Talk:Waiting for "Superman"

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 5 January 2019 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Waiting for "Superman". The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

Skip to table of contents

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Waiting for "Superman" article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1: 7 days

Discussions on this page often lead to previous arguments being restated. Please read recent comments and look in the archives before commenting.

United States: District of Columbia Low‑importance

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject District of Columbia (assessed as Low-importance).

Schools Low‑importance

	Schools portal This article is related to WikiProject Schools, a collaborative effort to write quality articles about schools around the world. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page.SchoolsWikipedia:WikiProject SchoolsTemplate:WikiProject Schoolsschool articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Film: Documentary / American

	Film portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Film. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please refer to the documentation. To improve this article, please refer to the guidelines.FilmWikipedia:WikiProject FilmTemplate:WikiProject Filmfilm articles
	This article is supported by the Documentary films task force.
	This article is supported by the American cinema task force.

Education Low‑importance

	Education portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Education, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of education and education-related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EducationWikipedia:WikiProject EducationTemplate:WikiProject Educationeducation articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Inaccuracies?[edit]

There are three paragraphs (two substantial) about inaccuracies in the film. Yet there is only one actual inaccuracy cited. (and even this is debatable. It is common to use proficiency as a measure of how many students are reading at grade level. I've seen numerous public school teachers do the same).

We should replace these paragraphs with a catalog of the inaccuracies, and a statement that "supporters of public education and unions have lambasted the movie". (we already have plenty of cites, but we need more inaccuracies. In general, we should avoid calling anything inaccurate unless we can make a statement: Movie said X, but this is contradicted by Y. That is also much more useful to readers of the article, who are probably reading the section about inaccuracies specifically looking for statements in this format.)

If these paragraphs are also supposed to be about "educational reception", then we are missing the (easily located) quotes from educators who have praised the movie. I'll leave this here for comments before doing anything. 72.69.159.191 (talk) 23:23, 5 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Graph located under "Educational reception and allegations of inaccuracy"[edit]

The graph is horrific and very misleading. It makes it look as thought the schools with no significant difference far outnumber the other two categories, when in fact each of the 3 "Average" scores should be located at the same level. Also the scaling numbers on the side of the graph do not correspond AT ALL to the percentages displayed above each of the columns.

If someone wants to try to change this, please do. I don't currently have time for another week and a half, by which time I'll have probably forgotten I was going to do it.

Also, I'm not entirely sure I know how to edit image files on Wikipedia. Is it done the same way as the text? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmpatison (talk • contribs) 02:12, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Liberal Bias[edit]

The enormous amount of text devoted to criticism in this article is one of the most egregious examples of liberal bias in Wikipedia. Compare with the article Race to Nowhere, which has very minimal text devoted to criticism. --Westwind273 (talk) 19:59, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As you well know, you can edit the text of Wikipedia articles yourself. Failing that you can write about actionable changes here on the talk page. Comparative assessments, while sometimes useful are not going to bring about changes on their own. My advice would be to edit the text first per this policy, and then discuss the text and related sources here on the talk page if you are reverted for some reason. Speculations as to the political orientation of the editors who wrote the article amount to personal criticisms and misuse of the talk page as forum for your opinions. Edaham (talk) 00:34, 23 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

OK, first of all, starting off a comment with "As you well know" does not assume good intention, as per Wikipedia policy. Secondly, you are way overboard in saying that any mention of liberal bias in the talk pages is automatically a misuse of the talk pages. That is an extreme position that can in fact be a cause for the perpetuation of liberal bias in articles. In sum, you are way out of bounds here. I think you have an ax to grind against me or against those who point out liberal bias in Wikipedia, and this is causing you to take extreme positions and promote insanely draconian enforcement of Wikipedia guidelines. --Westwind273 (talk) 13:51, 17 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Synopsis[edit]

The synopsis section is almost unreadable because of grammatical errors and purple writing. I haven't seen this movie but I highly suggest someone rewrite it completely or at least give it a huge facelift. Laikedits (talk) 22:40, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I took an axe to it since it was so incomprehensible, but it's now brief as a result, and I can't fill in gaps since I haven't seen the film. I encourage any other brave editors to add to it, preferably with citations. Worth noting that the section was completely unchanged since it was first written in 2010. Laikedits (talk) 22:54, 16 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The errors seem to be the result of recent sabotage. There certainly wasn't anything like the synopsis you deleted in the older versions of the article that I looked at. My guess is that somebody ran the synopsis through a machine translation program twice and replaced the section with the result. Or something similar.

At any rate, I've restored the synopsis to the way it was before the sabotage. Feel free to incorporate any of your text into the article if you think it is appropriate. Will Orrick (talk) 00:28, 13 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]