Talk:Cary Academy/Archive 1

Archive 1

Schedule Section

Do we really need a section about the school's schedule features? I think it may be better just to incorporate it into the academics section, rather than leave it a very short and entirely separate one. What does everybody think? Qazwsx999 (talk) 20:37, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Debate Team

I don't want to get into another Plano Football v. CA XC argument, but I do believe the debate section requires a tad more. debate is also HUGE in NC (as football is in Texas,) and the CA debate team's success is all more recent (ergo more relevant) than the Plano Football Teams' success (with their last champion title over a decade ago.) I'm just adding some hsitorical State Championships.

LD and PF are Huge in NC, with NC teams placing 1st and 3rd at Public Forum Nationals last year. Furthermore, PFdebate.org has noted the tarheel east district as one of, if not the most, competative PF districts in the nation. LD, while not so dramatic, is similar in importance.

I don't mean to drive anyone crazy, it's just something I think should be explained in more detail as relevent information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.87.175.169 (talk) 03:04, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Older

go ca!

what about the new senior tradition of victory cigars?

Yeah, a 'tradition' that's run for one year. Sorry.

As a CA student, I doubt that our Fine Arts department, while high-quality, is "widely known." I'm not aware that we get any more coverage in local papers, for instance, than other schools' productions... I'm going to cut that, in fact. ~~ N (t/c) 15:44, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

The references to individual students, teachers and courses need to be removed. The athletics section also needs to be more concise.

Some new sources added, possibly biased language revised. Mah159 05:32, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Delete the team facts section within athletics. Completely irrelevant to the article.

On claims that have been made in edit summaries with regard to notability and self-promotion: 1. The notability argument does not hold water--after all, Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedic resource providing as much information that others may find useful as possible (within copyright bounds, etc.), and there is definitely a significant community that would find this information useful. The facts in this section are of direct relevance to anyone in the North Carolina high school running community and possibly some others; they are almost certainly of greater reader interest than many of the more obscure cultural or taxonomical articles, all of which are undeniably an asset to Wikipedia anyway because they increase its breadth of coverage. If someone deleted the first article on a rare insect subspecies because no other rare insect subspecies had an article, useful information would be lost to the public, and it seems that this is contrary to the purpose of Wikipedia. 2. Facts cannot be considered to constitute self-promotion, and in fact the talk and history pages indicate that alleged biases have been taken seriously and corrected. If anyone feels that there are particular passages that are self-promoting, please do not hesitate to bring them up. Santiagonasar 22:11, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

"The notability argument does not hold water--after all, Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedic resource providing as much information that others may find useful as possible"

This is not entirely true. I suggest you look over the page describing what Wikipedia is not---specifically, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Ideally, the Wikipedia article paints a broad picture of a subject, offering links and references to relevant sites where interested users can find more detailed information. Since it seems as though the vast majority of the information contained in the `Cross Country' section can be found at http://www.carunning.com, it is unnecessary to repeat this all in the Wikipedia article. Rather, it would make more sense to pare down the article, and then offer a link to carunning.com in the `External Links and Resources' section. No information would be lost to the public, and a leaner Wikipedia entry means it will be easier for users to cull important information from the article quickly.Hobbes512 00:52, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

This is a valid point. To be honest though this page does only cover the most important facts about the team--coaches, course records, championships, etc. In this sense it is by no means a repetition of carunning.com--it is a summary of key points, just as any encyclopedia article is just a summary of its sources (or one source in the case of many article). Given these considerations, the article is not an indiscriminate collection of information at all; if all the team members were listed with their race times, et cetera it would be a different story. I think I should give some background on the section. The Cross Country section used to be a separate article; nickptar (wikipedia admin and current senior not affiliated with the team) said it would be best to merge it with the main article, which according to nickptar was probably written by someone not affiliated with the school. This original section was essentially a stub plus the list of plays (probably since the plays are easy to access on the Internet). The academics section at the time of merging in order to keep it from being just Cross Country and arts; in accordance with nickptar's suggestions the language was modified somewhat and several of the sources were added. I agree that there is some one-sidedness in the article but since the current information is all of relevance to many people, it seems the solution would be to expand more rather than to delete. I think this was the basic plan for the article at the time of merging. Santiagonasar 01:43, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

"...if all the team members were listed with their race times, et cetera it would be a different story."

Actually, I believe the article does currently include running times for two of the runners. While this is far from having ALL the team members' running times listed on the article, the point is that having ANY running times, even individual records, is probably too fine a level of detail for a Wikipedia article.

Also, there are at least a few claims in the article that really need to either be sourced or dropped. For example:

"The Cary Academy Cross Country program is widely recognized as the leading program in the Triangle Independent Schools Athletic Conference (TISAC)."

Widely recognized amongst whom, exactly? As I am personally unfamiliar with the topic, it seems to me as though other teams in TISAC might disagree with this statement. At the very least, it needs to be sourced.

"While the men's team does not compete at the level that the women's team does, they are well recognized in the state among all high school teams. They have a reputation for stepping up and helping each other out when needed; this has been cited to explain why despite being considered "rebuilding teams" at the beginning of both the 2005 and 2006 seasons but performed in the top 3 at the state championship."

Who was considering the team to be a "rebuilding" team? Where is this reputation specifically cited? I would imagine most high school teams imagine that they have such a reputation. Who cited this reputation as being a reason for the strong performance at state?

For reference, I suggest that you look at some of the Wikipedia entries on high schools that the Wikipedia Schools project highlights as showcase articles: Plano Senior High School, Stuyvesant High School, Aquinas College, Perth. You'll notice that even Plano High School's section on its football team, which is arguably more notable than Cary's cross country team (Plano has a 7-time state championship team in a state where high school football is HUGE), is shorter than the current section on Cary cross country.

Taking all this into account, I feel as though paring down the cross country section is justified. Hobbes512 02:55, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Evidence and citations are definitely an issue--I have modified those sections. Individual running times are probably too fine detail for the high school level, but since times are the universal standard of quality in cross country it seems appropriate to include school records, which are more notable because they are associated with the school rather than with any particular runner. Plano's football team is indeed more notable than Cary's cross country team; there would certainly be general interest for more information on Plano football, but that does not mean there is a lack of general interest for information on CA XC. In fact, to be honest, Plano football probably deserves its own article. Santiagonasar 03:50, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

This page needs SIGNIFICANT work. As a former CA student I am almost embarassed that the page reads like it does and the fact that the school is presented as a Cross Country Program that also has classes. Also to say that facts cannot be considered self promoting is false. If all teams were represented in the way they are then no, they would not be self promoting. However, the depth of the CC section and the lack of other teams does come across as self promoting. Only putting one aspect foward comes across as self serving.

I have expanded the academics section, written on the Tablet PC program (arguably the school's most distinctive major characteristic), and returned the cross country section with additional streamlining. It is now unequivocally clear that CA is not an XC team that also has classes. The fact of the matter is, Wikipedia will naturally cover some topics more than others; these are the topics that users choose to write about. Most of the current article was written by cross country runners, and as a result, that section is larger than the others; it would definitely be very good to have detail on other subjects, most notably other sports and middle school academics. Everything that is currently in the article is relevant to readers, be they prospective students, families, or employees; people at nearby schools or athletic rivals; people with an interest in high school academics or sports in general; or simply curious strangers. These other subjects, if detailed in the article, would have the same relevance. I am trying to work on these improvements but will need the help of people with different expertise than my own, e.g. familiarity with sports programs other than running. Mah159 08:41, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

How can such a good school have such a bad wikipage? First off, our Athletics should be the LAST thing we promote and certainly shouldn't take up a good 1/2 of the page. Second, why our xc team is ok, i certainlly shouldn't gain any more recognition than other teams which should all together be very little. Third, we are know for our arts more than our athletics (just look at our art and then glance at our win records...) so why not build that up instead of devoting the page to alums who want ego boosts from proclaim Hall and his ship of fools... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.138.41.139 (talk) 21:30, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Whoever wrote the part about the scheduling aspects is an embarassment to this school. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bojanglefunk (talk • contribs) 04:41, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Can we add something about how CA doesn't pay any attention to its video "department"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.229.178.41 (talk) 22:28, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

yes, it is an important point. We have thousands of dollars with of video equiptment never being used. It is an area that CA should really focus more attention to. Heck, they weren't even gunna hire someone to teach tech video until CA parents bugged them about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.229.178.41 (talk) 03:39, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Archive 1

Assessment

I am assessing this article following a request at WikiProject Schools. I'm maintaining the exciting low-importance rating, as I don't see enough evidence at present to justify higher importance. In order to get WP:BCLASS the article will need to pass all of the B-class criteria, which it unfortunately does not at the moment, and hence I am retaining the existing C-class rating. Referencing does not need to be perfect for B-class, but the current article has large gaps in referencing in places which need to be filled. The lack of referencing is also impacting on the content itself, for example "Cary Academy has a few unusual schedule features." is stated in the schedule section. Unusual in comparison to what? A source is needed to back up such comments; really everything needs a reference except the most non-controversial statements per WP:V. Some parts of the article do also come-off to the reader as rather promotional. Per WP:NPOV, the article content should be factual in nature, with any opinions given backed-up by sources and who made them identified (WP:YESPOV explains this more). For example, the speech and debate section states "Cary Academy is also known for its strong Speech and Debate Team, participation in which is available to Upper School students." Known by who, and in comparison to what? Sources for such content should preferably not be from the school itself (use as greater variety of sources as possible), and any reliable sources which disagree with that view will need to be provided also per WP:NPOV. The lead needs to be expanded to be better summarise the article per WP:LEAD, and I would recommend re-organising the article to follow the standard section layout at WP:WPSCH/AG#S. On format, try to keep lists to a minimum, since prose is preferred, and always uses bullets (*) for vertical lists, or commas if it within a sentence. Never use dashes/hyphens (-) for lists. On external lists, please keep them to a minimum per WP:EL and avoid bare URLs. CT Cooper · talk 16:41, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Rework

I have reverted back to the much longer version of the page, with hopefully most of the promotional-esque parts removed. I think working off of this is better than just deleting all of it and giving up. Correct me if I'm wrong though. JonoJ (talk) 19:58, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

You are and I did. John from Idegon (talk) 01:59, 20 February 2020 (UTC)