite a bit of content, apparently believing that a shorter article is better. This deletion removed a great deal of information about the history of social promotion, studies about it, and more. This information should definitely be added back, as shorter but less comprehensive is definitely not better. This looks like a textbook case of the common mistake of deleting rather than editing. If the content was unclear, then it should have been clarified rather than deleted.

I would add this information back myself, but I have not been involved in editing this article so I'm not terribly familiar with it. Someone who is more familiar with it will be better able to ensure that all useful information is kept. --Icarus 06:57, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Icarus - I appreciate your taking the time to post a comment, and particularly your citing a relevant wikipedia article.

I thought that Oahc and I had reached a reasonable compromise on this, and I'm going to revert the article to a previous version. John Broughton 11:50, 26 May 2006 (UTC)