Talk:Maugham Elementary School Adolf Hitler assignment controversy

Why is this an article? Reiterating call for this to be speedily deleted.

It seems very questionable to me why this "event" - an innocent action by a minor who in no way intended to valorize Nazism and nothing more than questionably motivated and dubiously informed outrage by a rather small group of adults - deserves an entire page on Wikipedia. By comparison, Prince Harry's (both an *adult* of global notoriety and third in line to the throne of a major global power at the time) dressing as a Nazi in public apparently merits a single line in his biography. I proposed yesterday that this article be speedily deleted and was reverted without any justification by an Admin. I seriously urge editors of this article and Admins to consider speedily deleting this article for several reasons.

1. It does not seem to meet Wikipedia's standards for events as it has not generated sustained coverage over a significant period of time. The news reports which the article cites are all within approximately 10 days of each other, hardly a significant period of time. Even the level of attention that the "many" articles published on the topic and cited would seem to suggest took place appears to be masking quasi content-farm-like coverage; many of the articles simply repeat what was reported on in other stories.
2. Relatedly, the article seems to fall under the category of "Wikipedia is not a newspaper", especially not a tabloid newspaper which this article comes close to being.
3. The individual at the center of the "controversy" is a child who in no way meets the criteria for notability.

Finally, I do not see this explicitly stated in Wikipedia policies but to maintain this as a separate article would be to memorialize for the entire Internet/world the innocent "mistake" of a child for eternity. I urge Admins to speedily delete this article and reduce the section on the Tenafly Public Schools page referencing this "event" to a sentence at most in line with the "Prince Harry-Nazi costume" standard alluded to above. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cattlematrix (talk • contribs) 20:35, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

To respond briefly:

1. A topic is presumed to be reliable when there is significant coverage of the topic in reliable sources that are independent of the subject itself. There are plenty of such sources; within the United States the topic has been covered by both local sources within New Jersey and national publications/regional publications from other states (including NBC News, The Washington Post, and The Miami Herald). The topic has also received international coverage in-depth, including in countries as diverse as Israel, Italy, and Taiwan (and the piece from The Washington Post was even republished by a reputable UK newspaper). The extent and widespread nature of the coverage of this controversy makes the event likely to be notable, in my opinion.
2. This article is well-sourced from multiple reliable sources, including several perennial reliable sources. If you have specific objections to the sourcing for content currently in the page, I'd kindly ask that you elaborate so that we can improve the page. However, I don't think that this article constitutes original reporting, celebrity gossip, or a "who's who". I also believe that the article is written in an encyclopedic tone. If there's content in it that's not reliably sourced (or that's unverifiable), then it should be removed, but absent specific objections it's hard to see what the "tabloid newspaper" comparison is saying here.
3. The third point has no basis in Wikipedia policy or notability guidelines; this isn't a biography of a person, so the people guideline simply is out-of-scope. And, as one of the pages you linked above notes, [e]ven when an event is notable, individuals involved in it may not be.

Additionally, speedy deletion is only for events that have practically no change of surviving a deletion discussion. If you still believe that the article fails to meet guidelines, then you can nominate it for deletion using the ordinary processes. However, it doesn't seem likely to me that such a proposal would succeed on the merits, since the article by all accounts seems to be notable.

— Mikehawk10 (talk) 04:24, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

Appreciate your points. I was unaware of difference between speedy deletion and ordinary deletion. I will propose ordinary deletion, although I feel you are bound to object and therefore nullify this option. If you remain open to being persuaded not to object, I would of course be appreciative. (I will wait to formally propose for deletion in case we can come to a consensus beforehand). To respond to your points:

1. The guidelines for notability include "sustained period of time" from my understanding. To quote from the notability page: "Brief bursts of news coverage may not sufficiently demonstrate notability." As I indicated above, the articles cited are all published within 10 days of each other. This would seem to qualify as largely "a brief burst of news coverage" and not much more.
2. As I suggested above, even the significant coverage from many news outlets I think overstates the depth of coverage given that each individual article has little original reporting and in many cases fundamentally misrepresents the events. The Independent (the reputable newspaper you reference) article, for example, includes a headline that fundamentally misrepresents what the student was doing - they were not "lauding" Hitler but writing from his (unrepentant) perspective, as instructed. Some weight ought to be given to the quality of "sustained coverage" in my opinion when considering it as a factor in disputes of notability. These headlines and the tone of the news coverage strikes me as rather sensationalist (see the Independent headline for example) and quasi-tabloid, even if the Wikipedia article is not written in such a tone, which I concede it is. I do not want to respond with points for how to improve the article or look for additional sourcing as I think the article does not merit existence in the first place.
3. Semi-related to my previous points, I would welcome a discussion at a minimum of including this "event" under the "anti-semitism" categories and the anti-semitism in the United States template as is currently included at the bottom of the page. Without getting overly socially constructionist this designation is itself at issue in the "event". To include it as a case of anti-semitism in the US alongside, for example, the the lynching of Leo Frank, I would argue, violates Wikipedia's neutrality.

— CattleMatrix 01:55, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. Regarding "ordinary deletion", I was attempting to reference Articles for deletion (AFD) rather than proposed deletion; there's a difference between the two in that PROD is for non-controversial deletions that don't qualify for speedy deletion and that AFD is for articles where deletion is expected to be contested.

1. The controversy is the subject of ongoing coverage. Since the essay became public over Memorial Day Weekend, it makes perfect sense that the coverage would have began then and continued to now. This doesn't appear to be a brief burst of news coverage; there seems to be sustained coverage on the matter. I have to incorporate additional sources/update the article to reflect new developments, but a brief burst doesn't seem to fully capture what's going on here.
2. Regarding your second point, I would point you towards the 2017–18 Bergen County eruv controversy article. It's a featured article, which is the highest quality of Wikipedia articles, though its citations are mostly local news and primary source court cases (primary sources do not contribute towards significant coverage). The citations in this article, right now, reflect coverage among a much larger range of reliable sources than the Eruv controversy. Regarding in many cases fundamentally misrepresents the events, I would ask for you to put forward reliable sources that demonstrate this point is true, or which sources, in particular, that you believe are not reliable here. Again, as I said above [i]f there's content in it that's not reliably sourced (or that's unverifiable), then it should be removed, but I'd need to see a reason to remove the content (and The Independent is not actually used in a source in this article, just as an aside; the point was to demonstrate that even the UK had picked up on this story by republishing an article from WaPo, and you might want to see WP:HEADLINE regarding why we don't treat headlines to have the same level of reliability of the actual text of the report).
3. This isn't a notability argument, though I'll ping Buidhe to see their reason for swapping the templates out to the current one. I don't think I need to explain why a public school district instructing a student to dress up as Adolf Hitler and present to a class in a way that praised Hitler's "accomplishments" could reasonably be classified as an antisemitic action on the district's behalf, as described in reliable sources, even if the middle-school student did not act with malice themselves. The controversy clearly centers around whether or not this is antisemitism, so I personally think it's apt to be included in that.

I would oppose a PROD owing to my points both in this response and my prior one, though obviously I cannot stop you from nominating the article for deletion.

— Mikehawk10 (talk)

Again, appreciate your points and thank you for the info about articles for deletion. I will follow up with that process.

1. The core issue is notability; I will for the sake of argument concede the points about quality are not as relevant for determining whether the article qualifies for deletion. As I argued above, I contend that the relevant factor here is sustained coverage. To measure sustained coverage, I consulted LexisNexis to see how many news articles mentioned "Tenafly" and "Hitler" in the same article since the story broke (on what appears to be May 31st in an article on northjersey.com.) Here are the results:

Number of articles found through LexisNexis mentioning "tenafly" and "hitler" by day

Day	Number of stories
May 31	1
June 1	27
June 2	28
June 3	15
June 4	18
June 5	10
June 6	1
June 7	2
June 8	1
June 9	0
June 10	0
June 11	2

As these numbers indicate, despite the story only breaking over Memorial Day, the story has already lost sustained interest/coverage. The results are even more desultory when I conducted the same search using Proquest newspaper database; only 16 articles in total were returned for the same search. This was basically a five-day news story at most as far as coverage not connected to the "event" was concerned. I think that reasonably qualifies as a "burst of coverage." The numbers in the table also include articles that are by LexisNexis standards "similar" so this actually overstates the amount of original reporting on the story, which I realize is not itself a measure of significant coverage, but I think is worth bearing in mind. For example, one of the two articles returned in the LexisNexis search for June 11, is simply a link to the other article published on that day.

2. Agree the issue of categorization is not related to notability. I disagree, however, that a student dressing up as part of an assignment on the nature of good and evil as Hitler connotes antisemitism. Instructing a student to portray Samuel Parris in a school production of The Crucible does not qualify as a case of anti-wiccanism. More importantly, however, I am less invested in this issue than the article's existence, but if the article is not approved for deletion, I would hope a better consensus can be found.

— CattleMatrix

@CattleMatrix:

1. The Lexis-Nexis numbers presented above are innacurate at best; the Lexis-Nexis database results are missing relevant sources that are cited on this page, so I am unsure that this actually overstates the amount of original reporting on the story is true generally (though it appears to be the case on some days). Some of these missing sources would appear to include the two published on June 10, when the database says that zero publication were made: this source from The Record and this editorial from The Star-Ledger. Similarly, on March 31, the database shows 1 source, though three are cited on this page alone. There's certainly a spike in the coverage when the story first broke, but the fact that Italian regional papers papers aren't providing daily updates on the situation doesn't detract from its notability; as I've stated above, the fact that there's ongoing coverage from reliable sources provides further evidence of notability.
2. The second portion of this is fully covered by WP:NOR; we can't provide our own interpretation of events and place it in the article. Rather, owing to WP:NPOV, neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources. The public reaction section does this; it reflects the way that reactions have been covered in reliable sources. If you don't believe that this is the case, you are free to make suggestions to adjust the weighting, though I think that the way the section is currently written is generally reflective of how RS cover the situation. You're of course free to suggest and make edits that attempt to adjust this in good faith, if you disagree.

— Mikehawk10 (talk) 15:57, 13 June 2021 (UTC)