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[quote=Anonymous]I am creating a new topic with regard to the post below, which was posted by the Moderator Jeff, in connection with the SFS HoS discussion.  While I think this is an important issue, I did not want to bog down/divert the discussion in that thread.

Here is what Jeff posted:

[quote=jsteele]While I realize that this thread is about the Sidwell Head of School and everyone either knows or can easily find out the identity of the Sidwell Head of School, I would still appreciate your not using the name of the Sidwell Head of School or any other folks. Please keep in mind that you are not having a discussion with a couple of friends over a cup of tea, but posting messages that are immediately indexed by Google and available worldwide. As such, folks deserve a modicum of privacy.  Topics such as an individual's reason for leaving, gossip about their performance, and/or their religion are not appropriate for anonymous discussion. If you would like to identify yourself, provide personal details, and allow the DCUM community to publicly evaluate your job performance, perhaps allowances can be made for your posts about others. But, short of that, please use some discretion.
[/quote]

In response, I suppose I have the following questions, though let me preface it by expressing my appreciation to you maintaining this forum.  As a private forum, I recognize that you can maintain whatever standards you wish, and hope you take my questions with that as a baseline understanding.  So:

What does "gossip about their performance" mean?  Are you going to delete posts that candidly discuss and critique a Head's performance at his/her job?  Are you going to delete them if we don't mention the Head by name?  Does "an individual's reason for leaving" mean that we can't discus whether a prominent Head of School was fired?

Recognizing, again, that you are entitled to moderate this forum however you choose, I will say that your comment seems to be imposing a rather odd and constraining standard on matters of public interest to this community.  Presumably, topics about school heads and their performance are more compelling and of interest to this community than are the hundreds of posts regarding application angst, etc.  Perhaps you don't want that kind of discussion here in any case, and if you don't, that's fine.  But that should be clear then, and the standard should be applied consistently.

Also, school heads are public figures.  They understand that their performance is subject to critique, often through anonymous channels.  The fact that school heads wield power in the community--which sometimes can be exercised improperly--is a confounding factor.  Comparing people who post on this forum to someone who is a public figure seems markedly unfair.[/quote]

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