jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The 1% of posts that were thoughtful and interesting are not worth the 99% of posts that were just vicious, speculative nonsense, some of which included very personally identifying comments attacking teachers, parents, and administrators. Please delete the entire thread.

Amen! Take it down!!

I totally disagree. There are some posts that clearly crossed the line in terms of personal information, but many of the posts (and not only the ones I posted ) were thoughtful and well-articulated statements of both the current and past history of what has created the problems in the Cluster. I get why you took down the CHCS Leadership thread even though I don't agree with the decision. The Oyster-Adams one is no better and still up there. I am a former Cluster PTA person of many years and find much value in seeing the variety of views on the thread.

Will you shut down any future discussions as well, even if they are devoid of personal information?

I reserve the right to lock or delete any thread for any reason. But, normally, I am only interested in stopping obvious abuses such as spamming, sock puppeting, and trolling. In addition, I try to prevent anonymous posting being abused to attack named individuals and I will stop threads in which discussion has exceeded certain necessarily subjective bounds (such as becoming overtly racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.). That last category, being subjective, is the most difficult to be consistent and I'm sure many can find examples in which they disagree with my actions. Also, I don't read all that many threads. If nobody reports a thread, I'm unlikely to know about any problems with it. For instance, I know nothing about "The Oyster-Adams one".

Thanks Jeff. I wasn't calling into question your prerogative to delete threads that are reported at all. What I meant is that I can see why someone reported the CHCS Leadership thread as containing personal attacks on named individuals even though the information pulled in to do so was from public sources, i.e., LinkedIn. I guess the comparison to O-A is that it also discusses the qualifications of their leaders in personal terms but apparently hasn't been reported.

I also wonder of the effect of deleting this thread. As someone said above, this is a long-standing discussion among Hill denizens, involving one of the largest, if not the single largest, ECE/elementary school in DC. I think it is like whack-a-mole. If you bonk down one head (of thread) another is likely to start afresh. I thinking locking the thread now after the last few pages is a good decision.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The 1% of posts that were thoughtful and interesting are not worth the 99% of posts that were just vicious, speculative nonsense, some of which included very personally identifying comments attacking teachers, parents, and administrators. Please delete the entire thread.

Amen! Take it down!!

I totally disagree. There are some posts that clearly crossed the line in terms of personal information, but many of the posts (and not only the ones I posted ) were thoughtful and well-articulated statements of both the current and past history of what has created the problems in the Cluster. I get why you took down the CHCS Leadership thread even though I don't agree with the decision. The Oyster-Adams one is no better and still up there. I am a former Cluster PTA person of many years and find much value in seeing the variety of views on the thread.

Will you shut down any future discussions as well, even if they are devoid of personal information?

I reserve the right to lock or delete any thread for any reason. But, normally, I am only interested in stopping obvious abuses such as spamming, sock puppeting, and trolling. In addition, I try to prevent anonymous posting being abused to attack named individuals and I will stop threads in which discussion has exceeded certain necessarily subjective bounds (such as becoming overtly racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.). That last category, being subjective, is the most difficult to be consistent and I'm sure many can find examples in which they disagree with my actions. Also, I don't read all that many threads. If nobody reports a thread, I'm unlikely to know about any problems with it. For instance, I know nothing about "The Oyster-Adams one".

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The 1% of posts that were thoughtful and interesting are not worth the 99% of posts that were just vicious, speculative nonsense, some of which included very personally identifying comments attacking teachers, parents, and administrators. Please delete the entire thread.

Amen! Take it down!!

I totally disagree. There are some posts that clearly crossed the line in terms of personal information, but many of the posts (and not only the ones I posted ) were thoughtful and well-articulated statements of both the current and past history of what has created the problems in the Cluster. I get why you took down the CHCS Leadership thread even though I don't agree with the decision. The Oyster-Adams one is no better and still up there. I am a former Cluster PTA person of many years and find much value in seeing the variety of views on the thread.

Will you shut down any future discussions as well, even if they are devoid of personal information?

Anonymous wrote:The 1% of posts that were thoughtful and interesting are not worth the 99% of posts that were just vicious, speculative nonsense, some of which included very personally identifying comments attacking teachers, parents, and administrators. Please delete the entire thread.

Amen! Take it down!!

Anonymous wrote:For the PTA rep who wants the thread taken down, I get it. But also remember that you all CAME to us to ask about problems at the Cluster. We confided in you all, then you told us that had made a mistake in talking to you. Further more you went back to the school officials and let us become targets.

I understand why you want this thread closed. But please be reflective and understand that the reason an anonymous board blew up is because no one is listening.

+1

For the PTA rep who wants the thread taken down, I get it. But also remember that you all CAME to us to ask about problems at the Cluster. We confided in you all, then you told us that had made a mistake in talking to you. Further more you went back to the school officials and let us become targets.

I understand why you want this thread closed. But please be reflective and understand that the reason an anonymous board blew up is because no one is listening.

The 1% of posts that were thoughtful and interesting are not worth the 99% of posts that were just vicious, speculative nonsense, some of which included very personally identifying comments attacking teachers, parents, and administrators. Please delete the entire thread.

As a non Hill resident, I followed the thread until it lost it at the end. I thought it was a fascinating discussion of race, gentrification, and urban education challenges.

I would not delete the thread. Maybe a few of the invested parties could identify posts for deletion (identifying info, racist comments) and perhaps lock it for now. But definitely keep it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Jeff - thank you for locking down the vitriol in this thread:
http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1470/381804.page

As a Cluster PTA rep, I respectfully request that you delete the entire thread. It is full of speculation about data, personal motivations, and facts about the students, admin, and schools; internal name calling; derogatory statements about AA and homeless kids in our community; and conjecture about variables in the DME boundary/feeder review process, which is now over. It doesn't serve value in addressing the issues talked about. There is not value to having this thread live in the archives.

This is not surprising, coming from the "PTA." Sweep the problems under the rug; ignore and don't fix; everything is A OK; safety, candor and transparency are not issues; educational quality is not important; the non-democratic process of abolishing the Peabody district is of no consequence.

PP: This is exactly why the ENTIRE thread needs to be deleted in whole. It's name calling, speculation, misinformation and reputation ruining. It gets nasty very fast. Private emails are being posted, personal information posted, racist and slanderous remarks are all over the thread. Please delete the entire thing and if people have issues with the cluster they should talk at the school level instead of posting anonymous misinformation on a blog.

Anonymous wrote:Jeff - thank you for locking down the vitriol in this thread:
http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1470/381804.page

As a Cluster PTA rep, I respectfully request that you delete the entire thread. It is full of speculation about data, personal motivations, and facts about the students, admin, and schools; internal name calling; derogatory statements about AA and homeless kids in our community; and conjecture about variables in the DME boundary/feeder review process, which is now over. It doesn't serve value in addressing the issues talked about. There is not value to having this thread live in the archives.

This is not surprising, coming from the "PTA." Sweep the problems under the rug; ignore and don't fix; everything is A OK; safety, candor and transparency are not issues; educational quality is not important; the non-democratic process of abolishing the Peabody district is of no consequence.

I request that you delete some of the more vitriolic and personal posts from the Dump the Cluster thread (particularly from the last several pages), but leave it frozen in the archives as it includes a good many remarkably thoughtful posts. You may or may not know that Watkins' slow and steady decline is a real sore point for Hill denizens these days, mainly because the Peabody/Watkins school district comprises one third of the neighborhood. I don't think that these issues should be swept under the rug. There are reasons that the thread ran 99 pages.

I would also request that you delete the thread, but for very different reasons. Folks at the school have been retaliated against because they are under suspicion for reporting things on DCUM. I don't think outsiders understand who very serious the situation is- and who vulnerable they are making others, at work.

Are you thinking of shutting down the "Dump the Cluster" thread? Good call.

Thanks for this post. I don't want to read the entire thread, but I do want to hear feedback such as this to help me decide what to do.

Jeff - thank you for locking down the vitriol in this thread:
http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1470/381804.page

As a Cluster PTA rep, I respectfully request that you delete the entire thread. It is full of speculation about data, personal motivations, and facts about the students, admin, and schools; internal name calling; derogatory statements about AA and homeless kids in our community; and conjecture about variables in the DME boundary/feeder review process, which is now over. It doesn't serve value in addressing the issues talked about. There is not value to having this thread live in the archives.